Arundhati Bhattacharya

President and CEO — Salesforce South Asia

About Arundhati Bhattacharya

Key facts Role: President and chief executive Organisation: Salesforce South Asia Country: India Sector: Enterprise software Headline figures: Headcount in India of around 17,000; sales of 133.8 billion rupees (about US$1.8 billion) in the twelve months to March 2025 As Indian companies move artificial intelligence from pilot projects into daily operations, Arundhati Bhattacharya is one of the executives deciding how that happens. "They are moving towards putting things in production," the Salesforce South Asia chief told PTI at the company's Dreamforce conference in September 2026. She said Salesforce would keep investing in India, where a new Bengaluru tower is due to open next year. The former head of India's largest bank now runs one of the US software group's fastest-growing regions, which since 2024 has also covered South-East Asia. The role Bhattacharya is President and Chief Executive of Salesforce South Asia. She joined in 2020 in a role so new that she wrote her own job description, she told Fortune in May 2026. Under her, the company's headcount in India has reached around 17,000, she told BusinessLine in April, after it took on about 2,500 India-based staff from Informatica, the data-management group Salesforce bought in November 2025. Salesforce does not break out country revenue, but Fortune reported that a filing with India's corporate register showed sales of 133.8 billion rupees (about US$1.8 billion) in the twelve months to March 2025. Her remit covers go-to-market strategy, a network of Indian offices including a Chennai centre inherited from Informatica, and expansion in South-East Asia. “We are the operating system for agentic enterprises, so how can we be out of step?” — Bhattacharya, to Fortune Background Her first career was in banking. She joined the State Bank of India (SBI) as a probationary officer in 1977 and worked in human resources, retail banking, foreign exchange and investment banking. In 2013 she became SBI's first woman chair. During her five-year term she led the bank through the complex merger of its five associate banks, and in human resources she introduced a two-year sabbatical policy, Fortune reported. She left in 2017 and held advisory roles before Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff persuaded her to move into technology. Agentic AI In 2025 and 2026 her focus has been agentic AI, the use of software agents that carry out tasks on their own. She argues that Indian firms have been stuck at the pilot stage and should pick "two-three use cases of consequence" and deploy them at full scale, she told BusinessLine. As Salesforce shares fell sharply in early 2026 amid investor fears that AI models could undercut software companies, she rejected the idea. "We are the operating system for agentic enterprises, so how can we be out of step?" she told Fortune. Regional footprint Her regional footprint is growing. Salesforce opened an office in Manila in October 2025, adding to hubs in Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore, and Fortune reported that her team is looking at around three more South-East Asian countries. Agentforce, the company's AI agent platform, is available in Tagalog, Thai, Vietnamese, Malay and Indonesian. She has argued that India's experience with diverse languages and fast-growing, young markets transfers directly to South-East Asia. She is ranked No. 83 on Fortune's Most Powerful Women Asia list and speaks often on gender equity. "You have to be better than the best in order to be noticed," she told the magazine. What to watch next: the opening of the Bengaluru tower in 2027, Salesforce's entry into further South-East Asian markets, and whether Indian enterprises' move to production-scale AI shows up in the company's regional growth. She ranks 25th because she turned a record at the top of Indian banking into leadership of a 17,000-strong technology workforce in India, and now shapes how South Asian businesses adopt AI. Sources Fortune (Angelica Ang), How a book convinced Arundhati Bhattacharya, one of India's most powerful bankers, to try working for a U.S. tech company , 19 May 2026 BusinessLine/PTI, Indian firms moving AI from pilots towards deployment: Salesforce , 20 Sep 2026 BusinessLine (Sanjana B), Amidst global uncertainty, enterprise tech spending holds steady: Arundhati Bhattacharya , 2 Apr 2026

Why this entry is on the list

She ranks 25th because she turned a record at the top of Indian banking into leadership of a 17,000-strong technology workforce in India, and now shapes how South Asian businesses adopt AI. SBI's first woman chair, she has led Salesforce South Asia since 2020, a region that since 2024 has also covered South-East Asia.