‘Businesses need to have a strong digital presence to grow & succeed in today’s market’

The first-ever edition of the e4m Pride of India Bharat Conference and Awards brought together leading business heads from across the country to celebrate the brands that truly help in building Bharat. The inaugural event saw nearly 175 brands being felicitated, but also a number of engaging sessions that were a meeting of the minds of leaders across different industries.

The panel moderated by Aftab Naqvi, Group CEO, Gozoop, the Business Leaders Roundtable saw the coming together of speakers Ashwinder R Singh, CEO- Residential, Bhartiya Urban; KR Nagarajan, Chairman- Ramraj Cotton, along with his son Arun Eshwar, the COO of the company; Utsav Malhotra, COO, Noise; Rishi Sharma, Vice President, Baidyanath; and Jay Bhuva, Partner- Digital, Deloitte.

While the conversations was a diverse and equally engaging one, the industry leaders primarily discussed what goes into building a brand for Bharat and how such businesses do not need to spend too much money acquiring new customers. Instead, creating and maintaining Bharat’s trust in your brand comes down to perseverance, willingness to adapt to changing market scenarios and most important of all, a solid business plan.

Starting off the session, Naqvi spoke about the encouraging signs of SMBs continuously growing their contribution to the country's total AdEx, even as digital was also growing in volume and helping grow AdEx even more. “What is especially encouraging to me is the forecast of the numbers only rising over the next four years. What’s interesting is that we’re the 9^th fastest growing market for digital ad spends in the world. And we have a great panel to take us through their strategies of how they’ve acquired customers, grown their businesses, and their many learnings over time,” he said.

Addressing how Baidyanath has been navigating the growing interest of consumers in health over the last 24 months, Sharma said this newly sparked interest had led to a complete digital transformation for the organization, whether it comes to the consumer-facing side or the business-facing side.

“Our D2C site had to be really revamped so as to provide the kind of information the customers were specifically looking for, as well as the details of various products. As an Ayurvedic brand, we had to ensure that our customers were getting the information they needed, as well as redesign our digital presence so they could also reach us in the right way,” he said, saying that this digital transformation had helped not only its existing customer base during a difficult time, but also reach out to new ones.

Eshwar said that, at Ramraj Cotton, the company never took a pessimistic view during Covid times. With nearly 200 stores all over South India being closed due to the initial lockdowns, Nagarajan's company pivoted to their e-commerce site and saw a 100% increase in sales within two months.

Also, given the large amount of fabric Ramraj Cotton had lying unutilized during the onset of the pandemic, the company, under Nagrajan’s guidance, decided to make and supply cotton face masks across the south, and Ramraj Cotton face masks became ubiquitous whether you were in a market or the Tirupati temple.

“The focus was on positivity and affordability and my father was committed towards those two things. When the consumers saw that, they in turn embraced our products. And during the Covid financial year, despite our stores being closed for four months, we grew our business by 25 percent," enthused Eshwar.

Malhotra said that for his company, Noise, which specializes in smart wearable devices, the Covid experience was very different. “We have seen that over the last 24 months so many Indians have woken up to the importance of monitoring their health that we have migrated through the funnel significantly. Now many consumers have come to not only accept, but proactively seek out the products that already existed in our portfolio.”

The panelists agreed that Covid had led to a significant amount of business moving online, as well as an increasing number of users coming on to digital platforms. And while tech and digital companies had a first-mover advantage, any business that wanted to grow and succeed in today’s market had to have a strong digital presence.

"At Deloitte we've been fortunate to be part of a great many success stories over a long period of time. During Covid times when we had all our brands coming to us, the fundamental theme that tied the outcome of their success was the why behind their brand. It was about communicating on new channels, it was about communicating new products and services, packaging and delivery,” said Bhuva, adding, “If through all of this, the ethos of your product, basically the soul of your business, is clear, consistent and well communicated - that is what helped companies survive as well as grow. Those companies who didn't manage to do that fell behind."