An evening with Mr. Peshwa Acharya | President, Group Strategy, Brightcom Group |IFHE

An evening with Mr. Peshwa Acharya, President, Group Strategy, Brightcom Group

Introduction

On Friday, Feb 25, we had a very insightful session by Peshwa Acharya, President of Brightcom. Peshwa spoke about the emerging trends in digital marketing and digital transformation. This was the 45th webinar in the ICFAI Wise Views series moderated by Prasad and Sudhakar week after week without a break.

Here is the link to the full session:

About Peshwa

Peshwa is a graduate of IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from IIM Calcutta, with over 30 years of experience in the FMCG industry. He has been instrumental in setting up and building some of India's largest brands & businesses at Procter & Gamble, Reckitt, Dabur, Reliance Retail (Reliance Digital), Sterling Holidays (Thomas Cook) and also Technology Start-ups like Housing.com. Peshwa has worked across the Indian Subcontinent, Asia and other emerging markets. Peshwa loves mentoring and also learning from young professionals. He has founded GrowthShyft (www.growthshyft.com ) to scale up his passion in Mentoring Young India and impact as many lives as he can.

About Brightcom

The Brightcom Group was founded in 2000 and headquartered in Hyderabad, India [ with offices in US, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Ukraine, Serbia, Israel, China, India, and Australia, and with representatives or partners in Poland, and Italy. Earlier known as Ybrant Technologies, the company grew rapidly aided by a series of acquisitions.

Brightcom is poised to reach sales of Rs 5000 crores in the near future, making it a very large marketing tech company with a global reach. The company accounts for some 70 billion impressions every month. With more and more companies considering themselves to be software companies, the role of technology is expanding. Brightcom sees major growth opportunities leveraging rich media innovations, video analytics, AI and ML. The company has assembled a good leadership team and also made some timely acquisitions like Media Mint. Brightcom has handled various prestigious assignments like Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza in the social media and Western Union (Programmatic display advertising).

Digitization vs digital transformation

Peshwa explained the difference between digitization and digital transformation. Converting physical documents into soft copies is the essence of digitization. This is the first step towards going digital. But digital transformation goes much further. It is about changing the business model leveraging technology.

Converting physical documents into electronic medical records is an example of digitization. But using AI and ML to make a diagnosis based on these records, is an example of digital transformation. If the base work is handled by AI, the time of doctors is freed up to do more value adding work. Similarly, chatbots can fee up the time of salespeople and allow them to focus on more important issues. (Of course, chatbots also mean that there are less sales jobs going around!) In short, digital transformation enables creation of value for customers and users in a superior way.

Netflix is a great example of successful digital transformation. The company reinvented itself from renting out CDs and DVDs to live streaming. It leveraged the cloud and put in place a technology architecture, driven by microservices, that provides a high-quality viewing experience at the time of their choice to customers across the world.

Peshwa gave the example of how during his stint in Sterling Holidays, he enabled the sales people to move from Excel sheets to the Salesforce platform. There are exciting opportunities in education, healthcare and real estate for digital transformation. Peshwa explained how a real estate company can use AR/VR to show prospective customers exactly how a sea facing apartment in Bandra will look like, including the view of the sea.

Prasad mentioned during the Q&A that in education, it is all about understanding the requirements of learners. Earlier, this was done in traditional classroom mode. Online platforms provide many more opportunities to personalize the learning and enable the students to relate their experience to conceptual frameworks. Digital media can enable learners to learn on their own, which is ultimately the objective of quality education.

Sudhakar added that AR/VR can be used to “transport” students to another location and give them the necessary information through audio/video. It provides a rich learning experience to students.

Later in the session, Sudhakar provided the example of iknife used by surgeons. It is a surgical knife, which tests tissue as it contacts it during an operation, and immediately gives information about whether that tissue contains cancer cells. During a surgery, this information is given continuously to the surgeon, significantly accelerating biological tissue analysis and enabling the identification and removal of cancer cells. The iknife becomes knowledgeable by reading medical articles. It can even scan adjacent organs to see if anything more needs to be done during the same surgery.

