Satya Mahapatra is the Chief Marketing Officer at Junglee Games, an online gaming and software development company. He has more than 15 years of experience in managing profitable digital businesses with proven record in delivering measurable results. He joined Junglee Games in 2013 as the CMO, spearheading overall India operations and marketing communication.

At Junglee Games, his role encompasses planning, developing and managing 360 co-marketing programs with alliance partners.

He comes with a rich experience in digital acquisition and revenue optimisation and has helped companies monetize their businesses by optimising various processes and maximising the ROI on marketing spends. He has effectively used research data to drive strategic plans and segmentation to help create product propositions to meet the needs of the target audience.

Prior to Junglee Games, Satya was associated with Spice Online Retail Pvt. Ltd. as the Head of Online Marketing and presently is also the Director of Digital Marketing at ROI Internet Marketing.

He has a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration, Marketing & Finance from ICFAI Business School.

In this exclusive interview with Ratnika Swami for India Digital Review, Satya talks about Junglee Games’ online strategies to engage with the youth, the changing online gaming industry in India and how social media has helped in shaping the digital space in the company. Excerpts:

Q. According to you how has the role of a marketing officer evolved in this industry?

I started with Internet marketing almost 15 years ago in India and I would say, marketing has taken a quantum step in the last decade. Both customers as well as operators have been empowered with real time technology, better reach, effective tracking, affordable devices, flexible and fast fulfillment etc. This has changed the way the customers engage with brands, products and services.

Back in the day, it was all about acquiring customers which has transformed to acquiring profitably, optimizing sources of traffic, retargeting, lookalikes and custom audiences. Marketers have improved by leaps and bounds in acquiring customers, retaining them and finally engaging and gratifying them. 

Earlier, marketing and technology were managed independently. However, today from product tech to ad tech, analytics to content, acquisition to engagement, marketing and technology work in tandem and co-ordinate to maximize productivity and ROI. Technology is driving a lot of key areas in marketing because unlike before, now each and every customer event/action is being tracked as a data point. Every data point tells a story about the customer's journey which gets analyzed to come up with actionable insights to optimize the user experience and thus maximize the ROI. In all these years, the role of the CMO has transitioned into Chief Marketing Technologist as innovation in product and technology improvements drives the marketing in today's world. 

Peter Drucker once said that business had two functions - innovation and marketing. It's time technology is added to this phrase.

Q. Could you please share a brief about the current strategy and direction that Junglee Games is taking in digital in India?  

We are a data driven company and our strategies are formulated around customer intelligence and customer equity. We are hugely investing in the social gaming and skill gaming space in India. The aim is to get market leadership in this area through innovative and localized content with mobile being our prime focus.

Q. The Indian gaming industry touched $171.66 million in 2010, from $144.56 million in 2009. According to an Indian entrepreneur the Rs 600-crore gaming industry in India is growing at a healthy 30 per cent but has the potential to grow 200 per cent. Growth projections look even better, with the gaming market in India pegged to reach Rs 4,000 crore by the end of 2017. What do you think about this development and how is this affecting your business?  

I can't disagree with that. The industry is growing by leaps and bounds and the biggest contributors have been innovations by entrepreneurs, growing infrastructure, better accessibility, penetration of mobile phones, cost of data and payment processing.

In the coming quarters, we will witness a lot of innovation, growth hacking and new marketing leaders emerging in each of these areas. As a company, we are hugely invested and aggressively working towards capitalizing this opportunity. 

Q. What kind of analytics or social media tools do you use?

We extensively use our own customized tools (both in-house and personalized third party ones) along with Google Analytics to analyze data and customer behavior. 

Like I said initially, each and every customer event needs to be tracked. Using this data and the customer journey funnels, companies would be able to optimize their customer strategy and create engaging relationships with their customers. 

Q. Could you please share in brief a couple of digital marketing campaigns you find different or noteworthy?

1. Amazon #AurDikhao -

Indians love to be spoilt for choice and prefer to check out more options before deciding to buy. Amazon used this concept during IPL 8 to roll out a brilliant digital campaign #AurDikhao, powered by a two-minute film which triggered valuable and viral conversations on social media. 

2. Heineken's #ShareTheSofa -

Leveraging the rise of the 2nd screen experience, Heineken launched a 90 min real time show during the Champions League - #ShareTheSofa. This show enabled football fans to share their experience with legends of the game like Ruud Van Nistelrooy, Hernan Crespo and Fernando Morientes, without distracting them from the game.

The campaign was a perfect engagement tool with football fans holding on to their tablets during the game. The sheer excitement of sharing a (virtual) sofa with football greats and being able to chat with them in real time was definitely a winner. 

Not only did the show enhance the Champions League experience, it helped trigger valuable conversations both in traditional news media and social media. 

Q. What percentage of your total marketing spends is on digital? And how do you maximise the ROI on your marketing spends?

We spend a substantial percentage of our budget on digital marketing due to the nature of our product and the industry. 

Everything that we do on digital is tracked, measured, analyzed and optimized. Constant optimization of the marketing spends on different sources/channels helps maximize ROI.

Q. As a CMO, what are the main challenges you face, especially in being able to reach out and engage with the millennials?

Communication, value offering and employing the right channel mix is the key to reaching out to any segment including the millennial. Engagement is a different beast altogether as every segment has its own characteristics and needs. Social media is one of the most successful mediums to reach this segment of customers as they have been raised on gadgets & the Internet and are some of the most influential early adopters of new technology. 

Marketing to this media savvy generation requires a fresh approach which involves creating great experiences, offering the ability to customize, being transparent, trendy and authentic and engaging them in activities which are fun, visual, social and viral. Understanding their likes and dislikes, browsing patterns, interests and preferences would help marketers in reaching out and engaging them. Typical questions to investigate are - what do they like - news/ travel/ movies/ technology / videos/ communities? What causes do they support?

Most importantly the buying behavior of this segment is different from the previous generations. These kids buy products that they can tell others about; they buy because of what these purchases say about them, in a way it's about making a statement.

Q. What advice would you like to share with your peers in the industry?

Today's reality revolves around connected customers and in this eco system; data is the key to reach the customers. Effective use of technology has helped generate huge amount of data on customers, channels, products, categories and measure ROI on various marketing initiatives. Marketers need to utilize the new information available to optimize processes and maximize efforts to reach and engage the end user effectively and efficiently. 

The rapid evolution of mobile as a preferred access medium has affected all internet businesses, positively I suppose. Look out for the mobile opportunity with respect to your existing businesses.

Being flexible and agile, possessing the ability to unlearn and adapting to emerging opportunities that the market presents is imperative. Last but not the least; innovation is the key to success.

Amit Duggal is the AVP – Digital & Mobility at Omnicom Media Group. He has over 12.5 years of marketing experience. He has worked in companies like Indiatimes.com, Travelguru.com, Geodesic in the digital marketing department, driving performance marketing for them with a single mind agenda of acquiring customers at bear minimum cost through SEM, Affiliate marketing, SEO and  Display marketing.

Last 4 years he has been involved with agencies like, Mindshare where he led Pepsico digital practice. In his last stint at Madison he was responsible for P&L, new business, and growing existing business for North and South India across digital paid, owned, earned platforms for clients like Airtel (Brand and Performance business), ITC- PCPB, ITC Hotels, ITC Kitchens of India, ITC lifestyle, Dish TV, etc. One of the high point in his career at Madison, he handled the national election campaign for BJP. His role entailed around strategizing to create digital content and distribution across digital medium/platforms.

Currently he is leading the digital practice for OMD (North) with a wide portfolio across automobile, technology, FMCG, CPG, online categories.

In this exclusive interview with Ratnika Swami for India Digital Review, Amit talks about the evolving digital medium in India, programmatic buying and the importance of mobile today. Excerpts: 

Q. What are the biggest challenges you face, especially in being able to optimally tap into the digital medium? What are the most important things you keep in mind while planning to buy inventory for a digital campaign?

Digital as a medium is like a double-edged sword. Measurability of the medium is both boon and bane. While the end to end tracking works for clients in terms of what is working and what is not, it usually leads the team to work / optimize on those mediums / properties which are delivering performance.  We need to look at digital beyond just performance play. We need to look at digital as a brand builder medium just like any other traditional medium.

The question which we need to answer on digital these days is what is to be done and where. The clients have become aware of all the digital mediums available. It is more about how you can juice these mediums in terms of contextual innovations.

The planning of any digital campaign is done basis a simple formula of 3 R’s – Reach, Reference and ROI. A smart planner will make sure that his plan has all the three pillars – Reach to get eyeballs, Reference to get the virality and ROI to see what has worked and what has not.

Q. What measures do you take to ensure that you deliver a highly effective digital campaign? 

It depends from campaign to campaign. In case of performance campaign, the rigor is on getting maximum conversions. And our endeavor is to improve the number of conversions. We look at various parameters like click to visit, bounce rate, landing page performance, exit rates, sales funnel, etc. Performance on mobile, viz-a-vis web.

In case of a branding campaign, our parameters are different. We try to do a pre and post campaign analysis through social listening, brand up-lift survey, sales inclination survey, time spent, engagement, sentiment analysis, word cloud associations, etc. In order, to maintain real time tracking, we suggest command centers which helps track real time conversations, sentiment analysis and engagements. This not only makes sure that we are on top of the campaign but also ensures that we are keeping a track on the sentiment of the brand.

