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Mukesh Bansal ,
Founder & CEO, Myntra.com
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Lifestyle as a category is worth almost $45 billion in India and is growing at 15 per cent every year. It is slated to touch $100 billion by 2015. We have been going through this transition for the last 12 months and are now a pure play e-commerce company, dealing with lifestyle products. The trend has worked well for us and we see ourselves growing to be the largest lifestyle e-commerce portal in the country. Our revenue is doubling every 4 to 5 months.
Priyanka Nair, Bansal speaks at length about growing the e-commerce customer base in India, the key growth drivers, marketing initiative and more...
Q.
How is digital as a medium changing the ways brands engage with consumers?
A.
A lot of enthusiasm can be seen amongst big brands in India, especially in the last couple of years. This is basically to increase their distribution scale in a dynamic market place like India. Big brands have really small distribution scale, particularly in Tier I and Tier II cities. Even in some metros store locations are too distant. Many brands in India still have around 20 stores across the country, which is still small for a country the size of India. Hence, online gives these brand a good platform to reach consumers across the country. Also, brands use digital as a medium to give detailed product information and educate consumers about the brand features. Consumers’ comfort level with buying online has increased massively. Initially, there were a lot of doubts regarding security and credibility of the business model. Also, at that time, the infrastructure and service were not massively supportive and consumers had enough reasons to worry. But gradually this has changed and consumers are now more open to the ecommerce buying model.
Q.
With India’s fast paced e-commerce sector, how are you reinvesting your strategies and operations to meet the competition?
A.
We have an early mover advantage, we have been in the e-commerce business for more than four years now and are really focused on strengthening our basics. For us, consumer experience is the most important thing; our strong foundation investment is disciplined and is focused on technology, supply chain and fast delivery. We are highly focused on building a rich brand catalogue. We are currently leading in the luxury category online and have over 100 brands that cater to all lifestyle categories.
Q.
What is your consumer profile like?
A.
Our target costumers fall in the age group of 21 to 35 years, 70 per cent males and 30 per cent females at the moment, and we it expect to be 50-50 soon with our new category launches to attract female customers. Nearly 40 per cent of our business comes from outside the top 10 metros, and two years down the line we expect this to be around 60 per cent.
Q.
Predominately, the e-shopping sector was ruled by electronics category. But of late we have seen a sudden interest in new brand categories. What has lead to this interest?
A.
This is primarily due to growing maturity and the way the Indian market is shaping up. With the setting in of the digital era, the ecommerce consumer base in India will grow and the real growth will come from Tier I and Tier II cities. These are audiences who aspire for these luxury products and are our primary target audience. E-commerce starts to develop in a market when the customers are comfortable in using the medium to the hilt. Currently, there some 7 to 8 million people buying tickets online, these are the one set of audience who have the confidence in this medium and are ready to transit their shopping style too. Depending on the dynamics of the products, I guess in next 3-4 years we will have majorly all products coming online.
Q.
Could you highlight the various marketing initiatives taken up by Myntra recently?
A.
We are focusing on digital marketing massively for customer acquisition. We had rolled out our first TVC in July-August last year, which was part of a brand awareness campaign. This was followed by the ‘Ramp it up’ campaign, which was targeted at potential customers focusing on good fashion. These were more like brand building exercises. To extend our marketing initiatives, we also hosted the launch event of FHM’s fourth anniversary issue. With this association with FHM, we think we too appeal to style-conscious consumers as a one-stop shop to sate their fashion appetite. The magazine portrays boldness, authenticity, and individual style, which blend well with the fashion appeal of Myntra.
Q.
According to you, how important is the measurability of the web?
A.
The best thing about investing in the digital space is that you get accurate results on a real time basis. You immediately get to know the RoI and you continuously optimise on it.
Q.
Who are your digital and creative agencies?
A.
Our digital activities are taken care of in-house, while our creative agency is Happy Creative Services.
Q.
What is your revenue growth rate?
A.
Lifestyle as a category is worth almost $45 billion in India and is growing at 15 per cent every year. It is slated to touch $100 billion by 2015. We have been going through this transition for the last 12 months and are now a pure play e-commerce company, dealing with lifestyle products. The trend has worked well for us and we see ourselves growing to be the largest lifestyle e-commerce portal in the country. Our revenue is doubling every 4 to 5 months.
