India rapidly emerging as a hub for top managers, says Snowflake CEO

Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy said India is rapidly emerging as a hub for global business decision makers, with more companies placing their top managers, from C-suite to vice-president, in the country.

Ramaswamy, who heads the $40 billion US-based company with over 600 employees in India, mentioned that some of Snowflake’s executives are choosing to relocate back to India after spending decades in the US, citing “value realization” and the “quality of talent.”

The Snowflake CEO, who took over the charge in February, said, “We are investing significantly in tech enablement in India. The reason is that many global companies are shifting entire divisions, especially data divisions, to India. We’re seeing that decision makers for major US banks are actually based here. Several of our own customers have VPs of data in India, even though the companies are US-centric or multinational.”

He reportedly stated that his primary focus as the leader of a high-growth company is to keep teams vigilant and committed to achieving success. “To be honest, Snowflake received excessive recognition too soon. We were valued at $100 billion while generating $1 billion in revenue—not profit, but revenue. Such recognition can foster overconfidence,” he remarked.

Ramaswamy referenced his decade-long experience at Google, where he helped grow the tech giant’s advertising business from $1.5 billion to over $100 billion in revenue. He acknowledged that Snowflake was overvalued when it went public; at its IPO in September 2020, the company was valued at $33.2 billion, which was the largest software IPO at that time. By November 2021, its valuation had jumped to $122 billion. Since then, Snowflake's stock has seen significant volatility and is currently trading at about a quarter of its peak value.

Commenting on competition from data analytics companies like Databricks and Tredence, Ramaswamy noted, “As a high-growth company, competition is inevitable. Many will copy or compete with you.” Ramaswamy said his current focus is on reinforcing Snowflake’s core to “deliver value predictably.

Ramaswamy referred to generative AI as a “new human-computer interface,” creating a strong link between unstructured and structured data. He remarked, “Just as smartphones made computing available to everyone, I believe generative AI will enable a broader audience to harness the power of data and software.”