 I would like to invite on stage our session chair, Mr. Avik Chathopathay, co-founder and partner Xperial to please join me on stage. Good morning and a very warm welcome to you, Avik. A quick introduction of Avik. He has been in the automobile, automotive and oil and gas industry for 22 years, part of five memorable product and brand launches, headed a global brand consulting firm in India for a year. Since December 2014 have co-founded a brand strategy and solutions practice called Xperial to partner organizations, institutions, places and ideas in value creation. Ladies and gentlemen, now I will be inviting on stage our panelists for this session. Mr. Amit Sethia, Head Marketing SISCA Group, Aayushman Cherenwala, Head Marketing Fast Track, B. Krishna Rao, Senior Category Head, Parley Products, Gul Bahar Tarurani, Director, Marketing and Business Head, Philips India, please pardon me. And Mr. Srinivas Rao, Senior VP Marketing, Lifestyle International. Ladies and gentlemen, this is your panelist and Mr. Avik is going to be the moderator. Over to you, sir. Okay, thank you, thank you everyone for being here and thank you everyone for what you're going to do for the next half an hour, 40 minutes. The subject is very interesting and what will really make it interesting is that we have people from stalwarts and leaders in the marketing field from different industries. So we have Srinivas Rao from Lifestyle and we all know what Lifestyle does. They want us to go to Lifestyle every day and buy more and more things. And we have Gul from Philips. Again, a great brand, terrific legacy, huge heritage. Sad that you guys lost in the Champions League in Eindhoven. Okay, then we have Mr. Krishna Rao from Parley. We've all grown up on Parley products, different types, different categories and we still continue growing up on them. We have Ayushman from FastTrack, great brand, again, terrific legacy, terrific heritage and he belonged to one of India's most respected brands as a group. And interestingly, we have Amit from a new brand, which again is a pioneer in its own area, okay, Cisco. And we've all heard of Cisco. They've become possibly one of the most, you know, I would say in terms of recall, one of the most recalled brands when it comes to certain specific product categories. The subject is very interesting for today's discussion, which is how can marketing drive the personalization game at scale. So we as a group are discussing on this and three words are important here and that's what we really discuss. The first is drive, which is, does marketing as a function, is it still expected to drive or is it expected to actually facilitate? Okay, second is personalization. Okay, what really is personalization? And we have people from different industries for whom personalization actually means different things. It could be in the B2B space, it could be in the B2C space and we'll actually get a little bit more into that. And lastly, what do we really mean by scale? Okay, a scale of 1, a scale of 1 million, a scale of, you know, 100 crore people. So I'll start off actually with Amit, right? And Amit, according to you, what really is personalization? How would you define it? I think to be honest, it seems, you know, maybe personalization is something that has, you know, come in the scene, maybe, you know, a year or two back or whatever. I think for me, as a customer, I think I always had this personalization maybe even 20 years back, I think, and maybe an easy example is maybe my grocery vala. I think he exactly knew what my requirements were and I think that was quite an experience for me at that point in time to say that, okay, fine, I'm being pampered, I'm being addressed, right? And now, thanks to the digital, you know, developments that we had, you know, coming in, I think the whole meaning and experience has just changed drastically. So for me, I think if I have to put, you know, an easy way, what personalization is for me, I think it's an approach towards customer engagement and with a lot of relevance, with a lot of till and message, and I think that, you know, that increases my satisfaction as a consumer. Interesting. Aishwarya, for you, how would you really differentiate or is there a differentiation between personalization and customization? Yeah, it's a good question, and I think I'm sufficiently confused when it comes to personalization and customization and pre-conversation. You're trying to reach at that, but I'll still try and attempt, right? I think certainly when it's like an N equal to one kind of a solution, certainly the customer feels its personalization, right? And most retailers and most customers here or most companies want a solution ideally for their customers like that, right? While customization, possibly it's slightly more mass, and having said that, of course, and once we later on discuss, we'll realize that how N equal to one is great on paper but not relevant and not practical for most industries, and hence we end up making cohorts of customers and then targeting them and treat that as personalization today. But I think as technology involves, as cost of reaching customers gets cheaper, we will reach a situation when N will truly equal to one. So when what you see to what Amit sees would be extremely targeted, different from most of the companies. So yeah, I think that's the broad difference for me between the two, and that's more on the communication side. Of course, there's a product, the production side as well, which is the product side, right? When we're supplying products, yeah, so that's... So for lifestyle as a brand, okay? Say when you are given the word personalization, what does it really imply in your business every day? So we sell fashion apparel and watches and footwear, right? Personalization, like some of my friends already