BFSI Summit: India is built for the VUCA world, says Arundhati Bhattacharya

India's resilience makes it ready for a volatile and uncertain world, while urging caution on AI hype and valuations, says Bhattacharya

In the uncertain times, India is built for the (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) VUCA world, said Arundhati Bhattacharya, chief executive officer of Salesforce, said during the CTO Lunch at the Business Standard BFSI Insight Summit 2025 on Thursday. 

“It is a world that is very uncertain. But one thing I will tell you, where India has a big, big advantage, is that we are built for the VUCA world. We are able to take uncertainty in our strength, and still go ahead. The biggest test of that, by the way, is something that we don't mention at all these days, it was demonetisation. It was the biggest test, and we passed it with flying colours,” said Bhattacharya. 

She was responding to a question from Prajakt Deolasee, chief technology officer, Turtlemint, on how India can wade in a global scenario when the majority of tech supply chains are controlled by US firms. 

She added: “This world is full of uncertainty. Every day there will be some uncertainty coming, but I think we are more than capable of taking that on, which is a great thing. Because there are a lot of other countries that cannot manage such uncertainty.” 

Responding to a query from Puneet Asthana, executive director and CTO, Shriman Wealth and Shriram Group’s Capital Market Businesses on Large Language Model (LLMs), Bhattacharya said: “I am not seeing generation of a lot of in-house LLMs. But people are trying to make out how they can reduce the cost of using the LLMs that are currently there. So, whether it is in-house or whether they will be given by the current, established players or new players themselves, has to be seen. There is a very big effort to reduce costs, because unless you reduce it, you have too few users.” 

“It is not going to provide you the kind of sustenance, nor give any legs to the kind of valuations that you have at the end of the day. If you are going to justify those valuations, most people in the world use them,” Bhattacharya said. 

She said that without reducing the costs, valuations of these companies cannot be justified beyond a point. “Otherwise, there is no way that those valuations can be justified beyond a point, and most people in the world won't be able to use them unless the costs come down.”

 

On concerns raised by Mahavir Jindal, COO of Amazon Pay, about the valuation that companies are drawing, Bhattacharya said the euphoria is not warranted. “So, I will not speak about valuations. I'll leave that to the experts. I will say this much only that while there seems to be a hell of a lot of euphoria, you need to be grounded. The euphoria may not be warranted, but serious looking into it and serious partaking of it is warranted” she said.