Thinking Aloud Magazine July - 205 x 275mm copy · content strategy has to be ﬁne tuned since the output today has more in common with sales material than information. The key is

June 2015 · `40 · thinkingaloud.in

Rajesh JainFounder and ManagingDirector, netCORE

H E L P I N G Y O U T H I N K O N L I N E

Kirthiga ReddyMD, Facebook India

EDITOR SPEAK

NilotpalChakravarti

In our effort to boost digital marketing conversations, we published few exclusive CMO interviews in the June issue. In continuation to that, we bring to you few more exclusive interviews of Head of Marketing from various verticals – ranging from real estate, healthcare and transport service providers.

The cross section of the marketing heads we interviewed were unanimous about the importance of digital today and all pointing out the fact that there is no escaping from the digital world. Today, consumer is the king, and when consumers are taking to digital like never before, there is no other option but to ride the wave and start the digital conversation with the consumers or customers in real earnest.

In a society where majority of our population are young and well-informed, the digital medium gives a great opportunity to engage on a more personal basis, and create a sustained dialogue by creating the right and relevant brand.

Also, considering the increasing web and mobile internet usage and growing and social media presence on the one hand and saturation of traditional marketing mediums on the other, digital marketing offers the perfect platform for businesses to reach the right set of audiences.

In my opinion however, for digital to really take centre stage in India, the content strategy has to be fine tuned since the output today has more in common with sales material than information. The key is to provide value to the audience for the time spent on the material. The desire to position products and services as solutions to is understandable but it severely undermines the acceptability and validity of the content, reduces the trust factor, and therefore backfires on the engagement desired through the content efforts.

Besides, in this issue, you will read an outstanding article by Rajesh Jain, Founder of netCORE Solutions, who writes about how Marketing Automation can revolutionize marketing for e-Tailers. He argues that Marketing automation is being made possible by the marriage of marketing and technology and is perhaps the single most important trend for brands and businesses in their outreach and engagement to present and future customers.

I do hope that you will find this issue engaging and enlightening and will look forward to your bouquet and brickbats too.

Sincerely,Nilotpal [email protected]

THE TEAM

Printed, Published& Edited bySubhajyoti Ray

On behalf ofInternet & Mobile Association of India

Published atC-36, (Basement) East of Kailash, New Delhi 110 024

Printed byNational PrintersB-56, Naraina Industrial Area Phase 2, New Delhi 110 028

For advertising, contact [email protected]

Editor-in-chiefDr. Subho Ray

Executive EditorNilotpal Chakravarti

5/15VOLUME 7

ISSUE 5

INBOX

N. SinghChandigarh

The May issue of Thinking Aloud was a great read. I thoroughly enjoyed reading all the interviews and articles on Net Neutrality. I strongly believe in Net Neutrality and there should be non discriminatory access to the pipes even for the smallest of players. If not, then there is a grave danger for start-ups, and the whole ecosystem, which is flourishing beautifully. This issue was timely and well conceived. Congratulations!

S. Pande Mumbai

I agree with Kapil Bharati when he writes that with the rapid growth in the e-commerce space, logistics companies need to upgrade and embrace new technologies to meet the growing needs and expectations of the customers, who are not only more demanding but also getting tech savvy. He is bang on and quiet explains why his company is doing great. The growth of e-commerce has given rise to many allied industries, which is a huge positive. However, one must keep pace with the changing times to remain relevant and to meet the aspirations of the people. Cheers!

R. JalgaonkarMumbai

The May issue of Thinking Aloud was interesting with well written and researched articles. The focus on net neutrality and the need of the hour and the experts have clearly mapped the situation which was really helpful. It was a great idea from the edit team to focus on a topical subject which has a huge bearing on all concerned. Well done.

S. Anthony Bengaluru

I think Venki in his article correctly summed up when he mentions that the argument for Net Neutrality should be about ensuring that the building of Internet infrastructure in India - data centres, optic fibre, etc. are not disincentivized by TRAI, allowing telecom companies to charge for over-the-top services, in return for a healthy revenue share and spectrum windfalls. It appears that the regulator and Government, is in such a bind. This is on the spot and pretty much sums up the state of affairs. Very well written. This is was great issue and I enjoyed reading every bit of it.

THIS ISSUE

07-14

Digital Media• 5 Tips for Marketers to Manage a

Customer’s Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)

• Kirthiga Reddy, MD, Facebook India - Interview

• Rural India Tops Urban India in Social Media Usage With 100% Growth

• What Cannes Lions 2015 had in Store for Indian Participants!

• Amidst Ambush Marketing War between Snapdeal & Flipkart, Amazon loses Exclusivity of OnePlus One!

• Mohan Menon, GM & Head – Marketing, Max Healthcare - Interview

21-24

Mobile

• Bengaluru Based Start-up Swiggy Set to go Big in Coming Months

• Public Safety Key to Becoming a Smart City

• Shajai Jacob, Director & Head – Marketing & Communications, JLL India & West Asia - Interview

31-34

Start-ups/Tech

eCommerce

18-20• Marketing Automation Can

Revolutionise Marketing For e-Tailers• 2 Simple Ways to Boost Traffic to

your e-Commerce Site• Dhruv Chopra, Chief Marketing

Officer, CarWale - Interview

25-30

Digital Payments• Retail Payments In Growth Markets:

From Cash To Electronic Payments• Rathin Lahiri, CMO of Meru Cabs -

Interview

Kevin Systrom, the co-founder of Instagram, once said that no one likes to perform in a vacuum and the internet has truly changed the way we function. As technologies evolve and adapt, there is a huge potential for the internet to affect different aspects of life, economy and society. Over 2.5 billion people are connected to the Internet today, that’s a third of the world’s population. We are at a unique stage where “Digital Immigrants” have adapted and embraced the digital world and the GEN Y's and Z's – “Digital natives” who have grown up in the digital era and know no other way. Forget using a GPS, they are comfortable in using Twitter feeds & trends to gauge traffic in the road ahead and navigate with Google maps! It's surprising what people would give up before giving up the Internet. For me chocolate and TV would for sure go first!

FOMO, Fear of Missing Out, is both a cause and an effect. For instance, people who have FOMO check social media more often, which only increases their FOMO. As responsible marketers, it is important for us to help our customers to break through the information overload and manage their FOMO. Below are the 5 things to keep in mind for all marketers:-

1. Understand FOMO to understand your customerAs Will McAvoy (played by Jeff Daniels) says in the popular Television series ‘The Newsroom’ – “First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one”. FOMO is natural, real and here to stay. Marketers need to accept and understand FOMO to understand what matters the most to their customers. The “carpet bombing” approach is often a major cause of FOMO.

2. Providing the right information at the right timeFOMO is built on the fear of missing out on information at the right time. As marketers it is important that when we communicate, we ensure the three R’s of Reason, Relevance and Richness in the content. Equally important is that this content is provided at the right time to the customer to have a truly wholesome end-customer experience.

