Darwinbox appoints Akshay Murthy as Country Head for India

Former Salesforce Regional Vice President to lead Darwinbox’s enterprise growth in India

Published: July 27, 2026 — 06:37 pm IST

Hyderabad, Telangana, India — Business Wire India

Darwinbox has appointed Akshay Murthy as Country Head, India. In this role, he will lead the company’s enterprise growth across the country — the market where Darwinbox was built and from which it has scaled into one of the world’s leading HR technology platforms.

Murthy brings over 24 years of experience in enterprise SaaS and technology sales, having held leadership roles at Salesforce, Oracle, and IBM. He most recently served as Regional Vice President of Sales at Salesforce India, where he worked with enterprise customers across sectors to enhance cross-channel marketing, customer engagement, and sales productivity using data and AI.

Strategic Timing Amid AI Acceleration in HR

Murthy’s appointment comes as Indian enterprises move AI adoption in HR from pilot projects to core infrastructure faster than most other markets. According to Deloitte’s State of AI in the Enterprise 2026 report, nearly 40% of Indian respondents are already in significant or full use of AI, compared to a 28% global average — ranking India first among 15 countries surveyed.

Darwinbox has positioned itself at the forefront of this shift, becoming the first HCM platform globally to launch a Model Context Protocol server and rolling out Super Agent, an agentic AI layer spanning talent, analytics, payroll, and employee support. Gartner’s decision to move Darwinbox from Visionary to Leader in its 2026 Magic Quadrant for Talent Acquisition Suites — within a single year — was driven largely by this pace of AI innovation.

Leadership Perspectives

“India’s HR function has moved from a support role to a boardroom priority faster than most enterprises have been able to adjust their systems for. I have watched large companies try to scale their people operations at the same pace as their revenue and geography, and the technology underneath them keeps falling behind. A lot of what’s on the market today is AI bolted-on to systems that were never built for it, so it never really integrates into how work gets done across the enterprise. That’s the gap I want to help close at Darwinbox — technology built AI-native from the ground up, not stitched on afterward.”

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— Akshay Murthy, Country Head, India, Darwinbox

“Akshay joins at a transformative moment. AI is fundamentally rewriting what HR technology can do — not incrementally better software, but a new operating layer for how organizations grow and engage their people. His track record of helping large enterprises adopt modern technology at scale makes him the right leader for this chapter. India is our home market, but what we’re building here is a model for every fast-growing, multilingual market in the world.”

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— Rohit Chennamaneni, Co-Founder, Darwinbox

Broader Industry Context

The shift underway in India reflects a wider global pattern. As enterprises across fast-growing, multilingual, and mobile-first markets modernise their people operations, platforms built closest to that complexity — and most adaptable — are increasingly setting the pace for the rest of the industry. India remains the origin point for Darwinbox’s innovation, work that goes on to lead on the global stage. The company is focused on accelerating its growth in the region under Murthy’s leadership.

About Darwinbox

Founded in 2015, Darwinbox is a global HR tech leader that empowers enterprises to better manage their talent with new-age employee experiences and disruptive AI-powered technology. Its mobile-first Human Capital Management (HCM) platform caters to an organization’s HR needs across the entire employee lifecycle. Darwinbox is trusted by over 4 million employees from more than 1,200 enterprises across 130 countries. It is the youngest player to be recognized as a Challenger on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud HCM Platforms.

Learn more at http://www.darwinbox.com/

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