India is a true microcosm of Adobe’s operations worldwide: Prativa Mohapatra

Adobe just announced the launch of AI tools to enhance marketing and customer experiences, unveiling its strategy for agentic AI with the Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) Agent Orchestrator. This platform allows businesses to build, manage, and orchestrate AI agents from Adobe and third-party ecosystems.

Additionally, Adobe introduced a suite of ten purpose-built AI agents designed to enhance the capabilities of marketing and creative teams, including the Audience Agent, Content Production Agent, and Data Insights Agent, all built on the AEP Agent Orchestrator.

In an era where technology is rapidly evolving, the big question on everyone's mind is whether introducing AI aggressively across product offerings is a pivot or simply another step in the evolution of marketing and creative functions. Prativa Mohapatra, Vice President and Managing Director at Adobe India, addresses this question and more in an exclusive conversation with exchange4media at the Adobe Global Summit 2025 in Las Vegas. She delves into the role of AI in marketing and creative strategies, as well as its growing impact on businesses, particularly in India.

Edited excerpts:

Adobe has always been at the forefront of creativity. However, at this year’s Summit, there was a strong focus on AI innovations. Would you describe this as a strategic pivot or a move to align with the evolving demands of the industry?

As you mentioned, creativity has always been core to Adobe. The key announcement this time was about
combining creativity, marketing, and AI — it's the three coming together. Adobe’s business has three major pillars: the creative cloud, which includes all the exciting creative tools; the document cloud, featuring Acrobat and similar products; and the experience cloud, which focuses on customer experience solutions.

Creativity has traditionally driven content creation and brand-building, while experience has always been closely linked. In fact, Adobe pioneered the marketing technology category a few years ago. Now, we’re bringing creativity and marketing together, powered by AI. AI itself isn’t new for Adobe; we’ve leveraged predictive AI for years. However, the rapid advancements in generative AI and now agentic AI are accelerating this evolution. Our strategy now centers on blending creativity, marketing, and AI, using both Gen AI and agentic AI, to drive powerful experiences. So, I wouldn’t call it a pivot; rather, it’s a strategic evolution that aligns AI with Adobe’s long-standing vision.

Adobe has had a strong presence in India for quite some time. How significant is India as a market for Adobe in the global landscape?

India is the fastest-growing market in the Asia Pacific region and one of the fastest-growing globally. While Adobe has been around for over 40 years, our presence in India dates back close to 20 years. Historically, much of our focus here has been on product development and engineering. But now, India as a market itself is propelling rapidly. Every part of Adobe’s global business has a presence in India, making it a true microcosm of Adobe’s operations worldwide.

With over 8,500 employees, India is Adobe’s second-largest market globally — a testament to its importance in our overall strategy. We're also seeing significant enterprise adoption of our products and technologies in India. Beyond major brands, we're actively engaging with the SMB sector, educational institutions, and individual consumers as well. It’s an exciting time for Adobe in India, a fast-growing market with immense potential and rising interest across various sectors.

India's digital advertising market is projected to grow at a 20% CAGR, expected to surpass Rs 60,000 crore by 2025. With the increasing emphasis on ROI, how does Adobe plan to support brands in maximizing returns amid this rapid growth?

At Adobe, we believe the value of a product is determined by the value it provides to the customer. Our focus is on value realization, ensuring our solutions deliver measurable outcomes. For instance, at Adobe Experience, we focus on content data and customer journeys. When implementing a campaign management solution, businesses typically track specific KPIs, such as reducing churn or increasing acquisition.

We work closely with large brands to assess their current baseline. For example, how much acquisition do they achieve monthly or annually? Can we help increase that? What is the current rate of attrition, and can we reduce it? These are clear, measurable outcomes we aim to impact.

Similarly, when it comes to websites, we analyze how many visitors are coming, how many are engaging, and how many are converting to sales. Are we improving all these metrics? The solutions we offer are directly aligned with specific KPIs, and most of our customers make decisions based on demonstrated ROI.

Can you help us understand the types of brands you’re working with the most? Have you noticed any significant shifts in categories?

One key category we've always worked with is banking and financial services, which has been a primary segment for us. Similarly, airlines have been another strong category. In general, enterprises with large volumes of end customers have been the natural segments for us. However, we're now seeing a shift with more pure manufacturing companies, which traditionally focused on creating products like cars and assuming they would sell. These companies are now focusing on their end customer experience, which represents a big shift.

