Startup Circle: Vipul Maheshwari, SVP Analytics, Honasa Consumer Limited

Honasa Consumer Limited is a company that focuses on digital-first brands aimed at meeting the varied requirements of millennial consumers. It's aim is to create a range of beauty and personal care brands that are modern, purpose-driven, technologically advanced, and tailored to meet changing consumer demands.

Vipul Maheshwari brings extensive experience in analytics and data science to his role as Senior Vice President for Analytics & Data Science at Honasa Consumer Limited. Previously, he worked in Delivery and Global Analytics.

In an exclusive interview with Ciol, Vipul Maheshwari, SVP Analytics, Honasa Consumer Limited, spoke about How do they leverage data analytics to drive business decision-making and strategy formulation at Honasa?, he outlines emerging trends or technologies in the field of analytics do you see as having the most potential impact on Honasain the near future.

Can you please elaborate about your roles and responsibilities at Honasa?

Honasa operates as a data-driven organization, firmly believing in the transformative power of data. As a central team our primary job is to empower every member of the company with actionable insights to enhance their efficiency and effectiveness. To do so we oversee the entire data lifecycle, from seamless collection to sophisticated wrangling, ensuring that each step adds tangible value to our users. 

How do you leverage data analytics to drive business decision-making and strategy formulation at Honasa?

At Honasa, we leverage data analytics extensively to drive our business decision-making and strategy formulation. We analyze the outcomes of our processes and initiatives, continuously track the health of our business using analytical frameworks, and believe that monitoring the right business KPIs can solve 80% of our business problems. This data democratization approach has proven highly beneficial. Additionally, we act as problem solvers, employing hypothesis-building frameworks to arrive at sustainable solutions using data.

What are some of the primary challenges you face in implementing analytics solutions within your organization, and how do you overcome them?

There are multiple such challenges, a few of them are: 

-    Establishing the impact of the external activity on the brand through the data lens.

-    the fast-changing consumer behavior, some of the experiments that give us an uplift today might not give us an uplift tomorrow.  

We have to be in a continuous state of experimentation. 

In your opinion, what emerging trends or technologies in the field of analytics do you see as having the most potential impact on Honasain in the near future?

AI is already disrupting the way we had been doing the analytics at Honasa earlier. AI is helping us manage our data better and increasing individual productivity. And the real time ML models to understand the impact of the investments is going to be the most critical thing, which will help us allocate our budgets better. 

How do you collaborate with other departments or teams within the company to ensure that analytics insights are effectively integrated into their workflows and decision-making processes?

In our central team, we have created multiple smaller squads, this has helped us create the champions of a business from the data lens.  This squad  is involved from the decision making steps to making the decision successful. 

What strategies do you employ to ensure that your analytics team stays updated with the latest tools, techniques, and industry best practices?

We are a tool agnostic team but output oriented team. We are a firm believer of self learning the technologies and promote asynchronous ways of doing it. We keep on sharing the knowledge across the team and we do not shy away asking for help from the other industry leaders. 

Can you discuss any ethical considerations or challenges you encounter when working with consumer data, and how does your team address them?

Don’t think there is any ethical dilemma, we are very clear that customer PII data security is of utmost importance. We are very cautious from the beginning. We ensure one single source where this data reside and ensure that encrypted data points/Aggregated information is being used when it comes to analyzing the data.

What advice would you give to someone looking to pursue a career in analytics, especially within the consumer goods industry?

Consider pursuing analytics if you possess a strong desire to help solve complex problems. Also equip yourself with the AI ecosystem to boost productivity. Put a lot more focus on prompt engineering. The entire consumer goods industry is on the cusp of getting disrupted by AI. The most important advice is to approach the problem only after understanding the business.