Imran Assar's life has become easier. This Shoppers' Stop sales reperesentative can now get the latest on sales leads, countrywide, by simply logging-on to the Internet. That's because his firm uses an online Customer Relationship Management service.

Salesforce offers software solutions, but sells no software. It says clients save on buying CRM packages and supporting hardware. Salesforce charges Rs 5,000 a month for five people in a company to access its services.

"We are a service and one pays on a monthly basis, you save enormous amounts of money because you don't have to make a huge capital outlay initially for customized software and don't have to install hardware either," said Kenneth Juster, EVP-Law, Policy and Corp Strategy at Salesforce.com.

The Rs 377 crore CRM services market in India is growing at 53% a year. And as companies seek to know their customers better, they will need to invest in CRM. And Salesforce wants to cash in.