Marc Benioff calls India a 'model market' for Salesforce
At a media interaction during Dreamforce 2025, Benioff said India and the surrounding region, including Nepal, Bhutan and Southeast Asia, “have a huge place in my heart” and remain critical to how the company thinks about global growth and innovation.
“We want to build a great company in India,” Benioff said. “Even other companies, I won’t go through the names, come to us and ask how we built a great company in India. I think we’re a model for that.”
Benioff credited Arundhati Bhattacharya, Salesforce India’s chairperson and CEO, for leading the company’s regional expansion. “We probably have the best CEO in India, not just in tech,” he said, adding that she would provide specific details on revenue and headcount plans.
While avoiding financial targets tied to India, Benioff indicated that the country’s operations were becoming more tightly interwoven with Salesforce’s global innovation programmes, particularly in artificial intelligence and agentic automation. “We’re working all together in real time now. I think we’ve had a breakthrough in how to work with Southeast Asia,” he said.
The Salesforce founder underscored the region’s philanthropic significance as well, noting projects across India, Bhutan, Sikkim and Nepal. “We’re doing philanthropy as well in this region. It’s very important to us,” he said.
Benioff’s comments underscore how the $36 billion software major views India not only as a growth engine but as a centre of strategic innovation under its expanding AI-led transformation.
Dreamforce, the company’s annual flagship conference, drew tens of thousands of participants to San Francisco this week, with its AgentForce AI platform at the core of the event’s product announcements.
(This journalist was in San Francisco to attend the Dreamforce conference on invitation)