Q. How do you maximise online conversions for a digital campaign?

Real time monitoring is the key. Keeping a tab on what is working and what is not. Constantly ploughing money from non-working buckets to working buckets. The planner will also keep a check on which platform is working, for example Search/ Networks/ Programmatic/ Native/ App downloads will drive conversions.

Q. How does programmatic buying or any other tech tool impact your job?

Programmatic is the future; there is no better way to get your audience. Programmatic helps you define the audience, reach out to them at right place, right context and right placement.

We have seen in a few campaigns that the ROI through a programmatic campaign is far better as compared to any digital display.

Programmatic is a smart and efficient way to buy and minimize wastage. It yields better ROI. Secondly, clients don’t lose audience data/learnings once they have run a programmatic piece. They can leverage the learnings and get great results over a period of time

Q. What are the main takeaways from this job? Does your experience help you plan for a performance campaign which is result/outcome oriented?

I have seen digital growing from 1% spend to a substantial 15% spend level. The clients have started believing in the medium. The only thing which I have learnt in this medium is patience and continuous learning from the medium.

Over time, we have realized what works and what doesn’t work. This intelligence is built only when you have been a part of various campaigns. Over time, we have realized the kind of percentage we need to keep to make sure that the campaign will deliver basis the objective.

There are few clients who run branding campaigns but at the backend they calculate the performance, for these clients we do performance led branding. 

Q. What role does mobile play in your marketing efforts in India?

Mobile in current world is like your buddy or someone you can’t live without. To draw a parallel, mobile is like your daily wear. Someone wears an expensive one, someone wears an affordable one, while someone wears just for the sake of it. But everyone wears it.

With over 200 million users on mobile, it is an essential part of your plan. Mobile as a medium stays with you 24X7.  No plan is complete without a focus on mobile these days. The weight age might differ but no plan is complete without mobile.

Q. Are there any industry trends and technologies that you find exciting right now that might help your clients?

Digital as an industry changes on a daily basis. A trend which is there right now may not be there six months down the line. The things I find exciting right now are:-

- Wearables

- Screen agnostic planning

- From conversion optimizer to content optimizer

- Brand storytelling through programmatic

- Content driven commerce

Q. Despite its growing popularity, social media continues to be tricky for media planners and brands. Having a large number of followers on Twitter or likes on Facebook, for instance, is no longer considered a useful benchmark. What are your views on social media engagement and what key parameters or criteria do you look at when planning to tap social media?

Social media is a tricky space. With over 120 million users on a single platform, 80% of users coming from mobile. Facebook should be considered as a pure reach platform, it needs to be treated like print medium with an additional layer of sharp shoot targeting.

We are firm believers that no other medium compared to Facebook can deliver brand’s message to the precise TG, specific location with specific interests…On the other hand, Twitter plays more on what is the interest of your TG. If a user is interested in sports genre, you can target a set of TG with that layer.

Treat Facebook as a reach platform and Twitter as an engagement platform.

Q. What issues or challenges are your clients facing right now?

Digital – both Web and mobile - is now imperative in the media mix, but how/where/how much is a constant struggle.

Clients are continuously asking for very first tie idea on digital, the reason digital has been to provide it. The medium has so much strength/ capabilities that we are constantly pushed to deliver innovations.

The other challenge is the format of advertising, while the mode of advertising is still banners (web/ mobile/ video) but the challenge is how to use it?

Also we need to constantly produce content for the right placements.

Q. Could you mention some recent campaigns that you found noteworthy? And what do you think makes them stand out?

A campaign by Horlicks during the fasting month of Ramadan was noteworthy. Through a banner integration, it set a daily reminder on the user’s phone to remind him/her to have their sehri on time. It was a wonderful integration, where technology partnered with the emotions of people to deliver a solution to an everyday problem.  

Another one was the Mentos Ad series featuring a chicken talking to its kid, it was absolutely delightful and creative. IT showcased how a creative advertisement could connect with its audience. Its series of contextual ads run as pre-rolls on YouTube, generating a lot of conversation.

Aur dhikhao from Amazon.com was another noteworthy one. I think the way brand message has been amplified across mediums is commendable. The thought talks about the mindset of Indian’s and dovetails with ecommerce offerings seamlessly. The message resonates with the daily lingo of consumers.

Long format content by Dabur did work out well; the core messaging was emotional and brought out the product attributes quite well.

Pratik Seal, CMO at Housing, joined the popular start-up from Star TV, where he was the Channel Business Head for Star Utsav. With over 16 years of experience in marketing, brand building and business leadership, his passion lies in creating start-up brands, and furthering challenger brands.

His prior assignments have included creating the Micromax brand from scratch and propelling it to the leader board in the global telecom space; and Life OK - the Hindi GEC channel. He has also worked on the Samsung and Vodafone brands as well. Prior to that, he had stints in established advertising and media agencies - Lowe and FCB Ulka. During this time, the most notable clients he worked for were Compaq, Whirlpool, LG and Maruti, among several others.

In this exclusive interview with Ratnika Swami for India Digital Review, Pratik talks about Housing’s online strategies to engage with its target audience, the changing face of the online real-estate sector in India and how digital plays a key role in the company’s journey. Excerpts:  

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

Since we are an e-commerce and an m-commerce company, digital forms a very important part of our marketing process. About 50-60% of our investments actually go into digital medium and more so now. Why its gaining importance is that more and more traffic is moving on to mobile site. 

Being a product on the digital space it’s important to take each and every aspect of digital into consideration, including SEO, SEM, re-targeting, brand marketing, and then there are social initiatives like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, PinInterest etc. Everything actually comes into the picture and of course at the end of the day the entire mobile marketing piece of the bit. App marketing also plays a huge role. 

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

There are two initiatives that we have basically taken in marketing. One of them is that we've invested in creating a marketing analytics team, which works on the complete analytics for online, offline, keeping an eye on traffic, orientation, what do the consumers do online, how do they search etc. We monitor this closely and then fine tune our communication far better, both in the online and offline medium. So that is one thing we have invested a lot of manpower in.

Typically in technology firm, what tends to happen is dependence tends to arise on the product team to basically bail you out or help you out. But unfortunately what happens is that they are busy with their own timelines that they need to manage. So what we have created is a strong marketing team to basically augment all the marketing initiatives in the technology space and especially in the online space. These are two things we have worked pretty heavily on and that is how we stand apart from our customers. 

Q. How do you integrate your online and offline marketing efforts?

Well firstly, of course, the brand that ties it all together. There is strict brand guideline that we work in terms of that we demarcate exactly what is the tone and manner that we communicate, what should be the language, what should be the colour usage, what should be the kind of illustrations, what kind of visuals etc. The entire brand world is very finely defined so that a consumer is completely platform agnostic. Whenever the consumer is basically exposed to a piece of communication made online or offline, he should be able to understand that it’s the brand Housing, even if the logo is masked. Secondly, we do integrated marketing communication for every initiative that we take and we also work on how to then tweak it to adjust it to the media as a vehicle, medium as the message and media as a platform. 

We don't differentiate as such between offline and online. They are both vehicles to reach out to consumers and both have their own objectives and agendas. We being an online platform, online becomes our bread 'n' butter to reach the existing consumers and get them to come back again and again. Our offline initiatives work in terms of getting more and more consumers to adopt this new age platform.

Q. As a CMO, what are the main challenges you face, especially in being able to optimally tap into the digital medium? 

Well, with us being a digital platform, the challenge is exactly the opposite. Since more than half of my marketing investment goes into digital, I don't think digital is too much of a challenge for us. 

The biggest challenge is to get the offline users to come online. It is also a challenge to push a lot of internal and intermediary stakeholders to actually agree to what should be the right optimal marketing mix. The first natural instinct is to only depend on digital. 

One of the things that one needs to understand is that the business has a very strong supply-demand cycle, and one of the biggest challenges that happen is that on the supply side you have the audience who don't have such strong affinity towards digital as a medium. Online listing or an online marketplace is not the first thing they consider when they have to sell off their house. So that becomes a huge challenge for us on a daily basis. 

Q. Is social media having any significant impact on how you market your products or services? What is your viewpoint on the growing consumption of social media and its place in the digital mix?

First of all, social is yet another online platform which works because of the engagement factor of the consumer. Social is not just about Facebook, even though it matters. Our recent revelation has been LinkedIn, which has worked fantastically well for us in terms of completing the entire top of the funnel to the conversion bit of it, including getting leads, getting inquires, to actually top of the funnel as well as when they convert into a consumer. In that sense, LinkedIn has been a fantastic and a fascinating social platform to work on. Facebook is a known story and I am not going to repeat what everyone else has to say.

Apart from that Instagram has been another brilliant revelation for us. We use Instagram to not just basically engage but also a lot of idea crowdsourcing in terms of what should be the visual cues. Our brand is incidentally a very strong visually-led brand. Visuals play a key role and this is where Instagram has worked wonderfully well for us. At present, we are only flirting around with PinInterest as a medium and I strongly believe it’s a great engagement tool as well, especially with consumers with high intellectual capabilities. We talk to them, engage with them and recruit more and more consumers from them.  

Q. What kind of analytics or social media tools do you use?

We have created our own in-house analytics tool. We have created an entire in-house matrix, which is being shared between the marketing analytics, the business analytics, and the product analytics. So everyone shares a different aspect of this module and it’s a product developed in-house. 