The notable change is that many automotive and manufacturing companies are becoming more engaged in the digital space. There’s a lot of digital intervention happening in their manufacturing processes, but now, their focus is shifting toward improving customer experience. Another trend is the growing interest from B2B customers. For example, we work with a large steel manufacturer, a conglomerate that engages with their end customers (who may not always be direct buyers), using digital channels and influencers.

So, the shift we're seeing is from manufacturing companies and consumer goods to B2B businesses adopting technology to either enhance their top line or reduce costs. If you'd like specific examples across verticals, in BFSI, we work with brands like HDFC, ICICI Bank, and many other next-level banks, as well as related segments like ICICI Securities and Nippon. In manufacturing, we have notable brands like Maruti, Hero, and MG Motors and others. In B2B, Tata Steel has a platform called Aashiyana which is used by builders to purchase steel sheets. We also do extensive work with the Tata Group group overall.

In India, the SMB sector is witnessing rapid growth, contributing nearly 30% to GDP and expected to reach $1 trillion by 2025.What strategies are you recommending to Indian brands, particularly SMBs, to leverage these tools effectively and improve their marketing efforts?

We haven't seen massive tech adoption in SMBs just yet. Right now, the companies are focused more on getting the basics right, especially with initiatives like ‘Make in India’. They’re putting a lot of attention on the quality of what they manufacture or bring to the table.

For companies that were born on the cloud, technology is already ingrained in their processes. E-commerce companies and cloud-native businesses are adopting technology well. However, for pure manufacturing, especially in the SMB sector, the full wave of tech adoption is still to come.

Beyond Adobe's specific offerings, what are the most significant shifts you're observing in Indian consumer behaviour and marketing strategies in the digital space?

Clearly, influencers now play a significant role in digital marketing. In the past, when we thought about digital marketing, the focus was on the end consumers who would make a purchase, followed by strategy. Now, the strategy is shifting to identify influencers who can sway those end consumers. So, when you're creating a digital marketing strategy, the stakeholders involved are changing rapidly.
That’s a big shift. Another major change is that marketing efforts, which once felt like a one-way communication, are now much more two-way. The focus is on engagement, not just telling, but also listening, gathering feedback, and acting on it. Marketing strategies are now built around this concept.

So, in your tech strategy, how are you supporting all of these changes? How are you making it easier for businesses to meet these needs?

These are the critical elements to address in strategy creation. Today’s consumer is empowered, and the stakeholders influencing their purchasing decisions are also evolving. This shift is even more pronounced in India.

Speaking of shifts, we’re talking about AI and its integration into marketing communications. With AI, there are parallel discussions around authenticity, biases, and other concerns. How does Adobe ensure that ethical concerns are addressed when applying AI to your marketing strategies and offerings?

At Adobe, we take ethical AI very seriously. We have a governing body in place that ensures all our products meet ethical standards and work to eliminate bias. For example, when building a product, the team presents it for review. With Firefly, for instance, it’s trained only on data that we own. Once the output starts coming in, we rigorously test it to ensure no bias is present. If we do detect any, we go through an iterative process to address it. Ethical considerations are built into our product development and governance processes, and we have dedicated people overseeing this. When it comes to content authenticity, we ensure that no one is using someone else’s data without permission.

We were pioneers in establishing content authentication, meaning every piece of content created using Adobe products is tagged with a history or label, similar to a nutritional label. This label indicates which tool was used, who the creator was, and helps trace the origin of the content. This helps maintain authenticity and transparency.

Additionally, we’ve developed this technology as a standard, and now many other companies are adopting it. There’s a consortium of major companies involved, and every piece of content coming from this group will carry astamp confirming its authenticity. These are some of the steps we’ve taken to ensure ethical AI and content integrity.

Publicis Groupe and Adobe have expanded their global partnership to drive creative expression and personalization at scale with Adobe Firefly Generative AI. So, how closely are you working with large networks or smaller agencies in India?

Globally, this is a huge development. In India, however, it’s still a bit different. Here, enterprises largely determine which agencies they work with. So, we collaborate directly with these enterprises, who then bring their agencies into the fold. It’s more about stakeholders working together in this model.

Lastly, are there any key trends to look out for in the Indian market this year? Not just in Adobe,
but overall—any shifts or smaller trends you expect to become big?

One interesting trend we've seen in India over the last few months is the rise of the concert economy and the cultural economy. While we’ve been talking about the creator economy, these newer areas in the Indian market are opening up. Tourism, for instance, is growing significantly, and I believe this year will be very big for it. Creativity will play a major role here. Additionally, the emerging business models are here to stay, and we’ll see a lot of new ones coming into play. We’ve also seen the growth of the religious economy. So, these are the new areas to watch out for