One of the most valuable privately-held companies, Databricks already has some of the big Indian enterprises among its customers and will now be targeting smaller companies whose data needs to be clean, integrated, and in order to reap the benefits of AI.
“We want to be a billion-dollar enterprise in India. Globally, we’re growing at over 65 per cent year-over-year (Y-o-Y) during our fourth quarter. India is beating that hands down. So we’re growing at a much faster pace here,” Kamalkanth Tummala, country manager, Databricks India told Business Standard in an interaction. He did not disclose the current revenue numbers.
Databricks, founded in 2013, offers a platform designed to help users ingest, analyse and build AI applications using complex data from a variety of sources. It was last valued at $134 billion in February and counts JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft and Qatar Investment Authority among its investors.
At the end of Q4 in December, Databricks’ annualised revenue run-rate stood at $5.4 billion but with the breakneck speed the company is growing at, it can easily touch the $10 billion mark in the next few years as investors’ appetite for AI still seems to linger.
Tummala, who joined last year from Salesforce, explained Databricks has done “exceptionally well” for any new company in India when it comes to engineering. It has, he says, also got five of the top 10 Indian enterprises on its platform which include Tata Power, HDFC Bank, Swiggy, TVS Motors and Zepto.
“So the next charter that I have is, being in all of the top 10 companies of every industry. Obviously, that’s not possible to an extent, but then clearly we want to make an impact over there. Then we want to also get into, the mid-market and the challenger brands where we have a very small presence. And then it is about growing our engineering teams, focus on GCCs and ultimately the public sector,” he added.
The company announced plans to invest $250 million in India last year to ramp up hiring for its go-to-market teams, support training initiatives, research and development (R&D) and build up an AI talent pool.
It expects to have about 1,000 employees in India by December. The company has launched a Data + AI Academy in India, aiming to train 500,000 partners and customers over the next three years.
When asked what impedes the adoption of AI among Indian enterprises, Tummala attributed it to data. “The biggest thing is data. Most of them have data sitting in multiple silos and multiple places. How do they bring it all together? The easiest thing is take everything and put it at one place. But then, is that data golden? Can I really say it’s clean, in proper format, there is no gaps in it, and the quality of it is really good?”
 "Kamalkanth Tummala, country manager, Databricks India")