Arundhati Bhattacharya

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Move over VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity). BANI (brittle, anxious, non-linear, and incomprehensible) is the new boardroom lingo, Arundhati Bhattacharya tells Fortune India. “The entire ecosystem is going through an enormous amount of change. In the way we do things, in the way we perceive things, and in the speed of change. What is most impacting people is the speed of change,” says the former banker who switched over to the world of tech. It’s not an overstatement. Despite the rapid pace of AI adoption, Bhattacharya points out that time management and prioritisation are still a struggle. But amid the cyclical and structural disruption, the world’s largest CRM SaaS player has grown meaningfully since she took over the top job six years ago. From 2,500 employees in 2020, Salesforce’s India headcount is now more than 17,000. “One good thing was that Salesforce started with a Centre of Excellence in India. It didn’t start with call centres and BPOs. The idea was that there is a talent pool here that can be leveraged. The cost advantage is obviously there, but the pool of talent is what the attraction is,” she says. Salesforce has also realised that there is a mature enough ecosystem to sell its products here. Besides supporting global operations, R&D, product creation, solution creation, and engineering, Salesforce has built a powerful sales and distribution function to sell to Indian customers. The numbers are revealing: its India operations, at a little over ₹1,500 crore in 2020, stood at over ₹13,000 crore in FY25. The growth velocity has meant that the CEO is virtually on the move. “Some days my calls start at 6.30 a.m. and continue right into the night to beyond 10.30 p.m. At times, I feel I should start saying ‘no’ to a lot of engagements,” says Bhattacharya. But when VUCA becomes BANI, CEOs like Bhattacharya know how to find the silver lining in the clouds.