Salesforce CEO & President, South Asia on Union Budget 2026

AI, Cloud Sovereignty, and the Roadmap for India’s $7 Trillion Economy

The Union Budget 2026 announced yesterday, highlights a growing focus on artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, and digital platforms. Arundhati Bhattacharya, CEO & President, Salesforce South Asia, shared her perspective on how these measures can support India’s long-term growth.

“Budget 2026 represents India’s transformation from technology consumption to AI-powered innovation—a blueprint for a $7 trillion economy built on intelligence, not just scale.

The Union Budget sets the foundation for an AI-driven economy built on intelligence, data, and digital capability.

The strategic architecture is balanced and long-term. The tax holiday until 2047 for cloud services is a masterstroke in data sovereignty, attracting an estimated $50 billion in data center investments by 2030 while positioning India as the cloud hub for emerging markets.

MSME reforms demonstrate sophisticated thinking. The ₹10,000 crore SME Growth Fund, combined with the TReDs platform mandate and expanded safe harbor thresholds, creates force multipliers enabling India’s 63 million MSMEs to scale from survivors to global champions.

Budget 2026 represents India’s transformation from technology consumption to AI-powered innovation.

The High-Powered Committee on Education to Employment targets capturing 10% of global services trade by 2047—ambitious but achievable given our demographic advantage: 65% under 35, digital infrastructure like UPI and Aadhaar.

AI integration is refreshingly pragmatic. Bharat-VISTAAR‘s multilingual agricultural platform and AI in school curricula show generational thinking, ensuring our demographic dividend becomes an intelligent dividend.

We see the Budget as a structural roadmap that creates an environment where technology, enterprises, and individuals can unite to collectively propel India’s future advancement. However, the critical gap remains R&D investment, we risk becoming sophisticated consumers of AI rather than creators.

The Union Budget’s design powers national growth, driven by AI, cloud sovereignty, and innovative digital platforms. This technological foundation is key to defining the future of growth, and Salesforce fully embraces this opportunity.”