Nilay Arora spearheads the marketing and business operations for Tencent's biggest global product for India - WeChat. Arora has over 10 years of marketing and product experience across consumer technology and media, including mobile, Internet, social media, online gaming, TV, radio and print. He has also been an active member of the leadership team driving marketing and product for various business verticals for about seven years. 

Before joining WeChat, Arora has worked with Hindustan Times, Radio Mirchi and Ballarpur Industries in various consumer marketing roles. He holds a Master’s in Business Administration from IMS and an Engineering degree in Electronics and Telecom, apart from a being a part of Harvard’s Strategic Management programme.

In this exclusive interview with Ratnika Swami for India Digital Review, Arora talks about the growing importance of the instant chat and messaging category in India, how the OTT market is changing in the country and the challenges faced by companies in making the most of digital. Excerpts: 

Q. How does the digital medium - Internet as well as mobile - figure in WeChat’s plans to reach out to the Indian consumers?

The product is already in the digital space. We are a communication app, which is an OTT app and every possible thing in our business is broadly on the Internet, and is in the digital space. As for as reaching out to the customer is concerned, yes, it does happen online significantly as well as offline at times. 

There are two ways to educate the users about you product: online and offline. In the online space, what happens is, typically, the first category of apps that the users go to are the communication apps, because that is the primary need from a phone. Then there are obviously guys who are trying the Internet for the first time on their smartphones; therefore there is a lot of offline communication that is also required. In the past we have done mass education programmes through TV and other mediums as well.  We also do very significant user reach-out programmes in colleges, etc. 

Q. How do you see the OTT (instant chat and messaging) market in India evolving in the coming years? And what is WeChat's current share in the market?

As far as the market is concerned, the OTT space has tremendous potential. The reason being, in India there are almost about 800 million-odd mobile connections and barely about 70-80 million Internet connected smartphone users. And in the next 3-4 years, as per a KPMG report, there will be 250 million-plus Internet connected smartphone users. If that is the case, the potential is enormous. 

Secondly, communication has always been the category which is the most utilitarian on a phone and almost all the communication needs are getting served OTT these days. Therefore in this category, there are multiple players and very clearly users are trying out multiple messaging apps. WeChat does feature very significantly there. Where will we go from here? We are very clear that we have spent a lot of time, energy and efforts in ensuring that our product is relevant to the user, the user experience is improved even more, the value that an app provides to the user keeps growing, and people are engaged on our platform for a period of time—I think that should result in further growth. 
 
Q. Could you please elaborate on the Freemium (Free + Premium) model and what role does it play in the OTT segment?

In the communication category, almost all the apps are free right now, and all the core communication features are also free. Unless of course there is calling to PSTN, which is outside of India, for which one pays. That would be the same for all the players in the category, if it is calling to a non-OTT number, which is basically an outside-the-network mobile number or an outside country landline number, I think that would remain paid. A couple of players are already offering that in the market and that is the only thing that I see will be paid. Going ahead, instead of core services being freemiumised, I think a lot of evolution of the platform is where the focus is for us; for instance, introduction of gaming as a service can contribute to the freemium model. Gaming is a place where the freemium model works better, because that is where people are engaged and when they are stuck into the game, they don’t mind paying to clear the levels. 

Q. What marketing initiatives are you undertaking online to stay ahead of the competition?

Throughout the year, we try and educate the audience through various marketing initiatives—online and offline both. In the online space, our focus is on using our own users as brand ambassadors to tell other people about WeChat and get them on board. Because those are the ones who like our features, who like our products, who consume that, and believe that there is a significant value, we’d like to use them as the ambassadors. 

Secondly, our effort is towards creating a positive cycle of word of mouth. We have also been doing advertising in the past: it’s a good medium to educate the mass audiences. At various stages of our product’s life cycle in the country, advertising will also be used as a medium. 

Q. How important is it for brands today to have a significant presence on social media? How do you use WeChat’s messaging and gaming features to create new interactive experiences for users and brands alike? 

While our focus is significantly directed towards those who are already on WeChat, we do try to use other platforms to talk to our users and communicate about our product, whether it is Facebook or Twitter. There are multiple ways of doing that: sometimes we reach out to them directly, or sometimes we engage with them through some activities where they come to know about our features, so those are very tactical things that we do on our platform. The core objective is to communicate what is the latest that you have on your product, which will help them to add value to their life and communicating with their friends and family. For example, we did a quiz contest about the feature that has a six-second recording on WeChat. Or which of the stickers do you like the most? 

Q. You have recently announced a content partnership with Buzzfeed. Could you elaborate on that? And also, please shed some light on the other partners that WeChat has engaged with, so far, in India.

Buzzfeed is also on WeChat now. WeChat as a platform has a concept called the official account, where brands and services can also have their presence on WeChat. And this presence is in the form of an account, which users can follow to keep connected with these brands. The user can engage with the brand through this account; it’s like chatting with the brand. It’s a chat interface, not a page interface that most of us think of when we think of a Twitter handle or Facebook page. The brand has an admin panel, at their end, through which a social media person can reply when required. 

Secondly, this can be used as a content distribution platform. So, for example, they [brands] can push one communication a day. Because messaging is a very personal space, you don’t spam. Otherwise, the user will “unfollow” their official account. And you don’t want that as a brand, that users unfollow you. Then how do people discover more? You just tap on whatever news you want and you’ll receive that news on the fly from their API plugged into our admin panel. 
Some of our other official account partnerships include Dainik Jagran, Flipkart, T-Series, ScoopWhoop, Sunburn, Desi Martini, Zoom TV, Food Panda, Cafe Coffee Day, and eBay. And ideally, this platform can be an open platform also. Just the way a Facebook paid platform is, but right now it is not, as it’s in a very early stage; in China it is an open platform. Over a period of time, this will become an open platform. 

Q. What is your current revenue model and how do you see it evolve as the market matures?

There are revenue opportunities. We have a sticker store, that’s an opportunity. Then there is gaming, where the freemium model fits in very well. Back in China, transactions is also an opportunity. WeChat has a wallet service in China, so those kinds of opportunities are also there. And over a period of time you’ll see us evolve in those directions. The Indian market is a huge and diverse market, and we’re still barely at 70 million connected Internet smartphone users. The moment this grows significantly bigger, there would be plenty of opportunities to do many more things.