 "Arundhati Bhattacharya")
Arundhati Bhattacharya describes her professional journey as “a hell of a ride.” As president and chief executive officer of Salesforce South Asia, and formerly the first woman to chair the State Bank of India (SBI), she is helping steer one of the world’s largest tech firms through an AI-driven transformation. In a video interview with Peerzada Abrar, Bhattacharya discusses the growing urgency for inclusive upskilling in India and outlines how Salesforce’s 'Agentforce' platform aims to reduce strain on overburdened teams while improving customer service. “Technology is the only answer,” she says, pointing to sectors from aviation to banking where intelligent automation is gaining ground. As job roles shift and demand for empathetic service rises, she sees opportunity in the transition, provided it is handled inclusively. “You don’t need to know code to use Agentforce,” she says. “That makes it accessible — and that’s how real change happens.” Edited excerpts:
How do you see AI agents transforming industries, particularly in traditionally human-centric sectors like finance, education, and public services?
Customer demands have changed. They want to talk to experts and have their problems resolved the first time they call. Every time they call, that should be your one priority. Their expectations require us to be very empathetic and understanding. Customer demands have gone up like this.
On the other hand, companies have fixed workforces — they can’t keep increasing them indefinitely. They have all kinds of siloed data, so even to answer one question, it may take time. There is a lot of attrition in companies as well. So sometimes, they don't have people who are experts — there are newcomers who don’t know how to answer or resolve queries. All of these issues are actually causing the employee experience to deteriorate quite sharply. It results in burnout, people leaving, dissatisfaction and, obviously, the customer satisfaction rating also takes a beating.
We need to find a solution for this, and especially in a populous country like India, where numbers and volume matter. Technology is the only answer.
AI agents, or what we call the Agentforce, is the platform we believe can provide a digital workforce that will not only assist people, but also autonomously act in many cases. This can take frequently asked questions off the table and allow human agents to work on far more complex cases, thereby increasing customer satisfaction across the board. Because agents can not only assist—they can also act. That’s why we believe there will be a huge change in how industry and business are impacted. Companies will have the time to become more customer-focused. One will be able to access solutions for frequently used cases and find answers quickly. Agents can be empathetic, because they won’t get tired of being asked the same question over and over again.
So overall, we think this is important — for us, and for delivering the kind of quality service that people are looking for.
What is Salesforce’s strategic roadmap in India and South Asia for democratising access to intelligent automation, especially for MSMEs and emerging startups?
Unlike many other startup programs where startups join, we have a community approach. We host a number of community events for them where they meet up, talk strategy, exchange knowledge, share experiences, and discuss best practices. A lot of them have also innovated on the Salesforce platform. Through the Salesforce platform, they can go on to the AppExchange. And now, we are even encouraging them to contribute to what we call the AgentExchange, where you can actually upload apps that resolve specific issues within your workflow.
As far as our strategy in India is concerned, we believe we have the right solutions for the digital transformation of many companies across multiple industries. We work according to industry verticals — we have a separate vertical for banking, for auto, for power and utilities, for health and life sciences, for travel, tourism, hospitality, realty, and more. We develop solutions tailored to the particular problems of each industry, so we can solve industry-specific challenges rather than simply offering horizontal platforms that require more time to customise, slowing down time to market. We are following an industry-level-offering strategy.
Agentforce, by the way, is something we are trying to incorporate into every single tool we offer — whether it's sales, service, marketing, commerce, integration, Slack (our collaboration platform), or Tableau (our graphic analytics platform). There will be agents on all of these platforms. The goal is to enhance the quality of work they support, create more intelligent workflows, and take away much of the drudge work. That leaves employees free to focus on more meaningful tasks — things that connect them better with customers and make them far more efficient.
With AI agents evolving rapidly, how does Salesforce plan to bridge the skill gap for developers and ensure ethical, responsible deployment of automation at scale?
If you look at developers and what we are doing to upskill them, we obviously have events. We also have Trailhead, a free learning platform. When it comes to AI, Data Cloud, and Agenforce, there are three levels available. The first is the Champion level, where you get the fundamentals of AI and Data Cloud. Then there’s a level called Invader, where you actually start applying what you've learned — building your own use cases and custom agents using our Agent Builder. You also learn to deploy agents for sales and service. Beyond that, we have the Legend level, where you can dive deeper into everything and learn advanced things. Community learning is a very effective way to upskill.
What safeguards is Salesforce putting in place to ensure AI agents are transparent, secure, and aligned with local regulatory expectations, especially in a diverse market like India?
There are enough sandboxes available for you to play around with agents — create your own agents, see what they do, learn from mistakes, and really take it forward from there. There are a lot of safeguards in place for us. Trust happens to be the number one value this company stands for. We understand that agents will be fed data, and it’s absolutely critical for us to ensure that data is not going to anybody else—not even us.
Not only that, for those deploying agents within a company, you can determine who gets to see what kind of data. The rest of the data — anything you don't want certain users to access — can be redacted. It will be blacked out so that it’s not visible to anyone who isn’t authorised to see it. This is absolutely in line with local regulators.
What sectors in India are most aggressively adopting intelligent automation today, and what trends are you observing in their innovation journeys?
A number of sectors are adopting intelligent automation. Aviation is, of course, one. BFSI is another that's adopting it very actively. There are other sectors, too, such as auto, healthcare, education and retail. I would not say that any sector is really holding back when it comes to trying to use it.
How do you foresee AI agents impacting the future of work in India, and what role can companies like Salesforce play in making this shift more inclusive and equitable?
The roles that people have today are going to change. There will be many new roles coming in, and you will need to upskill in the roles you're currently in. People will be more free to actually establish person-to-person connections, and therefore, the skill levels required will obviously be different.
There will be a period of transition — which are always a little painful. So I won’t say there will be absolutely no pain. But my own feeling is that, with every industrial revolution, we have actually seen improvements in living standards. We’ve seen many new jobs getting created. We’ve seen that everybody has benefited — society has benefited. The quality of lives that we live has actually improved. And I do believe it will be the same this time.
But it’s got to be more inclusive. Widespread adoption only happens when it is inclusive.
Today, what makes Agentforce more inclusive is the fact that it’s not dependent on knowing how to code or understand a computer language. You can use natural language to interact with it — that itself makes it far more accessible and inclusive.
As a leader who transitioned from banking to tech, how do you personally view the convergence of legacy expertise and digital innovation in driving India’s AI future?
It’s been a hell of a ride. It’s been a journey of deep learning — a lot of learning — every single day. And yes, I’ve enjoyed the journey. It has given me a lot of energy, I have to say that. It’s been good. In my view, I think I did the right thing in making the jump. I have not regretted it for a single day.
