Salesforce AppExchange sees rising contribution from Indian tech startups
Salesforce's deep engagement with Indian tech startups over the last several years has led to increased contributions to its solutions marketplace, AppExchange.
Salesforce, the global AI CRM company, has seen an accelerated contribution from Indian tech startups in the form of solutions to its products and platforms, and this tempo is likely to continue in the near future, it said on Monday.
Over the last three years, Salesforce has been engaged with Indian tech startups, helping young companies navigate through product development and getting access to a wider market.
In an interaction with Enterprise Story, Sanket Atal, Managing Director - Operations and Technology, Salesforce India, said, “The big success marker would be increasing the number of apps from the region in our AppExchange, and these startups have already added more than 100 such apps.”
The Salesforce AppExchange is an enterprise cloud marketplace, where businesses can access pre-built apps for any kind of additional support they need while implementing the CRM company’s solutions.
Atal added, “Our success would be accelerating the process of app creation from South Asia startups, and more importantly, these startups are actually entering the global stage.”
Salesforce's engagement with Indian tech startups is a multi-pronged approach as it seeks to be a partner at various stages of their growth. The CRM company’s platform, IdeaExchange, gives startups a list of the technology gaps that Salesforce would like to address, giving startups the opportunity to build their solutions around these requirements.
In addition, the company has built stronger bonds with the ecosystem by creating a framework where these startups are engaged with other startups, unlike some accelerator programmes, which generally have a limited time period of engagement.
“We expect the startups in the programme to help other startups in what we call as paid forward model,” Atal remarked.
Today, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a dominant theme, and it is reflected in Salesforce's engagement, where out of the 400-odd startups in its programme, 180 have self-declared as AI startups.
Salesforce enables these AI startups to get the correct access to data, context, and also build their agentic platforms. This helps the startup in two ways: one, by building solutions for enterprises, and second, by leveraging AI to build a better version of itself. Its Agentforce platform also enables these startups to build their AI agents.
According to Atal, Indian startups have shown a high degree of responsiveness in AI adoption, meaning there are high governance standards in the handling of data and adequate security measures while building AI solutions.
This engagement framework has become a two-way learning process for both Salesforce and Indian tech startups. “Having a feedback mechanism with the startups has enabled us to provide better support. If the startups produce a solution for our customers, then they also become successful,” Atal said.
Edited by Suman Singh