We played with some others as well, but on the whole we are pretty happy with the internal information that we generate using our own software. We have found out that the information we generate is far better adapted to our business, our environment and our questions. So all verticals then speak the same language. 

Q.  You recently unveiled your new brand identity. What was the thought process behind this?

We are founded by a bunch of IITians, a dozen of them actually, who were searching for a house in the Powai area and they basically realised that the entire real estate online and offline was quite a pain. So they decided to make a product which is actually going to facilitate this further. And that is how the entire journey started off with them thinking that let’s just have a product online that will get rid of all the pain that they faced. So they developed this portal Housing.com, 100% verified, all photographs taken etc. That is how the journey began.

When they were talking to the other people in this category, to the consumers, to the fraternity etc there was a huge amount of pessimism that was involved with this category. And if you were to talk to the consumers about their homes, then they will talk about such nice things, which bring in beautiful images in your mind. But the moment you talk about the journey to get into making a beautiful home, it’s a complete dichotomy. While the end result is suppose to be beautiful, but the journey not so much and that is where we decided that the reason for this brand to exist should be to make this journey as beautiful as the end result. So that is how we positioned our brand.

We wanted to fill the pessimistic consumers’ life with a bit of optimism and that is where our vision also comes from. We say that innovation and optimism in anything to do with housing is something that our vision is all about, so that is where the brand got established and defined. It is optimism that we promise to the consumer and that is the manifestation where ‘Look Up’ came into the picture. ‘Look Up’ is basically a verbal pun i.e. when you look up for a house and of course it is a statement of optimism. So when we worked on the logo, we wanted it to have a nice visual pun in it, so it is an upward facing arrow which manifests Look Up and the entire scroll thing. And that is how the journey began. In all our communication we have made it clear that we never look at the glass half empty, we highlight the good things in life.

Q. Housing.com launched the first phase of its mega marketing campaign in the beginning of the year. What was the ROI on it?

ROI measurement is of course cost per impression, cost per contact etc., which is the standard ROI measurement. But we also consider other things. We said that fine here is this category, where there is going to be at any given point of time delta amount of people, actively or passively looking for a house, so we have to consider that. This is not a category that is going to be used every day. So what we need to do, in terms of the category we need to reach is, we need to get a quick jump in awareness, but we at least need to convert into a 50% unaided. So whatever your awareness score is at least 50% needs to be unaided, which is a very tough task.

We look at it as a very high OTS (Opportunity To See) based campaign. There are two factors to communication marketing – reach (absolute number of people that you reach) and how many times a person sees it. Typically if you were to look at a campaign people say that a 3+ reach or a 5+ reach is average, i.e. on an average, a consumer must have seen the communication 3 times or 5 times. And to convert to a high unaided we said that we should be at 10+ reach that is where we basically picked up one offline medium and one online medium and decided to dominate it. We wanted to ensure a reach with a very high OTS so that whosoever coverts into awareness, at least 50% should convert into unaided awareness. 

Q. How much traffic do you see on your site on key campaign days? And what can we expect from the soon-to-be-launched second phase of this campaign?

After our first launch we have seen traffic surges from 5X to 15X on campaign days. Overall the figure has come to around 10 million plus in traffic, which is about an 8X-9X increase. So we have become an undisputed number 1 in this category if you were to look at the traffic etc. Even in the app downloads with one million plus downloads we are leagues ahead of the other guys in the category. So in that way we have taken the leadership position and the next step would be to look at how we get into the consumers life in a relevant manner. We are working on our second phase and once I get the go ahead then we will go into production.  

Q. As a CMO, what advice would you like to share with your peers in the industry? 

One of the things I have realised is that if you have to work in a startup and you have to work with millennials on a daily basis then you have to unlearn a lot of do’s and don’ts’ and relearn a lot of stuff all over again because the generation is different, their point of view is different and rightly so.  

Abhik Chakraborti is the Chief Marketing Officer at BedBathMore, an online home furnishing marketplace operated by Encompass Design India Pvt Ltd. His forte lies in brand strategy, communication, new business & products, media and activation.

He carries more than 10+ years of experience in media & entertainment marketing including movies & music marketing, celebrities, brand strategy, media management and large format events. From conceptualizing and executing the country’s first digital concert to launching India’s first Radio on TV service, he’s been at the helm of ideation and product innovations.

In his previous roles he’s worked in such organizations as Percept Picture Company, Percept Talent Management, Fame Cinemas, Promo Sapiens Worldwide and most recently as the Head of Marketing for India’s premiere entertainment destination Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt. Ltd.

In Hungama he was responsible for spearheading marketing for all consumer facing brands in the Hungama bouquet across the verticals of music, movies, independent artists, gaming and strategic partnerships with brands such as Intel, Tata Sky, The Creative Artist Agency among others.

In his current portfolio as CMO for India’s premiere home community platform Bedbathmore.com, his focus is to establish and manage brand strategy and develop and implement marketing activities to ensure brand positioning and awareness across all aspects of the marketing mix.

In this exclusive interview with Ratnika Swami for India Digital Review, Abhik talks about the boom in m-commerce, the recent acquisitions of the firm and the challenging role of the CMO. Excerpts:  

Q. You come from a very diverse background, having held several key positions in the branding, marketing and communication roles in the media and entertainment industry, including Percept Picture Company, Percept Talent Management, Fame Cinemas, Promo Sapiens Worldwide and Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. How has your experience helped in shaping your career at BedBathMore.com?

Working across various companies, I’ve looked at various diverse facets consumer behaviour from the point of view of different media companies. A common thread across the various companies I have worked with is, creating an engaging and immersive consumer experiences. At the end of the day, the brand has to become a member of the consumer’s circle to be relevant. Although the nature of the products and services has changed, the fundamentals of communication remain constant. At BedBathMore, I’m fortunate to work with like-minded professionals with a passion to take the brand to newer heights.

Q. What role does digital – Internet as well as mobile - play in your marketing efforts in India?

In the current age Mobile has become a necessity more than a privilege. This gives marketers an advantage to reach the consumer at any given time. The success ratio is measured on how interestingly you play out the call to action. For us given that we are a digital destination, advertising on Digital is a given. With the current generation being so used to accessing services ranging from booking movie tickets and cabs to using it to consume entertainment, being present in that eco-system is a must for any player. The boom in m-commerce is a testament to the popularity of the medium and how well the consumers have embraced it. Going forward BedBathMore has a very interesting mobile and App strategy that will to an extent change the manner in which social commerce is perceived.

Q. What are some of the key marketing initiatives that you are most excited about?

We very recently launched our brand campaign with our renewed proposition. We believe Home Décor is a daily obsession and there is a constant need to inspire consumers on the possibility of what can be done with one’s home. The creative thought on which the campaign was built “You change. So should your home” was represented in an interesting manner with the use of the ambigram. It represented the change everyone goes through as they experience different stages of life. The visuals were representative of the sentiment and were executed using print as a medium. The innovative messaging was well received by the consumer and the trade community. In the coming days, BedBathMore will carry out many more initiatives to engage with its consumers using interesting campaigns and activations.

Q. With PE investors and Venture Capital firms investing millions, the online furniture retail space in India has seen tremendous growth. The home and furniture market in India, which is pegged to be about $25-35 billion, is expected to touch $70 billion by 2020, with e-commerce playing a larger role. What do you think about this development and how would this affect your business? 

Today India is one of the key global markets witnessing a rampage in terms of ideas and ventures that are being backed by venture capitalists. The current eco-system for e-commerce companies is very encouraging since, the industry finds backers for horizontal market places as well as a niche and local online ventures. Given that we are a community first company, it will be exciting to see how the markets react to this unique model. The reaction received thus far has been encouraging and we are hopeful that our product innovations will help us create a benchmark that will be looked up to.

Q. You recently unveiled a new brand identity. Could you elaborate on the thought process behind it?  

The new brand identity was to reflect our renewed proposition of social and discovery commerce and more importantly to provide a platform that enables collaboration between like-minded homeowners and experts alike. From being a commerce first entity some months back, we are today the only destination that has commerce linked to interesting content and the experience is seamless. Our logo has gone through a transition and so has the experience on the website. While we keep growing our product catalogue and expand our private labels, content will continue to play a pivotal role in the experience that we hope to give to our consumers.

Q. In the recent past, you have acquired Homado.com, a marketplace for interior designers, and acqui-hired art based startup Crude Area. Please elaborate on these acquisitions. And what are your plans for the future?

Like I mentioned, BedBathMore’s focus on content, community and commerce will be the key pillars of the brand’s strategy going forward. The acquisition of Homado and Crude Area were in sync with our strategy. While the community of architects and interior designers from Homado have been integrated in the Experts section on the site, Crude Area as a brand will become a part of our private labels, offering wall art and canvas prints. We will look at associating with many such entities in the near future.

Q. From a branding perspective, how important is social media? What social media strategies have worked for you?

Today social media allows you to start conversations and ensure those conversations are sustained. More importantly it allows one to be a part of a community. Given that our model has changed to social and discovery commerce, our strategies on social media has become more important now than it was before. We use various platforms on social to drive conversations in to using blog, contests and informative & product centric posts. Depending on the end objective i.e. reach, traffic, consumer acquisition, time spent or engagement we measure how successful our campaigns on social media have been.

Q. What percentage of your total marketing spend is on digital?

I’d say about 60-70% of our spends are dedicated towards digital.