How would you feel if your internet suddenly stopped working? You wouldn’t be alone if your response was ‘anxious’ – as many as 64 per cent of global citizens feel anxious if they can’t get online, as revealed in our Tata Communications Connected World II survey report. This number is 62 percent in the UK and rises to a whopping 82 percent for India. As a marketer, the survey results offer me quite an insight into people’s behavioural associations and emotional connections to the Internet. (You can find out more about the survey in The Independent or Times of India among other media sources). Internet use and dependence have risen to a point where the ‘Fear of Missing Out’ or FOMO, often associated with modern technologies and social networking services, has become a global phenomenon.

5 Tips for Marketers to Manage aCustomer’s Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)

Julie Woods-Moss (@juliewoodsmoss)

Julie Woods-Moss CEO-NextGen Business and Chief Marketing Officer at Tata Communications Ltd

JUNE 2015 | THINKING ALOUD! 07

3. Choosing the right mediumWhile the content and timing are important, it is necessary that we keep the medium in mind – users expect the same experience no matter what device (laptop, Tablet, smartphone, etc) or source platform (twitter, website, an app, etc) they choose. It is therefore essential that marketing communications address these whether for Digital Immigrant or Natives.

4. Stay in touch with your connected customerFOMO implies that customers end up being hooked for more information. It also provides an opportunity for marketers to stay in touch with their “always on” connected customer. Identify your customer’s journey to identify the right time to communicate your messages.

5. Build balanced storiesFinally, it is imperative to know the difference between creating excitement and creating panic among customers. Brand stories and campaigns need to strike the right balance that makes customers come back for more.

If you managed to read it this far I have succeeded in putting some of the above lessons to practice! The internet has been pivotal in the context of human history - its importance is only going to increase with its evolution and marketers will need to evolve with it






JUNE 2015 | THINKING ALOUD!08

Image Source - www.tatacommunications.com















Image Source - www.tatacommunications.com

“Blueprint Will Help Manage BusinessOn The Go” - Kirthiga Reddy


Kirthiga Reddy MD, Facebook India

In an exclusive interview with Thinking Aloud, Kirthiga Reddy, MD, Facebook India talks about how Facebook is helping companies reach out to new audience and also talks about new innovations that are on the pipeline.

TA: The FMCG companies and the mobile companies are definitely reaping benefits from Facebook. What's in store for the back end companies? KR: In terms of backend and retail companies, Reliance has been one of our early clients. They have been doing some really great stuff on the Facebook platform. We have a case study with Reliance, which points out two main things. Reliance successfully used Facebook to get more insights for their consumers using the insight tools that we have. Secondly, they did a survey in terms of understanding the shopping behavior. They offered Rs 500.00 vouchers to the consumers for completing the survey. We witnessed a tremendous growth in terms of adoption, reaching out to the new customers, driving loyalty from the existing customers. Facebook played a tremendous part in covering all these aspects. One special capability in terms of the retail segment and loyalty program is a capability that we call Custom Audience. It enables one to map their database in a very privacy secured way with our CRM system to ensure that they are reaching the right audience in a proper way. They can bifurcate the customers that have not shopped with them for months and their regular customers with different messages. These processes tremendously help drive the business objectives of the retail sector.

TA: Are there any new innovations in the pipeline that you would like to share with us? For an example, you spoke about Blueprint in your session at IAMAI’s 11th Marketing Conclave. Would you like to elaborate on it? KR: Sure, Blueprint is an online trading tool. With more than 34 eLearning modules, Blueprint will help you learn the skills to move your business forward. It is designed to serve both online and offline clients along with the marketing teams and the agencies. The best part about Blueprint is its availability on both Desktop and Mobile. It helps you manage your business on the go.

TA: So, Blueprint not just helps me as a client, but, does it also means that the agencies are now associated with Facebook? I came across a section while filling the form that asked me to enter my company's name. Do agencies get any kind of certification? KR: Yes, we do partner with the agencies. For example, GroupM has Blueprint as a part of their onboarding program. So the new people hired by them need to complete the Blueprint program. So, yes, we do work with companies and agencies. However, we won't say that we are providing a certification to the agencies. Certification is at an individual level. However, we do partner with the companies and agencies.

TA: Social Media Marketing and ROI are often discussed and dissected. What are your views on Social Media marketing and how do you gauge the ROI?KR: Yes, we believe that any investment in marketing should be measured in terms of how we can help our clients grow. It is a very simple process. Towards the end, it can be determined by the leading indicators, how is it creating impact or driving awareness about the products both offline and online. Yes, we are committed to providing the capabilities to drive these results while partnering with our clients.



Rural India Tops Urban India in SocialMedia Usage With 100% Growth

Usage of Social Media in Rural India has grown by an impressive 100 percent during the last one year with 25 million users in Rural India. On the other hand, Urban India registered a relatively lower growth of 35 percent with the total number of users at 118 million as on April 2015. According to the Social Media in India 2014 report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India [IAMAI] and IMRB International, there are 143 million social media users in India as on April 2015.

The report also finds that the top 4 Metros continue to account for almost half of the Social Media users in Urban India.

According to the latest report, the largest segment accessing Social Media consists of the College Going Students with 34% followed by Young Men at 27%. School going children constitute 12% of the social media users. College Going Students and Young Men still form the 60% of the Social Media users in Urban India.

1%

47%25%

23%

4%

Social Media UsageBase: 48.2 Mn Social MediaUsers in 35 Citiesin Urban India,I-Cube (June 2014)

Top 4 Metros

Next 4 Metros

Small Metros

Non Metros

Small Towns

11%

10%

12%

7%

34%27%

Social Media UsageBase: 48.2 Mn Social MediaUsers in 35 Citiesin Urban India,I-Cube (June 2014)

College GoingStudents

Young Men

School GoingKids

Non WorkingWomen

Older Men

Working Women


The report further finds that 61% of these users access Social Media on their mobile device. The fact that almost two thirds of the users are already accessing social media through their mobile is a promising sign. With the expected increase in mobile traffic the number of users accessing social media on mobile is only bound to increase.

According to the report, maintaining a profile on social networking sites are a top activity of users followed by updating status. Commenting on a blog site is the third most popular activity among users in social networking sites.