mentioned, it's knowing your customer absolutely intimately, right? So using past data that you actually have, so we have about 5 million active customers in our database, which means 5 million customers are actively shopping with us every single year and that number is only growing, right? So now how do I know each one of those customers in terms of what they've bought and then using some intelligence to predict what they would actually buy and when they would buy, right? So if I'm able to kind of create models that are able to predict what your next move will essentially be and if I'm able to engage with you on a one-on-one basis, that to me is the holy grail for personalization, right? And I think like we were discussing backstage, each of us are at a different point in the journey of achieving personalization at scale. It's interesting you say that because now I'll come to Parle, okay? For Parle, for you, I think personalization for you has a lot of ramifications and manifestations when it actually comes to B2B because while lifestyle might have 5 million customers, you will have 500 million customers. So for you, personalization might actually be at a different point in your value chain. Can you just share with us? Yes. Well, because we as a brand is a very, very mass in nature. So also India has not really reached in terms of personalization to the level to reach such a mass number. So for us, personalization is more to do with B2B. So say for example, so we've been doing and we've been talking about, let's say, localization earlier. Say for example, a brand like in CPG, a brand like Bistleria actually has been trying to do a lot of localization. So in terms of, so every state, they have been naming their brand in the local language. So that's been more of like customization or localization from a market perspective. In our case, so we've had always been offering a lot of customized products for various markets. So for example, Bengal or East in general behaves very, very difficult as far as biscuits consumption is concerned. So rest of the country consumes a lot of glucose biscuits, but West Bengal as a market consumes a lot of Amari biscuits. So we tend to offer a very, very differentiated offering for a market like West Bengal. So likewise, so that's one aspect of like making it a localized offering. In terms of personalization, so there are two ways to look at it. One is say in terms of B2B. So we do a lot of personalized offerings to a lot of our distributors. So what is it that a distributor wants? Not all distributors want the same products. So can we actually personalize his offerings? Can we give him personalized schemes, offers, etc.? The other aspect is as far as let's say modern retail is concerned. So we have a lot of chains here operating and so we might actually during the beginning of a year, during our joint business plan meets, we might actually collaborate and come up with an exclusive offering for a particular chain. Let's say a 500 gram pack for a particular chain for a period of exclusive, for a period of one month, three months, one year or so, and thereafter extended to all other chains and so on and so forth. And that has really yielded us brilliant results actually. It's really working. Okay, good. You know, we've been, we've heard this talk of, you know, we have a lot of data. We need to process the data. Then we apply certain filters. We use a lot of AI and then we go back to our customers and we try to predict and also help in their future buying processes or future processes. Where is the thin line between helping and intruding? Which is the balance between personalization and actually impinging on your personal space. I think the most difficult thing to do, right? I think if one thing that we can get a solution for is this. And why I say so, if you look at the topic personalization for us, we need to first decode the meaning of the personalization and then we come to the data and how do we distinguish. Actually personalization could be in many forms, but the ultimate goal of personalization is to make the recipient feel that this is for me. And that's why it is personalization, right? Personalization could be writing a person's name on a product or making him a part of the group which he believes in or, you know, communicating to him in a way which makes sense to him. So there are different forms. Now if this is the variety and then you have a data, data tells you a lot about the consumer, but still there are certain cultural personal things that they remain. So technology helps us to dissect the data and reach out to a conclusion of demographics and where we whom we want to talk. But once you reach out to the consumer, you actually come to know what he or she wants. And I think that's the space where you need to draw that fine line. Because just having a tool and just having a general assessment that this is how I am going to reach out to a particular set of people may or may not work. That's when once you get the first experience, you realize, you come back and then see what's the line that you need to draw and how you need to facilitate and not intrude. Yeah, you're right. Srinee, from your own personal experience, one terrific experience or personalization that you would want to share with us and not to do with lifestyle? What I have experienced or what I've read about. Ideally what you've experienced. Okay. I wouldn't call it terrific, but at least these are things that brands in India are actually doing. If any one of us has hired Ola Prime, what essentially happens is if you've played music on the console that they have, and when you get back next time, you actually start from where you left. So they exactly know. In fact, it's kind of customized. It's not that classified as terrific, but just kind of to tell you that