Staying a step ahead with IT

Shashwat Chaturvedi

MAJORDA BEACH (Goa): A young and chic Rajiv Mehta, managing director, Puma India, today delivered an interesting address on “Beyond Boundaries – Partnering for New Markets, Customers and Products, at the fourth edition of the CIOL C-Change here.”

In the presentation riveted with illustrations drawn from India and abroad, Mehta dwelt on the Indian marketplace, its evolution and alignment with global trends and vogue.

“With over one billion customers around 50 per cent of them under the 25 age group, the strategy is simple: invest now and reap the benefits in the future,” he said.

“Consumer today is defining the market and not the other way round and that is the biggest fundamental change that has taken place over the years. The best part is that organizations are rushing to cater to this demand,” said Mehta.

The whole change is being brought about by opening of the markets and by the fact that the consumer is evolving at a faster rate, he added. In this new scenario, “the rural has transformed into the new urban,” he noted.

To illustrate his point, he gave a host of examples of how companies had undertaken innovative ways to promote their products. He cited the example of Espirit watches, which on its launch in India hired a few people to “crawl up and down the building.

``As an advertising and marketing exercise it worked well,” he said.

He also spoke about how Cirque Du Soleil and Ikea were using the latest in technology to personalize their customer experience.

Sudhir Rao, director from Team Computers also dwelt on the evolving marketplace, giving more of an Indian perspective to the story. He spoke about how Reliance had launched “Fresh” chain of retail stores all across India and were planning to go from zero to $25 billion in less than five years.

“Indian marketplace is very unique in nature. As usually one has a regulated market, an emerging market and India was a mixture for all these factors,” he said.

The address was followed by a panel discussion on the issue of marketing and the use of IT. GS Ravikumar, CIO, GATI moderated the discussion, which saw the participation of Alagananandan Balaraman, senior executive vice president (IT), Geoffrey Philips India with Mehta and Rao.

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