To download the full report, please log on to www.iamai.in

61% Mobile InternetUsers AccessSocial Media

Base: 37.7 Mn Mobile Internet Users in 35 Cities inUrban India, I-Cube (June 2014)

Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way - Edward de Bono

Yes, creativity involves thinking out-of-the-box to reach a space where you can churn out ideas that gel and sell. Ideas that gel with the audiences and sell for the marketers. Indian agencies have definitely come a long way since digital media came into the forefront of operations. There are many agencies that have carved out a name for themselves, winning several prestigious awards and setting benchmarks for the fellow competitors. The participation of Indian agencies has almost doubled up since they first started out participating in scores of prestigious festivals. The Cannes Lions Festival has been synonymous with excellence. The 62nd Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity ended with Indian agencies taking home a tally of 14 metals. The bragging rights for this year will surely be winning a Grand Prix in the inaugural Glass Lions Category. However, the participating agencies failed to win a Gold this year. Have a glance at the metals won by the Indian agencies this year.• 2 Health Lions - One Silver & One Bronze• 5 Outdoor Lions - Two Silver & Three Bronze• 1 Media Lion - Bronze • 4 Press Lions - Three Silver and One Bronze • 2 Glass Lions - Including Grand Prix

The Health Lions category featured Ogilvy and Mather winning a Silver for Giant Footprints and Medulla Communications winning a Bronze for Cinnarazine's 'Spinning Living Room' respectively. In terms of Outdoor Lions, McCann Worldgroup India (Essel Group's Dish TV) and Creativeland Asia (Durex) won a Silver Lion each. Grey Worldwide India (DHL), Ogilvy and Mather (Puffin) and DDB Mudra (Volkswagen) bagged Bronze Lions each. In terms of Digital Media, BBDO bagged a Bronze Lion for P&G's 'Touch The Pickle' campaign. The campaign also won the Grand Prix in the category. In terms of comparison with the previous years, the number of metals has shown a drastic downfall. India had managed to win 34 metals. In 2013, India had managed to bring home 34 metals. Whereas, in 2014 India won 27 metals.

However, it was very encouraging to see an Indian agency win the Grand Prix in the new Glass Lions category for communication that promotes gender equality. Both BBDO shortlists Touch the Pickle and Share the Load were absolutely innovative and deservedly Touch the Pickle won India's 1st Grand Prix (in this category) because of a very unique idea, emotional connect and astute storytelling. Other agencies should take cues from the performance to deliver more such campaigns. Indian advertising has come a long way in the international arena, or at least it would seem so, given the number of entries by Indian advertising agencies at the Cannes Lions, which places India amongst the top five countries. The number of Indians who are members of various jury panels is also impressive along with the contingent of attendees from India. We can conclude that smaller agencies will continue the trend of performing well on these international platforms to place the country of the digital and creative map. Here’s the list of Indian winners on an infographic, courtesy www.adageindia.in


What Cannes Lions 2015 had inStore for Indian Participants!

Imagine being able to personalise the shopping experience for every customer – one that collates the digital footprints left by the customer, touches the customer through her preferred channel, is able to take her through a journey for products that she is undecided on and nudge her towards purchase, and is able to anticipate what she will want to buy next. Imagine being able to do this for millions of customers – simultaneously and continuously. Imagine being able to create 100 percent customers – each customer monetised to the fullest extent possible.

Rajesh Jain Founder and Managing Director, netCORE

Marketing Automation CanRevolutionise Marketing For e-Tailers

This is the promise of marketing automation.

Writing is his new book “The Attacker’s Advantage”, Ram Charan wrote: “With companies able to collect and control information on the entire experience of a customer, the math house now can focus on each customer as an individual. In a manner of speaking, we are evolving back to the artisan model, where a market “segment” comprises one individual.”

This future of a personalised virtual sales representative is being brought to life by marketing automation.

Marketing automation is being made possible by the marriage of marketing and technology. It is perhaps the single most important trend for brands and businesses in their outreach and engagement to present and future customers. This is being driven by three factors: customers have become digital, customers leaving digital footprints for marketers to sift through, and the rapidly plummeting cost of data storage and analytics in the past few years. Taken together, this is creating an inflexion point in how brands and customers interact.

Brands and e-tailers can now look at not just prices and unique features, but also at the end-to-end customer experience. By combining cross-channel automation and data-driven personalisation, it now becomes possible to craft unique individual customer journeys.

Brands and customers will have a new parallel track – think of it as a hotline – opened between them. So far, there has been a transactional track – businesses provide products and services, and customers pay for these with their money or time. Now, smart marketers will open up a new track – that of a two-way information exchange and interaction. In this, content marketing along with marketing automation will play a key role.

It is a world where business knowledge meets data science, where intuition meets analytics, and where ad tech combines with marketing tech. It is a world in which the goal is to maximise 100 percent customers – building monopolies on customer spend. By starting the journey of knowing, predicting and engaging, brands can get to the future first.

At the heart of marketing automation lies the unified customer view. It pulls together all the customer transactions and interactions – using every touch point with the customer to collect data.

Based on this unified view, content can then be pushed to customers – automatically and personalised to their interests. e-Tailers can lead customers down a content journey, and track their actions, feeding them back into the unified view. Cross-channel automation and data-driven personalisation are the twin building blocks for content marketing. Think of this as the persuasion phase – interesting and relevant content delivered at the right time helps maximise the probability of the next spend of the customer being with the brand.

To enable all of this, analytics and algorithms will play a critical path. Customer data is the foundation for this. Transaction data, profile or demographic data and behavioural data all needs to be combined together to search for patterns and answer the question “what next.” Data will increasingly become the bedrock of cultivating the 1:1 relationship and crafting an individualised experience.

With marketing automation, e-tailers can focus on improving the effectiveness of their engagement with the customers using tools that simplify many marketing activities that are generally time-consuming. Two early opportunities come in the form of retargeting and cart abandonment. Over time, this can be expanded to personalised recommendations.

This is the new world of marketing automation that is now being built – combining delivery engines, automation platforms, and B2C CRM. By using the emergence of marketing automation as a disruptive innovation, e-tailers have a unique opportunity to reshape the competitive landscape and build 100 percent customers.


By Rajesh Jain, Founder and Managing Director, netCORE





























2 Simple Ways to Boost Traffic to youre-Commerce Site

If you have a business website, make it stickier; redo the merchandising often and try new things until you hit the right homepage. Then try and beat that - Lynda Resnick, Entrepreneur.

e-Commerce, a process of selling online is just like an art. You need to keep evolving and trying new things that are trending in the digital marketplace. It is all about creating an amazing online experience for the customers. It takes time, creativity and a whole lot of commitment. How can you make sure that you have the right mixture of solutions in place? There are certain things to be kept in mind while running an online store. Whether you are a startup or a seasoned business, eCommerce is the way to go. Identifying ways to increase traffic can often be time consuming and tedious. However, there are certain ways to work around it. Here are 3 ways that can vastly improve traffic to your eCommerce sites.

1. Buy Misspells of Domain & Create an Innovative Blog Along with buying domain variations like .net or .com, make sure that you buy misspells too. If you own more misspells of your domain, you can easily increase your traffic by more than 500 visits per month. It may sound weird, but, it churns out results for sure in terms of the per visit value. You must have heard that Content is king. Rightly said, do make sure to have a proper blog in place and try to incorporate creativity and innovation in it. It is essential that you have a proper content strategy in place. Do not follow the tried and tested way of writing a blog, posting some images from google and publish it. Companies need to create highly targeted and quality content with genuine keyword seeding. Use infographics, memes, statistics and graphs to add extra value to it. As an eCommerce player, you must make sure to provide the customer with the center stage. Create blogs and stories that ask questions to the customers.

