AI in Action: How Startups are innovating on the Salesforce Platform

While advancements in AI are remarkable, their true value lies in being harnessed to develop practical solutions that boost organisational efficiency. This is precisely what Salesforce has been achieving. By acting as a catalyst for AI adoption, Salesforce is empowering startups to innovate and build cutting-edge AI solutions, driving business growth and innovation.

The third episode of Mint's series ‘All about AI’ - anchored by Abhishek Singh, Deputy Editor at Mint - featured leading startup founders who are embracing AI in their business. Vishesh Singhal, Founder & CEO, ofCloudFiles, and Rajat Shukla, Co-Founder, ofAppEQ.ai, shared their experiences of using Salesforce's solutions for their organisation. Meanwhile, Sanket Atal, Managing Director of Technology & Operations at Salesforce India, delivered profound insights during the panel, offering a unique and invaluable perspective that elevated the depth and impact of the discussion. His contributions were pivotal in shaping the narrative with his expertise and forward-thinking vision.

Watch the full episode here,

Balancing AI with a Human Touch

Rajat Shukla Co-Founder ofAppEQ.ai, a product that focuses 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. The key to their success lies in leveraging AI to handle vast amounts of data, making it more consumable and actionable for teams managing customer relationships.

Rajat highlighted how AI has revolutionised their approach to customer interactions. By utilising AI, App EQ can consolidate large datasets into manageable pieces of information, allowing teams to address customer needs in real time. This level of responsiveness ensures that customer interactions are personalized and timely, enhancing overall satisfaction and loyalty.

He also spoke about how the company’s unique name came to be,“We started with the emotional quotient, figuring out how to bring in artificial intelligence but with the right human and customer touch to it since we are very customer-focused. There’s also a part of how each employee plays a key role in our organisation and the name is a pun on that.”

Automating with AI

Vishesh Singhal Co-Founder of Cloud File, specialises in AI and automation tools for business documents. Vishesh explained the challenges businesses face with document management and how Cloud File addresses these issues by automating document processing. Such automation removes the manual friction points, enabling businesses to process documents efficiently and more accurately.

He went on to explain further through an engaging example of KYC automation,“Let’s say you are a bank and you are collecting customer information such as their Aadhaar card and their driver’s license. Till now there had to be a person who would have to look at these and see if they are correct and then add them to the system. But now we can remove that manual point of friction and you can just simply give the documents to the computer and it can view, verify, and classify these documents as a human would.”

A Force to be Reckoned With

Sanket Atal, Managing Director - Technology & Operation, Salesforce India, elaborated further on how the Salesforce platform empowers startups like App EQ and Cloud File. He spoke about how Salesforce provides top-tier enterprise solutions but still takes the inputs of startups that help augment the power of innovation technologies. This symbiotic relationship allows startups to leverage Salesforce's robust platform while adding their unique value propositions and delivering customer success.

Salesforce's AI capabilities, combined with startup innovations, create a comprehensive solution that addresses various business needs. For instance, Cloud File's document automation technology augments Salesforce's existing offerings, making the overall solution more powerful for customers.

Taking pride in how Salesforce is democratising access to AI, Sanket said,“Earlier there used to be a big differentiator between enterprise usage of software and startup user of software. This was because to use something enterprise-grade, you need to have a data centre and you need to have people manning all those things. As the pioneers of SaaS, however, we can democratise access to all this state-of-the-art technology. As a result, startups today are running on the same technology that Fortune 500 companies are running on.”

Both Rajat and Vishesh emphasised the invaluable support they receive from the Salesforce community. Salesforce's 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 navigate the challenges of scaling their businesses.

Walking the Tightrope Between Data Access and Data Privacy

Touching upon the critical issue of data privacy with AI, Rajat said,“When any enterprise software is built, data privacy is something that you have to keep in mind from the beginning. A lot of the budget of R&D today goes into AI safety. It is not just about not having biases in AI products. It is about ensuring the privacy of the customer data. Models should be trained in a very anonymous way. The data that the models are training on, they should not know who this data is about.”

Praising the privacy features built by Salesforce, Rajat added,“What Salesforce has done is that it has added a trust layer. Because of this, even Cloud Files can deploy its trust layer that ensures when the data goes out and talks to the AI model, it is completely disassociated from the customer information and personal data.”

Sanket highlights the role that prompts play in our interaction with AI tools.“Prompt engineering has become a big science. What we enable through our solutions is the grounding of the prompts, which is putting a context around the prompts so that the right information goes in and you can get the right results.

The Three Ts of Success

The enriching discussion came to a close with Sanket talking about the three key factors which he dubbed the "three T's" which are critical for startup success.

• Talent: Attracting the right talent has become easier, with adventurous individuals in India willing to join startups. Access to information, courses, and technologies is readily available. Salesforce's Trailhead Academy offers free courses, enabling companies to train talented individuals quickly.
• Technology: Modern platforms allow startups to build robust products faster by leveraging pre-existing, well-tested technologies, reducing development time and enhancing product reliability.
• Time to Market: Utilizing these advanced platforms accelerates the time to market, giving startups a competitive edge by enabling quicker product launches.

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

(All About AI is a Mint editorial series, produced in partnership with Salesforce)