Archive
"We continue to invest in the best of innovations. Consumer trends change over a period of time... We made sure our products have deeper relationship with Facebook and Twitter, we're in partnerships with them. There's a huge amount of traffic coming in from social networks, which is incredibly important. We think social is not necessarily a destination, it's a behaviour. What we think about offline, we try to replicate it online. There are verticals, but behaviour is pervasive. As long as we help people create a social graph of their own and tap into it and share their content, that's an enriching experience."
Nitin Mathur
"If we look at media on the whole, we have paid media like banner ads, SEM; owned media like websites, Facebook channels; and finally, earned media where others talk about a brand based on the positive influence they have, which could be as a result of brand engagement, prizes, giveaways and so on. So IndiBlogger essentially plugs that gap where a brand sees that it needs more earned media, since it surely carries a lot more trust and credibility."
Vineet Rajan -Head - Client Strategy- IndiBlogger.in-12/19/2011
"We are seeing the most movement as well as innovation in retail, BFSI and Automotive segments. Simply put, segments with high retail involvement, propensity for repeat transactions and risk of commoditisation (consequent need for increased brand affiliation) are the most active."
S Monteiro & S Guha -- SapientNitro-12/7/2011
"What gets measured gets managed. Measurability is a major advantage with the web. We get to observe the results from specific marketing campaigns. However, grey areas still creep in while understanding close linkages between mass media campaigns and the end-results."
K Vaitheeswaran
"Spends are going to increase as consumers are spending more and more time on the digital medium. Now what marketers are grappling with are the numerous options available in digital media… There is also an e-commerce boom… Digital is going to be the way advertising is going to happen. With the medium evolving, every advertising person has to be a digital professional. The future of advertising is digital."
CVS Sharma
"I think measurement in any business is really important. In fact, as ensuring targeted audiences and driving customised marketing campaigns starts becoming increasingly important, digital will emerge as a hugely powerful medium. However, a critical aspect that brand owners must realise is that in addition to measuring the immediate outcome, they need to evaluate the efficacy of digital media in the long term as well. This is because the true power of the medium is that it allows for long term brand conversations that eventually create brand engagement with the end consumer."
Neville Taraporewalla
"Mobile advertising in India is still nascent. It stands at about Rs 100 crore. But at the same time it is a growing market, with dramatic growth rates, doubling year over year. The reasons behind the mobile market growth in India are external to the advertising environment. The mobile advertising market has evolved from a stage of mobile Internet being used for email access, to being used for social, to now being used for accessing various kinds of content – from news to sports to games."
Anuj Kumar
"2011 undoubtedly shall be “the year of tablets”, under all possibilities this is a great opportunity for marketers and the end user. This will take Advertising 2.0 to the next level to the extent the end consumer himself would say, “I don’t mind ads because they pay for my attention by giving me valuable content (discounts, free downloads, etc.) for free”. To me, this is what marketing on mobile Internet means - where the end user himself wants to see content provided by marketers!"
CR Vinay
"Building an umbrella around the content is the key here. Throwing TV online is not the solution. Instead, you need to look at how to extend the offline content, and build things up around it."
Benjamin Grubbs
"Digital is not about numbers. Digital is about interaction. It allows you to experiment, and take feedback from the audience. If you are not getting good feedback, then you can quickly reverse directions, and change the state."
Romi Mahajan
"The internet allows things to be instant, quick and convenient. The confluence of these three drives the web; the future is in services not retail. Logistics is a major stumbling block holding back retail. On the other hand, taking off for a services brand is very easy. With a retail brand, customer satisfaction happens outside the store. It's hard to ensure a good experience. Services on the other hand are going to grow much further."
Sharat Jain
"Social, email, mobile are all important and you can’t club all of them into one slot and expect an agency to do it along with TV and print. However, in digital, one part of the campaign feeds clearly into the next part, and if clients experiment a little they can earn great gains."
Chetan Asher
"Neil Hudspeth, Regional Digital Director Asia Pacific, Leo Burnett, spoke to exchange4media while on a visit to Delhi. He talked about the reason why he believes that the investment in, and engagement with, digital media is going to accelerate in 2011. Digital is now integrated into video, into outdoor and print, particularly through mobile, which is growing exponentially. Technology is important, not for the wow factor but because it is a part of people's lives."