brands have started doing personalization and at scale. I'm sure Ola must be ferrying millions of customers across the country. But the fact that they're able to kind of use technology to kind of customize this music experience for me when I get into a cab is I think a good move by a brand that I have personally experienced. But there are many, many other stories across the world where brands have really done a very, very good job. The other one that I have personally experienced is Netflix. Netflix says for those of you who do not know, they are very, very complex but very, very good algorithms to kind of assess what kind of content you watch. And I'm told that more than 80% of content that actually gets watched is based on the recommendation, which is extremely good. And the way they do it, it's a very fascinating algorithm. And if you have the time, you should just Google it and kind of read through the Netflix's recommendation algorithm. Interesting examples. Ayushman? So I'll take some offline examples. And I think Starbucks does it really well, right? So you actually go to Starbucks and you have a personalized coffee because they write a name on the cup and you can actually walk away with it, right? So they do it globally and completely no technology used. It's just people. It's training. And they leave you with the experience that no other coffee shop can own anymore, right? So that's one. I think Amazon, of course, is a great example. The predictive model that Amazon uses is legendary now, okay? And it's just so intuitive that people just tend to go back to Amazon because you feel they understand you better, right? I think, yeah, so one is a tech example. One is a non-tech example. I think the point is that personalization is very much possible depending on the business you are in and at the scale you would want to achieve as long as you know the nuance or what your customer wants, right? So even in retail for us, we use a lot of our people, okay, to actually have last-mile personalization and we empower them, right? In ways which is really not tech, okay? So tech is not enabling it at all. It is empowerment in people today that is enabling it in some sense in the 600 odd watch stores that we have that's run by the company. Similarly, in the online space, it's completely tech, okay? So if you go into a fast-track.in, it's a completely tech-first personalization game that we play. That's an important point that you raise, that personalization does not necessarily mean tech-led, okay? Relevance is extremely important. Gul, would you share an example from your personal life, a memorable experience of personalization that you've had? So I think, and many of the audiences will agree with me, the whole campaign of Maggie, my story, was a brilliant exercise of getting the personal experience and the brand together, okay? So there was a brand, there was an offering and there was this entire country which used to, you know, which got used to the Maggie, you know? And then certainly after a few years, you realize that how to make it more personal to you and by actually influencing the consumers to come up and share their stories, Maggie became more personal to people because it's always good to, you know, share. The second thing, so this was more from a communication point of view and how you engage with the consumers. The second thing is, the second example which is very, very generic and I believe that also gives you a facet of personalization, is personalization is what all you can control and banking apps is one of the examples which I see. It's a very, now we are getting used to it but it's actually personalization because today I have my bank with me so I don't have to physically go to a branch, I don't have to transact there but that's, I think these are the things which add value. One is on the emotional thing and that's the other one is on the transactional front which actually helps you connect with the brand. Amit? I think I'm a very difficult person to get impressed, you know, that easily I think. But if at all if I have to put an example I think maybe for me one part is personalization and second would be can I share my personal experience with others I think and that's the second aspect for me and I think maybe FB one, you know, is one classic example for me, you know, it keeps on creating those memories for me and getting it personalized in terms of what was the experience for me, what was the journey for me, maybe in last couple of months and last couple of years and do I want to still go ahead and share that personal experience. I think that's the only part I want to talk about as of now. Mr. Krishna Rao. Well, I've had a very interesting personalization experience. So I've been shopping on big basket and groofers for quite some time now and for cooking as a medium. So I've been searching for a brand. Actually it's a Gujarat based brand called Gulab, Gulab Groundnut Oil. And I went on to go groofers and I searched for it but I could not find it and I had to go offline and buy it. But surprisingly, so after about 3-4 months is when I started getting a lot of pop-ups during various interactions on the mobile. So probably gaming and all, I started getting banners saying that Gulab is now available. So which means the kind of algorithms you are talking about say Ola. So Uber has got one strong algorithm built in. I felt really quite impressed with groofers wherein actually they were able to determine that there was a consumer who was really wanting a particular brand. This is not really a national brand, mind you. And this brand was made available. So this was really a pleasant offering and personalization example for me. We cannot forget Google in our lives. If you're talking about personalization, just wanted to make that point and not really