Q. As a CMO, what are the main challenges you face on a daily basis?

Today, an average consumer is exposed to massive amounts of information throughout the day, which could be in the form of ads, TV commercials or just plain data. The challenge in such a case is stepping out from the ‘clutter’ and creating a unique identity for the brand. Every day is a new learning and insights that we receive from users go a long way to tweak and modify our thought process whenever required. However it is good to look at these challenges as opportunities and take them head on giving it your own unique twist. 

Kalpit Jain is the Chief Operating Officer of netCore, which provides enterprise communication & digital marketing solutions for businesses. After finishing his B.E. in Production from Mumbai University, Kalpit chose the then burgeoning IT field and joined netCORE Solutions as Software Programmer.

Kalpit is a key contributor in shaping pre-sales, client servicing, technology, operations and product development functions, eventually leading business development during mid-2003. In 2003-04, Kalpit became the sales/ business head & for the next six years, he led re-inventions in product development & operations. He was also instrumental in the expansion of Mumbai-based netCORE to five other offices in India.

Since 2011, Kalpit has been handling technology & operations of all netCORE’s divisions as COO. Recently, he has redefined his designation as the chief customer officer as now Kalpit’s focus will be 100% on Customers. Kalpit’s goals is to ensure customer delight – with product, marketing, support and new ideas, thereby making client’s interaction with netCORE a wonderful experience.

Kalpit envisions building a completely integrated campaign management platform for E-mail, SMS and Voice. He plans to take EMM international and aims at innovations in digital communication to revolutionize the enterprises and consumers interaction. 

In this exclusive interview with Ratnika Swami for India Digital Review, Kalpit talks about enterprise communication & digital marketing space in India, changing trends in the industry and netCORE’s plans for the future. Excerpts:  

Q. How do you see the enterprise communication & digital marketing space in India evolving? And what are netCORE’s plans for the future?

The enterprise communication and digital marketing space in India is growing at a phenomenal pace due to the rapid adoption of smartphones and the increasing penetration of mobile internet. Digital marketing is no longer just about advertising on the web or SMS marketing. Smartphones are multi-channel devices offering SMS, Voice, email and push notifications on apps. Roughly 40-50% emails are now being viewed on mobile devices.

netCORE, being a leader in multi-channel communications, sees the market moving towards cross-channel automation. Marketers will slowly evolve from a spray-and-pray approach of push marketing to personalised and relevant content marketing. This will increase the adoption of marketing automation tools that offer a unified view of customers and cross-channel automated workflows.

Q. How can brands improve their customer conversion rates? And how does netCORE help in this?

A common agenda on every CMO’s list today will be how they can do better on conversions over and above what they already do. I see marketers pay a lot of attention to leads that are hot and try to convert them as soon as possible. But about 90% of the leads that don’t convert are usually overlooked. With little thought put to that, the focus is usually on new lead acquisitions every month.

netCORE is an expert in communication channels including email, mobile and voice. Its experienced consultancy team helps brands convert those 90% leads that are left untouched. There are lot of ways one can nurture leads and improve conversion ratios. Few important ones are:

1. Make your lead sales ready: Once a lead is captured, all attention is focused on closure. A lot of conversations with other potential leads are ignored. Not every prospect is sales-ready when they register themselves as a lead, thus understanding them and keeping them engaged till they are sales-ready is very important. netCORE’s marketing automation platform, Smartech is meant to help convert leads that were not sales-ready earlier.

 2. Build trust: Not every brand will be like an Amazon or LIC that your leads will trust you. Most conversion rates today are impacted by trust issues amongst prospects. Brands should in their communications maintain the best standards by following all the best practices. Our consultancy team provides these practices of email and mobile marketing to brands while creating campaigns that builds trust and also ensure inbox delivery, thereby building value for prospects.

3. Make the extra effort: Brands can go the extra mile to understand what works, using persuasion in the form of value and not just by giving discounts, by addressing the objections of prospects, removing distractions from their communication etc.

Q. Since netCORE started offering e-mail marketing services a few years back, a lot has changed - from Internet penetration, user consumption behavior, campaign techniques to advent of social media marketing. Could you elaborate on the changes you have observed in the industry?

netCORE started offering its services in 1998 from mail infra and then ventured into email services, a few years later, and since then we have seen the industry evolving round the clock. In the year 2001, India had 7 million internet users, this number has grown 25 times and at compound rate of 30 year-on-year according to a report launched by BCG and IAMAI in 2015. By 2018 we are expecting 580 million people to use the internet.

There has been a huge growth momentum of data usage in India on wireless networks driven by 3G traffic. The data usage grew by 74 per cent and 3G usage was up by 114 per cent at the end of 2014, compared to 2013, according to Nokia’s Vice President. With 140 million smartphone users, we see that a lot is changing in the Industry.

Some of the top notable changes in the industry that we have witnessed in last few years are:

1. Batch & blast to Single Opt-ins – From sending an email to anyone and everyone, now brands have realised that in order to get better ROI, they need to try reaching out to users with their permission. We see lot of start-ups respecting permission-based email marketing as the new mantra of building brands over how it used to be few years ago. We have observed that the Indian marketers are respecting single opt-in permissions and this can further evolve into a double opt-in approach.

2. Spamming to Inbox Delivery – Batch & blast leads to a mentality of procuring data and sending emails to everyone. This was even done by installing an in-house server and sending emails, day and night resulting in heavy spamming. Over the years this has changed and now the approach is more sincere as email marketers avoid acts of spamming and make use of best practices. They are all the more cautious about inbox delivery and have started sending relevant emails to a segmented lot of customers.

3. Everyone to Personalization – The evolution has been from spamming to reaching out to a segmented lot. What has also changed is that emails are now being sent with personalized content based on the behavioural data pheromones of every single user. A user in Delhi with a higher income will receive something different from their counterparts in Mumbai with an average income.

4. Desktop to Mobile – With more smartphones, choices are now available in the market at affordable prices. 25% of the mobile users now use smartphones. This is making mobile the primary device and thus checking emails on desktop is no longer a popular trend. Brands are now becoming mobile-centric and thus responsive emails and mobile-friendly communication is gaining value. We see that out of every 100 emails viewed, 50% of them are viewed on smartphones.

5. Single image emails to live content in emails – Creating an image which is like a print advertisement and sending them via emails was the trend, a few years ago. Such emails were not only heavy, but they also used to defy the laws of inboxing and thus most of these mails were sent to the spam folders of the users. Now brands want to give their users an absolutely personalized, engaging experience. Live content like the countdown timer, web crop from websites, content based on weather and time have become the key highlights in 2015.

Q. With the advent of social media, one would say that e-mail, as a medium, has somewhat taken a back seat. Do you agree? If not, briefly mention the reasons why.  

One of the most popular debates and the top question in digital marketing circles and forums currently is with regards to what is better, social media or emails? It is a billion dollar question and the answer is neither as well as both. In the current era of modern marketing, both the channels play an important role and they in fact become stronger if used hand-in-hand. I see brands launching a Facebook strategy and promoting to users via emails, host contests and Tweetinars are announced via emails.

Emails allow smart integration and tracking capabilities with social media and that’s why it works more as allies than as foes. The content that can be seen on emails can also be shared on social media. Brands are now also promoting registration widgets on their social media pages to ensure that they are able to reach out to their followers over email as well.

Social is a good medium to engage with users but emails become handy to drive better conversions. Email as a channel still gives Rs. 40+ for every Rupee spent. If we compare users online and applications, email stands tall in terms of its utility. I see great synergies in both the mediums and I think in the future, we will see smart integrations and ways to work hand in hand with marketing.

Q. Today, an increasing number of consumers are using their smartphones to access their e-mails. How has that affected the way you market campaigns on e-mail?

With 40-50% emails being opened on smartphones today, emails are no more made for just one device. Email marketers are cautious when creating emails as the performance of the campaigns largely depend on how the email will appear on different devices. In year 2013 we observed 70% of emails being opened on the mobile were deleted due to the fact that emails were not responsive or because of bad display quality on mobile device.

Several marketers have also adopted text-based emails, as they are more mobile-friendly. The top 5 things to keep in mind when designing emails for smartphones are:

1.    Avoid single images or large sized files

2.    Restrict the scrolling to a bare minimum

3.    Keep the layout simple

4.    Call to action button should be neat and clear

5.    Use flexible images, layout and

6.    Media queries must be responsive

Q. What would you say are the most important factors to consider when deciding on an email marketing strategy?

Email with its vast utility is becoming an important part of the overall marketing strategy for every online business. Email channels have been in use for a decade in India, however it has been the talk of the town since the beginning of the e-commerce boom.

The most important factors while deciding an email marketing strategy are:

1. Right Audience – The first step in making your email plan is identifying the right audience. Do you want to batch & blast it to all your customers? Do you want to segment it to active users? Choosing the right audience helps you ensure that the email reaches specific users for whom it is meant for.

2. Personalize and Relevant Content – We receive a lot emails that have “Dear Name” mentioned. Nowadays even that is not considered as personalization. When creating an email strategy, we need to make sure that ‘one size for all’ approach is not adopted. Based on what your users have been responding to and interested in, create personalized and relevant content. Consider behavioural data when making the next content for users.