Neil Hudspeth
"The people selling ‘likes’ are behaving like door to door salesmen, talking about the price of a ‘like’. It’s nonsense. It’s like saying that I will put up one hoarding on the highway, and guess what? A lakh or more people are seeing it every day. What value is that actually adding though?"
Chris George
"Most IT marketing is not about selling just technology, because what you’re actually selling is a business decision; you’re selling technology for transformative purposes. So it’s not just about capturing eyeballs…Instead of selling a box of software and walking away, you first need to sell a vision, like the smarter planet initiative, and then find a way to fit the vertical, and then actually demonstrate the value that you are providing to your partners."
Susan Jain
"I believe that being a customer-centric industry, life insurance needs to aggressively leverage the digital space to increase customer connect; drive awareness; leverage data for analytics and tailored and customized services and products and build a reputation for the brand. This is especially relevant to create a positive perception about the brand to the consumer and enrich the overall brand experience. This is a strategic focus for Max New York Life which is helping us build increased loyalty towards the brand."
Anisha Motwani
"So the thing that we are most careful about is to match expectations from both ends, and create a high value ecosystem where we carefully screen out a lot of advertisers to ensure the best experiences for our members. In a way, a deal on offer from Deals And You is not just a discount, but also a recommendation. We carefully curate the best experiences, create packages for our members, like putting together a deal from a restaurant, and a taxi service and a club to create a full experience for a Christmas date."
Gaurav Kachru -CEO- Deals and You-12/22/2010
"Keeping that in mind we either had to create a kick ass product that would be a differentiator in the brand space for which we needed tons of money or go through the grind on our core capabilities, which is sales and business development. That is the sole reason we got into a space where we could shine from day one and touch wood it has. We were the first to go to market with an open proposition and not just being a blind ad-network, created a new format called ‘hybrid ad-network’ and testimony to that is not only the market welcomed us but we also ensured that the competitors in the space followed us, which to me is the biggest testimony in any business."
Rammohan Sundaram -CEO- NetworkPlay.-11/17/2010
"Each ‘conversation’ will be relevant and contextualized to the needs of the consumer. The initial opt-in provides the first level of information, which can then be enhanced by third-party intelligence based on the consumer’s mobile usage and behavioral traits. Lastly, and most importantly, each consumer’s response during the conversation with the brand will provide the latest and up-to-date consumer information. In effect, this third stage is real-time consumer profiling. And when applied to the power of messaging, becomes the ideal channel for brands and businesses."
Raghu Kumar -Managing Director- SinglePoint.-9/30/2010
"Rajiv Kumar, an IIT Mumbai alumni and a proven entrepreneur who previously built and sold Bluetooth® software company WIDCOMM to Broadcom in 2004, founded RockeTalk in 2005.
Mr. Rajiv Kumar
"Amarjit Batra joined the OLX team in Dec 2008 to take over the responsibility of building and growing the India business for the agency. As the Country Manager for OLX India, Amarjit contributes to the Global Business Development initiatives for OLX. Prior to OLX, Amarjit was at eBay India.
OLX is the next generation of free online classifieds. The company was co-founded in March 2006 by Internet entrepreneurs Fabrice Grinda and Alec Oxenford. The company is based in New York and Buenos Aires and operates two leading online classifieds networks hosted at www.olx.com and www.mundoanuncio.com."
Amarjit Batra
"Social Media can be used for a number of things such as brand promotion, online branding, etc. It is a great tool for online reputation management… Why it is more relevant now is that for a public company, there is a direct relation between their success and what is being said about their brand on the street. One of the major roadblocks in the Indian context is that many still treat digital marketing as a technology function. This is more so in Social Media… Building a community to strengthen a relationship is all about getting to know your customer. SMM and SEO are vehicles to reach your target audience, but unless you know your customer and where they are, these tools will not work."
Pradeep Chopra
"A photograph is not a commodity, photography is an art. Like any other form of art, there can’t be a price tag on the artist’s work. For ages, there have been artists who work for free and many others who take millions for their work. So, if you will look at www.imagesbazaar.com or www.shotindia.com, the two are not the same. Moreover, there is not even a single free resource for buying creative images with Indian faces. Even if someone sells the same for free, it’s illegal, as one needs to pay a person/ model in the picture and get an agreement signed by him/her for using his/her picture."
