Agentic AI Gains Ground in India as Enterprises Redefine Digital Transformation

At Dreamforce 2025, the conversation around AI took a practical turn as industry leaders explored how enterprises are moving beyond experimentation to real-world impact. Mankiran Chowhan, Managing Director & SVP – India, Sales & Distribution at Salesforce, joined Rajesh Gopal, Global Chief Digital Officer at Tata Consumer Products, and Anubhav Rajput, Chief Information Officer at PNB Housing Finance Ltd., to highlight how the concept of agentic enterprises—where AI agents work alongside humans to enhance decision-making and productivity—is taking shape in India. From financial services to FMCG and healthcare, companies are increasingly adopting Salesforce’s Agentforce platform to unlock efficiency, agility, and data-driven intelligence across their operations.

India’s Agentic Acceleration

India has become one of the most dynamic markets for agentic AI adoption. Several enterprises are already running live implementations. “From the Indian context, there are many customers already in production. The ones publicly quoted include Hero Fincorp and Utkal Hospitals,” said Mankiran Chowhan, Managing Director, Salesforce India. “Across industries, the use cases are wide and varied—and the excitement in the market is tremendous.”

Within Salesforce’s own operations, agentic transformation is already visible—over 76% of customer enquiries on help.salesforce.com are now handled by agentic systems operating 24x7.

AI at the Frontline of FMCG

For Tata Consumer Products, agentic AI is transforming its go-to-market operations. The company has built an end-to-end connected ecosystem linking 4,000 distributors, 8,000 sales representatives, and 1.5 million retail outlets on the Salesforce platform.

“The salesman no longer just asks the outlet what they want. The system now recommends what to stock based on similar outlet data, demographics, and purchase trends,” explained Rajesh, Head of Technology at Tata Consumer Products. This has enabled the company to shift from reactive selling to intelligent, insight-driven engagement.

AI is also helping the FMCG giant identify early trends in the food and beverage space, merge those insights with R&D expertise, and accelerate new product development—enabling faster market response and innovation.

Financial Services: From Digitisation to Intelligence

In financial services, PNB Housing Finance has used its digital transformation journey as a springboard for agentic adoption. Starting in early 2023, the company revamped nearly 90% of its processes—from customer onboarding to loan disbursement—through a unified digital platform.

According to Anubhav, Head of Digital Transformation at PNB Housing, this has led to measurable gains. “Turnaround time for salaried loans has improved by 60%, and for self-employed customers by 30–40%. With agentic AI, we expect another 10–20% boost in efficiency,” he said.

As a deposit-taking housing finance company, PNB Housing has also automated its deposit processes, enabling customer transactions that once took hours to now be completed within minutes.

However, for a regulated industry, the focus remains on responsible AI. Anubhav emphasised that guardrails around model governance and data security are crucial: “We must ensure that automation does not lead to valid customer cases being rejected. Data privacy and information security controls are non-negotiable.”

Balancing Trust and Innovation

Salesforce’s approach to agentic AI centres on trust by design. Chowhan noted that the company intentionally took a measured path to market: “We were not the first to launch agentic solutions, because we wanted to ensure the right architectural foundation—especially around trust and data. Your customer data will never be our data.”

This focus on transparency and compliance has made Salesforce’s platform especially relevant for clients in regulated sectors such as banking, insurance, and healthcare.

Opportunity for All Business Sizes

While large enterprises are driving early implementations, smaller businesses are proving equally ambitious. Chowhan observed that MSMEs and SMEs, often unburdened by decades of legacy infrastructure, are more agile and open to experimentation. “They may not have made earlier investments, but that’s an advantage now—they can start fresh and move faster with AI,” she said.

Building the Agentic Foundation

To help customers prepare for intelligent transformation, Salesforce has introduced its Agentic Maturity Framework—a model that assesses readiness and identifies the building blocks needed for scale. Chowhan emphasised that “data strategy must precede AI strategy”, and many Indian clients are now engaging in deeper architectural discussions before implementing proof-of-concepts.

India’s Scale as a Global Testbed

India’s vast customer base and operational diversity are giving it a unique edge in the global AI landscape. The country’s scale, combined with cost-conscious and value-driven decision-making, is enabling real-world stress tests for agentic AI systems. “The peaks we see in India truly test our products,” said Chowhan. “The size and complexity of deployments here are shaping how we think about AI at scale globally.”

The Road Ahead

India’s early adopters are demonstrating that agentic AI is not a distant future—it’s already delivering measurable business impact. From faster loan processing and smarter sales engagement to predictive supply chains and proactive customer service, enterprises are beginning to experience the benefits of human-AI collaboration.

As Salesforce deepens its engagement with Indian customers, the next phase of digital transformation will be defined not by automation alone, but by intelligence that acts—responsibly, contextually, and at scale.

By Shipra Sinha, Senior Analyst, CyberMedia Research (CMR)