3. Engagement – Engagement is one of the factors that help in better inboxing and being in the good-books of MSPs i.e. Gmail, Yahoo etc. Engagement would mean how many users open your emails, visit the enclosed links or even reply to them. We have seen campaigns where the users are asked to comment or are asked to choose a right answer to induce a reply, these campaigns drive a lot of replies and hence returns the highest rate of engagement over emails and hence ends up building a great sender reputation.

4. Metrics to measure success – Most email marketers refer to the opened emails as metrics to measure success of campaigns. There are various metrics to choose from including open rate, click-through rate, website visits, conversion rate and click to open ratio. With the objective of the campaign appropriate measures of success is selected from the above mentioned KPIs.

Q. Currently, how big is the total market for email marketing in India? And how do you see it grow in the future?

According to internetlivestats.com, internet penetration in India is at 30 crores plus and every user receives at least 10 emails (promo + trans) in a day. There are 300 crore emails that float in a day and around 9000 crore in a month in India.

Now with digital droplets of a user (email + mobile + social) becoming key to reaching the user, brands in India have taken email as a channel very seriously. Right from going paperless to having a tech savvy Prime Minister, we are now witnessing everything contributing to interactions between the people online and those on the go.

Sectors like as BFSI, e-commerce, hospitality, education and retail have become cautious about emails. They now want to send out offers and begin conversations via emails. We are currently witnessing a lot of brands that only have mobile numbers of their customers but not their email ids. This differs from vertical to vertical but on an average brands do not have access to more than 50 % of the customers’ email ids. In the next two years, brands will try to bridge this gap and ensure that they have access to more than 80% of their customers’ email ids.

E-commerce boost, go green initiatives, financial regulations and guidelines have resulted in the increasing use of email marketing in India. netCORE has in itself seen the rise of 10 billion emails in a year, with an average of 2.5 billion mails per month in the last financial year to an average of 3.5 billion emails a month currently. India with a staggering growth market is estimated to witness at least 10 billion emails a month.

Q. Last year, netCORE launched an Internet of Things platform called Cloud4One. Could you elaborate on this?

Cloud4One was launched last year to provide an integrated device & server ITO platform for enterprises.

The focus is on helping organisations to use sensors to acquire data using our device and then measuring , monitoring & analysing the data coming from various ambient sources (temperature, humidity, energy, smoke or machine data), which will help the organization leverage data and make it more efficient.

 

 

The “Digital India Week” saw top industry houses pledging investments worth Rs 4.5 lakh crore in various technology ventures that can potentially add 1.8 million jobs.

Eminent industry people on Digital India:

Reliance Group chairperson Anil Ambani said the Indian story, which had been driven by 3-Ds -- democracy, demographics and demand, now had a fourth 'D' (decisiveness.
     
"With Narendrabhai assuming charge as Prime Minister, we inaugurated a new era in our nation's history: of visionary and decisive leadership," he said. Digital India would add another unique dimension to that story, he added.
     
Modi is India's greatest and among the world's most popular leaders in the digital space with over 80 lakh followers on Twitter and over 3 times that number – or 2.5 crore followers -- on Facebook, he added. "In other words, Digital India carries the signature of a leader whose name is synonymous with the transformational power of connectivity and communication," he said.
     
Anil-led Reliance Group committed to invest about Rs 10,000 crore over the next few years to expand its presence across digital, cloud computing and telecom space.
     
Mukesh Ambani, whose Reliance Jio is set to launch telephony and broadband services by December, said India is fortunate to have a Prime Minister "who not only paints a comprehensive and compelling vision but has the personal leadership and drive to convert his vision to reality."
 
"It is my conviction, Prime Minister, under your leadership, the Digital India initiative will create a partnership among all sections of society... a partnership that will leverage the power of 1.2 billion Indians. A partnership built on the ability and industry of all our citizens," he added.
     
Reliance Industries will make an investment of over Rs 250,000 crore in the digital space, including rollout of wireless broadband infrastructure and manufacturing of mobile handsets.
     
Bharti Airtel's Sunil Bharti Mittal said Modi understands the power of technology.
     
"Who better to lead this initiative than our own very popular and beloved Prime Minister, who is a digital native, perhaps a handful of leaders around the globe who understand and is comfortable with the technology. Who is an avid user of Facebook and Twitter and a person who has set a trend of selfies," Mittal added.
 
Aditya Birla group chairperson Kumar Mangalam Birla, who has pledged to invest $7 billion over the next five years in network roll out, broadband and wi-fi deployment, commended Modi's futuristic thinking.
     
"Digital India is a truly exciting possibility. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has articulated the whole vision, which reflects his clairvoyance and his futuristic thinking," he added.
     
Billionaire mining baron Anil Agarwal said the industry will actively participate in the drive as it has the potential to drive India ahead as a knowledge and economic power.
     
"Whenever the government has trusted the industry, it has performed whether it is telecom, pharma, power etc. I can assure you (Prime Minister) in the coming days if you will trust us we will succeed," he said while speaking at the programme.
     
Tata Group chairperson Cyrus Mistry said: "I would like to congratulate the Prime Minister on digitally empowering the country."

Industry chamber FICCI termed launch of "Digital India Week" programme an important milestone to engage with renewed energy to transform India's digital infrastructure for the next generation users and the unconnected.
     
"As the entire world is looking at India, it makes practical sense to launch such a grand programme which has the potential to catalyse the investment process in this high technology sector and simultaneously generate employment," Ficci president Jyotsna Suri said.

NIIT CEO Rahul Patwardhan said digital infrastructure being setup under Digital India will support Skill India by enabling mass scaling of skill development, using technology as a mass delivery mechanism.
 
NetApp India and Saarc president Anil Valluri said, "Digital India's success would also be a function of the underlying technology infrastructure with data becoming the nucleus of this thrust."

Search Engine giant Google said that it is focussing on key areas like bringing more Indic language content online and helping 20 million small and medium enterprises set up Internet presence by 2017.

Though India is now the second-largest Internet market in the world, there is still a great deal of work to be done, Google VP and Managing Director, South East Asia and India, Rajan Anandan told PTI. 

"That is why we are excited to be a partner to the Prime Minister's vision for Digital India, with its focus on empowerment, development, growth and governance," he added. 

Google is also working with MyGov.in, Department of IT, Ministry of Culture and many state governments for initiatives aimed at promoting adoption of Internet amongst women, promoting digital literacy and Internet safety.

"Our big focus is on 4 key projects -- Bringing more Indic language content online, help get 20 million SMBs online by 2017, make high-quality, affordable smartphones available to as many people as possible and bringing India's rich cultural heritage online," Anandan said in a report. 

Talking about the challenges the government would face for ensuring success of Digital India, Anandan was quoted in a report as saying, "We need to set aggressive timelines for the ambitious projects - becoming a true broadband nation should be a key priority."

"We also need to arrive at clearly defined processes and guidelines that are aligned with global trends and international standards for entrepreneurs to truly achieve India's full potential," Anandan added. 

Startups on Digital India:

Vineet Jain, Co-Founder and CEO, LoanStreet.in, said that the revolution is on the way. “WiFying the Country is going to have big impact on startups based on “Efficient Delivery of Services.” Businesses having strong fundamentals will benefit as delivery alone will not be sufficient any more. The largest beneficiaries being financial services, healthcare and education sectors.”

Speaking on e-learning, Jain said, “e-learning, the need of the hour will create multiple jobs on content creation as well as Dissemination Side. Converting all books to e-books alone will create a ‘Blue Whale’ of jobs.”

He expects banking to shift from huge branch network dominated players to smart Internet/mobile platform driven banking networks. And this is going to economize an entirely untapped population for consumption of services and products.

When the entire nation is equipped with digital connectivity, many more people can participate in India’s growth story. Innovation and entrepreneurship will get a tremendous boost.

“Once the digital gap in smaller cities is bridged, there's a huge possibility they might become the preferred locations for startups due to lower operational costs. Additionally, local talent will not have to migrate to larger towns for employment opportunities.” said Diwakar Chittora, Co-Founder and CEO, Intellipaat.

Chittora said, “With universal digital access, prohibitive costs of learning such as shifting to a city with brick and mortar educational institution will disappear for a large chunk of the population. Many more people will be able participate in e-learning and equip themselves with job skills. This exponential growth in demand for e-learning solutions will fuel job creation in the industry. With such strong digital workforce and infrastructure, I won’t be surprised if India becomes the world’s e-learning hub.”

“Executed well, Digital India Campaign can become a launchpad for India’s rapid growth and development and propel it towards a digital revolution.” he added.

Sanjoe Jose, Co-Founder and CEO, Talview, said, “Digital India Campaign can have the biggest impact among all the initiatives of PM Modi if executed well.”

“A digitally connected India can overcome urban-rural, rich-poor and gender divides and bring the disadvantaged sections of the country to the forefront and create a level playing field. Rural youth can find better jobs irrespective of where they are based, student from financially weaker section can have better quality education, women who cannot travel can take up remote jobs and everyone will have access to better healthcare. The per capita productivity for the nation can increase multifold and propel India to a much better future.” he said.

Saurabh Kochhar, Co-Founder and CEO (foodpanda India) and CBO (Global), said, "Digital India is a much needed initiative for the booming e-commerce space in India. India’s talent combined with required infrastructure will accelerate our growth pace like never before. Further, Private sector shall be able to help the government with required business models and strategies and make inroads for itself to explore new opportunities and demographics.”

Commenting on the challenges the government will have to deal with, Kochhar said, “The Digital India dream will have its own set of challenges to deal with. It will be difficult to access the Internet since fibre network is not available in many remote villages. This project needs a lot of coordination and optimum utilization of infrastructure to execute the big challenge."