Sandeep Maheshwari
"There are two ways at looking at the Indian market. One is competency development solutions, and the other is the delivery mechanism. We have made the delivery mechanism easier for the learner in the Indian market. There is a lot of hand holding as compared to same trainings in other geographies. But when it comes to competency development, it is truly up to international standards."
Anuradha Madhusudhanan
"I don’t think we’ve even seen the tip of the iceberg in the digital domain. The online/ digital world has lowered the barrier to entry to almost nothing. There will be plenty of sites that will come up – each with their values and messages. Some will be successful – even if they serve a niche. Having said that, let me add that to earn a living through a small site/ blogs is not easy, since online ads is the primary source of revenue, and consumption of content is still fairly low in India. The latter will develop as the quality of content improves."
Premlesh Machama
"What happened with the West in the Internet sphere will happen to mobile in countries like India, and the opportunity and value is immense for advertisers through reach and engagement in a way no other medium can. So, I believe that mobile will emerge as one of the biggest new advertising medium in India and in other emerging markets."
Beerud Sheth
"The Internet is increasingly becoming the medium for customers to research travel products, even if they end up buying the product, offline. Cleartrip offers inherent benefits of convenience, transparency and comparative shopping that enables customers to find what they are looking for, in the quickest possible time. This is reflected in our traffic data. Over the past one year, the total unique visitors to Cleartrip have more than doubled. We also see the number of new visitors steadily increasing."
Noel Swain
"“World over it has been observed that it is better to advertise on vertical ad networks than on a horizontal ad network if the objective is to create brand awareness. This is because on a horizontal ad network one is not sure which sites the ads are being served on. This leads to spillover, which is money down the drain. If a person seeks brand engagement from a user from a specific audience thereby ensuring that there is zero or minimal spill over, then vertical ad networks are the best.”"
Sunil Punjabi -Co-Founder and Vice President- Networkplay.in-8/10/2009
"We have really rebuilt from Connecturf to Ignitee, and post the re-branding, we have rebuilt the organisation in the last 6-7 – rebuilt it not only in terms of getting people or building business, but in terms of processes, identity, and market share, which is very important. The kind of phenomenal growth seen in Ignitee in the last 6-7 months is by far unparalleled in the digital industry itself. We have seen a 200 per cent jump in nine months’ time and we have seen it with significant new businesses. That has been the Ignitee story."
Atul Hegde
"Print and the other mediums as a percentage, are loosing share to the online media, though they are all growing but, as the market expands the increase has taken up more by online than by any other traditional forms of mass communications."
Naren Nachiappan
"Advertisers should be educated with all technical features and benefits Internet advertising offers. Brands are still shying from the Internet largely due to lack of knowledge amongst advertisers with respect to benefits of Internet advertising, even the conventional agencies, barring a few leading media buying agencies, are not investing enough in the resources required to educate clients about the potential of Internet platform. They don’t want to invest time and money in people as return (billing) is still very small compared to traditional media. The small size of the Internet population is another turn off for big FMCG brands."
Anil Mishra
"It is not about whether a site is being published in India or talks about India, it is about whether the information on the site is relevant to Indian users. Our value lies in relevancy. We feel that with the approach that we are taking and the focus that we have, we will improve the quality of results from an Indian consumer point of view. We were the first to launch city search results along with our web results, much before any of the global players (including Google) had figured that out."
Anurag Dod
"The medium is very effective because it is an immersive and ‘lean forward’ media, unlike TV or radio. Studies have shown that games are a more trusted and less intrusive to users and, therefore, much more efficient in communicating brand USP and core values. Recall is much higher and ad avoidance is almost non-existent. In established markets, CPM rates for in-game ads are typically priced at four times the price of web ads because of this efficiency."
Quentin Staes-Polet
"The core proposition of ibibo.com, as we define it, is that it ‘a local social utility that enables you to discover new people’. There are numerous local social utilities available on ibibo that drive creation, collaboration and hence, discovery of new people. ibibo.com has been able to craft these social utilities into the social graph, thereby giving the applications viral power."
