Latest news with #ETBrandWorldSummit2025
Time of India
22-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Real Time Actionable Insights For Personalisation In the Age of AI: ETBWS 2025
Today, marketing is about enabling customers to find the products that best match their profiles. Customer data is allowing marketers to deliver personalised campaigns at scale. However, the volume of data generated in recent years has grown at an exponential rate. Meanwhile, marketing organisations have remained the same size or, in some cases, have even shrunk due to economic pressures. Marketers are quickly realising that, for personalisation to become the cornerstone of their customer strategies, they must implement AI-driven automation. At the seventh edition of the ET Brand World Summit 2025 , a panel of marketing leaders gathered to reflect on a defining imperative of modern brand building: personalisation in an AI-driven world. The session, titled 'Personalisation in the Age of AI: Real-Time Actionable Insights 2.0', featured insights from Shiv Kumar, chief data and analytics officer, L'Oréal India; Nishant Kedia, CMO, Rebel Foods; Maneesh Mittal, senior vice president, Reliance Brands; Kavita Jagtiani, CMO, L&T Finance; and Gagandeep Gadri, EVP and global managing director, frog, part of Capgemini Invent. The discussion was chaired by Devesh Gupta, content lead for product and community, ETBrandEquity. The focus in marketing has shifted from creativity as a siloed domain to creativity as a democratised capability, unlocked by AI but driven by the quality of human input. 'The system is available to everyone, but the real art lies in how you use it,' stated Kumar. 'Prompting is not just science, it's creativity. With AI in our hands, ideation becomes faster, but it's the human touch that keeps communication meaningful, trustworthy, and truly personalised.' Personalisation is not merely a function of data, it is about making people feel genuinely delighted. At Rebel Foods, this principle came alive through a Diwali campaign featuring Saif Ali Khan delivering AI-powered, name-personalised greetings. 'Today, content must create its own distribution, and the only way to do that is by making someone feel personally delighted,' shared Kedia. 'When AI helps you send a greeting from Saif Ali Khan that says your name, that's not just personalisation, that's emotional branding at scale.' Personalisation is not a new phenomenon. It is rooted in the timeless power of human interaction, something AI should complement rather than attempt to replace. 'Personalisation didn't begin with AI, it began decades ago with your neighbourhood shopkeeper who knew your name,' said Mittal. 'The goal today is the same: replicate human warmth in digital experiences. Technology can assist, but the heart of marketing is still human connection.' Delivering real-time personalisation at scale requires a complete rethink not just of tools, but of teams, skills, and structures. 'The future of marketing isn't linear; it's circular, adaptive, and deeply human,' stated Gadri. 'To scale personalisation, brands must blend AI with creativity, behavioural science, and neurodiverse thinking. The question isn't just what AI can do, but how it reshapes our teams and their skills.' At the intersection of technology and social impact, AI is being used not only to personalise experiences but also to expand financial inclusion, particularly for underserved communities in rural India. 'With AI, we're personalising not just communication but inclusion,' said Jagtiani. 'From using satellite images to assess rural housing to analysing digital footprints to extend credit, we're making finance contextual, fair, and accessible, because personalisation must empower, not exclude.' While AI provides the infrastructure, personalisation remains a deeply human craft. From advanced analytics to heartfelt storytelling, from rural loans to luxury retail, today's brands must balance intelligence with empathy, and scale with soul. In an era where algorithms are everywhere, what truly sets a brand apart is how human it chooses to remain.
