The Power of Access: How AI and Skills Are Opening New Futures
How recognising talent early is shaping India’s future workforce
Across India, young people arrive in classrooms with intelligence, ambition, and drive. What shapes their futures is rarely a lack of talent. More often, it is a lack of access to the skills, exposure, and confidence that turn potential into opportunity.
At Salesforce, this understanding guides a long-term commitment to expanding access to high-quality education and future-ready skills, creating pathways of opportunity across the country. The focus is not only on learning, but on recognising untapped talent early, building social capital, and connecting young people to meaningful career pathways in a rapidly evolving economy.
This commitment is brought to life through long-term partnerships with organisations such as Futuristic Lab on Wheels (FLOW), Wadhwani AI, alongside ecosystem partners including the TNS Foundation and the Roots & Shoots programme with the Jane Goodall Institute of India and 1M1B, each supporting a different stage of a young person’s journey from exposure to employability.
Where Talent First Meets Opportunity
For many students, the journey begins with exposure.
Through the Futuristic Lab on Wheels (FLOW) initiative, advanced STEM education is brought directly into underserved and rural schools. Mobile labs equipped with robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT, AR and VR, and 3D printing transform familiar classrooms into spaces of exploration.
For nearly 9,900 students from 33 districts of Telangana, FLOW provides a first hands-on encounter with technologies shaping the future of work. These experiences do more than introduce tools. They shift perspective. Students begin to engage with technology as creators, not observers.
This early exposure helps address long-standing barriers such as limited infrastructure, lack of trained educators, and minimal access to hands-on learning. By bringing learning to students, FLOW helps remove constraints at the point where curiosity first takes shape.
When access is thoughtfully designed and learners are trusted with relevant learning and real opportunity, skills become a bridge to confidence, careers, and economic mobility.
Arundhati Bhattacharya, President & CEO, Salesforce, South Asia
From Curiosity to Capability
At the heart of the current AI revolution, Salesforce is committed to ensuring that communities are not left behind.
The Wadhwani AI Readiness programme supports students through a structured, 12-month journey that builds foundational AI skills alongside real-world exposure and clear pathways into STEM and AI careers. With a strong focus on increasing girls’ participation, the programme reinforces the importance of inclusion in innovation.
For 2,000 students, learning unfolds through bootcamps, guided projects, and paid internships. Teachers participate alongside students, helping embed skills development within learning environments that extend beyond the programme.
Here, artificial intelligence becomes a practical language for problem-solving. Students gain confidence not only in technical ability, but in their sense of belonging within the technology ecosystem.
Skills That Lead to Livelihoods
As India’s economy evolves, the demand for sustainability-aligned skills and green jobs continues to grow.
The Green Skills and AI Academy is supported through Salesforce philanthropic investments, with 1M1B Foundation as a grantee implementing Green Skills and AI centres. The Academy prepares learners for roles at the intersection of technology, climate action and economic growth by leveraging AI-enabled skill assessments and green job mapping to connect learning directly to emerging employment opportunities.
The initiative aims to train 100,000 youth and support 15,000 individuals in accessing green jobs, contributing to India’s long-term Net Zero goals. Through grassroots centres and locally relevant learning models, participants gain both technical skills and clarity on how their capabilities translate into livelihoods.
This impact is already visible at the community level. In Dantoo village, Jharkhand, India, five Green Skills interns translated their training into tangible outcomes by installing four solar vendor lights and a multipurpose solar disaster system, extending reliable lighting to nearly 50 households, vendors, and community members. Their work improved night-time study for more than 20 students and enhanced productivity for women, while engagement with the local panchayat and a government school helped increase PM Kusum Yojana adoption from 2–3% to 25%. Beyond implementation, the interns demonstrated entrepreneurial leadership, generating a cumulative ₹3,00,000 through solar and LED repair initiatives and mentoring new students in green skills.
In this context, green AI becomes a practical enabler, aligning talent development with the needs of a changing economy.
Designing Access With Intent
Across these initiatives, a clear pattern emerges.
When learning reaches students where they are, when skills are paired with relevance and trust and when education is connected to real career pathways- talent that was once overlooked begins to surface and thrive.
Commenting on these impact initiatives, Arundhati Bhattacharya, President & CEO, Salesforce, South Asia said: “The future of work is shaped by how early we recognise potential and how intentionally we support it. Talent is universal, but opportunity is not. When access is thoughtfully designed and learners are trusted with relevant learning and real opportunity, skills become a bridge to confidence, careers, and economic mobility.”
As classrooms turn into launchpads and learning turns into livelihoods, one truth becomes clear. When access expands, futures follow.
