Sindhu Gangadharan

About

Sindhu Gangadharan has been at the core of building talent, platforms, and partnerships for Germany-based SAP. More so in the AI era. With more than 17,000 employees and housing the company’s largest R&D presence outside its headquarters, India plays a key role in SAP’s innovation journey. In August 2025, SAP Labs opened its second Bengaluru campus. It also has an experience centre for customer engagement. “India is the only location to have two experience centres, which speaks volumes about the work that we do here,” Gangadharan says. “Besides, S.Market, our autonomous store, is a simple example of how technology can integrate into everyday life...It becomes a great way to demonstrate innovation in a real-world retail context”. By upskilling nearly 70% of its workforce through initiatives like Learning Fest and AI Ignite, SAP Labs has transitioned from theoretical learning to real-world applications. SAP Document AI recently won the Hasso Plattner Founders’ Award in the ‘scaling innovation’ category. “It reflects the depth of engineering and product innovation driven from India,” she says. SAP Labs is yielding meaningful outcomes via research and building a strong talent pipeline through structured engagement across research, curriculum co-creation, certifications, and hands-on collaborations. “We work on joint IP generation, patent programmes, and a steady pipeline of ideas coming from academia and our own teams, all aligned to SAP’s priorities,” Gangadharan says. Going forward, her focus is to build “reliable, responsible, and deeply contextual” AI. “If we get this right, India will not just adopt AI at scale, it will shape how AI delivers impact at scale, for itself and for the world,” she notes.