At SalesforceBen.com, we have been enabling Salesforce Admins, Consultants, Developers and Marketers with salary statistics for a number of years. Then, we realised there was a gap – where was India? This is the first time we have focused on Salesforce salaries in India.
There’s no doubt that Salesforce professionals are deserving of their compensation – they carry out a core function that allows organisations to extend Salesforce and improve user adoption to leverage its full potential. So, how much do Salesforce professionals in India earn, and how do you find out?
In this guide, we cover multiple different angles around salary and what factors may determine how much money an individual makes. First, let’s start by taking a look at India’s Salesforce economy, which is unique – and growing rapidly!
Salesforce India Economy: The Facts
The ‘Salesforce Economy’ in India will continue to be an interesting country to watch. Research from IDC forecasts exciting
Salesforce ecosystem growth, both Salesforce as a company, and it’s network of partners and customers. The most recent report published in 2019 estimated that:
- The Salesforce economy in India will generate $8.7bil of revenue in 2020 alone (projected to reach close to $30bil in 2024),
- 548,000+ new jobs will be created as a direct result in the 6 year period (2019-2024), and an additional 1.3 mil indirectly.
India has been a Salesforce hotspot for the past 3-4 years. For a structurally diverse country, investing in the right skills is key to building a workforce that is ready for the future. And Trailhead does just that in the best possible way! Bringing flagship events like TDX to the country and the growing Salesforce community are reliable signals of this huge potential.
Tojo Joseph,
Vice President, Marketing,
Dazeworks Technologies
It’s a good time to take a look at how the job market is shaping up in India!
What We Asked
We launched a survey with 7 questions covering the type of role, salary, years of experience, certifications, and location.
These are the questions we set out on a mission to answer:
- What the average salary is for Junior/Mid-level/Senior Salesforce Admins, Developers, Consultants, Marketers (and more),
- Where Salesforce professionals are based and how salaries vary by city,
- How many certifications professionals hold, and is this a factor in determining salary?
I went away and analysed the 1670+ results.
I would like to underline that the data we gathered is self-reported data, which can often be misleading. Some sample sizes were too insignificant to include. We are reporting back on the information we gathered, but feel free to disagree with our findings in the comments section.
Average Salesforce Salaries in India
| Role | Average Salary (₹) |
|---|---|
| Salesforce Administrator | 8,86,659 |
| Salesforce Developer | 9,00,835 |
| Business Analyst | 8,49,695 |
| CRM Manager | 12,07,500 |
| Marketing Automation Specialist | 8,63,333 |
| Marketing Cloud Consultant | 8,37,200 |
| Pardot Consultant | 6,61,518 |
| Project Manager | 19,17,739 |
| Salesforce Consultant - Functional or Technical | 12,77,967 |
| Solution Architect | 22,09,977 |
| Technical Architect | 26,76,672 |
| Tester | 7,52,285 |
With more than half a million jobs expected to be created by 2024 with AI and IoT taking the centre stage, Salesforce will surely be a force to reckon with in the Indian context. Contrary to the country’s image of being a cost-effective IT services hub, Salesforce partners are investing big in the right skills to be the trusted digital enablement partners to Salesforce customers worldwide. This is validated by the substantial uptick in acceptance of Salesforce among developers in the recent past. The Salesforce Salary India Survey 2020 is bringing to the surface a whole gamut of insights on what to expect, especially when one is transitioning into Salesforce.
Shivanath Devinarayanan,
CEO & Founder,
Dazeworks Technologies
Salesforce Salaries vs. Experience in India
For the purposes of keeping this guide simple, we set the following experience categorisation:
- Junior = Less than 3 years (“Less than 1 year” and “1-2 years” in the survey)
- Mid-level = Between 3-5 years
- Senior = Greater than 5 years (“5-7 years” and “8+ years” in the survey)
Salesforce Admin
Here is how Salesforce Admin salaries increase as individuals gain experience (measured in years):
| Seniority | No. years of experience | Average Salary (₹) |
|---|---|---|
| Junior Admin | < 3 years | 4,63,831 |
| Mid-level Admin | 3-5 years | 6,78,263 |
| Senior Admin | 5+ | 16,20,400 |
Salesforce Developers
Here is how Salesforce Developer salaries increase as individuals gain experience (measured in years):
| Seniority | No. years of experience | Average Salary (₹) |
|---|---|---|
| Junior Developer | < 3 years | 5,00,924 |
| Mid-level Developer | 3-5 years | 9,18,768 |
| Senior Developer | 5+ | 15,59,554 |
Salesforce Consultants
I predicted that measuring Salesforce consultant salaries may not be straightforward. Remember, I said that this is self-reported data, a factor that I will return to later in the analysis.