Ashish Kashyap -CEO- Ibibo.com-2/1/2008
"All the money that’s spent on your ATL and BTL converges at retail. In India, marketers are just waking up to the fact that the shop is where it all matters. The fact is that many still look towards London or the US for solutions to retail design. While the work done in London and the US in the retail space is phenomenal, we need to understand that the purchase path of Indian consumers is quite unique."
CVS ’Venke’ Sharma -Senior Vice-President & Director- Arc Worldwide-1/7/2008
"When we stared out we had a different name for each language portal, which posed a challenge when it came to unified branding. So we deliberated and decided that we need to have one brand, one name, hence each portal has the name Webdunia. We migrated our email service from ePatra to Webdunia Mail, portal properties like Webulagam.com to tamil.webdunia.com."
Pankaj Jain -President & COO- Webdunia-10/12/2007
"Mobile advertising holds the promise of targetted delivery to large customer segments. At the same time, the personalised nature of delivery and the instant ability to seek a response or closure are great attractions for advertisers. It seems to have the best of direct marketing and mass advertising."
Pankaj Sethi -President-Value Added Services- Tata Teleservices Ltd-8/28/2007
"As the mobile subscriber base increasingly shifts from the metros to towns and villages, there will be an increasing opportunity to service this market with localised content. I wouldn’t say that localisation will be crucial for success, but definitely more of the future opportunities for generating revenue from content will be through localisation."
Raj Singh -Co-founder and Executive Director- ActiveMedia Technologies-7/9/2007
"In a market like India that is really just starting to ramp up, you have certain marketers who are still focussing on traditional media and beginning to really think through how they can adopt the Internet. So, adoption is fairly low in this market and it is starting to see a pick up quite dramatically."
Gregory Coleman -Executive Vice-President,- Global Sales, Yahoo! Inc.-6/5/2007
"Loyalty marketing is actually a long-term strategy to identify, retain and grow profit for a company. They are called by multiple names; one is loyalty programme, one is data-driven marketing, one is relationship marketing, and there are affinity programmes too. The strategy is simply to identify and retain your best customers and grow value for them."
Siddharth Reddy -Managing Director- SurfGold India Pvt. Ltd-4/23/2007
"Most of the advertising agencies had tried to have an interactive agency in 1999-2000. but most of them floundered and shut down shop… We hope they will surely do a better job this time. Interactivity is not like where you can put a business head and 3-4 guys and have an interactive business. The Internet is far too vast to be considered that frivolous. Even we or any of the specialist players in the medium cannot say that we fully understand this medium. The Internet continuously keeps changing. It seems as if all the advertising agencies have a single-point agenda in their 2007 or 2008 plan – that they want to set up an interactive agency. But I don’t think that is the way to look at Internet. Do Indian (offline) agencies have the appetite to do something dramatically different? I don’t think so."
Sidharth Rao -CEO & Co-founder- Webchutney-1/23/2007
"Getting new job seekers is extremely important. That’s what our business is all about i.e., how many new resumes are we able to acquire. We believe that a job seeker comes to a job site to search for jobs and that we should make it as easy as possible for him / her to do just that. The redesign of the site has worked well for us because the job seekers can see that we are respecting his reason to come to the site."
Dhruvakanth B. Shenoy -Country Manager, Monster Middle East &- VP, Marketing, Monster India-11/16/2006
"Technology will definitely be a key differentiator. Online travel is an early adopter of technology in that sense, but one really needs to innovate and make technology easier for a user to conduct an online transaction. And all these big boys like Travelocity, who are the leading players in this space, are continuous innovators in technology to make doing business online easier and easier."
Manu Agarwal
"While it is true that search advertising helps in getting a new consumer, it would be wrong to say that an old consumer will not search for better solutions. When it comes to buying financial products or travel solutions, consumers want the best deal and they will compare and search for the best bargain. Thus, search attracts both kinds of consumers."
Rajiv Parikh
"Three of the biggest properties on the Internet – Google, Yahoo and Microsoft – are betting their future on paid search or contextual advertising. We are doing the same as an agency… The industry is so dynamic that whatever one says during the day may be obsolete by midnight."
