Salesforce to expand its innovation hubs in Bangalore, Hyderabad

Salesforce , the customer resource management giant, said it will expand its innovation hubs in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Speaking at a press interaction on the sidelines of its annual tech conference, Dreamforce , in San Fransico on Wednesday, Srini Tallapragada, president and chief engineering officer, Salesforce said: “The big hubs, which we call the innovation hubs, are in Bangalore and Hyderabad. That's where we'll continue to invest. And we're always looking for areas. Real estate is not as easy,” he said. Salesforce employees in India have doubled in the past two years, reaching around 13,000 currently. The country has been the fastest-growing market for the past two consecutive years. The company’s largest centre is in Hyderabad. “Actually, when the decision was taken for Hyderabad, in contrast to Bangalore, Hyderabad was a cheaper center, but still had a very deep pool of good quality resources. Now I don't think the difference is so much. ow we go where the talent is available. We are not recruiting as per location; we’re recruiting wherever we find good people. That is the main leverage of India, to get the right kind of people,” said Arundhati Bhattacharya, former SBI chairperson and country-director for India. Salesforce has tied up with the All India Council for Technical Education for providing 2.5 lakh internships. Of these, 60,000 have already been made. The internships consists of 1.5 months virtual training and another 1.5 months of on-ground training. The company has tied up with 2500 colleges and many of the engineering colleges offer Salesforce’s training programmes as elective courses. “If you ask me, are we facing a shortage of talent? I would say no. But this was not the case four years back when I had come into India. At that point of time, we were literally cannibalizing each other because we were not having an ecosystem by which we were also training people. But today, because we have created that learning ecosystem,” she said. The company is also exploring to penetrate into public sector. “We've just set up the government division this year. And we have just started making ourselves ready in order to be able to address the public sector. Because the public sector has certain processes, etc., for which we need to be equipped. Also, we've also been discussing with some of the bigger resellers, meaning the bigger partners, who have been working with the public sector,” she added. The tech conference is being held from September 17-19.