India a critical market and talent hub for Salesforce: Bret Taylor

India is a critical market and talent hub for product development for Salesforce, said Bret Taylor, co-CEO of the American cloud-based software firm.

“India is a priority market for Salesforce and it will continue to invest in the ecosystem to maintain its strong pace of growth in the country,” Taylor said at a global media roundtable, which took place in San Fransisco, California, USA, on Tuesday.

The company already has a significant presence in India. It already has over 5000 employees, spread across its offices in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Gurgaon. It has been tapping opportunities in India’s Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), retail, healthcare, edtech, as well as the government sectors, which have been witnessing high adoption of digital services and are increasingly moving to the cloud over the past two years.

“While Salesforce India plays a crucial role in the development of the company's technology and products, it also assists in the success of its customers as well as growing-developer community of more than a million,” said Taylor, who was elevated to the role of co-CEO in November 2021 to serve alongside CEO Marc Benioff.

Salesforce has seen strong growth of 26 percent year-over-year in the Asia Pacific region, according to the company’s quarterly report for the quarter ended December 2021. In December, the company’s senior vice-president and managing director, sites, told TechCircle, that it will have more than 6500 employees in India by January 31.

In September 2021, market research firm the International Data Corporation (IDC) predicted that the Salesforce economy will create 548,400 direct jobs and $67 billion in new business revenues in India between 2019 and 2024, as the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of technology by large enterprises as well as small and medium businesses.

“In my recent travels, I’ve seen disruption because of the pandemic, Ukraine crisis, rising fuel prices, and the Great Resignation among others,” said Taylor. “But the only thing that remained constant is the use of digital technologies as businesses across the board sped up digital adoption in the last two years," he added.

The Great Resignation, also known as the Big Quit and the Great Reshuffle, is an ongoing economic trend in which employees have voluntarily resigned from their jobs en masse, beginning in early 2021, primarily in the United States.

Looking forward, Bret said he sees the metaverse as an opportunity for the company to deliver customer-centric digital transformation. “When one thinks of the metaverse, it's really about people's digital identities becoming as important as their physical identities," he said, adding that as brands are already exploring how VR shopping experiences can shape the future of commerce, it is clear that those that stay ahead will find new ways to express their value propositions in a digital format.

However, he cautioned that one should move beyond the hype and focus on delivering meaningful customer-centric experiences with any digital technology.