Amidst global uncertainty, enterprise tech spending holds steady: Arundhati Bhattacharya

Any new developments within the company?

We completed the Informatica purchase in November last year. As part of this, approximately 5,000 of their employees, including 2,500 based in India, have joined us. We have taken over Informatica’s centre in Chennai, which is now a new location apart from the six earlier — Mumbai, Gurgaon, Pune, Jaipur, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Our India headcount is now around 17,000.

Are Indian enterprises ahead in AI adoption, or is there still a lag? What are you hearing from customer conversations?

From a global perspective, our industry is still lagging. In India, many are still stuck in the pilot stage and are anxious because being stuck is not yielding results. But the jump from the pilot stage onto production is a serious decision. They need to determine whether they and their workforce are ready for it, whether they are compliant, and if there could be security issues. These things can’t be solved in a day. We are now asking our clients to determine where they want to see value, and to choose those two-three use cases of consequence — where it either resolves a long-lasting problem or adds value and to go full scale with those. This will make it easier for them to lay out a path to frame their initiatives and to ensure they are getting the best out of this. Enterprises have to willingly take on that journey.

With the ongoing conflict in West Asia, do you see enterprises reprioritising budgets away from software spending toward other areas? What trends are you observing?

I do not see that happening because of how software is evolving. Not being part of this evolution is not a solution. If you want to remain relevant and sustainable as a company, you must provide the solutions that customers want. They are spoilt for choice. So if I have to create that experience for them, I will have to invest because technology can make the differentiation. At scale, it cannot be done by human beings alone. Industries like manufacturing are benefiting from things like digital twins, which can, for example, help with replacing a particular piece of machinery even before it breaks down to prevent stoppage of work. While we are currently in the digital agentic phase, the next phase is expected to be a robotic agentic phase, where robots will have the same intelligence as digital agents. Companies believe that they need to be part of this moment. They are not looking to reduce this spend. Having said that, they expect this spend to give them returns, which could be anything from bottom-line or top-line functions, better market share, or customer satisfaction score. Companies are working on those metrics to understand whether their spending is justified. But trying to reduce spending on this front is not a trend that I have seen.

There was a lot of frenzy around AI players like Anthropic, with speculation that automation could shrink the role of traditional software. Do those fears persist, or is this now an opportunity for software companies to collaborate with AI players and co-exist?

We will 100 per cent co-exist. While an LLM might provide you with an answer, they are not in the flow of work and often not contextual either. Enterprises are looking at LLMs, SLMs or even micro language models to reduce expenses. But we can’t still say whether it will take away from companies like ours. Who’s leading the race — whether it’s OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or DeepSeek — remains unclear. The landscape is evolving rapidly, with continuous innovation, and the eventual winner is yet to emerge. But if you look at our AI stack, you can integrate any model because the stack is flexible. You put in any model, and we have a reasoning engine that gives our agents an edge because it brings in the context, which is essential for the right answers.

Some of your global peers have announced large layoffs, including in India. Are there any similar plans at Salesforce? And should we expect headcount in India to continue growing?

We have no infrastructure ambitions, so it is unlikely. We will continue to do things as required by the evolution in technology. We will also re-imagine our workforce and proceed accordingly. For instance, if we need certain skills that are currently unavailable, we will recruit for those skills. We will focus on upskilling or reskilling employees with outdated skills; otherwise, exits may happen. All of this is a function of the business we are in and not for any particular reason. Depending on organisational needs and priorities, we periodically review our workforce to ensure alignment with evolving requirements. There is broad-based upskilling underway — particularly for roles like support — to prepare employees for current and future job demands.