Snowflake bets on India’s under-penetrated Cloud and AI market to drive next phase of APJ growth

(L-R) Rinesh Patel, Global Head of Financial Services and Vijayant Rai, MD - India at Snowflake

India has a lot of headroom for cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, creating a significant growth opportunity for Snowflake as the AI data cloud services provider plans to double down on the market, said Vijayant Rai, Managing Director - India, Snowflake.

In little over a year since Rai took charge as the country head, Snowflake has doubled its team go-to-market (GTM) team in India, aggressively tapping core sectors in the region including financial services, manufacturing, CPG, retail, digital natives.

The NYSE-listed technology company is also investing into public sector resourcing in India, as the company believes that public sector will become a “major market in the years to come” in the AI era Rai said.

India’s growth trajectory

According to Rai, India has remained resilient in terms of driving demand for Snowflake. Despite macroeconomic challenges, US trade tariff related uncertainties – there hasn’t been any slowdown.

“From a demand perspective, it remains very strong. Across the sectors, right from NBFCs to asset management companies, we are acquiring a lot of them as partners and we're looking to scale it further,” Rai told Moneycontrol in an interview.

He added, “India is one of the fastest-growing markets for Snowflake in APJ. We're completely a focussed territory in terms of investment. It's not just the go-to-market piece of it, Snowflake globally recognizes India as a major destination for tech resourcing.”

“Massive investments are going on in the GTM side. Also, looking at what we want to do with the developer ecosystem, the data practitioners here, we believe that they would be our force multipliers for us as we look ahead.”

While Snowflake has been in India for five years now, the generative AI boom in 2022 globally, has catapulted the company’s growth in India, which it sees as an “under-penetrated market” otherwise. Rai emphasised that a most of his Indian customers still have their data stored on-premise.

Sridhar Ramaswamy as the CEO

Snowflake’s growing focus on India also coincides with the appointment of Sridhar Ramaswamy as the global CEO in February 2024.

Globally, Snowflake’s product team has been on a roll, having released about 250 AI-related innovations in just the four months, that has reflected on the company’s stock price which has skyrocketed by over 74.5 percent year-to-date to $274.88 as of November 3.

“There's been a massive movement in terms of what customers can now get from the Snowflake platform. So, from a product standpoint, we're way ahead now. We're seeing a level of product release that is unprecedented and that is a pivot that many organizations aspire to achieve,” Rinesh Patel, Global Head of Financial Services, Snowflake said.

He added, “Also, it's not just about product. It's how you take that product to market. He (Ramaswamy) has been laser-focused on making sure that go-to-market also represents that proposition of a data-driven platform."

Out of the 12,000 plus customers Snowflake has globally, around 6,100 are already consuming AI on the platform.

Snowflake's GCC gambit

Snowflake is also bullish on the burgeoning global capability center (GCC) opportunity in India, as many of its customers look to set up offices in the country, especially in the financial services sector.

Patel said, “Our global customers, at least in financial services, have GCC footprint and aspirations. They understand the benefits of talent that exists in India and the fact that that talent can help them accelerate transformation.”

“That's great for the aspirations of those global customers to get closer to talent in India. It also allows the rich Indian talent to have opportunities in other parts of the world,” he added.

In an interview with Moneycontrol in December 2024, Ramaswamy noted that GCCs in India are driving decision-making for global firms and are no longer just back offices.

He also added that Snowflake will staff a very large team in India that will work with GCCs.