elaborate. I think all of us have experienced how spooky it could be and how useful it could be at the extreme ends. And the kind of information they actually have about you and they're able to personalize everything. Today when I check in, I send my boarding card to my Gmail ID and it actually promptly alerts me. That is immense personalization. I mean I forgot to really add that. And I do not know if any of you all have subscribed to it. It sends me a monthly calendar in terms of it tells me every single day where I've been and the number of cities visited, number of countries visited, everything in our dashboard. Yeah. And Sriniv, I'm sure you'll be happy to know even the Pentagon knows that. So there's obviously a fine line as to how much am I giving away about what the world should know about me. So how much am I willing to be a slave to a larger system vis-a-vis, you know, what I would really want to do myself. And I'll share one example of personalization that I experienced. Not directly, but functionally. So when I started working, my first job was in Maruti. And I still remember it was, I think, 8.30 or 9 o'clock in the plant in Gurgaon in the engineering hall. You know, people don't have rooms in Maruti. You just sit in a hall, a large hall. Okay. And there was just one light which was on there. And I saw the director engineering, Dr. Krishan Kumar. He was there. He was working. And what he was doing is he would address all the letters that came on a daily basis. So his PA then would actually type them out on a network computer, right? Take the printouts. And Dr. Saab, as everybody called him, used to personally write in his, with his own fountain pen, would write the name of the customer and sign his name. Now for a person to do that 365 days a year, okay, that was the personal touch. Because his, his stenographer or his assistant could have easily typed the name of the customer also. That to me was a great, great learning and personalization. Okay. A company needn't have done that. But the fact that if I have complained to you as a customer and a letter comes back, firstly from the director of engineering and then with your name actually written by hand to me, it was a great example and also a learning of what personalization is. But at the end of the day, yeah, you need to draw because all of us, I mean all of you, not me anymore, but all of you are running businesses. Okay. You have targets to meet. Somebody has to meet daily targets. Somebody has to meet quarterly targets. Where do you draw the fine line in between trying to go too much into this esoteric world of personalization and customer centricity vis-a-vis business goals and sustainability and profitability. Let's start with you Srini. I mean it's a, it's a, it's a really debatable topic and obviously, you know, there is no one correct answer. But obviously all of us are responsible marketers. I mean, that's for sure. And, you know, personalization is not about, you know, stealing data and selling it to somebody. Personalization is not about bombarding you, you know, with promotional messages because I want you to somehow come and buy. Personalization is about intimately understanding. The word intimate is very, very important, right? When you intimately know somebody, you're not going to harass them, right? So I think most of us, at least the popular brands and I can speak for people here, is I think we're largely responsible marketers and we've got certain targeting principles. And we have certain metrics that we kind of follow. We do not go and harass the customers. But at the same time when you communicate, the fact that you're able to strike a chord with the customer helps better metrics. For example, a personalized e-mailer's open rate would be three times the open rate of a normal e-mailer, right? A personalized SMS with a bit.ly, you know, has about 20% open rate and a non-personalized SMS without, I mean, with a bit.ly will have about 2% open rate, right? That's the kind of incremental benefit that you actually get for the same amount of messaging that you're actually currently doing, right? Therefore, personalization does not necessarily mean that I communicate more often to you. Personalization could definitely mean that I communicate more effectively to you, right? So without actually increasing the number of times I contact you, I'm able to drive better returns on the investment. Amit, what would make personalization sustainable for Cisco as a brand? I think cracking personalization at stage one is not a very difficult task, you know, because, you know, it's a wow factor that ultimately happens, maybe, you know, across the counter for any customer in my business. But my bigger worry is, or my bigger concern is that who is taking the responsibility of the customer information? How do you ensure that, you know, it doesn't end, you know, irritating the customer on the other side? Because in my case, there are a lot of stakeholders which are involved in ensuring that, you know, the customer is getting what he's looking out for. So as a brand, maybe, there is only this much that I can, you know, sort of go and convince my customer with that, hey, listen, I'm not going to irritate you any longer, or maybe as, you know, other panelists are talking about that, you know, we will ensure that, you know, you're safe enough. But I think when it comes to the stakeholders, and I must tell you, I think no offense to anybody, I think Indians are basically very, very jugadu, you know, and I think I'm not against jugadu, but, you know, at least, you know, let us make that jugadu very, very relevant, you know, and I think that's where I would expect that the thin line should be drawn, I guess. So for us, I think we have just started putting the piece together, but dillidoor heavy, you