Snowflake, a US-based AI data cloud company that has been operating in India for nearly five years, has said that the Indian market is the fastest growing market for it. This growth is driven by the increasing number of enterprises that are getting into managing structured and unstructured big data and applying AI solutions to drive better outcomes, Vijayant Rai, Managing Director, India, Snowflake, told FE.
The company specializes in providing cloud-based and AI-powered data storage solutions that enable businesses to process and analyze data to gain better insights. In simple terms, companies like Swiggy can identify the most ordered food products during specific periods or optimize delivery routes in high-volume order areas, using Snowflake’s data analytics solutions.
“India “It is a growing market because the data penetration levels are still low. So we see that this is going to be a huge contribution to us,” Rai said. He added that India’s progress towards becoming a data-driven market economy indicates that businesses are increasingly willing to pay for value.
Generative AI helps us better understand investor behavior and sentiment trends
BrandWagon Exclusive: Can AI Transform Customer Support While Overcoming Its Challenges?
Meet K9 Zac: Indian Army’s Tactical Canine Asset
Government asks sovereign wealth funds to divest their stake in Vi
The low penetration of AI data solutions in India means that many businesses have vast amounts of data without fully utilizing solutions to manage it and extract valuable insights from it.
Snowflake’s client list includes companies like Swiggy, Urban Company, Marico and Piramal Finance, among others. Through its Cortex AI product, Snowflake also helps enterprises build generative AI applications and manage and refine their large language models (LLMs). Similar to LLMs developed by Meta, OpenAI, and Mistral, Snowflake has created its LLM model for enterprises, called Snowflake Arctic.
In India, Snowflake is gaining traction in sectors such as banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), manufacturing, retail and logistics. Rai said the company is invest Snowflake has implemented various go-to-market strategies to expand its reach, strengthen its partner network, and grow its technical team in India. Additionally, Snowflake is investing in its Pune Center of Excellence, which employs 500 people focused on support and operations.
“We have a very large number of international customers based in India. So we have set up a separate team to look at international customers in India and figure out how we can better support them,” Rai said.
Snowflake has over 700 employees in India and is actively looking to expand its team across go-to-market verticals, with a focus on increasing its developer base as well.
On the growing competition in India, Rai said, “We will be ahead of a lot of the competition because we already have customers across the spectrum. What we are doing now is taking that to the next level by using use cases, getting partner representation and making our own investments in India.”
“The way we’re going to differentiate ourselves and compete in the marketplace is basically the value we offer to customers,” he added.
Rai said one of the company’s main goals is to build industry-specific use cases that prioritize customer outcomes.
Certain differentiators, such as a good time to value for enterprises due to the nature of the product as a software as a service (SaaS), the ability to collaborate on data within teams and across organizations with confidentiality, and the AI infrastructure, put Snowflake in a better position in the market, the company said.
Globally, Snowflake’s revenue in FY24 grew 36% YoY to $2.8 billion (roughly Rs. 23,700 crore). However, the company’s losses also widened to $836 million (roughly Rs. 7,000 crore) in FY24, driven by significant investments in research and development as well as sales and marketing.
The company did not provide specific figures for India.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), the adoption of AI and generative AI in India has seen a significant increase, encompassing software, services, and hardware for AI-centric systems. IDC predicts that spending in this area will reach $6 billion (Rs. 50,000 crore) by 2027, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33.7% for the period 2022-2027.
Asked about data localization and privacy, Rai said Snowflake has complied with data protection law and data residency standards, taking into account local laws.