 “Digital India subsumes a mix of services and plans that are just right for reinvigorating the state of governance in the country. The programme will make it easy for the citizens to avail the government services online, in an easy way. With this technology advancement, India will transform into a digitally empowered knowledge economy,” said Deepak Ravindran (tech entrepreneur), Founder & CEO, Lookup, a hyperlocal mobile messaging app to disrupt local e-commerce in India.

Talking about the synergy between the private and public sector, he said that the engagement of the private sector in national development programs has the potential to serve development ends across any and all sectors. “It will support the government by providing suitable infrastructure and technology-led facilities to consumers. Besides this, there will be a good inflow of innovative ideas and modern technologies from the private sector that will give a boost to the Digital India Programme.”

Brijesh Agrawal, Founder & CEO, Tolexo.com, a b2b online marketplace for business goods | Co-Founder, IndiaMART, said, “Digital India is an initiative that holds the potential of transforming India into a developed nation in the next two decades. Not to forget that this will give a much needed boost to the booming e-commerce eco-system in India.”

With the government focusing on broadband and smartphone penetration across the country, it’s a great opportunity for the e-commerce players to accelerate their growth by tapping a new set of target audience.

“As a player in online B2B e-commerce space, we are already doing more than two-thirds of our orders from tier 2,3 &4 cities and this initiative will further help us reach out to businesses in areas that offer huge potential but remain untapped due to poor connectivity and infrastructure issues. We look forward to metamorphosis of our nation into a digitally-empowered economy” he added.

Prakash Sangam, CEO, RedBus, said, “We at redBus would like to commend and wholeheartedly welcome PM Narendra Modi's Digital India initiative. We believe that such initiatives in the new digital era will empower India and its citizens, open up new opportunities and accelerate economic growth"

Pratik Jain, Co - Founder, MyOperator, said, “The vision of a digital India is grand. If successful, it could transform citizen access to multimedia information, content and services. It also gives the government access to a great deal of information. However, laying cables doesn't ensure they will be used.​”

He said that the startup ecosystem is waiting for such initiatives. Absence of startup friendly policies has made many successful startups shift their bases outside India. This initiative can be the start of a big change.

"Digital India is a great step and it will add both efficiency and transparency  in the system. We as a digital payments company will be even more benefitted as this will increase the number of people accessing Internet in India.  We salute the initiative" said, Nitin Gupta, CEO and Founder, PayU India.

Rohit Raghav, Co-Founder, Phone Warrior, said, “Digitalization must be accompanied by democratization. Indians need, and deserve, a visionary approach to public services like Digital India initiative. However, one of the fundamental lacunae in British-era bureaucracy systems in our country is lack of feedback systems for government policies and execution. Service that will go completely digital will become faceless to a large extent and run the risk of big gaps in delivery quality. Ubiquitous mobile phones could be ideal partner for government and people in facilitating very fast, simple, and accurate real-time feedback. True democratization means true empowerment and it can begin now.”

On July 1^st 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Digital India programme to reform governance through technology. The Digital India vision is centred on three key areas – Digital Infrastructure as a Utility to Every Citizen, Governance & Services on Demand and Digital Empowerment of Citizens. It also aims at inclusive growth in areas of electronic services, products, manufacturing and job opportunities etc.

Digital India is an ambitious programme of the Government of India to transform India into digital empowered society and knowledge economy, projected at Rs. 1,13,000 crores.

The programme has been envisaged by Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) and will impact Ministry of Communications & IT, Ministry of Rural Development, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Health and others. It will also benefit all states and union territories.

Digital infrastructure will focus on providing high speed secure Internet. Governance and services on demand will stress on integrating services across departments and jurisdictions and making services available in real time for both online and mobile platform.

Digital empowerment of citizens will pay emphasis on universal digital literacy and availability of digital resources/services in Indian languages. The programme will be implemented in phases from 2014 till 2018.

During the Digital India Week(1^st – 7^th July, 2015) a slew of projects and policies were announced.

Here is the list of important announcements:

Digital Locker System – It aims to minimize the usage of physical documents and enable sharing of e-documents across agencies. The sharing of the e-documents will be done through registered repositories thereby ensuring the authenticity of the documents online.

MyGov.in – It has been implemented as a platform for citizen engagement in governance, through a “Discuss”, “Do” and “Disseminate” approach. It also has a mobile App, which would bring these features to users on a mobile phone.

Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) Mobile app – It would be used by people and Government organisations for achieving the goals of Swachh Bharat Mission.

eSign framework – It would allow citizens to digitally sign a document online using Aadhaar authentication.

Online Registration System (ORS) – It has been introduced under the eHospital application. This application provides important services such as online registration, payment of fees and appointment, online diagnostic reports, enquiring availability of blood online etc.

National Scholarships Portal – It will be a one stop solution for end to end scholarship process right from submission of student application, verification, sanction and disbursal to end beneficiary for all the scholarships provided by the Government of India.

Digital India Platform - DeitY has undertaken an initiative namely Digitize India Platform (DIP) for large scale digitization of records in the country that would facilitate efficient delivery of services to the citizens.

Bharat Net – It is a high speed digital highway to connect all 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats of country. This would be the world’s largest rural broadband connectivity project using optical fibre.

Next Generation Network (NGN) - BSNL has introduced Next Generation Network (NGN), to replace 30 year old exchanges, which is an IP based technology to manage all types of services like voice, data, multimedia/ video and other types of packet switched communication services.

Wi-Fi hotspots - BSNL has undertaken large scale deployment of Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the country. The user can latch on the BSNL Wi-Fi network through their mobile devices.

Policy initiatives have also been undertaken by DeitY in the e- Governance domain like e-Kranti Framework, Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India, Framework for Adoption of Open Source Software in e-Governance Systems, Policy on Open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for Government of India, E-mail Policy of Government of India, Policy on Use of IT Resources of Government of India, Policy on Collaborative Application Development by Opening the Source Code of Government Applications, Application Development & Re-Engineering Guidelines for Cloud Ready Applications

BPO Policy has been approved to create BPO centres in different North Eastern states and also in smaller towns of other states.

Electronics Development Fund (EDF) Policy aims to promote Innovation, R&D, Product Development and to create a resource pool of IP within the country to create a self-sustaining eco-system of Venture Funds.

National Centre for Flexible Electronics (NCFlexE) is an initiative of Government of India to promote research and innovation in the emerging area of Flexible Electronics.

Centre of Excellence on Internet on Things (IoT) is a joint initiative of Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), ERNET and NASSCOM.

Link to Part 2: Overview of Digital India (1st - 7th July) - Part 2

Yuko Saito is the Managing Director for Southeast Asia at Criteo. Criteo is a global technology company that delivers performance-based online advertising solutions using real-time consumer data.

Based in the Singapore office, she has taken charge of business expansion in nine countries and regions, including Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

In September 2012, as Managing Director for Corporate Business Development and Operations APAC at the Criteo Tokyo office, Saito played a key role in negotiating a strategic alliance with Yahoo! Japan, making a significant contribution to solidifying Criteo’s position in Japan.

Saito was subsequently engaged in business establishment and development in Southeast Asian markets, and oversaw the preparations for Criteo’s entry into China and Singapore. She headed a cross-functional project team comprising local legal offices along with finance, legal, human resources, IT, and corporate planning departments at the head office in France, to establish locations in China (operations commenced in January 2013) and Singapore (operations commenced in October 2013).  

Saito has a broad range of experience and a solid track record in the media and Internet industries. Since graduating university, she has accumulated a wealth of expertise and skills, mainly involving corporate planning and new business development, at organizations including Sony (1991-1997); Trans Cosmos (2000-2003); and Walt Disney, Internet Group (2003-2005), a business unit of The Walt Disney Company (Japan) Ltd. In 2005, Saito was appointed chief strategy officer and director for the game developer Q Entertainment Inc., overseeing a broad range of operations that included business strategy planning and implementation, financing, new business development, and marketing.

Saito holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

In this exclusive interview with Ratnika Swami for India Digital Review, Saito talks about how online advertising is changing in India, the role of mobile, and how Criteo enables companies to engage and convert their customers online across any screen and device, whether they are on a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. Excerpts:  

Q. Ms. Saito, you come from a very diverse and successful background, having held several key positions in the business development and operational roles in the Internet & media industry, including Sony, Disney and Q Entertainment. How has your experience helped in shaping your career at Criteo?

Unlike most of the other people at Criteo, I don’t have an advertising background, but I do have a lot of experience in Business Development. I went to Harvard Business School and since 2000 I have been working in the Internet space and that has really helped me. I basically opened up the business for Criteo in Southeast Asia, including India. And I have done this before; while working for Sony Computer Entertainment, I was opening up office for the company in Southeast Asia at the time. For me, the advertising space is a little bit new, but its been a great adventure. The growth in Southeast Asia and India has been so exciting and explosive. Its just fun being in the market, enjoying the vibe and the energy.

For me, personally, the reason why I’m very much a business development person is because I like growing stuff. I was here last year, and this year at AdTech, I saw so many mobile players, which is an indication that the focus is shifting from desktop to mobile. This is also a confirmation really that in India mobile has immense growth potential. And we want to make sure we are not missing the wave. I really enjoy helping these e-commerce companies and there is more competition in this market. So it’s just working with these companies and making sure that they perform.

