As Indian enterprises accelerate the shift from AI pilots to production-scale deployment, Salesforce is placing its bets on Agentforce – a platform designed to embed autonomous AI agents directly into enterprise workflows. These agents go beyond chat-based assistance, with the ability to reason, use enterprise data and execute tasks across functions such as sales, service and operations. In this interview, Arun Kumar Parameswaran, EVP & MD, Salesforce, South Asia, speaks to Sudhir Chowdhary on why India is fast emerging as a key growth market for agentic AI – and what it means for the next phase of enterprise transformation. Excerpts:
How is agentic AI changing enterprise tech priorities in India?
India’s biggest challenge has always been solving problems at scale, and agentic AI is enabling enterprises to do that in entirely new ways. Unlike traditional chatbots that follow fixed rules, AI agents can reason, understand context, access data, and take action.
That ability to operate intelligently at scale is what makes agentic AI transformative for India, especially when paired with the right trust frameworks and cost economics.
Which industries see AI as a strategic priority today?
Digital-native companies and financial services firms are leading AI adoption in India. Banks, in particular, see AI as a major opportunity to deliver hyper-personalised customer experiences at a massive scale.
Direct-to-consumer industries such as retail, travel, transportation, and hospitality are also moving quickly toward “agentic-first” customer engagement, where users interact with systems through natural language instead of rigid workflows. B2B adoption is progressing at a more measured pace, but AI is now part of virtually every enterprise transformation conversation across industries.
What’s preventing enterprises from scaling AI successfully?
The biggest challenge is that many enterprises are stuck in endless pilots without a clear business outcome or ROI. AI initiatives driven by technology alone rarely scale successfully. The second barrier is the build-versus-buy dilemma. Many organisations underestimate the true cost of building and running AI at scale, including infrastructure, governance, security, and continuous upgrades.
Talent is another major issue, especially in India, where retaining skilled AI professionals is becoming increasingly difficult. Ultimately, the enterprises seeing success are the ones aligning AI adoption with clear business goals, operational readiness, cost economics, and the right platform strategy.
What sets Agentforce apart from competing AI platforms?
AI works best when it sits close to the workflow and the data. Since customer workflows and data already run on Salesforce, Agentforce can embed AI directly into the flow of work in a more efficient, trusted, and cost-effective way. We’ve also invested heavily in reasoning capabilities, recognizing early that not every task needs a large language model. Salesforce’s strength is putting AI intelligence to work inside real business workflows.
Where is Salesforce AI delivering real business results?
Air India has reduced class downgrade refund timelines from 30 days to about 30 minutes using Agentforce, while also automating ticket name corrections through AI-led workflows. Hero FinCorp reduced loan approval timelines from days or weeks to under 30 minutes using Agentforce and intelligent document processing.
In regulated industries, our platform also provides full auditability and traceability for AI-driven decisions, helping enterprises scale AI while meeting compliance requirements.
Why are some companies scaling AI faster than others?
The biggest differentiator is leadership commitment. The organisations seeing the strongest AI outcomes are the ones where CEOs and leadership teams are driving AI adoption as a business priority, not just a technology initiative.
The second factor is data. AI is only as effective as the quality and accessibility of the data behind it. The third is being pragmatic about build versus buy, understanding where to create differentiated capabilities internally and where to rely on trusted platforms.
And finally, talent remains critical. As AI adoption accelerates, attracting and retaining skilled talent is becoming a major competitive advantage.
How should enterprises balance human and AI workforces?
It starts with leadership. The organisations moving fastest on AI are the ones where the CEO and leadership team have made AI adoption a strategic priority. What’s different this time is that AI doesn’t require deep technical reskilling. It’s conversational and intuitive, so the focus is more on building a culture of usage and experimentation.
The goal isn’t simply replacing people, but redesigning workflows where AI can improve productivity, customer experience, and growth. In India, especially, the ROI conversation is often more about driving better customer outcomes and top-line growth than just reducing costs.
What makes India important to Salesforce’s global AI push?
India will play a critical role in shaping Salesforce’s agentic enterprise capabilities, both for our own operations and for customers globally. More importantly, India is becoming a real test bed for scale. We also launched Agentforce Voice in Hindi. With AI voice agents, enterprises can now engage far more customers quickly and efficiently, both inbound and outbound.
Overall, the focus is now shifting from experimentation to real-world deployments with measurable business outcomes, and India will be central to that journey.