2. Publish Videos of your Products & Run Purposeful Social Media CampaignsPeople see it to believe it. Being in the online selling business, companies must make sure to provide a platform to the customers to gauge how would the products look on them. Video is a powerful selling platform to achieve this motive. To take things to the next level, try having a custom-made video that shows off the products on a real person. You can either opt for self-hosting the videos on your site or you can create a channel and upload it on YouTube or Vimeo. The second option is more beneficial as it does not affect your site's page load time. Publishing videos on YouTube can result in higher visibility as it is the second largest search engine close on the heels of Google. Run optimized and purposeful Social Media campaigns. Design campaigns that drive brand awareness and engagement rather than just focusing on driving leads. Social Media is the best platform for eCommerce brands to engage with their customers.

e-Commerce businesses thrive on regularly trying new business strategies and keeping a tab on the latest developments taking place in the industry. To be a significant eCommerce player, always focus on providing advice power, real-time solutions and data significant information on your websites. Use these simple ways and make sure to establish a market presence or enhance your market position by providing a more efficient and effective distribution.


“Until last year, nearly 100% of CarWale’smarketing investments have been in digital”

Dhruv ChopraChief Marketing Officer, CarWale

Dhruv Chopra, Chief Marketing Officer, CarWale speaks exclusively to Nilotpal Chakravarti, and shares CarWale’s perspective on digital marketing and the challenges and opportunities that the medium presents.

TA. How are you ensuring that you have an integrated marketing effort? DC: Being a digital company, our marketing activities usually begin with digital marketing at the fore. As a brand, we use multiple media to reach our target audience and our communication is always integrated across. We also have a large reach on our own media properties which we use effectively to further expand our reach.

TA. How are you leveraging the digital medium to acquire customers or create an amazing customer experience?DC: We have been using the digital medium to acquire customers since literally the first day that CarWale was launched. From the basics like search and display to all the latest opportunities like social, mobile and apps, we have an exhaustive digital marketing programme that forms the spine of all our marketing activities. We are also often a part of beta programs with some of the world’s largest publishers and are fortunate enough to test some of the latest cutting edge technologies before other advertisers have access to it.

TA. Social Media Marketing and ROI are often discussed and dissected. What are your views on Social Media marketing and how do you gauge the ROI?DC: Social media as a platform helps us connect with our users and brand loyalists, and establish our key brand positioning. Many brands like to measure ROI in terms of clicks, engagement and likes. But we take a different approach - we consciously look at social media to drive brand image and engage with our target audience. Traffic acquisition from social media is always welcome, but it is not necessarily the focus of our social marketing.

TA. As a marketer, what according to you are the key challenges for any CMO, especially for digital marketing?DC: I see one of the current challenges for digital marketing in India is getting the right talent – team members who are sufficiently experienced in various aspects of digital marketing. I would also venture to say that many of the ‘digital marketers’ we interact with in other companies have migrated to digital from other areas of marketing, and don’t necessarily have a lot of experience in digital themselves. This is especially true for specialist roles like search optimisation, search marketing, programmatic buying, social media and web-analytics.

Another challenge we see is that while digital marketing offers high levels of targeting, there are very limited opportunities today when it comes to the number of channels that offer large volumes in terms of sheer reach.

TA. What can be done to address the challenges?DC: Various companies have different approaches – some companies look to hire young digital marketers and groom them into the responsibilities that go with handling the medium, while other companies look to groom experienced marketing professionals in digital marketing. There have also been a few instances where we have seen companies recruit digital talent from vastly different industries or even from overseas. Global knowledge sharing programmes in large multi-national companies also help to develop digital marketing programmes in markets like India, especially when it comes to introducing never-used-before technologies.

TA. Most marketers believe that harnessing data analytics is one of the most important challenges they face. Are you also one of them and if yes, how are you dealing with the problem? Do you have in-house skills to harness data?DC: It is not just me but everybody in CarWale is highly focussed on data. Decisions at CarWale – whether big or small – are always data-driven. In fact, we are strong believers in letting data override management and creative decisions. This behaviour is organisation-wide and core to our functioning. Even when we use mass media advertising, we analyse the data right down to impact from specific television spots and other media. Lastly, even product decisions, whether for evolution of existing products or launching brand new products, are all driven by detailed data analysis and data mining.

And yes! We’ve had our own internal big-data warehouse and a dedicated internal analytics team for years, not to mention enough BI tools to drive us mad.

TA. Has big data completely altered the landscape for marketers?DC: Yes, absolutely! Couldn’t agree more. Big data has fundamentally altered marketing forever. The choices that marketers now make, whether it is on media, on communication strategies or targeting of audience segments, they are all based on the analyses of big data. We have even experimented with creative decision-making being

IntroductionCash continues to rule as the pre-eminent payment instrument in retail payments in the growth markets. In spite of increasing numbers of plastic cards being issued to consumers in emerging markets, card penetration continues to be low: as an example, according to MasterCard, less than 15 percent of the adult population in Indonesia has access to a card. Meanwhile, merchant adoption of card acceptance is happening at an even slower rate. At the same time, innovative mobile money schemes are beginning to offer credible alternatives to cards as a form of merchant payment. The prime example of this is found in Kenya, where over 80 percent of the adult population is using mobile money, and retail payments via mobile money are increasing at a brisk pace, making it a natural evolutionary step from cash to electronic payments. The Lipa ni mPesa merchant payment service offered by Safaricom is but one good example of electronic over-the-air payments bypassing credit/debit card usage in Kenya. To offer a developed market example, according to the UK Payment Council, it wasn’t until 2014 that the usage of non-cash payments surpassed the usage of cash in the UK.

The retailer dilemmaRolling out new type of electronic payment schemes -- whether cards, mobile money or other alternatives -- often face resistance from retailers. The reasons are numerous: adopting to a new way of doing things via electronic money that one can’t hold in one’s hands does not come naturally to everyone; new processes may at first feel slow and more cumbersome, making the payment process feel more complicated; and not all retailers necessarily want all of their transactions recorded–the anonymity of cash may sometimes be preferred. All of this guarantees that if the electronic payment solution is too complex, cumbersome or costly without tangible countervailing benefits, retailers will not switch from physical cash.

Increasing the penetration of electronic paymentsThe widespread penetration of mobile devices is without doubt a major force in driving the migration from cash towards electronic payments at the point of sale. Mobile devices have become all-pervasive, with Android-based smartphones already available well under US$50—for example mid/high-tier Android smartphones are widely available in Kenya at the time of writing for 3,000-5,000 Ksh. For increasing retail acceptance of card payments, there are card reader accessories available for the Android-based mobile devices at reasonable cost--as an example, EMV compliant card readers are available at less than US$50. This means any recently purchased Android-based mobile device can be turned into a card acceptance mobile point of sale (mPOS) device, at a fraction of the cost of traditional ePOS terminals which currently sell for 300USD upwards. Moreover, given that many merchants in emerging markets now already own Android smartphones, the merchant acquirer need merely to provide (or loan) card reader accessories to merchants to use with their preexisting phones, driving down cost even further.

