 As I told you that this is going to be followed by a one-on-one interaction It's now time for this session and the topic of the session is going to be lips move But we don't hear what they are saying the need to listen to your users and The session will be taken by Mr. Shankar. Now. He's a senior VP marketing paytm Shankar has more than 15 years of experience in the financial services space and consumer marketing in India a Graduate of st. Stephen's College and I am in the bath He has served in organizations such as GSK consumer healthcare city financial and Aviva life insurance Prior to joining paytm He worked as a head of marketing and direct for ICICI lombard general insurance so ladies gentlemen Please put your hands together and welcome mr. Shankar Nath on stage Good evening and a very warm welcome to you. Hi. Good evening. I Think this is the last session. So thankfully we'll get over with it very quickly So in fact yesterday Jyotsana and I were talking and we couldn't come up with Good title. So we just copied from a pink Floyd number and try to put it here and Basically what I'll try and talk about for the next 10 15 minutes is a little bit about What we are seeing? overall Within the paytm context as well as in society in terms of some of the changes that are happening and how it's become very important to Kind of notice Observe that trend take some actions to to kind of exploit that particular trend because if you don't You one can become obsolete very very quickly and this is especially true on the mobile and on the technology front and Thus what becomes very important is that one needs to listen and observe both at a macro level and at a micro level And I want to distinguish between these two with the with a couple of examples on the macro front Today we see and there are lots of industries where We are seeing this that there's a lot of disruption which is happening and I over the last half an hour or so of course talked about what's happening with Netflix Uber Ola and The on-demand services right primarily because Everyone's moving towards that, but it has taken a lot of time for the incumbents whoever is there to kind of notice this trend and take action and When you don't you can easily become obsolete because the paranoia which is there Which needs to be there for the incumbents is perhaps missing now just just as an example today I was talking about Appointment viewing on TV. It's gone. Okay, but group M. Maybe still still talks about it and lot of us spend a lot of money on it So which is fine, but and so where do we get the so what do we do? So essentially what we then need to do is try and see alternatives Which exist like today as a market here if I still start spending keep spending all my money on on soaps That that I'm not being able to reach that particular person So what we have tried as as as a counter to that perhaps is take up sports in a very very big way and Perhaps that is the only real-time content which which people watch and there's no Even if you want to watch on hotstar If you are present on the field then you will still get the user the user will still see you So those trends you have to kind of notice and be and Take steps so that you know where the puck is moving and you don't kind of stagnate at one particular place now That is at a macro level because any stray bullet can come and hit any Organization and very soon in in about a year's time you may you may become redundant But at the micro level what what do we do? What do tech companies do to kind of observe what their users are saying and I give you a very Specific example which which concerns ptm today. We have about 12 13 crore of people who have downloaded our app Okay, and About five four four to five crore people at least use it once a day. That's a significant number But what we have realized is that there is an upper ceiling that we are going to reach very soon Because our app is primarily in English now when we look at Whatever is happening on social media All the face we have very active forums on beat Facebook Instagram Twitter, whatever, right? And when we go through that we see a lot of people who are using the app in English, right? But whatever they are writing in in terms of whether they like the app or they faced a particular problem Everything is essentially in their mother tongue But written in the English script now if you you as a marketer need to see that and clearly clearly understand that if you don't go vernacular in India Over the next two years you will you will hit a ceiling There's no way you can grow only with English beyond a particular point now those trends are very obvious right at a societal level Also, you will realize that because of data consumption of democratization So many people are now on the mobile and they're consuming content, but that content is primarily being consumed in the vernacular language So if you as as a marketer or as a product guy in a technical company Do not take enough steps to have vernacularization of your content or of the process product flow Then then then you are in a little bit of a problem The other thing which we are seeing today and one of the reasons why perhaps We have been able to establish ourselves as a brand and and I go back three years back So when we saw on we were we are very active on Twitter, right? And then we saw a lot of people who used to say that all these brands run consumer promotions, right? All the big big FMCG brands run consumer promotions where somebody is giving a Bucket free somebody is giving a bowl free. They're different I mean free items which are being kind of given right and we saw three four consumers who said that you know Whatever is being given to me does it's not important. It's not useful. Why can't I get something like a mobile recharge or? Like paytm cash now That is just an isolated comment, which perhaps if you don't listen very carefully You will ignore or you may not you may choose to not act upon it But the moment we saw that we kind of sense that there is perhaps a little opportunity if we talk to a lot of brands And we say that whenever you are running consumer promotions Why don't you use paytm or use us as the gratification tool? because Mobile recharge or or or paytm cash is almost a currency. It's relevant to 90% of your people. It's a digital gratification So you will know who are the users who redeem that and we will subsidize you at the cost of your promotion The brand loved it, which is which is great because their users They would get far more data in terms of who would use it and on top of that the brand would also advertise It is great for us because it helped us acquire new users it helped us being on helped us be on television all the time and We at least were able to make an Inroad into the branding space because at that time we didn't have too much money The thing is that this particular approach would just not have been there for us If we were not listening to a few isolated consumers on