Appistoki named Salesforce ASEAN Partner of the Year

Abhijeet Kulkarni, Founder and CEO of Appistoki hopes the recognition for the second-year running will continue to fuel them to greater success in the region.

Appistoki has been named ASEAN Partner of the Year for the second year running at Salesforce’s 2025 ASEAN Partner of the Year Awards. The awards honours partners in the region who have redefined the future of work by building Agentic Enterprises across ASEAN, delivered exceptional customer outcomes, innovation with Salesforce technologies, and contributed to ecosystem growth.

For Appistoki, the win is a recognition of its partner ecosystem participation and commitment to delivering transformative solutions that drive business outcomes for customers across the region.

“It's an ecosystem that's nurtured partners for a long time and this kind of recognition is a huge motivation to our teams. Our business is all around numbers so the recognition is important, it gives us validation, motivation to our teams and we hope this is the fuel that can drive us to bring better numbers,” Abhijeet Kulkarni, Founder and CEO shared with CRN Asia.

With a growing presence in Singapore, the Philippines and plans to expand to Malaysia, Kulkarni added that Appistoki is a 100% Salesforce shop. He feels this is a big advantage for them as Salesforce is such a big stack.

“When you have a business challenge or a problem statement, Salesforce has every product in its armoury. So there is so much to do in this ecosystem but for a partner to stay Salesforce focused, the advantage is that we have a templatized approach, we have a chance to innovate and really put the right piece of the puzzle at the right time for the customer's business evolution journey,” he explained.

For Kulkarni, as businesses evolve, Salesforce provides the pieces of the puzzle that Appstioki can bring in at the right time. He added that as a Salesforce focused partner, it helps them understand the stack better and enables them to be trusted advisors to the clients and provide more in-depth solutions.

Appstioki also won the award for ASEAN Country Excellence Partner of the Year in the Philippines. While the partner operates primarily in the mid-market and enterprise segments, it has a strong focus on enterprises in the Philippines.

Meanwhile, Pravar Gautam, Vice President for Alliances & Channel ASEAN, Salesforce shared that partners are architects of the shift of customers from AI to becoming agentic enterprises.

“This year’s winners have demonstrated exceptional expertise in navigating the unique complexities of the region’s digital landscape and a laser focus on delivering results,” Gautam said.

Other winners of the ASEAN Partner of the Year Awards include NCS as ASEAN Reseller of the Year, Deloitte as ASEAN Customer Success Partner of the Year, PwC South East Asia Consulting as ASEAN Agentforce Partner of the Year and Valuehub as the ASEAN Rising Star Partner of the Year.

Country excellence partner awards winners in ASEAN include Accenture for Singapore, M-Intelligence for Thailand, APD for Malaysia, Gimasys for Vietnam and Metrodata for Indonesia.

Apart from the awards, Salesforce also announced a revamped partner program in March 2026 which will focus more on rewarding partners who ensure agents are secure, compliant, and built for verifiable outcomes.

Several weeks earlier, Salesforce also launched its first Center of Excellence in Vietnam in collaboration with FPT Software. There are also plans to launch similar centers in Singapore with Accenture, PwC Singapore and Huron later this year. These centers are designed to combine partners' hands-on solution and implementation expertise with Salesforce's trusted, unified platform.