India IT cos bet on Salesforce amid AI turmoil

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd’s takeover of Coastal Cloud in its largest acquisition since going public wasn't a one-off—it is the seventeenth such buyout of a Salesforce-centric firm by an Indian software services provider in the past decade.

- Jas Bardia

Yet, the focus on creating products for Salesforce systems has become even more vital as artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes businesses.

San Francisco-based Salesforce Inc develops software to track client inventory, sales, ticket resolutions, and data entry. It even tracks marketing campaigns and keeps a log of customer engagements. Homegrown information technology (IT) services companies customise this software and integrate it into their clients’ back-end IT systems.

Over the past decade, the country’s largest information technology (IT) services providers have spent at least $2 billion to acquire firms aimed at improving their customer management software offerings. These acquisitions suggest that their clients are becoming increasingly reliant on customer data for deeper insights, which the IT firms use to automate processes and systems.

Salesforce expects 10% full-year growth at best in fiscal year 2026 (FY26). Indian IT services companies are looking to piggyback on the growth of Salesforce’s software and its agentic AI capabilities to shore up their own revenue at a time of uncertain demand.

“With time-tested approaches such as reliance on large deals, vendor consolidation and partnership with GCCs (global capability centres) providing only a limited canvas for growth, we are now seeing a series of acquisitions focused on expanding high-value service offerings and jump-starting AI-advisory-led growth opportunities,” said Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, partner at Catalincs.