How Tata EV Blends Empathy and AI in EV Marketing—Pooja Asar Explains

As India’s EV market inches past 1,00,000 units annually, despite holding just 2% market share, the category is undergoing a dramatic shift. In this interview with MartechAI.com's Brij Pahwa, Pooja Asar, Head of Marketing at Tata Motors Passenger EV Mobility breaks down how digital-led strategies, data-driven storytelling, and evolving consumer mindsets are reshaping the EV journey across metros and small-town India alike. From first-party data integration to campaigns like Thangalpara, she reveals why empathy and instinct matter just as much as analytics in the new age of electric mobility.

Excerpts:

What percentage of your EV marketing budget today is allocated to digital, and how has that changed since 2022?
Back in 2022, we witnessed a sharp acceleration towards digital due to behavioural shifts post-COVID. The ‘digital-first’ mindset became foundational—especially for an emerging category like EVs—where education, exploration and trust-building happen extensively online before customers walk into a showroom. Since then, we’ve evolved from digital-first to digitally integrated, ensuring we reach consumers at multiple levels, in real time, across mediums and with contextual relevance.

How many digital touchpoints do you actively track before an EV lead is marked “sales-qualified”?
We actively monitor various digital touchpoints before a lead is deemed sales-qualified. These range from awareness-building platforms to car aggregator sites via strategic data partnerships, our websites, inbound engagement via contact centres, and 1P (first-party) data-led nurture journeys. The objective is to create a frictionless funnel that maps every interaction—intent, interest, research, and action.

Which one MarTech tool or platform has become indispensable for your team in the last 12 months—and why?
No single tool can work in isolation; our approach is to create a tightly integrated stack that works in unison. The integrated stack empowers us to move from generic campaigns to behaviour-led engagement across the funnel.

Do you believe most MarTech stacks today are built for performance, not empathy? How are you bridging that gap in your own campaigns?
At Tata Motors, we see performance and empathy as co-drivers of marketing effectiveness. That’s why we not only design to optimise but more importantly to understand—to learn from customer behaviour, voice, drop-offs, and feedback. The tools and the stack help us to achieve this outcome.

In your view, can empathy or emotional intelligence be programmed into AI-driven customer journeys—or does it still need human curation?
In today’s world, AI and the human element have to go hand in hand as neither can survive on its own. AI has come a long way—for example, it can simulate patterns of emotion—but interpreting why someone is hesitating, or what will delight them, still needs human insight. That’s where our teams step in—to bring nuance, cultural relevance and intuition into AI-crafted journeys.

What’s one recent marketing decision at Tata EV that was based purely on data—and one that was based on instinct?
For us, data and instinct go together. Data provides direction, but instinct gives it meaning. Take the Harrier.ev—our decision to enter the premium EV SUV segment was deeply data-led. Market signals showed a growing appetite for larger, tech-forward EVs, and we saw clear whitespace.

However, we felt the EV category needed storytelling beyond specs and features, something that emotionally connected with India’s new-age SUV buyer but also kept the product at heart. This is where we creatively chose to showcase what the Harrier.ev stood for—from unique, exhilarating campaigns like Thangalpara, where we showed the prowess of the SUV by driving it up the elephant rock, to the Quad Day event, which was organised for all stakeholders to experience the off-roading capabilities of the Harrier.ev. Everything was curated with an instinct to bring the capabilities of the product alive.

Any noticeable data/insight into the Indian EV buyer?
The Indian EV buyer has undergone a significant transformation from the initial "early adopter" phase to a more mainstream profile. While the EV category barely existed five years ago and national penetration is still around 2%, the market has surpassed 100,000 units in annual sales.

Initially, buyers were tech-forward individuals, but this quickly expanded to educated professionals who valued the comfort, lower cost of ownership, and predictable charging cycles for city commutes. Today's EV consumers are increasingly characterized by their heightened price sensitivity balanced with a strong expectation for advanced technology and seamless digital integration.

They are bold in embracing EVs despite a higher upfront investment, viewing them as "smart gadgets on wheels" that should offer superior performance and features compared to ICE counterparts—driving demand for innovations. This has further been supported by manufacturers offering price parity between EVs and ICE vehicles, which has helped create a level playing field.

This shift is also evident in demographic changes, with a growing number of youngsters entering the EV segment, and a noticeable trend of adoption cascading from larger cities to Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns—indicating a more homogeneous and widespread acceptance across India.