Beyond traditional cards, mobile devices also enable other electronic payment scenarios. Using mobile money–based payments at the retail point of sale in the form of a direct money transfer between consumer and retailer is one possibility—this is the most common form of e-money merchant payment in Kenya, for example. In addition, NFC reader technology is increasingly available in ever lower cost smartphones which makes it feasible to for retailers with NFC-enabled devices to accept consumer payments through contactless cards or stickers without any additional accessory devices.

For any of these scenarios however, the retailer interest must be there to adopt non-cash payments. The interest is driven by several factors:

1. Customer penetration of the different electronic payment instrumentsThe retailer won’t want to lose a sale by not being able to accept a particular form of payment. But given that most consumers still also carry cash as backup, this is not an immediate problem. The driver will be the popularity of different electronic payment instruments, whether mobile money, card or another form of payment.

2. Ease of overall payment process with the electronic payment instrumentThe payment process can’t be substantially slower or more complex for retailers compared to traditional cash payments.

3. Cost for the retailer, both transaction and investment costOne aspect the retailers often don’t see is the cost of cash handling (i.e., risk of theft, effort required to have cash carried to bank, etc.), and they often consider cash to be “costless”, compared to acceptance of electronic payments.

4. Other factorsSuch as willingness to forgo anonymity of cash transactions to having electronic track records of the payments.

When planning a roll-out of electronic payment solutions to a wider range of retailers, all of these factors need to be carefully considered in terms of their impact on electronic transaction volumes growth at the retail point of sale.

Alternative mobile approaches to drive the transition from cash to non-cash

The table below gives a brief comparison summary of the alternative means of using mobile-based payments

at the retail point of sale, using a few critical factors for comparison:

driven by big data, and the results have helped us significantly improve performance and ROI.

TA. Is it true that the emergence of the digital medium has put enormous pressure on CMOs to realign their strategy? How critical it is to be on the same page with your CEO and CTO?DC: Luckily, I have never felt this at CarWale since at the heart we have always been a technology company. Technology plays a massive role in all our digital marketing, especially when it comes to serving targeted communication to specific audiences. However, I can imagine how difficult this could be in companies that have been using more traditional marketing practices. Adopting and embracing a paradigm shift in marketing strategies can be arduous, and particularly difficult to drive at all levels of a large organisation. Thankfully, we do not have to deal with that challenge.

TA. What are your marketing plans going forward?DC: As always, we will continue to focus on digital as the lead medium to develop our brand and acquire users. We also plan to use mass media for specific campaigns. The focus on driving higher and higher ROI from each marketing dollar invested will continue as before. I’m also personally looking forward to some technologies we are developing to build more engaging content for our users. CarWale has been the ‘first’ to roll out many technologies and tools for car buyers, and hope to retain that edge this year as well :-)

TA. What is your digital advertising spends? Can you give a number to it? Has it risen over the past year and if so, by how much?DC: Up until last year, nearly 100% of CarWale’s marketing investments have been in digital. Even today, though we invest in mass media and other marketing programs, digital continues to be the lion’s share of our budget. Regrettably I cannot disclose anything more specific on this front.







































































Amidst Ambush Marketing Warbetween Snapdeal & Flipkart, Amazon

loses Exclusivity of OnePlus One!OnePlus One has now opened its doors for Flipkart too!

"At OnePlus, it has been our constant endeavor to evaluate and evolve our go-to market strategy and this collaboration is another step in that direction. We are happy to have Flipkart as our new channel partner, in a bid to expand our reach and make the OnePlus One more accessible to people across the country." - Vikas Agarwal, General Manager - OnePlus, India

Did you see the ambush marketing between Flipkart and Snapdeal coming? Snapdeal score some witty ambush marketing points against Flipkart's new campaign - 'Acha Kiya nahi Kharida'. Snapdeal came up with "Acha Kiya Bata Diya. #YahanSeKharido." The hula hoopla surrounding the campaigns was visible across several hoardings across the metros that looked like a follow-up to that of Flipkart. However, there was something else brewing out of the limelight. It featured the third big player, Amazon. OnePlus has announced that The One phone will now available on Flipkart too. OnePlus One was available exclusively on Amazon till now. The news that developed on the June 22nd, the 64GB Sandstone Black phone has been made available on Flipkart at Rs 21,999 and the 16GB variant will be up for Rs 18,999 in the coming weeks. Taking the developments a notch higher, OnePlus also offered a Rs 2,000 discount on the purchase of the 64GB model only from June 22nd to June 24th. Amitesh Jha, VP - Retail, Flipkart, commented: "OnePlus is one of the leading players in the new age mobile tech world and we are excited to have the OnePlus One on our platform. Known for offering best-in-class technology and innovative products, we are confident that this product will resonate well with our tech savvy customers."

This recent development may have taken a back seat amidst the Sale marketing saga between Snapdeal and Flipkart. However, it can be regarded as one of the key developments in the mobile world this week. Ambush Marketing campaigns have been garnering a lot of attention in the past few months. The other cases of ambush marketing can be the one between Zostel and OYO Rooms along with the one between Commonfloor and Housing. For now, only the OnePlus is available through Flipkart, while the accessories continue to be available only on Amazon. We are not sure if OnePlus will be considering other online players such as Snapdeal, Shopclues, Infibeam etc. in the coming few weeks. It is surely a development to keep eyes on.

“We Are Ramping Up Our Digital Efforts”- Mohan Menon

Mohan MenonGM & Head – Marketing, Max Healthcare


Mohan Menon, GM & Head – Marketing, Max Healthcare, speaks exclusively to Thinking Aloud, and gives a sense on how the leading healthcare provider is leveraging digital to reach out to customers, and also Max Healthcare’s plans going forward.

TA. How are you ensuring that you have an integrated marketing effort? MM: People consume healthcare through various mediums, while they are seeking information, trying to make

a choice or closing on a provider. It is important that we are present at these points with the right content and capabilities – be it giving information about disease symptoms and treatment modalities or enabling booking appointments with specialists.

While we still do few campaigns which use only certain local traditional media, our effort is that most of what we do should be integrated across. It might not be important that it be talking the same thing but the essence and the language should remain the same across – our hospitals, traditional media, online assets, social media or the mobile app.

TA. How are you leveraging the digital medium to acquire customers or create an amazing customer experiences? MM: Customers are already online in their interaction with healthcare. The question really is are we? Right from searching for the symptoms they have, to looking for the right treatment provider and then reconfirming the treatment course – all of it is done online. We look at each of the touchpoints that patients and their caregivers today go through, digitally.

We’ve worked on bettering the customer appointment booking scenario – both, through online and our mobile app and that accounts for 15 percent of all appointments that we get today. We use search optimization extensively – there is nothing that compares to the credibility of organic search results when it comes to healthcare. Our social efforts are focused on driving traffic to the website, where we provide meaningful content to our consumers. On most others, we are really beginning the journey to see how we can better patient experiences using digital.