Q. According to a report, with the increasing penetration of smartphones, the number of mobile Internet users in India is expected to reach 213 mn by June 2015. How do you see this effect the display business in the coming months? What role does mobile play in this?

Today, most of the online advertising is still on desktop. In India, I would say, 50% of the online traffic is coming to mobile, but the monetisation is lagging, and this is not just specific to India. So they are still making more money on Web, even when the traffic is about 50-50 and shifting towards mobile. So that is a challenge for publishers, but that will change. And I think that players like us can help change that. At present, we are educating the market that, right now, mobile conversion isn’t low, but its just that they are actually converting somewhere, so they do need to invest on mobile. We would love to help drive more revenue to publishers so that they can invest more on their mobile sites.

Every year, since 2010, people have been saying that this is the ‘Year of the mobile’, but it never came. But this year, I feel, and a lot of people are saying this, that there is a tipping point, which has forced people to say, “You really have to focus on mobile”. 

Q. Over the last few years, what changes have you seen in the online ad spends, both on PC and mobile, in India? In terms of growth, how would you peg India in respect to other Southeast Asian countries?

Well, I can tell you that online is growing faster than any other media. In the mature markets like Europe, Japan and the US, maybe 15-20% of the total marketing budget is online. In Southeast Asia, we are talking about less than 5% today and in India perhaps the numbers are even lower. But this will change.

Q. How does Criteo help to deliver a seamless message across all consumer touch points in a cross device world?

I won’t get into the technology to much, because its a bit complex and its our secret sauce. We basically use certain data to exact match the user. We link the device to the PC to determine if this is the same person, and once that is done, we apply our engine of prediction and recommendation. For example, today, the data shows that a lot of people are actually browsing on mobile and some of these people do convert online through the smartphones. But, about half the people are still going back to desktop to do the transaction. If that is the case, and we know that the user has a tendency of converting on the desktop then what the engine will do is look at the products that the same user is browsing on the mobile and find them on the network on our PC and then show the same products and recommendations while the user is browsing on the desktop. The users would be reminded that they wanted to buy the product and click on the link to make a purchase.

Q. A lot of bigwigs like Google, Flipkart, Snapdeal, among others, have shown great interest in ad tech companies. Flipkart bought Adiquity, Google is reportedly in talks to buy mobile ad tech firm InMobi, and Snapdeal is in talks to buy Komli Media. Could you elaborate on how ad tech firms are changing the rules of online advertising in India? And should companies like yourself feel threatened by this?

The evolution of the technology is so fast, and the engine that we have is pretty amazing, the algorithm is making decisions in split seconds based on all this complicated information.

Till now, the majority of the money is going to TV. However, more money is going to shift online since more users are spending time here than on TV. It won’t go away completely, but over time it will decrease. So really, it is the TV agencies that should feel threatened. TV is great for brand but its very difficult to track performance. There are certain methods to measure it, but a lot of it is subjective. Whereas online, the benefit is, that we can track to the very detail and find out whether it actually led to conversion or not. In that sense online is very effective.

I think what Flipkart and Snapdeal are doing is that they have such a huge base of users that they can stand on its own as a media. And what media companies do is they monetise their advertising and I think that’s what these companies are trying to do. They are buying technology companies to find better ways to monetise their user base, not just through sales, but through advertising and other means. They are possibly trying to target their users in a more granular way. Which I think is a good thing. It helps evolve the industry.

I personally don’t think it is threatening to us. They may develop their own re-targeting solution, but its a very complex technology. At Criteo, we are not a one-stop solution and the reason for that is that we are really focused on re-targeting, bringing conversion and making conversion. And because its a very competitive space and there is always a limitation of engineering resource, we really want to stay focus on what we do and be the best at it. Of course, other people will develop re-targeting solutions, but we just need to innovate, stay focused and make sure that we are the best. So even if these e-commerce and technology companies are acquiring ad tech companies, which will greatly benefit them, in the end, they will have to choose the best solution and our mission is to ensure that that is us. It is an competitive environment and we all need to stay on top of our game.

Q. What are the present challenges that you are facing?

Well I’m trying to launch a team in India. At present, we are based in Singapore, and covering our India based clients from Singapore, and given how big the market is, I don’t think that is the optimal way to go about it. This is an important market for us and we are making an investment to hire people on the ground here so that we can service better. And the biggest challenge is, ‘Can I wrap up the right team fast enough?’, because there is so much growth. We have a very ambitious target to grow big this year. 

Chaitanya Aggarwal is the Founder & CEO at Juvalia & You, one of the leading online fashion jewellery and accessories brand. 

An engineering graduate and MBA from Columbia Business School, Chaitanya Aggarwal has always been an aspiring entrepreneur. While pursuing engineering, he started his own venture in home furnishings that is now exporting to nearly 50+countries. 

An explorer and an avid traveller, he knew from the beginning that a 9-5 desk job is not his cup of tea. He aspired to create an entrepreneurial platform that blended fashion and jewellery with a unique channel to empower women. 

Thus, in 2012, he founded Juvalia & You based on an innovative online social selling business model. Spearheading the venture, today, Juvalia & You has become India’s largest online fashion jewellery and accessories brand, and is one of the top runners in direct selling MLM industry.

In this exclusive interview with Ratnika Swami for India Digital Review, Chaitanya talks about the fashion and accessories market in India, challenges faced by startups and a new line of smart jewellery. Excerpts:  

Q. How did you come up with this idea? What was the thought process behind starting Juvalia & You India?

Drawing inspiration from international runway jewellery & accessory trends, a group of us met in New York City during the Fashion Week and started discussing a business model involving this passion. Soon they created Juvalia & You - an innovative and modern social selling company that would offer today’s busy woman a career alternative, where she can achieve success and balance through a career in something she loves.

Q. Could you briefly take us through your journey so far? And what hurdles you had to overcome to reach where you are today?

It has been a great journey with various ups and downs and has taught me a lot of life lessons. I think it is important to have a long term vision in place but as a startup one should always think for short term and keep adapting. It is vital as a startup to keep innovating and be ahead of the competition. It is important to have a balance and we at Juvalia have a culture to work hard and play hard. It is important to celebrate small wins to keep the team motivated. 

Q. Who is your target audience? And how do you engage with them and keep customers coming back—whatever the channel?

Our target audience is women in the age group of 16-45 years. We have different range of products for different sub age groups across the target segment. We are present across Metros, Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. We have a different offering for various profiles of customers across these demographics. We have actively tried to cater to all the regional preferences of diverse India. We have something for everyone.  

Q. Which cities/countries are you currently operational in?

We are currently operational in 13 states of India and have been expanding at a fast pace. We are looking to be present in all the 29 states of the country by mid of 2016.

Q. Who are your main competitors in this segment? What differentiates you from them?

The jewellery market is extremely fragmented in India and doesn’t have any major player in the fashion jewellery segment. From our launch is 2012, we have quickly grown to be India’s largest and most loved brand in the fashion jewellery segment. Accessorize, Claire’s and the likes are our closest competitors who are present in select locations. Our focus on creating and focusing on setting trends in the jewellery space has set us apart from the others.   

Q. What is your current area of focus at Juvalia & You India? And what are your plans for the future?

Juvalia would continue setting trends in the jewellery market. We are looking to revolutionizing how jewellery is worn in India. We are developing a line of smart Jewellery which would have a smart module inside. This product would be a tiny chip and would be a safety device which would alert near and dear ones in emergency situations. The product would also notify the user for all incoming calls and messages. It would also monitor sleep and fitness of the individual.

Q. What is your take on the future of online fashion jewelry and accessories sector in India?

The market hasn’t been tapped yet and it follows the story of India’s Internet story. A major population of India is not online yet and the market would continue to grow exponentially in the near future. We expect that the online fashion jewellery and accessories would continue to grow at the same or higher pace as the pace of growth of India’s e-commerce market.

Q. What is your current revenue model for Juvalia & You India?

Our revenue comes from the B2C segment and is through sales of jewellery and accessories.

Q. Any advice for your peers and fellow startups?

Having the right product is the key to success for any startup. It is also extremely important to have the right foundation team and people willing to go the extra mile complements a great product.

Sumeet Singh is the National Head – Marketing & Communications at Info Edge Pvt. Ltd., which is an Indian online classifieds company founded in 1995 by Sanjeev Bikhchandani and headquartered in Noida, India. It owns internet properties Naukri.com, Shiksha.com, Jeevansathi.com, Naukrigulf.com and 99acres.com.

At Info Edge, she is responsible for all online and offline marketing, brand strategy as well as corporate communications. As the head of marketing, her role includes budgeting, strategizing, planning and managing TV, print, online, outdoor advertising and direct marketing campaigns.

Sumeet was instrumental in setting up the strategic alliances and corporate communications department which boasts of over 150 alliances in association with leading publications and websites across the country.  Public relations for all the brands also fall under her domain.

Prior to Info Edge, Sumeet was the founder executive director of The Indus Entrepreneurs, Delhi and has also served as the executive director of the Indian Venture Capital Association. During the course of her career she has been associated with CII and served on the IT advisory councils of 6 states and was involved in policy framework work.

Sumeet started her career with NIIT in Delhi in their ETG department as a management trainee and moved on as area manger sales. She did her MBA in Marketing and Sales from Pune University.