Vivek Bhargava
"The whole media industry of today is self-obsessed. Mainstream media is in a crisis around the world. People don’t trust it as they used to. There are many examples of corrupt practices, journalists lying, media stories going wrong. Interesting media blogging is just a symptom of this crisis in mainstream media. To some extent, it depends on the individual journalists, individual organisations to find out ways to engage with bloggers. But it requires the will power of the journalist or the publication to make a difference. And there may be some resistance to that as well."
Bill Thompson,
"Our marketing strategy is to do intelligent spending. We are targeting netizens and credit card holders. We offer guaranteed low airfare. This apart, we are targeting TV channels, outdoors and print mediums for our campaigns. Terror warnings do affect inbound and outbound traffic. That’s why we are focusing on the NRI market. An NRI has to return home. Moreover, we have found that the travel industry bounces back the fastest despite the terror warnings."
Sachin Bhatia -Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer- MakeMyTrip.com-5/4/2006
"Our core proposition is simple. We offer two things to both job seekers and employers. First is the greatest aggregation – to the job seekers we offer the greatest aggregation of jobs and to recruiters we offer the greatest aggregation of job seekers. The searching capability of our site on the job side as well as on the resume side is superior."
Sanjeev Bikhchandani -Founder & CEO- Naukri.com-2/1/2006
"I must admit candidly that my greater involvement in animation was born out of what was first my couple of decades in the entertainment industry, and secondly, my love affair with India. I had not been specifically in the animation industry. It was India first and animation second. I did have experience with animation over the years through my involvement with various motion picture companies, but I never considered myself in the an industry until I got involved with India."
Kenneth P. Silverman -President- Interactive Teamworks-10/11/2005
"“With the intensive penetration of the Internet, computers, credit cards, drop in broadband rates, online shopping has moved from being restricted to a certain section of the society to the larger population. Now, even middle class people can think of shopping online because people have come to trust it, they find it convenient and secure… We started out with the mindset that we are in the business of e-commerce and then realised that we are actually in the business of changing people’s habits.”"
Vaitheeswaran -COO- Fabmall-8/24/2005
"“We address brands’ requirements by strategising and developing communication tools that can be presented online through the year and help in building and sustaining online traffic for the brand. Essentially, we build online brand communities and ensure that these communities do not just consist of one-time visitors but of an active repeat visitor community.”"
Chaya Brian Carvalho -CEO- BC Web Wise-7/27/2005
"Now, digital cinema service providers have decided to seed the market. They sign agreements with theatres on revenue share or monthly payment terms."
K Krishna -Senior Director – Marketing- Hughes Escorts Communications-6/21/2005
"Brandsum offers a print advertising archive covering all leading English publications, numbering more than 55 dailies and magazines, including financial and specialty publications like in-flight magazines. It also offers a search through categories, sub-categories and brands in order to view and save original sized ad images"
Ujjal Sinha -(CEO)- and Shankho Chowdhury (Director) ,Brick & Click Technologies-6/6/2005
"As compared to other media such as television, print and radio, online advertising is cost-effective as the cost (to reach) per thousand people (CPT) is very low. We expect the reach of Internet to quadruple in the coming years, with more broadband connections happening at offices, SOHO & homes."
M. R. Krishnan -Director,Sales & Business Development- Sulekha.com-5/10/2005
"The objective of National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) is to promote Internet services in the country. We are taking care of issues like infrastructure growth and setting up Internet exchanges. This is to ensure that the domestic traffic is managed within the country."
Amitabh Singhal -Acting CEO- National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI)-4/21/2005
"Currently we have a team of over 20 people, working on the news and non-news content on the site. In the beginning, we primarily had coordinators to get the work done through freelancers. This has grown into a full-fledged team now."
L Ravichandran -Managing Director- Chennai Interactive Business Services-3/30/2005
"We are a very dominant player for handycams and we command a major chunk of the market. We would like to repeat this achievement for digital cameras also. Currently, we are at the second position but we would like to take the number one position as soon as possible."
Ranvijay Singh -Product Head- Digital Imaging- Sony India Pvt. Ltd.-2/15/2005
"The India brand for animation is just a few years away from getting established and this will happen when we have a universal track record of consistency in performance and promise."
Biren Ghose -CEO- Animation Bridge-1/31/2005
"If you look at the traditional media, whether it is the newspapers or the print media or now TV and radio, you see that most of them are actually getting popular in regional languages – both in terms of revenue and growth potential. What we believe is that in India, if technology and internet as a medium, or even wireless as a medium which is mobile MMS or mobile SMS, have to reach beyond a certain number, you have no choice but to develop in local languages."