Here is how Salesforce consultant salaries increase as individuals gain experience (measured in years):
| Seniority | No. years of experience | Average Salary (₹) |
|---|---|---|
| Junior Consultant | < 3 years | 5,13,200 |
| Mid-level Consultant | 3-5 years | 10,72,109 |
| Senior Consultant | 5+ | 25,55,329 |
Salesforce Salaries vs. Certifications in India
This is one of the ‘golden’ questions: do Salesforce certifications increase salary? In previous guides, I have pointed out that even though Salesforce professionals with higher salaries do have more certifications, this may be due to their experience (if they have been working with Salesforce for longer); plus, certifications take time to study for, and complete.
Here I will talk through the two most popular roles from our survey respondents.
Salesforce Admin
Do Admins with more experience have more certifications? Do the top Admin earners have more certifications than the average experienced Admin?
| Seniority | Average No. Certifications | Max No. Certifications |
|---|---|---|
| Junior Admin | 1.2 | 4 |
| Mid-level Admin | 1.6 | 6 |
| Senior Admin | 3.5 | 13 |
Salesforce Admins in the top 20% of salary earnings had on average 3.2 certifications.
Aside from the Salesforce Administrator certification, the top 20% also had:
- Platform App Builder (11)
- Salesforce Advanced Administrator (9)
- Platform Developer I (4)
- Sales Cloud Consultant (3)
- Service Cloud Consultant (3)
- Platform Developer II (2)
- CPQ Specialist (2)
- Field Service Lightning Consultant (2)
- Einstein Analytics and Discovery Consultant (2)
- Community Cloud Consultant (1)
- Pardot Specialist (1)
- Marketing Cloud Admin (1)
- Salesforce Accredited B2B Commerce Developer (1)
Salesforce Developers
Do developers with more experience have more certifications? Do the top developer earners have more certifications than the average experienced developer?
| Seniority | Average No. Certifications | Max No. Certifications |
|---|---|---|
| Junior Developer | 1.6 | 9 |
| Mid-level Developer | 2.9 | 16 |
| Senior Developer | 4.8 | 16 |
Salesforce Salaries by City
These are the average salaries by city, overall. To account for differences, I only included cities with a large number of responses, with a reasonable seniority split, too.
Thank you to all the respondents in the following cities that contributed, it was amazing to receive such a geographically spread response: Ajmer, Andhrapradesh, Coimbatore, Ernakulam, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Kerala, Mangalore, Mysore, Nagpur, Palwal, Panchkula, Patna, Ranchi, Surat, Trivandrum, Vadodara, and Vijayawada.
Read on for where we break down one role for a city-by-city comparison.
| City | Average salary (₹) | No. valid responses |
|---|---|---|
| Ahmedabad | 9,27,001 | 14 |
| Bengaluru | 12,66,478 | 275 |
| Chandigarh | 10,60,286 | 13 |
| Chennai | 12,18,069 | 59 |
| Delhi | 16,75,918 | 103 |
| Gujarat | 10,40,833 | 6 |
| Gurgaon | 14,56,577 | 56 |
| Hyderabad | 10,13,945 | 134 |
| Indore | 7,56,250 | 8 |
| Jaipur | 7,65,688 | 36 |
| Kochi | 7,65,353 | 16 |
| Kolkata | 12,97,381 | 25 |
| Mumbai | 10,49,865 | 64 |
| Noida | 8,48,068 | 28 |
| Pune | 10,40,428 | 154 |
Mid-level Developer Salaries by City
We thought that mid-level developers offer a good benchmark for this popular role.
| City | Average Developer Salary (mid-level) (₹) |
|---|---|
| Ahmedabad | 6,44,000 |
| Bengaluru | 10,40,009 |
| Chandigarh | 6,51,333 |
| Chennai | 7,22,000 |
| Delhi | 10,00,318 |
| Gurgaon | 9,14,214 |
| Hyderabad | 8,66,189 |
| Indore | 6,10,000 |
| Jaipur | 6,15,253 |
| Kochi | 4,87,500 |
| Kolkata | 14,30,000 |
| Mumbai | 8,00,000 |
| Noida | 8,52,143 |
| Pune | 9,01,970 |
Mid-level Consultant Salaries by City
We thought that mid-level consultants offer a good benchmark for this popular role. Remember that a definition of a ‘consultant’ can vary widely, depending on the individual. We attempted to spot and remove anomalies in the data for this reason.