In this exclusive interview with Ratnika Swami for India Digital Review, Sumeet talks about Info Edge’s online strategies to engage with the youth, the changing online classifieds segment in India and how social media has helped in shaping the digital space in the company. Excerpts:  

Q. How does the digital medium - Internet as well as mobile, fit into Info Edge’s plans to cater to their customers?

For us, digital is very critical. It forms a very important part of our marketing mix, essentially because our businesses are all on the Internet and therefore all our consumers have to be online by nature, otherwise they can’t consume our products. So be it Internet - Web or mobile - both are extremely critical and important and form a very big part of our overall marketing mix.

Still I feel that when it comes to brand building and brand awareness in this country, TV still plays a very important role. And I feel that if you are really building a brand then it is quite difficult to build it just based on digital. You obviously need a 360 degree, and TV forms a very essential part of it too. So if you can afford everything, the great, but if you can’t afford everything, then TV and digital both become important.

It is also very important to know, who is my TG? And where are they? For example, we have a business called Shiksha, where people come and choose what are the right courses and colleges for them. It is not in the K-12 segment, but it is for people who are choosing their next course after 12^th class or vocation courses or their higher-education, and it has a very robust study abroad section as well. So if I look at that TG, then that TG is very online today. They are on YouTube, social media and the stickiness on online is far higher with them than on TV. On the other hand, if I look at 99acres.com, which is my real-estate portal, there I cannot do without TV if I am building my brand.

Q. India is witnessing a lot of progress in the digital and mobile space. And it is not just the internet population that is increasing but the number of smartphone users is also on the rise. What do you think about this development and how is this affecting your business?  

Well, most of the businesses that are on the Internet can feel the impact already. For us, we don’t really advertise on the mobile, but even with no real advertising push we are seeing a lot of organic traction. For instance, for Naukri.com today, 45-50% of our traffic is on mobile. For a site like Jeevansathi, we have about 60% traffic on mobile. And it is not like we are really going out and doing a major App download campaign or trying to get a lot of mobile traffic, this is all happening organically.

And we do know that in the next 3-5 years, because of an increase in smartphone penetration there is going to be a huge population in this country that is going to access the Internet just through the mobile, and not through desktops and laptops. Therefore building the right products for the mobile are very important. Hence, we are really focused on the mobile platforms. We constantly wonder, what can we do with these apps? Which phones require a lighter app and which don’t? What kind of experience do you deliver on the phone? Because the real-estate available on the phone is so much smaller than that on desktop/laptop screen. Also, for sites like Naukri and Jeevansathi, essentially a lot of people come to our websites to register for them, and then they start receiving jobs from recruiters, our alerts go, and filling a form on the phone is very different from filling the form on a desktop. Mobile is not the best device if you have long forms to fill. So a lot of science goes into designing that. It becomes essential to answer, how do I get a smartphone user to register on mobile, while making sure that the quality of the form and the experience delivered on mobile should be same as that of the desktop. Because end-of-day when the recruiter is viewing something, he should not see something as being inferior to another. So a lot of our work and efforts is going in this area.

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

So there is one part which is our bread ‘n’ butter, which is performance advertising, it is an acquisitions strategy. We have tried to be quite straight and upfront when it comes to performance advertising because that is very conversion driven. Luckily, we are a profitable, listed Internet company, so we are not working under investor pressures, where we need to deliver on unique visitors or we need to deliver on traffic, or mobile app downloads. We believe in quality and ROI. So what we are doing is, essentially, we understand what kind of people come in and convert on us, we are very conscious of the fact that there is no point in just getting cheap traffic. You can still get very cheap traffic in India; with bounce rates as high as 80-85%. So we are very cautious of who and what kind of people we get.

For instance, we do a lot of advertising on Facebook, which is not really for a brand, but for delivering the right message to the right consumer. We have been doing remarketing now for last four years. So we have been pioneers in a lot of things, for example, we were one of the first companies in the country to start SEM, we started way back in 2004. We started doing Facebook 6 years ago; we were their special beta partners in India, when they were not even looking at India, and we did some integrations with them then. We tried to keep ahead of the curve, by trying and getting on to things early. I wouldn’t say we have mastered everything, but definitely there is an early mover advantage.

And we are always open to working with newer players, newer platforms and newer technologies to see how we can improve and what will work for us. Because everything doesn’t works for all our products. Something that works on recruitment might miserably fail on matrimony, for some reason or the other and vice versa. And since we have so many verticals within Info Edge that there is a lot of cross-learning as well.

Q. As a CMO, what are the main challenges you face, especially in being able to optimally tap into the digital medium?

A big challenge is really finding the right partners to work with, and by this I don’t necessarily mean digital agencies only. But if I look at the biggest challenge that a lot of us have found is, whether we have the best creative agencies or not? And this challenge is very common to the fraternity. So you have one set of agencies that belong to this genre who do fabulous viral work, like they create the best videos for you. And then there is another outfit which you require, that understands the consumer mindset and is creating something else for it. Today, we are seeing a lot of bright people who are identifying this gap and getting into this by opening boutique agencies. So I think that one major challenge for digital is, do enough creative people understand this space? And I think the situation is much better now.

Till about two years ago, there were not enough tools available in the market where you could actually target a user across platforms, so you had tools available according to different platforms and therefore you looked at a unique visitor on Yahoo, a unique visitor on Naukri and a unique visitor on Rediff, but there was a lot of overlap, and therefore you could not look at everything in one window and therefore spend your money judiciously. And then instead of doing a unique cap or a frequency cap on four, most of us were doing it on 5 individual websites or networks or exchanges. Today a lot of tools that have entered the market in the last two-three years help us get that one minimum view. I think that from an advertiser’s perspective, from a marketer’s perspective, end of the day we want to catch a unique eyeball. And those kinds of tools are making life easier.

It’s not that much about just the communication sometimes people say there is a communication overload and a lot of people have to say that about digital. As marketers you want people to see relevant messaging and if they are not engaging with you or interacting with your messaging, it is better to just back off, instead of badgering them because a lot of them then call it spam. Today it has become more easier because tools have become more sophisticated, even at the digital workforce now you find a lot of people who are trained in digital, so that also took time, because this was a new field.

Even today, if you look at mobile marketing, has India mastered the art? No. We are just kind of learning it still. This whole shift from traditional offline to digital, I don’t think we are right there yet. As a company, as Info Edge, we are, but as a country, as marketers, a lot of progress needs to be made still. Since we are an Internet company, and our audiences were only online, therefore online advertising always became as important as offline. 

Q. Is social media having any significant impact on how you market your products or services? What is your viewpoint on the growing consumption of social media and its place in the digital mix?

As a marketing tool, social media is wonderful, because it’s a listening tool. It has enabled us to reach a lot of consumers directly and in a short span of time. So you see a lot of people actually taking out their angst on social media, as a marketer or a corporate communications person what is nice is that you can respond and enough people turn around and they don’t mind thanking you for your responses. So I think that one big thing it has done is that it has brought consumers much closer to the brands, because there is a faster interactive way of doing it.

Secondly, platforms like Facebook, for example, give you immense targeting opportunities. So it helps you in reaching out to audiences and giving them the right message. Today, Facebook allows me to target people based on designation, interest groups, among other criteria and therefore I can show very relevant messages to a particular group of people. So it has given us both access to the right people as well as targeting capabilities.

Thirdly, social media has helped shape digital in India. If I look at how digital has moved in this country, apart from the Internet players, you did not see a lot of traditional offline marketers on digital till about 5-6 years ago. And I think we can give a lot of the credit to social media as it has given a big push to digital advertising in India. From a digital industry point of view, social media has helped digital advertising to scale up to where it is today.

For Info Edge, we have a different social media strategy for different brands. For instance, with Shiksha, where our audiences are far younger, it plays a very important role, maybe it even plays a larger role than Google. So for our marketing mix for Shiksha, Facebook is far more important to us than Google, primarily because youngsters are spending so much time on that medium.

Q. You recently unveiled an ad campaign for 99accres. How is the campaign faring?

We did a 360 degree campaign, and thankfully its delivered very good results for us. We did one new TVC on new projects around December and we just released one two week ago, which is around rentals and mobile. Both the communications was done by our creative agency, which is JWT (Delhi).

Then our outdoor we did with an agency called Span Communications. Digital we don’t do with any agency, as far as the media piece is concerned, as we have a large in-house team to look after that. But we do work with a digital creative agency Landscape, it is a boutique agency run out of Gurgaon. We have a large in-house design team of around 30-35 designers, both Web and UIA, who work with marketing on marketing design and graphics etc. And our media agency is Lintas media group.

It was a pan India release, the outdoors was in the 5 metro cities and Radio was everywhere, we covered about 25 cities. And TV of course was everywhere, and it’s still running. We also took some big blockbusters like Akshay Kumar starrer Baby and we are also a sponsor on Indian Idol. So there are some big ticket items that we have taken to get those impact and media spikes.

Q. How much of your total marketing spend is allocated for digital?

It is different for different brands. For Shiksha it will be close to about 70%. For Jeevansathi, digital is just about 25% and 75% is TV. Naukri on the other hand is all on digital, because we feel that the brand is built, we haven’t really gone back to TV because we already have over 70% of the traffic share in this market and therefore don’t need to do brand building any longer. So in the case of Naukri, it will be 90% digital and 10% other stuff. In the case of 99accres, it will be somewhere around 60-40, where 60 is digital and 40 is ATL and BTL all put together.