TA. Social Media Marketing and ROI are often discussed and dissected. What are your views on Social Media marketing and how do you gauge the ROI?MM: One needs to be very clear on what they are expecting from Social Media. The marketing objective should be clear and Social media should be a driver to achieve that larger objective. Just driving certain matrices on social media – like number of fans, become meaningless if they are not really translating into achieving the marketing goals.

For us, while we closely monitor engagement on social and the traffic that it generates on our website, it is a huge platform to listen to customers. Patients/caregivers first go to social media platforms and talk about their concerns even before they have reached out via the traditional customer service avenues – making ORM really important. We also listen to these social conversations closely to analyze patterns and see if there are larger problems that our consumers are facing and which are recurrent, that we need to solve for.

TA. As a marketer, what according to you are the key challenges for any Marketing Head, especially for digital marketing?MM: The onus on a Marketing Head in any organization is to be wearing the customer’s hat and thinking from their perspective. And this does not change even for digital. The biggest task is to bring customer insights and knowledge to measure everything that happens in the digital journey. The question to answer really is what are we solving for the customer using our digital efforts? And this could be a stated or a derived need.

The Marketing Head has to be the one driving behavioral change in the organization to move energies and resources to digital. The last challenge really is to be abreast of all the shifts in trends, newer things constantly happening in this medium, and to be able to adapt to these changes.

TA. What can be done to address the challenges?MM: Digital at Max Healthcare is strongly viewed as a revenue generating channel – query management, closures, and appointments, all converting to actual walk-in. And it is very important that all digital activities are closely monitored against the objectives set for the channel – engagement, traffic to website, time spent or actual transactions. As much as having a good digital partner and the quality of the teams becomes important, making the choice of what can be worked by internal capabilities and what needs external specialists is as imperative.

TA. Most marketers believe that harnessing data analytics is one of the most important challenges

they face. Are you also one of them and if yes, how are you dealing with the problem? Do you have in-house skills to harness data?MM: We are a data rich industry. Our data analytics is not only used in marketing efforts but also a lot of clinical decisions. That said, using this data for marketing becomes slightly different. The decision maker whom the marketing activities target is at most times not really the consumer of the services - the patient being the ‘consumer’ and the attendant being the ‘decision-maker’.

Our data analytics helps us in refining our marketing approach and the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns that we do. Be it our offline contact programmes or online campaigns, efforts are to really find insights from how people are interacting with healthcare. For example, our data analytics helped us create a product specific to senior citizens and choose value benefits according to what they were looking for or using in the hospitals. We’ve also developed marketing campaigns based on newer patient trends that are seen in the hospitals. All of this data is analysed internally – the challenge is in ensuring that we are able to glean relevant insights from the multiple informational systems with different types of data.

TA. Has big data completely altered the landscape for marketers?MM: The change has come in the form of being able to make more informed marketing decisions. Being able to segment and address consumers based on their transactions, behavior and preferences. Based on previous transactions, we are able to provide relevant content – be it on the website or through email marketing. But there is a lot to do – I believe we’ve just only begun to scratch the surface of what can really be done here.

TA. Is it true that the emergence of the digital medium has put enormous pressure on Marketing Heads to realign their strategy? How critical it is to be on the same page with your CEO and CTO?MM: Since our consumers are already on digital – searching, selecting, transacting and commenting, there isn’t a way that we cannot be. The choice is only on how we can address most of these avenues. Having everybody aligned is fairly important because with digital, the lines are fairly blurring between the traditional Marketing and IT teams. They need to be constantly working together and moving in the same direction.

TA. What are your marketing plans going forward?MM: We are actively looking at digital and there is a huge focus on this channel. Content Marketing is a big focus area for us across the digital spread. The contribution from digital is only set to increase this year with concerted efforts in this direction. Mobile marketing is also something we are actively working on, as part of our strategy for the year. The healthcare industry in India is really still quite nascent on utilizing the potential of digital. So it is definitely about trying and testing things that haven’t been done before in the category.

TA. What is your digital advertising spends? Can you give a number to it? Has it risen over the past year and if so, by how much?MM: We are ramping up our digital efforts. So the spends are definitely much higher than what they were last year or before. We are planning at almost doubling spends. But the focus is very high on effectiveness. We are looking at campaigns more holistically and evaluating certain campaigns to go only digital, which till before may have used the traditional media.














































































Peter OllikainenSVP, Mistral Mobile

Retail Payments In Growth Markets:From Cash To Electronic Payments

By Peter Ollikainen, SVP, Mistral Mobile















Shajai Jacob, Director & Head – Marketing & Communications, JLL India & West Asia, in a candid interview, talks about how JLL is actively tapping the digital medium and also the opportunities and challenges it faces.

TA: How are you ensuring that you have an integrated marketing effort? SJ: JLL’s marketing activity is a 100 percent, 360-degree consultative process that factors in the current and future requirements of all its business verticals and stakeholders. All activities are based on real-time needs, and there constant feedback mechanisms are in place to gauge the efficacy of every campaign.















TA. How are you leveraging the digital medium to acquire customers or create an amazing customer experiences? SJ: JLL actively leverages digital marketing in all its facets, which have a very deep and broad spectrum when it comes to the real estate business. As digital marketing is a constantly evolving phenomenon, we also keep our finger on the pulse of new developments and opportunities in this space to ensure complete future readiness in every respect.

TA. Social Media Marketing and ROI are often discussed and dissected. What are your views on Social Media marketing and how do you gauge the ROI? SJ: The opportunities that lie in social media marketing are not something that any business can afford to ignore anymore. For a long time, it was not very clearly understood; but today the various platforms have evolved – and so has their ability to cater to businesses. There are very effective means and methods to gauge ROI on social media, but they have different implications for different business verticals and activities. It is a largely a question of what works where.

TA. As a marketer, what according to you are the key challenges for any CMO, especially for digital marketing?SJ: One of the biggest challenges when it comes to digital marketing is probably change aversion. One cannot yank entire companies from traditional ways of thinking into the next century by brute force, so the process of adaptation can sometimes be slow and quite frustrating. Still, it is a part of the job and every victory won is immensely satisfying. That said, the highest amount of efficient integration of all communication and media networks despite platform fragmentation is still the highest priority on the marketing bucket list.

TA. What can be done to address the challenges?SJ: No opportunity to raise awareness and provide assistance when it comes to adapting to new processes and methods must be overlooked.

TA. Most marketers believe that harnessing data analytics is one of the most important challenges they face. Are you also one of them and if yes, how are you dealing with the problem? Do you have in-house skills to harness data?SJ: JLL has its own in-house data gathering and processing capabilities. Since Indian real estate suffers from a rather pronounced lack of verified data, transparency and also information asymmetry, we can not rely on outside agencies for this.

TA. Has big data completely altered the landscape for marketers?SJ: Not really – at least not in real estate. Information is important, but real estate is still very much a people business.