Time of India
07-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
ETBWS 2025: Why ‘Zero to One' is still the most exciting stage for D2C
At the seventh edition of the ET Brand World Summit 2025 , hosted by ETBrandEquity, a packed room of marketers and startup founders gathered for an engaging fireside chat titled 'Pitch Perfect: A VC's Lens on India's D2C Equity.' The session featured Chandrasekhar Venugopal , Principal at venture capital firm Z47, in conversation with Krystyna Devina Lason, Senior Anchor and Producer at The Economic Times. Venugopal described his career as a journey marked by a consistent focus on "zero to one" value creation. His path, which he attributes to "serendipity," began at BCG. He then led growth strategies at Foodpanda before venturing into his own start-ups in food and digital marketing. Prior to Z47, he also ran Glance Collective . Venugopal expressed a deep affinity for this foundational stage, stating, 'I'm not an operator or a founder or a VC; I'm just in love with the stage. I think it's a beautiful stage. In 'zero to one,' you just get to see magic created from nothing and that's what got me here.' Reflecting on the current consumer landscape, Venugopal noted that the environment for building brands has never been more promising. 'I have been acquiring consumers since 2014 across various sectors, and it has never looked this good. What once required immense effort to reach a five-lakh monthly run rate is now comfortably reaching one crore. Contribution margins are improving, customer acquisition costs are declining, return on ad spends are rising, and retention and repeat purchases are increasing across categories. It is truly an optimistic time to build in India.' India's D2C market is on a distinctive path, according to Venugopal, prompting discussion about whether it will follow the lead of the US or China. 'I don't think our supply backend is the same as some of these other countries and their trajectory,' Venugopal explained. He pointed out a unique paradox in India: despite being "brand-starved" with a largely unorganised and fragmented market, its supply chain infrastructure isn't yet fully developed, resulting in a substantial "influx of material from outside." He emphasised that to effectively serve India's enormous consumer base, "you do need innovation on the supply chain backend and get new price points in." Venugopal offered an interesting example from Z47's portfolio: Country Delight. "Country Delight started off selling milk. Now it does everything from veggies to, you name it." This expansion, he clarified, "required deep, absolutely deep backend sort of vertical integration to make the quality of milk right, or to get the freshness of the fruits and veggies right, or to get the staples right." He highlighted that "for Country Delight to unlock a new price point and repeat behaviour, it took a tonne of work on vertical integration." He also praised Lenskart for its similar approach, noting that "every large sort of outcome, you'd see this sort of deep vertical integration to sort of crash price points and reach India in the right sort of positioning." This focus on vertical integration is presented as a vital differentiating factor for successful D2C brands within the Indian landscape. On what makes a brand VC-backable, Venugopal cautioned against a one-size-fits-all approach. 'We have done a disservice by grouping very different businesses under the D2C label. Everything from Unilever to Nike to Decathlon gets lumped together, but they are not the same. Public market investors understand these nuances, and we need to apply the same lens. Metrics like retention and revenue are important, but their significance varies by category. A tile brand and a skincare brand will never have the same retention, but both can build meaningful businesses.' For marketers and founders, he encouraged a greater focus on what he termed 'the hidden potential of the long tail.' 'Marketers in large companies focus on the big levers that can move the needle by ten times. But in startups, there is value in the overlooked insights found in the long tail. These can lead to breakthroughs that do not come from conventional strategy. It is often in these small, seemingly unscalable moments that the biggest growth levers lie.' Addressing the scaling challenge from the first thousand to the first million customers, he advised founders to stay close to their users. 'Do not delegate customer conversations too early. That is where your product-market fit lives. Also, while growing fast, do not lose sight of financial discipline. It is easy to compromise on terms in the short run, but that can come back to bite you. Finally, strategic thinking should not be postponed. If your business becomes too dependent on one channel or partner, it can create risk. Take time to step back and assess whether your trajectory is sustainable and well-positioned.' Venugopal believes AI will be a monumental force in D2C, creating entirely new brands and sales channels. He highlights a historical pattern: every major shift in distribution (from newspapers to mobile) has led to new brands emerging. While AI will boost productivity, Venugopal urges founders and marketers to think bigger: how can AI enable entirely new frameworks? He points to areas like personalised experiences in local stores or property tech, which are still rudimentary. AI could transform these into truly one-to-one interactions. A key example for India is bridging the digital divide in "Bharat." Current app interfaces are often intimidating due to their Western UI/UX. Vernacular, voice-powered AI could be a game-changer, leveraging the comfort people have with phone conversations. This seemingly "unscalable" approach could forge entirely new, accessible commerce channels and, consequently, new brands. As he puts it, "Do things that don't scale in the beginning. You'll be surprised at what gets created." When asked what category he would choose if he were to start his own D2C brand today, Venugopal offered a framework rather than a specific sector. 'If you look at the most successful brands of recent times-Decathlon, Lenskart, Zudio, Country Delight, they all combine vertical integration with control over distribution. These are not just brands; they are full-stack businesses. On the backend, they own their supply chain. On the frontend, they own their customer interface through apps or stores. When a consumer sees a retail experience, but the business owns the full profit and loss like a brand, it creates a powerful advantage. If you find a category where you can do both, I would love to hear about it.'
