The New Math of AI

As organisations accelerate AI adoption, CFOs are moving beyond cost savings and payback period to evaluate efficiency, growth and strategic advantage, reveals a BW Businessworld roundtable

- By Savi Khanna

At a high-powered roundtable hosted by BW Businessworld and Salesforce in Mumbai, India's senior finance leaders moved past the easy optimism around AI to confront a harder set of questions: how do you measure ROI on technology that changes faster than any financial model can track, and how do you actually structure the investment — build, buy, or partner? The traditional ROI formula, several CFOs agreed, was never built for this moment; existence and efficiency now matter as much as returns. What emerged instead was a three-dimensional framework around efficiency, growth and strategy, alongside hard-won lessons on data readiness, change management, and the human cost of transformation. Salesforce leaders pushed back on caution, arguing that AI ROI is achievable today, not a future promise. Fifteen voices, 15 vantage points — but a shared conviction that AI adoption in Indian enterprise is, above all, a leadership commitment, not a technology decision.

GIRISH GOENKA, CFO, Piramal Realty

"For every finance guy, if any proposal used to come to our table, first thing was how much is the return in how many days? That used to be the pure, pure number. I think that has changed completely with AI. Right now, it's more of efficiency — and more of, if you are not doing, your computers are doing, then are you in the game or you are not in the game? It's not a matter of return; it's a matter of existence."

MANKIRAN CHOWHAN, Managing Director, Salesforce India