DH Interview | ‘Future of enterprise AI is in building custom solutions with LLMs’: Vijayant Rai

'We believe flashy models won’t define the future of enterprise AI; it will be defined by those companies with a strong data foundation. Data is the fuel for AI, and AI is only as powerful as the data it is built on', Rai said.

Agentic workflows are redefining how organisations use data. Bozeman, Montana headquartered cloud data storage company - Snowflake Inc, which has completed five years in India, is striving to democratise artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) workflows, break down data silos, and accelerate the adoption of AI across various use cases within the enterprise. It is on track to grow to over 700 employees in India by the end of this year.

Speaking to DH’s Uma T K, Vijayant Rai, managing director- India, Snowflake, said that the future of enterprise AI is in building custom solutions with large language models (LLMs) like chatbots, AI apps and agents so as to meet unique business needs and solve real problems.

Edited excerpts:

What kind of growth opportunities are you seeing in the Indian market?

India is a crucial growth engine for Snowflake’s global strategy, particularly given its vast and expanding data market. AI is projected to add $1 trillion to the economy by 2035, with a corresponding need for one million AI professionals by 2026. Over the past five years, Snowflake has established a strong presence in the Indian market. We’ve grown our presence significantly, expanding our teams across business and various functions, opening new offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru, and continuing growth in our Pune Centre of Excellence. We have seen strong adoption of our platform with customers like IndiGo, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, Razorpay and Shiprocket, among others.

How is AI transforming different sectors?

We believe flashy models won’t define the future of enterprise AI; it will be defined by those companies with a strong data foundation. Data is the fuel for AI, and AI is only as powerful as the data it is built on. Adoption of our AI product capabilities is growing fast, with globally over 6,100 customers using them on a weekly basis, including some customers in India. We are also witnessing customers across BFSI, Retail & CPG, and Manufacturing move from POCs (proof of concepts) to production with AI. We are continuing to advance our leadership in enterprise AI. We have embedded AI across the data lifecycle to accelerate analytics, transform workflows, and even power migrations.

What future advancements do you foresee in AI?

The future of enterprise AI is in building custom solutions with LLMs — like chatbots, AI apps, and agents — to meet unique business needs and solve real problems. That’s why we host a plethora of models in Cortex AI to ensure our customers have a choice and flexibility to select the models that work best for them. We also believe agentic AI represents a massive opportunity to transform how people interact with data. Agentic AI is the death of the static dashboard. It marks the beginning of a true conversation for organisations with their business and data. For years, BI (business intelligence) tools could tell enterprises what happened. Agentic AI, powered by a solid data foundation, can now tell enterprises why it happened and help them decide what to do next. It’s about moving from passive reports to active, intelligent decision-making. But agents are only as good as the data they can access. An agent without governed, high-quality data is just a toy. 

How are you ensuring security and governance over the data and models used by companies?

 We embed protection throughout the data and AI lifecycle—from ingestion to transformation to deployment—ensuring that data never leaves the secure environment where it resides. Snowflake Cortex Guard safeguards LLM pipelines by monitoring inputs and outputs to prevent the processing of harmful or sensitive content, ensuring AI remains safe, compliant, and trustworthy. At the same time, Snowflake Horizon, our unified governance layer, brings together compliance, privacy, interoperability, and access into a single framework—allowing organisations to govern and act on data, applications, and models across clouds, partners, and teams. 

Going forward, what is your revenue target?

India is our fastest-growing market in the APJ (Asia-Pacific and Japan) region. Over the past five years, we have built a strong foundation here. Globally, in Q2 (quarter ended July 31, 2025), we reported product revenue of $1.09 billion, up 32% year-over-year, with a net revenue retention rate of 125%. We now have 654 customers contributing more than $1 million in trailing 12-month product revenue and serve 751 Forbes Global 2000 companies.

In APJ, which includes India, we delivered $64.4 million in product revenue, growing 52.3% y-o-y, alongside a 25% increase in our customer base to 1,809. Snowflake continues to see healthy revenue growth, strong retention, and record enterprise adoption, with 50 customers crossing the $1 million mark in the last quarter alone. Looking ahead, we are raising our FY26 guidance, expecting $4.39 billion in product revenue, representing 27% y-o-y growth, as we continue to invest strategically for scale.