‘Brands should start investing in building trust'

Technological developments have made the world come closer and businesses are thriving on the same with opportunities and a chance to widen their horizons.

At the e4m Martech India Conference 2023, Jagdish Mitra, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Growth, Tech Mahindra, spoke about technology enabling business for progressive India as part of a keynote speech on the opportunities and challenges of a tech-led world.

 “Specifically in today’s world the opportunity for technology to impact every aspect of the world, of our lives whether it is marketing or delivery or customer service or product development, tech is no longer ERP or EDP as we used to call it earlier. Tech is integrated into everything and MarTech as a word has evolved years back because marketing and technology cannot be differentiated as they are an integral part of the opportunities with marketing lies.”

He further said what changes do marketers want to bring and as consumers what would we want to see? “In the previous discussion everyone said personalization is something that they are foraying into, tech is an enabler of the same.”

Pointing out to a growing issue that will impact businesses in the coming time, he said, “We also know that there are a few things that technology is pushing people away from, for instance, the audio devices at home are constantly listening and therefore how should one trust? A year back World Economic Forum did a study on how trust levels plateau down, and that's a big that the world is dealing with where sales and personalization are increasing by the day, and worry about data privacy and what is being sold to me through ads, is it right for me or for the brands.”

Moving on to the opportunities at hand, Mitra said: “India today is on the cusp of greatness, we have seen this growth tremendously and as the world looks at sowing down because of geo-political reasons, we see a very different India which is one of the flag bearers of growth among a few other countries. This growth is here to stay, it is not something that is a flash in the pan, it has a tremendous opportunity to grow in every aspect of business. We are not just the 5th largest growing economy in the world but the future landscape is extremely progressive of about a 29% increase in 3B household spending by 2027. We have an opportunity to capture this and this is where MarTech plays a role 33% of the population is in the group which will start to question the value of a product beyond just being personalized. What is the intent behind this personalization and how tech in India be a little more enabled in that aspect?” he asked.

Mitra also spoke about challenges. “We have a whole host of challenges, there is a significant income disparity. I was told that one of the big challenges despite our GDP growth is that 50% are worse from pre-covid to now. Therefore, the trust in the product will start to get impacted and technology should be able to enable it to do so.”

“The infrastructure gap could be physical or digital. We still have a significant population that is not able to use it otherwise but is only being used for entertainment, therefore that digital divide is constantly increasing. We have a complex regulatory environment not just government but also the disparity of business we operate in.”

While speaking about the opportunities and how India is progressing in different business areas, Mitra said, “Areas like demographic dividends have a significant opportunity like the airline companies have such a huge opportunity to grow, We have kept a large part of the global airline industry alive, there were 800 aircraft orders given from India. The urbanization, the digital literacy initiatives that we are taking in growing the economy, so the products will not only be personalized for one segment of consumers hailing from one region but it will be personalized for people hailing from the interior part of the country which are getting urbanized as we speak.”

“E-commerce is on a boom, and fintech innovation is the biggest innovation that we have seen. In terms of the payments getting innovated with the ability of voice-enabled payments, micropayments are also paving the way be it insurance, or loans, every aspect has gone to a sachet level. I think this is a leading charter for Martech to follow, if there is one vertical that Martech needs to emulate, it’s the fintech world. Startups have been a critical innovation for India’s growth of employment, and government initiatives like ONDC to grow employment. The role of tech in this is very significant”, he continued.

He further spoke about how COVID had an impact on the digital growth of the country, he said, “Companies realized during COVID that had to splurge on technology. Like the internet, COVID was the biggest inflection point of the century so far, a bad one but from a technological point, it changed the way we looked at businesses. If we look at it, if digital payments and UPI weren’t in place by then, the economy would have been in bad shape by now. Going forward there is a huge amount of opportunities to enhance efficiencies in everything and the technology around it. Gen AI, AR VR, and solutions are driving the growth. The fastest way that businesses can adopt wherein waves are being created is Gen AI. The adoption of Gen AI in every aspect and every company is thinking about how large language models can help them create data and drive innovations.”

While concluding his speech, Mitra said, “I think brands that build trust will ultimately be the longest-standing brands and the brands that actually invest in building trust will start to get succeed. As a nation we are willing to adopt technologies what we need to ask ourselves is how much are we spending time on educating customers on how to use technology.”