Unified Data, Not AI Adoption, Will Decide India's Marketing Race: Salesforce
Unified data will decide who wins the customer-engagement race in India, according to Salesforce's tenth State of Marketing report, which shows that while 81% of marketers in India have adopted AI, siloed systems and poor data quality remain the biggest barriers to AI-driven personalisation. The report finds that the roadblock is not a lack of effort but a lack of usable data, with 71% of marketers struggling to respond promptly to customers because they cannot access the context they need.
- 81% of marketers in India have adopted AI (Salesforce State of Marketing)
- Unified customer data is the deciding factor for engagement
- 71% can't respond promptly due to missing data context
- Data-unified teams are 1.6x more likely to use AI agents
The Case for Unified Data Over More AI Tools
The report's findings suggest that India's marketers are not short on AI enthusiasm but are constrained by fragmented information systems. Only 60% of respondents said they have complete access to service data, 61% to sales data and 58% to commerce data. This patchwork access limits how effectively AI can be deployed for personalisation, even as adoption rates climb. Salesforce's data points to unified data as the differentiator: marketing teams that have unified their data are 1.4 times more likely to respond to customers regularly and 1.6 times more likely to use AI agents to scale their operations. The implication is clear—AI tools are only as effective as the data feeding them, and without a single, coherent view of the customer, personalisation efforts stall regardless of how advanced the underlying technology is.
Data Access Gaps Undermine India's AI Ambitions
The disparity between AI adoption and data readiness highlights a structural challenge for Indian marketing teams. With sales, service and commerce data sitting in disconnected systems, marketers are often unable to build the complete customer context needed for timely, relevant engagement. The report's global survey, conducted between October and November 2025 among 4,450 marketing decision-makers worldwide—including 250 respondents from India—suggests this is not a uniquely Indian problem, but one that is particularly pressing given the scale of AI adoption already underway. As more Indian brands invest in AI-driven engagement, the ability to unify data across service, sales and commerce functions is likely to emerge as the clearer marker of competitive advantage than adoption numbers alone.
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