India has ‘huge opportunity’ as Salesforce shifts to AI-first enterprise systems: CEO Benioff
- IBEF
- September 17, 2026
Salesforce sees a huge opportunity for India as the company transitions towards rebuilding its enterprise systems with an AI-first approach, with the country’s large pool of technology professionals, engineering talent and ecosystem partners expected to play an important role. Mr. Marc Benioff, CEO and Co-founder, Salesforce, highlighted the company’s strong teams in India and said that Indian technology professionals and partners could be a key part of the company’s AI-led transformation. The shift is expected to involve rebuilding enterprise systems around intelligent interfaces capable of performing certain tasks while working with partners and users. Mr. Marc Benioff made the comments during a press conference on the sidelines of Dreamforce 2026 in San Francisco, underlining the growing role of India in Salesforce’s global technology operations.
Salesforce’s AI-first transition is expected to create substantial engineering opportunities as enterprises move from conventional browser-based interfaces towards new AI-driven interfaces. Mr. Marc Benioff explained that customers have spent decades building applications on Salesforce’s platform, with application information stored as metadata and subsequently rendered through conventional web browsers. Under the emerging architecture, this metadata could instead be recomposed through new AI-powered interfaces, creating opportunities to modernise existing enterprise applications and capabilities. Mr. Marc Benioff described the scale of the engineering transition as comparable in importance to a Y2K moment, as technology professionals undertake significant work to upgrade enterprise systems. Salesforce has maintained a presence in India for more than two decades and has expanded its operations across technology, research and development, sales and customer support. The company is also increasingly integrating artificial intelligence and autonomous AI agents into its enterprise software offerings to support task automation and AI-enabled employee capabilities.
Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.
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