India a strategic partner for Salesforce, says Co-CEO Bret Taylor

Points out that company's financial services cloud products have been totaly developed at its Hyderabad office

For software-as-a-services player Salesforce, India is a strategic partner—both as a market as well as for sourcing talent for its research and development initiatives.

“We are really interested in serving the Indian market. Like every market in the world, every company in India is going digital and I think we have an opportunity with our platform to really help every company build digital business in India. We've had some remarkable customer success stories in that market,” said co-CEO Bret Taylor, Salesforce in a global media conference.

He also pointed out that the company’s financial services cloud products have been completely developed out of its Hyderabad office. “So India is an area of focus for me as CEO and for us as a management team,” he added.

In India, Salesforce is headed by Arundhati Bhattacharya, and has an employee base of over 6,000.

Taylor unlike several global and Indian CEOs preferred to use the term flexible work than hybrid workplaces as it truly captures what employees value. Salesforce that has a total employee base of 75,000 saw almost 30,000 of its employees joining during the pandemic.

“The policy we have taken is really recognizing that flexible working is more about team decision than individual decision. I think in this world of flexible work for it to work successfully, it really requires a proactive conversation as a management team all the way down the chain of the company. When I talk to the executive teams that are thriving, right now, it's really about them having this conversation proactively. They're not passive about their approach to flexible work and they're approaching it creatively,” said Taylor.

Taylor, who also has the CTO of Facebook and saw the company through its IPO, when asked about his take on Metaverse said that there are compelling examples where metaverse is getting applied. “I really think consumers' digital identity has become as important as their physical identity. And I don't think this is a trend that's new, despite terms like metaverse. We've all spent years investing in our profiles and social media. The idea of spending time as individuals invested in that digital identity makes a ton of sense. And I think it's really exciting to see so many retail brands experiment with ways that you can actually invest in your digital identity,” he added.

He also added that what is interesting this time around is the way customers are wanting to experiment with the metaverse. “Some of our customers are experimenting with NFT, with some of these 3D virtual worlds. As a platform we really want to help our customers do those experiments. I don't think all will be successful and that is the definition of an experiment. But I do think there is a lot of interest from really mainstream brands and dipping their toe in these technologies that say, how can this help them develop deeper and more trusted relationships with their customers, many of whom are spending more time in these digital tools and I think that's really exciting,” added Taylor.

Salesforce grew its revenues by 25 per cent last year to reach $26.5 billion and has given guidance to reach $32 billion in the current year. Taylor said Salesforce, which turned 23 recently, would make a pivot towards a “Slack-first” company so that its customers would have the opportunity to work out of a digital platform where functions such as sales, marketing, and support are executed on the Slack platform.

Salesforce had acquired collaborating tool Slack in 2020 for a staggering $28 billion.