‘The next 200 million consumers will be very different from the previous ones’

With the world becoming digitally savvy, several retail and traditional players have ventured into the online e-commerce arena while adopting different technologies to reach consumers for a better ROI. To explore more of this world, the e4m Screenage Conference held an enlightening discussion with various industry leaders who came together to discuss their e-commerce journeys.

The session was moderated by Harshil Karia, Founder, Schbang. The panellists were Pallavi Chopra, CMO, Redbus; Priyanka Bhargav, Senior Director - Marketing & Research Head, Flipkart; Sreekanth Chetlur, Chief e-commerce Officer, Shoppers Stop; Dolly Davda, Head - Marketing, BookMyShow; Surbhi Gupta, Head - Digital, Grasim Paints, Aditya Birla Group; Francis Rodrigues - SVP E-commerce & Digital Marketing, HDFC Life.

The conversation started with data and consumers, and how business holds onto them. Rodrigues spoke about the various technologies they use to bring all the data together and emphasized that all the data has to be in one place. He said, “The starting point should be having your customer data in one place. The second is to extract the data and visualize it.”

Taking the conversation forward, Davda of BookMyShow said they try to segment users and give them suggestions based on their interests. “There are signals that help us cross-sell and segment the customer.”

Meanwhile, Chopra of Redbus spoke about CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost). “How do you manage CAC at sale? I want to look at this question differently, the way we are going to look at this question is for every marketer, the holy grail is new users, repeat customers, and reducing CACs. There are many factors we look at when it comes to CAC reduction - the timing of my campaign and intervention. I am better off being present during demand times. The second is - choosing the market. Sometimes high CAC may not be a bad thing if it’s an emerging market because I want to grow the business in these markets.”

Moving forward, Karia asked if the phenomena of ‘Two Indias’ still exists. Bhargav of Flipkart said, “There has been a change in the cultural discourse of India, we have been hearing and learning about it. Earlier it used to be India vs Bharat. But it is important to us to win in many Indias. The contextualization of the same comes from - if I were to cohortize by just the demographics, there has been a shift in women and GenZ, they have shifted from the value quadrant of protectionism, conformity, and tradition into more of hedonism, and indulgence. There is a general feeling that - where I came from will not define where I will go.”

“We see that the top 200 Million consumers are very different from the next 200 Million consumers. I'm just going by the N minus one rule here the next 200 million potential customers for e-commerce in India are more vernac and more older, they are more T3 and Rural, there are more women and that's a very important aspect to remember.”

She also added, “The second is in terms of Metro and non-metro. Nearly 70% of revenues for the e-commerce at large come in from the tier 2 plus towns. Millennials were ruling the roost when it came to adopting newer technologies like e-commerce but now it is the GenZs. 91% of the youth is now influencing the decision-making in the household.”

Chetlur of Shoppers Stop spoke about their online journey and said that their consumers are very digital savvy, which is why they had to have an online presence. Talking about First Citizen, a customer loyalty programme that the brand has, he said, “We have the oldest loyalty programs and 70-75% of our revenue comes from the same. It became very important for us.”

Gupta of Grasim Paints also spoke about their new venture under the umbrella of the Aditya Birla Group and shared how it is an advantage for them to start now as they are aware of the various nuances. She said, “We have set everything right from scratch be it marketing or technology, it is an advantage to us because we know what is working for the market and what is not.”