‘It’s an expanding pie’: Salesforce sees Asia-Pacific as top growth region

[SINGAPORE] Salesforce expects Asia-Pacific to remain its fastest-growing region by revenue in the coming years, as the software giant deepens its push into artificial intelligence (AI) across South and South-east Asia.

Apac recorded 10.5 per cent revenue growth in the most recent quarter – the highest among all geographical segments – and is expected to continue outpacing other markets over the next two to three years, said Arundhati Bhattacharya, chief executive officer and chairperson of Salesforce India and South Asia.

For the first quarter ended Apr 30, 2025, the Americas contributed 65.8 per cent of Salesforce’s US$9.8 billion in revenue, followed by Europe at 23.8 per cent and Apac at 10.4 per cent.

By 2030, India and Asean are expected to collectively account for around 26 per cent of the world’s population, she noted. The two regions are also projected to become the world’s third and fourth-largest economies, respectively.

“Even though there are a number of players, you can still get a bigger share of the pie, because it’s an expanding pie,” Bhattacharya said.

A former senior banker, Bhattacharya was chairperson of the State Bank of India from 2013 to 2017. She joined Salesforce in 2020 as the company’s first India CEO.

AI push

A key pillar of Salesforce’s strategy is the rollout of Agentforce, its agentic AI platform that powers digital assistants capable of handling customer queries and internal workflows.

Since its launch in September last year, more than 8,000 customers have adopted Agentforce globally, including 4,000 paying clients.

Salesforce itself was “customer zero”, and has used the platform to automate support functions internally, including in South and South-east Asia.

“We are really excited about the AI and the agentic AI opportunity,” Bhattacharya said. “We want to showcase what we have done. We want to show how we are using it internally and externally… to speed up the flow of work and improve productivity.”

At Salesforce’s web help portal, which receives 60 million visits annually, 85 per cent of customer queries are now handled and resolved by the agentic AI layer.

Bhattacharya said the solution has not reduced customer engagement; instead, it has done the opposite. “The number of queries have gone up, because customers are finding they’re getting good answers,” she said.

The improved experience drives deeper usage, higher customer stickiness and faster deal conversion, she added. “If they get good answers, they’ll keep asking for more – and that brings about the customer stickiness,” she said.

Regional adoption patterns

While macroeconomic jitters remain, Salesforce has not seen a broad-based pullback in enterprise spending across Asia.

“People get worried, they pause, but then they go ahead again – because nobody wants to miss the bus,” Bhattacharya said. “There is no boardroom that’s not talking about (AI).”

She observed that Singapore is “slightly ahead” in terms of AI readiness, partly due to earlier investments in digital infrastructure and data maturity.

But markets such as India, Indonesia and Thailand are rapidly catching up – especially among legacy enterprises that are now prioritising data strategies to support AI deployments.

In Singapore, where the labour force is ageing and relatively tight, AI is seen as a solution to manpower constraints. In contrast, countries with younger populations are exploring how automation can scale service delivery and increase efficiency.

“But ultimately, both problems – whether it’s a problem of too many or too little – can be helped by this,” said Bhattacharya.

She added that government support has been a critical enabler in markets such as Singapore, where policymakers have funded workforce upskilling and AI development.

“Most of the places, the government sets the tone,” she said.

Workforce shifts

The company’s own shift to agentic AI has brought changes in hiring and workforce structure, but not in the form of broad job cuts. Instead, roles are being redeployed or reskilled.

Support staff displaced by AI are being shifted to “success” roles – which focus on customer adoption and training – or to areas that require more human touchpoints.

“We are still doing a lot of sales recruitment. We are recruiting AI engineers. We are recruiting engineers who are more trained towards prompt engineering,” said Bhattacharya.

Every Salesforce employee – including senior leaders – is expected to complete hands-on training in building AI agents. “Even a person as senior as me has got to do those courses, and we do it hands-on,” she quipped.

Asked how quickly Agentforce will scale further, Bhattacharya said the adoption curve will differ by industry and data maturity.

“It’s very difficult to predict… but there is a lot of interest, a lot of experimentation, some amount of scepticism, some amount of fear,” she said. “But I think this is true of any new transformation. The difference is, this one is really a big one – it will determine the future of how we work.”