Vinay Chhajlani -Founder & CEO- Webdunia.com-1/7/2005
"Pugmarks is one of the first interactive companies in India to provide interactivity to a large amount of media houses and other people who wanted to get on to the Internet which is the first truly interactive medium in the world. Now interactivity has become multi-dimensional with SMS, GPRS, WAP, CDMA, and interactive voice. We are getting into total interactivity where we will offer all these services."
Dilip Venkatraman -CEO- Pugmarks InterWeb Pvt. Ltd.-12/22/2004
"The potential of the Internet is such that it gives enormous flexibility and reach. We decided to leverage its power. Bharat Matrimony’s main service is to help one search for a prospective life partner but there are several allied services that we provide alongside which make it a desirable destination for making marital choices."
J Murugavel -CEO- Bharat Matrimony-12/7/2004
"We are trying to ascertain exactly where all the marketing money is going, and if it is being used in the right manner. Most marketers see mainstream advertising as the be-all and end-all of branding. The maximum work that‘s done on brands qualifies as above-the-line advertising. The way most people think about marketing is you go to an ad agency, get a great creative, do some great advertising and that’s about it. But the argument remains that advertising is not the only solution to all branding problems. Alternate solutions are available and solutions differ from product to product and from brand to brand."
Ganesh Mandalam -Founder & CEO- Xerago-11/17/2004
"As part of our strategy, we have now acquired worldwide rights to properties like The Day After Tomorrow, Garfield, Buffy and, most recently, Bruce Lee. Products like Spiderman and Bruce Lee which have a global fan following are what Indiagames takes to the market and very easily finds millions of customers all over the world, thanks to the product quality and extensive branding."
Vishal Gondal -CEO- Indiagames-9/20/2004
"AMD’s OEM-led strategy has yielded results as the company today works with all leading OEMs in the country, like HCL, HP, Zenith, Acer, Wipro, Sun and IBM. We are planning to grow our presence in large enterprises across key industry sectors and SMEs via vertically focused initiatives across the IT/BPO, manufacturing energy and BFSI verticals."
Sanjeev Keskar -Country Manager- AMD Far East Ltd.-8/21/2004
"The fact is that it is a big market and there are not too many major universal services on offer. Railway ticketing is a mass consumption service. Internet is getting localised at a fast pace. And this means higher coverage. Anyone anytime and from anywhere can access the Net."
Amitabh Pandey -Group General Manager (IT Services)- Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC)-8/4/2004
"We have acquired JobsAhead.com, one of the leading online recruitment firms in the country. In fact, this is the first acquisition in Asia which falls in line with the other three acquisitions in Europe and US. This will add a database of 22 lakh more resumes on the website and a traffic of 65 lakh job seekers every month."
Stuart J McKelvey -Group President, Asia Pacific- Monster Worldwide-5/27/2004
"In the four years since inception, our website has recorded over four lakh unique visitors a month. Out of these, a majority are registered members. I would say corporate Indians and Net savvy people are our target."
Gautam Chadha -Chairman & CEO- JourneyMart.com-5/6/2004
"The prime function of Business Wire India is to disseminate corporate information real time in full text to a cross-section of clients who could use them accordingly."
Rajiv Desai -President- Business Wire India-4/29/2004
"The online experience does provide a platform for us to build offline business. But it was never easy to build a brand through a dotcom"
Vishal Anand -CEO- Mahamaza.com-4/2/2004
"We have not advertised so far but plans are underway to opt for traditional advertising. We want to convey that Monster is not just a source of a job but a guide for career management."
Arun Tadanki -President & MD, Asia- Monster-3/20/2004
"There was a time when all over India and more so in Silicon capitals like Bangalore, we found highly disproportionate ratios of hoarding and ad space of other medias that was taken up by dotcom companies. Though CIOL did its fair share of advertising, we were nowhere close to what some others spent."
Abraham Mathew -President- CIOL-2/1/2004
"Indians are living at the periphery of information because they don't have the means of disseminating information; they have access only to the traditional tools - radio/ television/ hoardings; a level of interactivity is required, and this is where the Internet comes in"
Osama Manzar -Founder & Director- Digital Empowerment Foundation-1/16/2004
"Sending message to an existing database is wrong. Only when you have an optimum database of people who have permitted brands to message them is effective marketing. That differentiates a meaningful message from a spam and makes all the difference to your communication."
