Next AI chapter in India to be spoken in languages of its people: Arundhati Bhattacharya
Mumbai, May 19
In a bid to enable Indian organisations deliver more natural, multilingual, and inclusive AI-powered customer experiences at scale, global major Salesforce on Tuesday announced the launch of Agentforce Voice in Hindi.
Arundhati Bhattacharya, President and CEO, Salesforce South Asia, said the next chapter of AI in India will not be written in code alone; it will be spoken in the languages of its people.
The capability is designed to support natural Hindi and Hinglish conversations, helping businesses engage users more intuitively while extending AI adoption deeper into tier 2 and 3 markets, the company said during the 'Agentforce World Tour Mumbai 2026' event.
Built on the trusted Agentforce platform, the solution combines conversational AI, enterprise data, and workflows with deterministic guardrails and controls to help ensure secure, consistent, and policy-aligned customer interactions. The announcement comes at a time when voice is becoming an increasingly important interface for digital participation across Bharat, particularly for non-English-preferring users.
"For AI to create meaningful impact at India's scale, it must be conversational, inclusive, and rooted in local context. Voice is emerging as the most natural interface for digital participation, especially across Bharat, where millions of users are leapfrogging directly to mobile and voice-first experiences," Bhattacharya said.
With Hindi voice capabilities in Agentforce, "we are helping businesses reimagine customer engagement through AI that understands not just words, but cultural nuance, intent, and trust," she added.
Salesforce also announced the upcoming availability of MuleSoft on Hyperforce in India, enabling organisations to deploy integrations, APIs, and AI-powered workflows on locally hosted infrastructure.
"India is a country of extraordinary ambition and for too long, legacy systems have been seen as a barrier to innovation; the cloud changes that equation, giving businesses a secure, scalable and flexible foundation to connect data, applications and workflows without being constrained by the past," said Bhattacharya.
"By bringing MuleSoft on Hyperforce to India, we are giving enterprises, especially those in regulated industries, the infrastructure to do exactly that: move confidently to the cloud, automate intelligently, and build the next generation of digital experiences on locally hosted infrastructure," she said.
— IANS
Reader Comments
The vision is good - making AI accessible in local languages. But I'm skeptical about data privacy. Salesforce says it's on "locally hosted infrastructure" but how many Indian companies can afford this? Plus, these voice assistants always have issues with accents and slang. Let's see if Hinglish actually works in practice. 🤔
Arundhati Bhattacharya is a legend! From banking to AI, she's showing how Indian leaders can drive global innovation. "Next chapter spoken in languages of its people" - this is the kind of thinking that will make Digital India truly inclusive. Bharat needs more such initiatives, not just English-first solutions. 👏
Interesting timing with all the global AI regulation debates. India has a huge opportunity to leapfrog into voice-first AI, but local language support can't just be a translation layer. The cultural nuance they mentioned is key - a simple "namaste" and "kya karein" mean different things in different contexts. Hope Salesforce invests in quality data for Indian languages!
Jab tak humari koi desi AI company nahi aati, tab tak foreign companies hi India ko English se bahar nikalein. But honestly, MuleSoft on Hyperforce in India is the bigger news for me. That means regulated industries like banks and insurance can finally move to cloud without compliance headaches. That's where the real impact will be. 💪
Love the enthusiasm but let's be realistic - how many people in tier-2 cities can actually use this? Smartphone penetration is there but internet connectivity and
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