know. Gul, is personalization, I mean, in this entire race and this, say, in this manic obsession of personalization, are we creating a Frankenstein? Pardon, sorry? Are we creating a Frankenstein? I mean, are we creating a kind of an amorphous monster which at some point of time will be very, very difficult to manage and handle, will grow out of control? See, I think that depends on how responsible we are, and I think, you know, jugadu is one side of it, but Indians are very, very responsible that way. And I completely agree with Rao what is not the frequency, but the effectiveness. So it's something not like marketeers have decided to get the personalization done. It's the consumer need. The consumer wants the relevant data to be shared with them. They want us to add value. They want us to help them, to facilitate them in their buying decision and all. So that's the requirement of the day. Now, and also there is an ecosystem which will level you out if you are not responsible. So I am not worried about that. I am only worried that how effective we are, and we don't waste much of our time and irritate consumers, but we do our homework well. If the homework is in place, I think we will make sense. Mr. Krishna Rao, again, given the nature of the business that you're in, do you think it is, do you think technology and the personal touch, or the last mile human touch is evenly balanced, or do you think over a period of time because you deal with customers of all ages and of all cultural backgrounds. Do you think consumers are becoming slightly more vocal and more protective about how much technology and how much emotion? I think there has to be a fine balance. While we all know that 2016 was a revolutionary year with data becoming really cheaper, and subsequently, I would term that as a year of geo, and 17 the year of others, like Airtel, Voda, IDI, everyone joined the bandwagon, and we have seen an explosion of smartphones, and hence greater usage of technology as such. There is somewhere a fine line, actually, that consumers are themselves somehow alienating. Generally, there were times when the entire family used to sit together and watch television shows from there on to now the evolution of OTT platforms, and things getting very, very personal. So while I would say, yes, technology is exploding, and yes, consumers are getting what they are seeking, at the same time, I think emotions are very, very important. They would always remain as marketers will have to always maintain a fine balance between both the emotions and the technology part of it. Ayushman, your last views on is personalization a science or an art? I think it's both partly, right, and like I explained. Choose one. So I would say it's more science, okay, and given the topic, at scale it's more science. If you want to really achieve personalization at scale, you will really need to use a lot of scientific tools to be able to do that, right? And I think if you ask me in that journey as a country or even as the entire business model, we are possibly in the first version of it right now, okay? There's a lot to learn. There's a lot to learn how to do it profitably. There's a lot of systems and processes which are getting set up. I mean, the GDPR laws and EU is the beginning of it, right? You will see that very soon happening across the globe, even in India. We have already started that data protection is a big thing. We want people to move the servers within the country. Okay, data cannot be flowing out. It's just about time and laws come in on how much of data that you have of the customer you can use, you know, and you need specific permissions. So those are the things that have already started. And I think as marketers it's going to get significantly more challenging, but yet I think it's going to get more meaningful for the customer, okay? Because currently, I mean, if you are really not in a D&D, the number of SMSs you receive is just outstandingly crazy, you know? I mean, I personally have stopped reading them, okay? So unless it's from somebody I know, I would not read them. And this is after me registering twice on D&D, okay? So it's a gray area right now, right? And yeah. Okay, thanks a lot, gentlemen, for sharing your views with all of us here on the subject of, you know, how does marketing drive personalization, the personalization game at scale? To me, I mean, what I take away from what you shared with us is, yes, personalization is the way forward. It is an art and a science. You need to maintain a fine balance. And to ensure that it is profitable and sustainable, you need to be relevant. You need to be humble. You need to be honest. And I guess at the end of the day, you need to be really sincere, okay? To this entire, let's say, the practice of personalization. I know I thank all of you once again, and I throw the session open to any questions that people might have, to any of them. Okay, so thank you very much once again, and thank you for being patient with us. Ladies and gentlemen, sorry we'll be taking these questions offline. I request all our panelists to please stay back. I would request Mr. Alok Shrivastava, business head North and East of Vitakan Group to please come and join me on stage to give a token of appreciation to our moderator and to all our panelists. Ladies and gentlemen, I request you to please stay back. We have Mr. Alok Shrivastava, a business head from Vikatan Group to handle a token of appreciation to all of you all. Thank you so much for taking our time and joining us. Ladies and gentlemen, for me and for my... Can I know that you all are here with me in the room? Yes? Can I hear a yes and a no? I just want to know that we all are awake and we are here with our mind, body and soul. Can I please hear a yes from all of you all? For a strict teacher, I'm just here...