Rajiv Hiranandani -VP-sales and Mktg- Mobile2Win-12/29/2003
"It is restrictive to consider the Internet as a medium for promotion alone. That's just 5% of the story. Internet is the most measurable medium. It goes much beyond a reach-frequency bind and allows us to 'market'. Whereas most other media can only help you advertise."
Pranay Anthwal -Group Head- Starcom Digital-11/20/2003
"Today's online advertiser is savvier and is serious about using the medium. The Internet has become an essential part of the media mix for quite a large number of advertisers. It is no longer a fad or a fashion to advertise."
Ratish Nair -COO- Mediaturf Worldwide-10/30/2003
"Media Monitoring is mandatory. Information fuelled by quality data powers any business. This holds true in Media. Data for Ad Audit & Analysis is a must. The focus would very soon shift to the availability of data & the way it's served."
Prashant Chothani -CEO- Perfect Monitoring Services Pvt. Ltd-9/15/2003
"Both as a standalone media and as an add-on to traditional media, mobile is poised to become a ‘must do’ for marketers who want to stay relevant to their audience"
Raj Singh -Business Director- Active Media-8/26/2003
"If the question is will the mobile phones be used as a medium of communicating between the brands and the consumers -I can guarantee you the answer is yes. There would be 100 million consumers in India on mobile in five years."
Nitin Gupta -President & COO- Rediff.com-7/22/2003
"We are in the process of developing the subscription module and payment gateway and in another three months, this will start functioning. The news part will remain as it is. But the interactive content, which is premium in nature, will go pay."
Sanjay Trehan -Chief Executive- Internet HindustanTimes ltd-7/16/2003
"Search is permission-based marketing which is more valuable than traditional online marketing. It offers a higher conversion rate and better return rate on investment for the advertiser."
Johannes Larcher -General Manager- Overture International-6/30/2003
"A participative collective voice of the industry is a must. It's time online media players come together to voice their concerns, share ideas and focus on ways to better consumers' online experience."
Shriram Adukoorie -Director- MSN South Asia-6/12/2003
"When people are at home they have their television sets on and watch NDTV. When outside somewhere, they have their mobile handset and SMS 6388 for news. And when away from television, they log on to NDTV.com on their computers."
Vikram Chandra -CEO-NDTV.com- NDTV-5/27/2003
"Many traditional media planners and even clients would be familiar with that old chestnut - I know half the money I spend on advertising is a waste, the trouble is I don't know which half! Not true in the case of the Web. We deliver results and we get paid accordingly."
V Achuthan Kutty -CEO- BridgeOverTW-5/12/2003
"What the advertisers are basically looking at today is, can I make my money work better, efficiently and cost effectively. I think Internet allows you to do all of that."
Neville Taraporewalla -Director - Sales & Business Development- Yahoo! India-4/30/2003
"The issue with online advertising is that the clients and agencies still have a phobia. Actually, they have not invested enough to understand the medium. And there is a problem with the Internet industry itself."
Rajesh Sawhney -COO- Times Internet-4/3/2003
"The information about Internet and how people use it and transact on it, needs to be unlocked to demonstrate the true value of the medium to advertisers, agencies and media sellers alike."
Lynn Bolger -Exec. Vice President, Agency Development- comScore Networks-3/21/2003
"Globally online music still has to resolve certain issues like pricing and compelling content. But being far more aggressive than the rest of Asia on this front, the Indian music industry should reveal commercial reality soon."
Sudhanshu Sarronwala -Co-founder & CEO- Soundbuzz-10/1/2002
"Smaller towns and cities will become big contributors to online shopping since purchasing power there is increasing at a far higher rate than ease of access to latest products."
Avnish Bajaj -Chairman & CEO- Baazee.com-9/30/2002
"To increase the penetration of Internet in India, besides computers, we should use the existing tools to access web. You've got 40 millions TV sets (with cable connections) in India and even if 25% of them are utilized for accessing web then straightaway you get 10 millions (users) added."
Kiran Karnik -President- NASSCOM-9/30/2002
