India has opportunity to leapfrog into AI, generative AI areas: Salesforce

Mumbai: India has the opportunity to leapfrog into areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and generative AI, cloud-based software provider Salesforce India's Chairperson and CEO Arundhati Bhattacharya said on Tuesday.

She also sought to assuage general concerns around AI leading to mass job losses but added that the nature of jobs may change, requiring upskilling and reskilling of talent pools.

"So, India does have the opportunity to leapfrog into AI and generative AI. Now, how far and how long it will take, it's anybody's guess... generative AI is something that's maturing... it's not something that's completely mature..." she said at a media briefing.

The macro environment in India is "very supportive", Bhattacharya said underlining the India advantage of large talent pool as also the digital public infrastructure.

"The India stack... Aadhaar, UPI and healthcare platforms... are not something available in most countries. The India public goods space is a huge enabler and most of the other countries don't have this, so we have a big advantage," she said.

Salesforce, a leading player in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), on Tuesday announced the launch of Salesforce 'Starter' for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) businesses in India.

Starter is an easy-to-use CRM that includes sales, service and e mail outreach tools in one suite, helping companies get started so that they have the tools to improve customer experiences, reduce costs, and drive revenue.

"Salesforce Starter combines the usability, flexibility, and security that companies need to scale their business faster and enable companies to improve ROI, and it's all in a single suite with helpful guides for customers to set up and go live", the company said.

Starter will also help businesses by offering simplified signup, guided onboarding, and a new checkout flow that makes it easier to bring more users into Salesforce, it added.