| City | Average Consultant Salary (mid-level) (₹) |
|---|---|
| Bengaluru | 16,33,333 |
| Chandigarh | 19,50,000 |
| Chennai | 10,10,000 |
| Delhi | 17,62,000 |
| Hyderabad | 13,40,250 |
| Jaipur | 12,70,000 |
| Mumbai | 7,18,122 |
| Noida | 9,00,000 |
| Pune | 10,87,222 |
Salesforce Salary Factors
One single figure without context can be misleading: there will be a significant difference in the salaries based on certain factors.
In the other salary guides we have live on the blog, we have called out the following factors as ones that could determine an individual’s salary:
- Experience (Seniority)
- Background with Other Development Languages (developers)
- Certifications
- Generalists vs. Specialists
- Location
- Market Demand, Skill Supply
- End User vs. Consultancies
There are minor factors, such as if the role requires you to travel to onsite projects, however, we chose to leave misc. factors like these out because they apply to a small minority, and the impact on salary is negligible.
I recommend you take a look at our role-specific guides for the commentary relevant to your role:
Salesforce Admins, Consultants, Developers, Marketers.
Comments from Survey Respondents
We allowed respondents to share their thoughts on the last question of the survey; we deliberately left this a free text comment box to capture some great insight from Trailblazers.
These quotes are taken directly from the survey and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Salesforceben.com.
Here are some of the responses:
- “Indian companies sometimes do not have specific jobs roles, for example, my exact role is not listed but I am doing what an architect does.”
- “Compared to the workload and amount of knowledge required, the salary is low, especially from what I have seen in Pune based companies.”
- “I do personally think that the hiring process and salary offered is not apt in India. It is not paid according to knowledge and hard work, but instead, is determined by the number of years spent in the industry (even if you gain ZERO knowledge)!”
- “I feel compensation is lower in India than other countries for Salesforce professionals”
- “It would be better if Salesforce sets a compulsory salary bar for companies offering Salesforce development services.”
- In small cities the salaries are still low, even if you have more experience. There should be a standard structure for salary according to experience, and not to the city.”
- “There’s a big gap in salaries when you compare India vs USA or other countries, which is way beyond the notion of difference in currency. It’s quite painful to see when people are not paid enough, while the world is moving ahead with technology advancements. This is a true story till now, let’s see what will be like in the future.”
- You get salary increases only when changing company. Only technical folks can rely on salary increases year on year – whether they are good technically or not!
- A lot of certified developers just can’t write the code good enough. Reading dumps and clearing exams is a bad precedence has been running for some time. Organizations have to maintain their partnership status with Salesforce, which forces them to get certified professionals.
Summary
Our first ever salary survey for India gathered 1670+ results over a 10 day period, thanks to all the amazing Trailblazers that were willing to build a picture of salaries in India.
The 7 questions covered the type of role, salary, years of experience, certifications, and location. We went away and analysed the results, which gave us insight into how salaries vary across India. That was the ‘how’; to answer the ‘why’, you can check out the role-specific salary guides we have live on the Salesforceben.com blog.
I would like to underline that the data we gathered is self-reported data, which can often be misleading. Some sample sizes were too insignificant to include. We are reporting back on the information we gathered, but feel free to disagree with our findings in the comments section.
What’s next?
We know that there are still some unanswered questions. We hope to write about some of these topics in the upcoming months, such as, what is the salary “difference between certified and non certified developer?”, “How much can a junior Salesforce developer with no certifications and one year experience expect in terms of salary?”
So, Why Do We Care?
At SalesforceBen.com, we have been enabling Salesforce Admins, Consultants, Developers and Marketers with salary statistics for a number of years. Our latest Salary Infographic gives insight into the salaries for US & UK professionals across the core Salesforce job titles – but this is the first time we have focused on India.
Salesforceben.com has always had such great support from our readers and contributors based in India – in fact, over 20% of our readers are based there! (21.24% to be exact)
We’re pleased to be joined by Dazeworks in spreading the word about our survey. The Dazeworks team of Salesforce professionals will be valuable in producing some great content in the coming months.
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