TA. Is it true that the emergence of the digital medium has put enormous pressure on CMOs to realign their strategy? How critical it is to be on the same page with your CEO and CTO?SJ: Everyone being on the same page is definitely the desired idea, but most of the time it is a Utopian objective. I think it is very important to understand when, where and how quickly change can happen. Sometimes, the process of adaptation of new methodologies is gradual, and a CMO must be able to match the pace.

TA. What are your marketing plans going forward? SJ: Imagine a pie with the largest wedge being consumed by digital content, followed by several in diminishing sizes being attributed to the traditional.

TA. What is your digital advertising spends? Can you give a number to it? Has it risen over the past year and if so, by how much? SJ: : I can only say that whilst the firm is growing in double digits, out digital spends are quite nearly matching this vertical ascent – movement from the teens to the twenty’s is definitely a changing paradigm.

















In all of the above scenarios everything starts with the retailer and their willingness to embrace new innovative ways to receive payment, and ends with customer adoption of the particular type of new payment instrument. None of the methods are mutually exclusive and retailers can support multiple/all forms of payment with a single mobile device, but ultimately it will be customer habits and preference which determines which type of payments will be adopted for non-cash payments.

SummaryThere is no single winning approach but consumer preferences within the local market context will largely determine which models merchants will adopt, given that from the merchant perspective, the transaction nor the investment costs for options are not that different. It is therefore very likely that multiple approaches will be adopted in any given market since different consumer segments will have different payment preferences: not everyone will have (or want) debit or credit cards, and preferences will vary by age, economic and educational status, and so on.

The most efficient solution for traditional card acceptance is to have retailers using mPOS devices (i.e., a combination of smartphone and card reader accessory).

The simplest solution in markets with high mobile money penetration is to simply utilize the person-to-person transaction as a means of payment to the retailers.

A hybrid solution utilizing contactless technology and fast payment processes.

Retailer keeps the mobile device with the card reader accessory available at all times, and enters the payment information in the application loaded on the mobile device. Customer swipes or inserts card and enters the PIN to confirm the payment (in other words, the same use flows as when using a card on a traditional ePOS).

Consumer requests the retailer’s phone number to enable them to make the P2P transfer to the retailer (note that this may slow down the process). The consumers also may not want to have their own phone number revealed to the retailer which can make the verification of the payment cumbersome.

Retailer enters the payment information in the application. Customer simply taps the retailer device with their card or sticker, or their/own mobile. Given there is no direct PIN entry as part of the transaction, extra verification step for larger payment amount may be requested from the customer by sending them a confirmation request to their mobile.

Ranging from 0.5-3% of transaction value



Smartphone and a mobile POS accessory combined cost can be as low as 100USD (card reader accessory alone can be well below 50USD)

None Smartphone with contactless reading capability, already available under 100USD

Overview

Description of thepayment process

Transaction costs

Investmentrequired

Accepting traditional debit or credit cards

Using P2P money transfer from customer to retailer

Acceptance with contactless card, sticker or mobile device


























“Over 70% Of Our Spend Are Digital”- Rathin Lahiri

Rathin LahiriCMO, Meru Cabs

In an exclusive chat with Nilotpal Chakravarti, Rathin Lahiri, CMO of Meru Cabs, talks about Meru’s transformation into a digital business and how the Meru App will be critical to its business in the future.

TA. How are you ensuring that you have an integrated marketing effort? RL: Consumers use multiple channels although each consumer segment has a preferred channel of choice. At Meru, we use this insight to leverage any campaign across all our touch points: the cabs, the web te, the call centre, the app, our airport counters, social network, customer base etc. We run digital only campaigns tactically, but all major campaigns are integrated campaigns as they deliver the highest impact.

TA. How are you leveraging the digital medium to acquire customers or create an amazing customer experience?RL: : In the last one year we have transformed Meru into a digital business with the app only moving from a 12 percent contribution to a 65 percent plus contribution to our business. All Digital including web is over 75 percent contribution to our business. Last year, we have focused on mobile acquisition campaigns using both CRM to migrate the existing Meru user base and paid media including with mobile networks, social networks, youtube advertising, alliances etc. There is a base of 10 million to 20 million consumers who are doing transactions on the mobile and the opportunity for brands is to reach out to them and get them as early adopters.

TA. Social Media Marketing and ROI are often discussed and dissected. What are your views on Social Media marketing and how do you gauge the ROI?RL: Social Media Marketing is about engaging with consumers as a real person would - with a point of view, with opinions, having real conversations etc. Earlier brands would broadcast their messages but now consumers are telling their stories of their experiences with brands. And the voice of the consumer resonates more than the voice of the brand. That’s the shift Social has brought about. We have taken baby steps in Social Media Marketing and honestly speaking we have a long way to go. But this is something I am personally very excited about.

TA. As a marketer, what according to you are the key challenges for any CMO, especially for digital marketing?RL: The 3 key challenges for a CMO especially for non-digital organizations are:1. Be the Digital champion in the organization. It’s not about Digital Marketing anymore but it is about transforming your business into a Digital Business. Organizations which are not ‘Digital First’ have to make significant changes in culture, processes, and relook at their business model itself to stay competitive. The CMOs challenge is to champion this within the organization.

2. Most Marketers are engaged in Acquisition Marketing. The Digital Marketer’s job is to drive ROI, but the true test for a CMO is to use digital to drive organic growth using digital in addition to other media available to him. He has to use his overall consumer and marketing understanding to ensure that overall the brand shows growth and not just a few digital metrics.

3. The digital space is constantly evolving so it is really important for him to work with the best of specialist agencies and develop an internal team who understand tech, analytics and consumer all in the same team. It’s about creating the right culture, an attitude of constantly doing test and learn and attracting and retaining the right talent.

TA. What can be done to address the challenges?RL: The CMO is the voice of the consumer within the organization and the consumer today across categories is in the driver’s seat. He has a shorter attention span, more choices, is more empowered and can shift to another competitor at a swipe of a phone. The only solution to this is to ensure that the value proposition to the consumer is constantly enhanced and brands do enough to keep the consumer engaged. Digital Marketing is overtly focused on acquisition marketing and the focus needs to shift to Engagement Marketing.

TA. Most marketers believe that harnessing data analytics is one of the most important challenges they face. Are you also one of them and if yes, how are you dealing with the problem? Do you have in-house skills to harness data?RL: We are a data led business as to book a Meru, you need to give a phone number and the number becomes the unique consumer identifier. Our analytics team is in-house as both on the supply side to ensure that our network is constantly getting optimized and on the demand side, so that we are able to match demand and supply together, we are constantly using data. We use this data to study consumer behavior patterns and via targeted marketing influence these behavior patterns with customized communications, targeted offers etc. For example we have immediately post downloading an app given a trial voucher to enable him to take a trip using the app, done targeted promotions called ‘Happy hours’ to promote off peak hour cab usage, done promotions on current bookings to ensure that more and more consumers book on a Meru whenever they need a cab thus increasing frequency etc.

Anything that is strategic.










TA. Has big data completely altered the landscape for marketers?RL: It is still early days yet and most brands are just beginning to do data mining and using the insights for personalized/ segmented campaigns. It is important to engage with the best in the business to get learnings across categories, do test and learns and build a playbook which works best for your brand.