the social media space So there are lots of nuggets of wisdom and I think we as marketeers or many of us get so Closely bogged down with the kind of work with the kind of campaigns that we need to do We tend to ignore or spend far less time with our customer service people than we should do I mean, I know lots of organizations insist that Every marketing person or every all people in key departments at least spend one day in their customer service floor Now many of them do it as a tick mark I don't know whether the intent is there always, but if you really want to listen I think that's the best because that's where you get raw data You just get to know what is going on and that's the moment of truth. You may have done a fantastic Product like like what happens with us is we keep launching different various. I mean different use cases, right? And then there are people who are saying that because of this unnecessary step that you have put I could not complete my transaction. So we kind of Monitor the user flow very very closely and very very consciously, right? And then we have realized that even one extra step that we may have in this transaction flow Will essentially mean a 10% drop off now on a big base. That's a very very big number in terms of absolute numbers. So we kind of Really look at this particular user flow, which is coming because there are lots of consumers who keep writing back to us Saying that I got stuck here. I got stuck here. I got stuck here. I need to remove all those Barriers or obstacles because it's at least till a year back the data connectivity was not good data was expensive Now it's of course almost free, but on low-end handsets Most of us here would have an iPhone or very expensive Android phone. It doesn't matter to us But when you are in a tier three town on a five thousand rupee phone, which is just somehow hooked on to the internet If your app or or or the product which you are providing in terms of transactions is taking one extra step means 10% of our users are gone because of that additional step. So those things we need to kind of really Listen in and and observe but the same time. I think There's also a little word of caution that that we need to have Which is that there is a lot of chatter on social media and a lot of chatter on the digital space It's it's very easy for someone to get a bit too carried away with something which may not really be useful But then we leave it to the marketer's judgment and maturity to kind of work on Which are the three or four different things that he really needs to see and then take concrete actions on the basis of that And ignore the rest and that that judgment I think comes with a little bit of experience with a little more time That you may spend in that particular sector just to give another example of Being able to to listen in so when When we launch these products, right? They were there were instances where There would be a customer who would be saying that, you know, I do x y z But I need to pay an electricity bill of my state electricity board But you are not providing that service now It's almost on that basis you can quantify and say that amongst these 15 electricity boards that I need to go And tie up with which is the first one that I go So because that kind of quantitative feedback is almost coming in from customers who are writing into you or for that matter today, I mean Many people use Paytm to pay at shops and you know by by a packet of mail by whatever I mean, we are trying our best to make People use that it's it's habit. It's a bit of habit formation It's it's it's a big change because everyone about 95 97% of the transactions happen in cash in this country So it's not easy. So the but what we have done with our in with our users We are essentially telling we have run campaigns where we have told our users that if there is any particular Outlet where you would like to pay with Paytm, but people are not except but it's not being accepted Why don't you inform us rather than this other push process where there's a big distribution force Which goes out into the market and then tries and sign up signs up everyone. That's that's very cumbersome Instead of that, you know, here are these shops here in in in the gk2 market. Let's say there are 500 shops out of which 20 customers are telling me that in these 10 shops I am not being able to pay with your particular payment instrument now that feedback coming in to us through social mode or through any digital mode is far more useful than an army of people trying to go and sign up all The other 500 shops because I know that in those other 480 shops. Maybe there is not enough demand in any case so these kind of things I think are very important from a from a marketer's perspective and Once we do all of this well it can have significant inputs both into the distribution and into the product development and delivery So that is that is one part the the other thing I think which which is today become very very important for all all people in the marketing Fraternity is that earlier on when we started working right we would have one annual plan We would have two or three campaigns in a year and we'd be very happy with it But today the the situation itself is so so dynamic for us that The annual planning process is redundant. It's useless because there is a plan which happens almost once every month There are different categories that you may be fighting for fighting in there are different competitors that may be coming in so if you really just Focus only on a very very rigid One-year marketing plan then Chances are that by the time you go to the market the market has moved on to come something completely different So I think we as marketers also need to change our mindset a little bit and I see a lot of people in this room Who might have worked for 15 years because 15 years Is a long time and I think the market is completely changed But we still have a particular tendency to work in a pretty straight-jacketed manner and Essentially do things the way we have always done before and I think it's it's changed completely It's a set of new tools which are there in the market it's it's necessary for us to be far far more agile and Take decisions in an instant rather than you know relying on market research Which maybe takes two to three months for you to come for it to come on board and And by the time the results have come the market has moved on something else So broadly I mean what essentially I am trying to say here on the on the listening listening in front and and the fact that there is the The scope the scale of change and the pace of change has become so much That if you don't listen to what the people are saying across all your distribution across all your channels Then there is a very very Good chance that some stray bullet or some Development in the industry will come and make you completely Obsolete and that's the paranoia that all marketers like us need to have to survive. Thank you