During the Q&A, Peshwa explained that the HR function is also undergoing digital transformation. There is a shortage of talent and the new generation wants work life balance. The pandemic because of remote working has posed serious challenges in sustaining employee engagement. In this context, digital channels will become important in HR. For example, recruitment through LinkedIn will be the preferred norm both from the point of view of accurate targeting of candidates as well as brand building. There is a lot of attrition at entry level. Digital platforms can be used to promote mentoring and reduce attrition.

Recent developments

Technology is facilitating anywhere operations. This form of working also calls for special attention to cybersecurity.

Drone technology is growing popular. It is being used in wars, emergencies, delivery of essentials to remote locations, etc.

The Metaverse will create new opportunities for marketers. The metaverse has five elements: AR/VR, Cryptocurrency, NFTs, Gaming and Social. To appreciate the metaverse, we must understand each of the five elements carefully.

Live commerce, i.e. the combination of live streaming and ecommerce will become important in some categories like Fashion and Impulse purchases.

Some companies like Apple have disabled third party cookies. Will this create problems for the online advertising companies? Peshwa believes there is no serious problem here. There will always be ways of reaching out to customers. What is more important is to eliminate spurious data and use authentic data to make predictions.

One key insight from Peshwa was that when we use digital marketing, we should be clear about the objectives: Is it for communication, engagement or sales?

Building a digital ecosystem

There are several important steps as indicated in the slide below:

Website or App
Content and Search Engine Optimization
Lead generation
Social Media
Online Reputation Management

Q&A

On Suresh Reddy’s entrepreneurial journey

Suresh took up entrepreneurship at a time when it was not the flavour of the month. He demonstrated risk taking abilities. For example, some of the acquisitions he made were fairly big. When the company was of a size of $10-15 mn, it acquired companies worth $30-40 mn. Suresh was able to look ahead. He invested in AI/ML many years back. Another lesson from Suresh is that an entrepreneur cannot afford to be depressed even when the chips are down. It is important to keep the teams motivated. Corporate executives can leave the company, but this option is not available to entrepreneurs.

On going global

Thanks to the pandemic, the term country has become a misnomer. Especially, in the tech space, there is scope to tap the global markets. One advantage for tech companies is that both India and Hyderabad have a strong global reputation as tach savvy places. Tech companies must think global and build on the India advantage.

On the potential for digital advertising

Digital advertising is growing at 35%. It will soon make up 50% of the total advertising market. Outdoor advertising is likely to take a hit while television may sustain itself for a little while. A lot of digital consumption (75%) happens over mobile. Mobile internet penetration among rural farmers (70%) is as high as in urban areas.

The market can be expanded further by taking note of some emerging trends. There is a lot of demand for vernacular content. Video analytics and digital audio content are growing in importance. Since people want specialized information, podcasts are gaining in popularity. Customers are looking for both global and local information.

Start-ups should use only digital marketing as it is far more economical and effective. Legacy businesses should first set up an online business and then venture into digital marketing. Large companies which are trying to pivot from traditional to digital marketing should be clear about the outcomes. For example, if the outcome expected is higher sales, the emphasis should be on getting quality leads and converting them into phone calls and maybe meetings if needed. Of course, to get good leads, quality talent is necessary.

Peshwa emphasised that in order to get results after identifying the objective (whether brand communication or brand engagement or brand sales), it is important to spend a good amount of time to craft the digital strategy well before execution. If one can get users to download an app of the brand and engage, the chances of funnel conversion are much higher.

On the role of influencers

We tend to be carried away by the biggies, i.e. the Bollywood stars and cricketers. It is more effective to rope in micro influencers. We should use key opinion leaders who can stand up for the product they are endorsing. We must spend the money wisely!

We thank Dr. Vedpuriswar for bringing out the highlights in the form of this note