TA. Is it true that the emergence of the digital medium has put enormous pressure on CMOs to realign their strategy? How critical it is to be on the same page with your CEO and CTO?RL: The consumer is already Digital. The Digital medium is an opportunity to make Marketing a growth and a revenue centre with clear deliverables. It is a time bound opportunity because if you don’t digitize now, in 2-3 years it will be impossible to catch up. The CMOs job is to be the digital champion in the organization and work closely with the CTO, COO etc to help transform it.

TA. What are your marketing plans going forward? RL: We are in a very exciting category and the category in the last 12 months has become a digital business. We already find that people are substituting their personal cars one or two days a week. In the next 2-3 years we believe that the category will get totally transformed so that a second car will definitely not be required and even a first car will be seen as unnecessary. The market is still not fully organized so there is huge opportunity in getting new consumers to try out Meru, make the Meru app the first choice to book a cab and launch our services in new markets.

TA. What is your digital advertising spends? Can you give a number to it? Has it risen over the past year and if so, by how much? RL: Over 70% of our spend are digital, as we have focused on making the business into an app based one. With the market exploding, we have increased our spend and have grown largely to get consumers to try out our app. It’s a really dynamic category so we can’t give a number but we will continue investing in growing our consumer base and driving growth on the app.








































































































“It’s almost always harder to raise capital than you thought it would be, and it always takes longer. So plan for that.” – Richard Harroch, Venture Capitalist and Author

Yes, it is hard to raise capital. But, with so many investors looking to invest money in Indian start-ups, the future looks pretty bright. Acting on the toes with the recent fundraising, Bengaluru based food ordering start-up Swiggy is poised to hire more than 12,000 delivery executives in the coming months. The company has roped in funds of approximately Rs. 104 crore from venture capitalist firm Norwest Venture Partners along with Accel Partners & SAIF Partners. After expanding their office spaces to Gurgaon and Hyderabad, they are now looking to sow of seeds of operations in Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai. Currently, Swiggy has a team of more than 640 delivery executives. However, this number is set to witness a tremendous surge in coming months. Big players from the segment, Zomato and TinyOwl will be keeping a close eye on this recent development.

A brainchild of 3 budding entrepreneurs, Swiggy was founded by Birla Institute of Technology and Science alumni Sriharsha Majety and Nandan Reddy along with IIT Kharagpur graduate Rahul Jaimini. True to its vision, 'We are all about Food', Swiggy has been successful in carving out a name for themselves in a very short span of time. The company plies its trade depending on a fleet of delivery executives who pick-up orders from restaurants and deliver it to the customers. This process comes in handy as they do not follow a minimum order policy that is prevalent in other restaurants. And, to pull off a sort of Blitz Krieg type of delivery model, Swiggy' bragging rights are fast deliveries and online payments. To make sure that operations run smooth and quick, the company has a team of some of the finest managerial minds picked out of the young Indian business hotbed. The news will be welcomed with open arms by the budding executives looking to leave a mark in the food ordering industry. The training modules for on-boarding process are specifically designed to imbibe the values of fast growth and responsible execution amongst all the employees.

Last August, the senior team launched Swiggy in Koramangala, one of the largest neighborhoods in Bengaluru. It promises to deliver food in about 35 minutes. The delivery executives use smartphones and an app powered by an algorithm for an efficient way of delivering food. Consumers can also discover popular restaurants and track their food orders in real time. With so much innovation in the pipeline and investor backing, Swiggy is looking rub shoulders with the industry big players in a very quick and efficient pattern.

Bengaluru Based Start-up SwiggySet to go Big in Coming Months

By Nilotpal Chakravarti


























Public Safety Key to Becominga Smart CityMany experts have predicted that the world's urban population will double by 2050. Smart cities will continue to play a pivotal role in terms of driving the economic growth. More and more smart cities must continue to evolve to handle large-scale urbanization, increase efficiency and improve the quality of life. So, what can be done to maintain a proper balance between competitiveness and sustainability? Along with providing reliable utility services, better infrastructure and prospects to attract investments, smart cities should be able to provide transparent services to ensure security & deliver a citizen centric experience. The Modi wave that has hit India promises to set up more than 100 smart cities across the city. Investors need to pay heed to the adoption of smart solutions for efficient use of available assets & resources to deliver the vision of 100 smart cities.

In terms of delivering the perfect experience, ensuring public safety plays a very important part. Hitachi Data Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., recently released the result of a public safety survey conducted in May 2015. The outfit focuses on big data that offers real value. According to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute, The Internet of Things (IOT), in which everyday items ranging from toasters to cars to buildings and factories are all connected to the Web, could be a multi-trillion dollar market over the next decade. The platform has immense potential for companies to boost revenues and make decision-making more effective. The results of the survey suggest that technology will be able to provide cost saving benefits and efficiencies in a much better way. However, the survey also revealed that making municipalities safer for people to live should be the primary concern of individuals involved in the planning of smart cities. 44% of those surveyed expect their countries to invest more than US$100 million in public safety initiatives over the next two years. Of those investments, 24 percent are expected to be allocated toward surveillance technology, with 19 percent earmarked for big data analytics, and another 19 percent for mobile and network technology. The results suggested that the participants of the survey felt that their respective countries are struggling with crime investigation, transportation and traffic services. The segments that ranked as top priorities were public and community safety. Among the respondents, more than a quarter had a background in technology, with the remainder ranging from city mayors and corporate CEOs, to military, emergency services and infrastructure providers. Tony Field, senior director of Hitachi Data Systems’ Social Innovation Business Unit for Asia Pacific, commented, “The survey results highlight that many Asia Pacific countries are looking to implement technology solutions that can have a meaningful, measurable impact on public safety. While a willingness to invest in such solutions is apparent among respondents, the main barrier appears to be a failure to adopt an aligned and integrated approach to safety initiatives, which would allow cities to create a single holistic view of crime in their cities.”

The individuals involved in the process of the planning of the Smart Cities must take cues from these surveys to focus on adoption barriers and deliver an efficient chart plan for development. Far-flung connectivity and optimized technology will play a big role in monitoring and management of the development process of these cities. The developers must focus on Entity Analytics, Smart Surveillance and an Integrated Communication System to effectively solve local problems and provide a dream Smart City to the citizens.



Shajai JacobDirector & Head – Marketing & Communications, JLL India & West Asia

“JLL Has Its Own In-house Data Gathering &Processing Capabilities” - Shajai Jacob

















































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H E L P I N G Y O U T H I N K O N L I N E

RajeshJainFounder and

Managing Director,netCORE

June 2015 · `40 · thinkingaloud.in

Peter OllikaisenFrom Cash to Electronic Payments

Julie Woods-Moss5 Tips for Marketers

Indian Winnersat Cannes Lions

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Thinking Aloud Magazine July - 205 x 275mm copy · content strategy has to be ﬁne tuned since the output today has more in common with sales material than information. The key is