As Indian enterprises race to adopt AI, a new Salesforce report underscores a hard truth: without modern, trusted data foundations, AI ambitions will fall short. According to Salesforce’s latest State of Data and Analytics report, 89% of India’s data and analytics leaders say their organisations must modernise data strategies for AI to deliver meaningful business impact.
The findings come at a time when expectations from data have never been higher. Three‑quarters of Indian business leaders report growing pressure to demonstrate measurable value from data investments. Yet incomplete, outdated and poor‑quality data continues to be the single biggest obstacle — a challenge that becomes even more acute in the era of agentic AI, where autonomous systems depend heavil
While 66% of Indian business leaders describe their organisations as data‑driven, the operational reality tells a different story. Over half (52%) of data and analytics leaders admit their companies struggle to align data initiatives with core business priorities. Only 51% say they can consistently generate timely insights, and 54% acknowledge that their organisations sometimes — or frequently — draw incorrect conclusions due to poor data context.
This disconnect highlights a widening gap between how mature organisations believe they are and how effectively data is actually being used to drive decisions.
AI puts data foundations under stress
AI has rapidly emerged as the top data priority for Indian enterprises, mirroring trends from Salesforce’s 2023 report. As a result, 56% of data and analytics leaders feel intense pressure to deploy AI quickly. However, speed is colliding with fragility.
Nearly 39% lack full confidence in the accuracy and relevance of AI outputs, largely because models are trained on fragmented or outdated data. Although almost all leaders conceptually agree that AI is only as good as the data behind it, respondents estimate that 25% of their organisational data is untrustworthy.
The consequences are already visible. Among organisations with AI in production, 94% report experiencing inaccurate or misleading AI outputs, while half of those training or fine‑tuning their own models say they have wasted significant resources due to poor data quality.
Trapped data limits AI and customer outcomes
Even when data quality improves, accessibility remains a major hurdle. 89% of Indian data leaders say unified data is critical to meeting customer expectations, yet an estimated 26% of enterprise data remains siloed or unusable.
More concerning, 75% believe their most valuable insights are locked inside this inaccessible data. The impact is far‑reaching: over 80% cite reduced AI effectiveness, fragmented customer views, weaker personalisation and missed revenue opportunities as direct consequences.
Zero copy and agentic analytics gain momentum
To overcome these challenges, Indian technology leaders are rethinking how data is accessed, governed and secured. More than half (52%) are adopting zero copy data integration, enabling analytics and AI across distributed systems without moving or duplicating data.
The benefits are tangible. Organisations using zero copy are 40% more likely to have fully connected customer data sources and 22% more likely to succeed with AI initiatives compared to those relying on traditional integration approaches.
At the same time, natural‑language and agentic analytics are emerging as solutions to persistent data literacy bottlenecks. 69% of leaders say translating business questions into technical queries is error‑prone, while 95% of business leaders believe they would perform better if they could query data using natural language.
Governance emerges as a critical gap
Despite rising complexity, governance frameworks are still catching up. Only 52% of Indian data leaders report having formal data governance policies in place, even as 90% agree that AI requires entirely new approaches to governance and security.
Commenting on the findings, Deepu Chacko, VP – Solution Engineering, Salesforce India, said: “AI cannot fix what incomplete data creates. For India to truly unlock the promise of agentic AI, leaders must treat data as a strategic asset — unified, governed and contextual. The companies that modernise their data foundations today will be the ones that scale AI responsibly and lead the economy tomorrow. Agentic AI isn’t just the next technology — it’s the next revolution, where AI agents handle routine work so humans can focus on creativity, relationships and impact.”
The road to agentic enterprises
Salesforce’s report makes it clear that becoming an agentic enterprise is not simply about deploying AI tools. It requires disciplined investment in data quality, accessibility, governance and architecture. As Indian organisations push to embed AI deeper into operations, those that modernise data foundations now are likely to gain a decisive edge in speed, trust and business outcomes.