Data streaming platform announces significant expansion in India with plans to increase headcount by 20%.
Data streaming platform Confluent, has announced India as a priority market for its global expansion strategy, with plans to increase its workforce in the country by at least 20% across various engineering roles.
The announcement comes as the company reports exceeding its hiring targets last year by 50%, surpassing its initial plan of 25% headcount growth. Rubal Sahni, AVP and Country Head-India at Confluent, attributes this success to “strong demand in key regions and a highly talented workforce,” noting that India plays a crucial role in supporting the company’s global software ecosystem.
Speaking exclusively to CIO&Leader on the sidelines of Current 2025, Confluent’s annual conference in Bengaluru, CEO and Co-Founder Jay Kreps expressed excitement about rapid AI adoption across the Asia Pacific region. “Countries like India, Singapore and Saudi Arabia are making significant investments in AI infrastructure. India’s AI mission, for example, has announced large-scale GPU deployments to support AI innovation,” Kreps noted.
The company sees particular growth opportunities in India’s BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance), public sector, and Global Capability Centers (GCC). This aligns with broader industry challenges highlighted in the conference materials, where legacy banking systems, manufacturing facilities, retail operations, and healthcare providers are all struggling to integrate AI effectively with existing infrastructure.
Confluent’s expansion comes at a critical time for AI implementation. According to IDC’s FutureScape report cited at the conference, “By 2027, after suffering multiple AI project failures, 70% of IT teams will return to basics and focus on AI-ready data infrastructure platforms.” The report identifies data silos and redundant data stores as “major impediments to effective AI model development.”
Addressing these challenges, Confluent announced significant advancements in Tableflow, which the company describes as “the easiest way to access operational data from data lakes and warehouses.” The technology, a feature within Confluent Cloud, enables users to access streaming data in popular open table formats, facilitating advanced analytics and real-time AI applications.
“At Confluent, we’re all about making your data work for you, whenever you need it and in whatever format is required,” said Shaun Clowes, Chief Product Officer at Confluent. “With Tableflow, we’re bringing our expertise of connecting operational data to the analytical world. Now, data scientists and data engineers have access to a single, real-time source of truth across the enterprise, making it possible to build and scale the next generation of AI-driven applications.”
As enterprises across sectors from banking to manufacturing struggle with integrating AI into legacy systems, Confluent’s focus on bridging the gap between operational and analytical data positions the company to address a growing market need, particularly in India where digital transformation initiatives are accelerated.