AI in Action: How Startups Are Innovating on Salesforce

While AI advancements are extraordinary, their true value comes from using them to develop practical solutions that drive organizational performance. That’s exactly what Salesforce has accomplished. By acting as a catalyst for AI adoption, Salesforce enables startups to innovate and create cutting-edge AI solutions, driving business growth and innovation.

The third episode of Mint’s “All about AI” series — hosted by Abhishek Singh, Deputy Editor at Mint — featured leading startup founders who are implementing AI in their businesses. Vishesh Singhal, Founder and CEO of CloudFiles, and Rajat Shukla, Co-founder of AppEQ.ai, shared their experiences of using Salesforce solutions in their organization. Meanwhile, Sanket Atal, Managing Director, Technology and Operations, Salesforce India, provided profound insights during the panel, offering a unique and invaluable perspective that added depth and impact to the discussion. His input was instrumental in shaping the narrative with his expertise and future vision.

Watch the full episode here,

Balancing AI with the Human Element

Rajat Shukla Co-founder of AppEQ.ai, a product focused on revenue retention and expansion, works closely with Salesforce to integrate customer data, providing insights that enable front-end teams to respond more effectively and efficiently. Key to their success is using AI to handle massive amounts of data, making it more digestible and actionable for customer relationship management teams.

Rajat highlighted how AI has revolutionized their approach to customer interactions. Using AI, App EQ can consolidate large data sets into manageable insights, allowing teams to respond to customer needs in real time. This level of responsiveness ensures that customer interactions are personalized and timely, increasing overall satisfaction and loyalty.

He also talked about how the company’s unique name came about,“We started with the emotional quotient, thinking about how to bring AI, but with a human and customer-centric approach, because we are very customer-centric. There is also a part of how every employee plays a key role in our organization, and the name is a play on that.”

Automation with AI

Vishesh Singhal Co-founder of Cloud File, specializes in AI tools and business document automation. Vishesh explained the challenges that businesses face in document management and how Cloud File solves these challenges by automating document processing. Such automation removes the manual friction points, enabling businesses to process documents efficiently and more accurately.

He then explained it in more detail, giving an interesting example of KYC automation:“Let’s say you’re a bank and you collect customer information, like their Aadhaar card and driver’s license. Before, you had to have a person who would go through it and check if it was correct and then add it to the system. But now we can remove that manual friction and you can just hand the documents to the computer and it can review, verify and classify them just like a human would.”

A force to be reckoned with

Sanket Atal, Managing Director – Technology & Operation, Salesforce India, shared more about how the Salesforce platform empowers startups like App EQ and Cloud File. He spoke about how Salesforce provides top-notch enterprise solutions but still leverages startup inputs that help power innovative technologies. This symbiotic relationship allows startups to leverage the robust Salesforce platform while adding their own unique value propositions and ensuring customer success.

Salesforce AI capabilities combined with startup innovation create a comprehensive solution that addresses a variety of business needs. For example, Cloud File’s document automation technology extends existing Salesforce offerings, making the overall solution more efficient for customers.

Sanket said he is proud of the way Salesforce is democratizing access to AI:“There used to be a big difference between the enterprise user of software and the startup user of software. That was because to use something enterprise-class, you had to have a data center and people running all of that stuff. But as a pioneer of SaaS, we can democratize access to all of that cutting-edge technology. As a result, today’s startups are running on the same technology that the Fortune 500 companies are running.”

Both Rajat and Vishesh emphasized the invaluable support they receive from the Salesforce community. The Salesforce Startup Program and the broader ecosystem provide startups with access to resources, mentorship, and a network of potential customers. This support accelerates their growth and helps them overcome the challenges of scaling their businesses.

Maintaining a balance between data access and data privacy

Raising the crucial issue of data privacy in the context of AI, Rajat said:“When you’re building any enterprise software, data privacy is something that you have to think about from the very beginning. A lot of R&D budgets today are spent on AI security. It’s not just about not biasing AI products. It’s about ensuring customer data is private. Models should be trained in a very anonymous way. The data that the models are trained on should not know who the models are training on.”

Praising the privacy features developed by Salesforce, Rajat added:“Salesforce has added a layer of trust. This allows even Cloud Files to implement its layer of trust, which ensures that when data goes out and talks to the AI ​​model, it’s completely separate from customer information and personal data.”

Sanket highlights the role that commands play in our interaction with AI tools.“Rapid engineering has become a big science. With our solutions, we enable you to ground prompts, that is, put context around prompts so that the right information can be entered and the right results can be obtained.

The Three Ts of Success

The lively discussion came to an end with Sanket sharing three key factors, which he called the “three Ts,” that are crucial to a startup’s success.

• Talent: Attracting the right talent has become easier as bold individuals in India are eager to join startups. Access to information, courses, and technology is readily available. Salesforce’s Trailhead Academy offers free courses, enabling companies to quickly train talent.
• Technology: Modern platforms allow startups to build solid products faster by leveraging existing, well-tested technologies, which shortens development time and increases product reliability.
• Time to market: Leveraging these advanced platforms accelerates time to market, giving startups a competitive advantage by enabling faster time to market.

As AI continues to evolve, collaboration between Salesforce and startups will undoubtedly lead to even more groundbreaking solutions that will change industries and shape the future of business.