Arundhati Bhattacharya, President and CEO, Salesforce – South Asia
Arundhati Bhattacharya, President and CEO, Salesforce – South Asia, has said that certain types of jobs will sunset due to artificial intelligence. However, it will create new job roles that were not in vogue.Stating that India occupied a key role in the company’s global operations, she said that the talent pool here was very deep. “It enables you to get any kind of talent that you really want. And there is a choice regarding who you want to get, because there will be quite a bit of competition for it,” she said.Bhattacharya was in the city to mark the 10th anniversary of its Centre of Excellence here.“There is a cost leverage as well. Because if you compare with some developed countries, I think India compares quite favourably. The cost would not make any difference if the delivery quality were poor. It’s also the quality of the delivery that makes people believe that this is a good place to be,” she said.New RolesAsked about how AI is impacting the industry overall and Salesforce in particular, she said that the kinds of roles now being envisaged are very different from what we thought two years back. “We were not talking about job roles such as forward-deployed engineers, content creators, and agent orchestrators. Some towards tutoring the agents themselves. Those are roles that are coming up now. As we go forward, more and more such roles will be created because the requirements will differ significantly,” she said.“It is essential that we keep ourselves upskilled so that, as those roles come up, we are able to take them on. There will be some sunsetting on certain skills, some skills that will be more in demand, some new skills that will come up that we will need to then internalise, and that is the way this whole thing is going to happen,” she said.“The only way that you can allay these fears is if you lean into AI. You will not be able to allay those fears because it’s a fact: certain repetitive jobs will disappear because AI does them better, faster, and error-free,” she said.AI Skilling ProgrammeTo mark 10 years of its Centre of Excellence here, Saleforce, a customer relationship management (CRM) technology company, has announced a programme to equip one million learners across the country with AI-related skills by 2030. ‘Leveraging Trailhead’, the free digital learning ecosystem, will be offered through collaborations with academic institutions, industry leaders, and government agencies.The company will offer a virtual internship programme with All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), providing students with hands-on project experience, and job-ready Salesforce and AI skills.It tied up with institutions such as Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Accenture, Deloitte, Grant Thornton Bharat, Infosys, PwC and TCS to offer structured training curricula and mentorship-led learning.Published on June 9, 2026
