We want partners ‘to move up the value chain’ to AI and business outcomes: Snowflake executives

The company shifts India partners from migration to AI as Cortex and Intelligence drive the next revenue wave.

(Left: Dhiraj Narang, Director and Head of Partnerships- India, Snowflake; Right: Vijayant Rai, Managing Director- India, Snowflake)

Snowflake is pushing India partner ecosystem to move beyond data migration and resale-led engagements, as it sharpens focus on AI-driven use cases and business outcomes.

Speaking to CRN India, Snowflake’s director and head of partnerships, India, Dhiraj Narang, said, “We want partners to move up the value chain to AI and business outcomes,” adding that traditional migration work is becoming increasingly commoditised.

The shift is tied to Snowflake’s focus on offerings - Snowflake Intelligence and Cortex, which the company sees as the next phase of growth for its partner ecosystem. These capabilities enable partners to build use cases across functions, such as sales, marketing, risk, and supply chain, while driving measurable outcomes, including cost savings and revenue growth.

This positioning also comes at a time when competition is intensifying. Snowflake is differentiating itself through faster time-to-value, deeper partner monetisation opportunities, and a stronger focus on outcome-led delivery, Narang said.

Move beyond migration to AI-led outcomes

The company is looking to expand its partner ecosystem across the full spectrum of capabilities, including data engineering, analytics, and AI. “In the current AI-driven landscape, partners need to be able to leverage Snowflake Intelligence effectively, which requires strong domain expertise,” said Narang.

Partners need to move up the value chain by developing deep domain capabilities and engaging in business-led conversations. This means focusing on outcomes that matter to customers, such as revenue growth and cost optimisation, rather than just technical execution.

“We are seeing significant interest from partners in India and expect it to continue expanding over the next year, both in terms of new partner additions and the growth of existing partners,” Narang said.

From a partner revenue cycle perspective, engagements begin with co-selling and resale, followed by implementation. The initial layer of revenue is driven by data engineering, bringing enterprise data onto the platform and building the foundation.

However, Snowflake is pushing partners to move beyond this phase.

Sustained revenue growth, Narang said, will depend on partners’ ability to deliver continuous business value. This is centred around driving measurable outcomes for customers, either through cost optimisation or revenue generation.

Snowflake Intelligence enables these use cases, while Cortex accelerates development and deployment, he added.

Snowflake is investing in enabling its partners to take these offerings to market, operationalise them, and scale customer success. The focus is on ensuring partners can build repeatable, high-impact use cases rather than limiting themselves to one-time data projects.

“From an industry standpoint, financial services remains the largest opportunity, followed by manufacturing and retail, where the scale of data and complexity of operations create strong demand for AI-led solutions,” said Narang.

Partners can monetise across streams

Under Snowflake’s updated partner framework, revenue is no longer limited to upfront deal margins. Instead, partners can monetise across streams, including resale margins, backend consumption, services, and service-linked incentives.

Narang said, “Partners play a key role not only in closing deals but also in expanding accounts over time, in line with Snowflake’s global 'land and expand' strategy.”

“Partners now have multiple revenue streams, including resale margins, backend consumption, services, and service registration incentives. These elements together enable partners to generate meaningful financial returns,” Narang added.

Speaking to CRN India, Snowflake’s managing director, India, Vijayant Rai, said, “Snowflake invests in enabling partners with deep platform expertise, helping them accelerate time to value for customers. In many cases, large-scale data migrations, running into multiple petabytes, can be completed within weeks, compared to months in traditional environments.”

According to Rai, this allows partners to demonstrate value quickly and start generating revenue from implementations early.

Beyond that, Snowflake enables partners to build capabilities across business domains, including finance, sales and marketing, supply chain, financial risk management, and CRM, he added.

Snowflake works with partners to build Centres of Excellence (CoEs) across sales, pre-sales, delivery, and domain teams.

This model supports revenue generation through resale and services while increasing platform consumption, said Rai.

The platform enables faster execution of use cases across industries, such as inventory optimisation, with clear cost and revenue impact.

In one instance, a partner was able to pivot an ongoing engagement to Snowflake and close the deal within four weeks after demonstrating business value, Rai said.

Strong growth in India puts pressure on talent and partner execution

The company says India continues to be one of the fastest-growing markets globally, with strong year-on-year growth in customer consumption driven by both new wins and expansion within the existing base.

The company has also doubled its sales team in the country over the past year, while half of its APJ partners are based in India.

According to Rai, Snowflake follows a consumption-based model, where revenue is recognised only when customers use compute and storage. In addition to reported revenue, the company tracks Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO), which represents contracted but unconsumed revenue.

Snowflake reported product revenue of $1.23 billion for Q4 FY26, reflecting a 30 percent year-on-year increase, indicating strong consumption-led growth on the platform, said Rai.

At the same time, the RPO stood at $9.77 billion, representing contracted revenue yet to be recognised. Of this, approximately $4.69 billion, around 48 percent, is expected to be realised over the next 12 months, Rai added.

This momentum is placing pressure on partner execution, particularly around talent availability.

“There is a clear demand for skilled talent in the ecosystem,” Narang said.

To address this, Snowflake is investing in building talent through multiple initiatives in India. These include its partnership with NASSCOM under the “Million Minds” programme, and collaborations with the ICT Academy focused on a train-the-trainer model.

The company is also running developer-focused programmes such as North Star and Build across multiple cities, alongside targeted partner enablement through SPN Learn and the Partner Champions initiative.

These efforts will help expand the talent pool, as demand continues to outpace supply, particularly as partners take on more complex, AI-led engagements.

On pricing, Snowflake continues to back its consumption-based model, positioning it as flexible across customer segments.

“To further support the Indian market, the company has established a local entity and introduced INR-based billing, enabling customers to transact in Indian rupees through partners,” said Rai.

According to Narang, customers can also procure Snowflake through direct purchase, partner-led models, and cloud marketplaces such as AWS and Microsoft Azure, while those preferring US dollar transactions can continue to do so.

For partners, this means the opportunity in India remains strong, but scaling delivery will depend on how quickly they can build and deploy skilled talent to meet growing demand.