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Amazon CMO stresses on context f

personalisation, performance
marketing and data analytics
After spending a decade in India and watching the marketing landscape transform,
Amazon’s Director, Mass and Brand Marketing, Ravi Desai looks back on the journey.

A Aishwarya Ramesh , • ETBrandEquity

Updated On Jun 30, 2023 at 08:01 AM IST
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Ravi Desai

E-commerce giant Amazon recently completed 10 years in India. It first

launched in India in June 2013 and, since then has witnessed the digital
marketing landscape grow steadily. At the time of its launch - there were
three main things that the e-commerce giant had to communicate to
Indian audiences. That it had a large selection of products, that these
products were available at competitive prices, and the third was to
emphasise on ease of buying experience.
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ChaiCart-street view

When Amazon first began operations - they had difficulty onboarding

sellers. To overcome the primary hesitation of coming on board,
Amazon’s representatives created chai carts where merchants could
have chai with employees and learn the benefits of coming on board as
an Amazon seller. The e-commerce company has come a long way
indeed. At the swanky glass paneled office in traffic laden Bengaluru -
we caught up with the director of mass and brand marketing for Amazon
- Ravi Desai.

Advt
 Desai has worked with Amazon since 2016; when he joined from ITC. He
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was responsible for the company’s growth and its digital marketing

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Some edited excerpts from the conversation - B

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Two years ago, you were quoted in an interview as saying
technology democratises reach. True to your prediction, now a lot
of business comes from tier 2 and 3 cities for Amazon, but overall e-
commerce penetration remains low on sellers side - around 2% and
on the buyers side - 5%. How do you plan to change that?

A: E-commerce is still a fairly new phenomenon and despite us having

completed ten years, people are still not used to it. It is definitely a lot
more prevalent today than it was, when we began, but it’s still limited to,
say, the top 50 cities in this country. There are still around 200 cities in
this country where there is still a lack of trust when it comes to buying
things on e-commerce platforms.

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How challenging has it been to market to an evolving Indian

audience in the last decade?

One of the things about India is that there is immense heterogeneity

within the customer base. There are three dimensions of customer
heterogeneity - the first is language. Roughly, 129 million Indians speak
English and are comfortable transacting in English. Approximately a
 million Indians or more speak another 20 languages. If your customer
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experience is exclusively in English, then it means that you are only

Newsspeaking to approximately 129 million but leavingWebinars

out the other 600
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million (approx.) who are on the internet. Even internet connectivity can
be limited in India. B
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Advt

The third challenge is payments because in India, not everyone owns a

credit or a debit card, so you need to create a solution that
accommodates that.

What barriers to entry still exist for Indians to adopt to ecommerce?

India does not have 100% internet penetration yet and most people
access the internet through their smartphones. A lot of customers we
encounter need a lot of assistance because they are in an early stage of
their journey. They might know what it means to create an account or set
a password to do a transaction because they are used to just walking into
a store and buying a product. India as a country is actually filled with
customer heterogeneity, and the need to solve for that is what keeps us
going.

Previously, you mentioned that it was a challenge to make sense of data

 and to understand consumer insights in a way that you could take action
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based on them. How has this challenge evolved over the years?
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When a business is online, there is no dearth of data. We don’t deal with
individual consumer data because we take data privacy very seriously, B
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but you have to keep in mind that averages can be misleadingReport
because of
B
the previous point I mentioned - customer heterogeneity. While we deal
with averages, we ask ourselves, what is the right level of de-averaging
or pacing the profiles out. This makes the data a lot more powerful and
the insights a lot richer.

What, then, is your view on real-time actionable data insights, now that
MarTech has matured enough to provide you the opportunity to make
sense of data in real time and make real time decisions.

I think it depends on the context. If Amazon is hosting, say, a Diwali sale,

then tracking real time data, monitoring it, and eventually reacting to it
is perhaps par for the course. But doing it on a daily basis for every page
on the side is not necessary or manageable.

Sometimes it’s just noise. Sometimes data is just people behaving in a

certain way for whatever reason, and you don’t need to react to every
single stream of data that you get. Context matters a lot. If there is a
broken link on the site - and you are actually serving a bad customer
experience to a large number of customers. Then you should be
monitoring as much of the site as you physically can. If there’s an error,
an alarm needs to go off to trigger a way to fix it.

Gartner said in a report that 85% of marketers will abandon

personalisation owing to the low ROI. What is your view on
attempts to market using hyper-personalisation?
 I think it depends on the context, again. If a consumer is searching for a
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book to read or is in discovery mode and browsing for products, Amazon

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purchase history. Here, personalisation is valuable. However, if the
purchases are occasional and infrequent - there is not enough data to B
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personalise it, then people should refrain. Report
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Which is your favorite performance marketing channel and which

one do you tend to see the highest ROI on?

I don’t have a favourite channel per se. It’s like asking which finger on my
hand is my favourite. Each one has a very different role to play. Take paid
search for example. A lot of people begin to research about products on
the internet and then check out the product if its available on Amazon
and make the purchase there. In such a context, paid search is a relevant
channel to get on. Similarly, each channel has its own role to play.

During the pandemic, quick grocery delivery is a segment that

came up online. While Amazon still has Amazon Fresh - you don’t
have a play in this segment yet. Why is that?

The number of products that every household needs is a big source of the
perplexity of quick grocery delivery. There are product expiry dates
involved, supply chains are fragmented, there are national brands,
regional brands, local brands and sometimes even unbranded products to
deal with.

We are not trying to compete with quick grocery delivery brands. We

would rather focus on reliable delivery at good prices. Amazon Fresh is
for the monthly grocery stock up and planned purchases - which is a
large enough occasion or segment to be in. It’s okay not to play in the
 quick grocery delivery segment.
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Amazon plans Prime Day for India later next
month amid slowing ecommerce sales
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Published On Jun 30, 2023 at 08:01 AM IST

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Uniqlo plans major manufacturing

presence in India
One of the world's most valuable clothing retailers, Uniqlo already has a cluster of prod
partners in India and is looking to expand this network through a significantly large
investment, multiple people aware of the development told ET without sharing any
estimated amount.

Dia Rekhi & Faizan Haidar , • ET Bureau

Updated On Jun 29, 2023 at 09:22 PM IST
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Fast Retailing, the parent company of Uniqlo, is looking to set up a

significant manufacturing presence in India through about 20
‘production partners’, multiple people aware of the development told ET.

One of the world's most valuable clothing retailers, Uniqlo already has a
cluster of production partners in India and is looking to expand this
network through a significantly large investment, they said without
sharing any estimated amount.

“The investment amount will be significant because Uniqlo is serious

about India and views it as an important market,” one of the persons said.
“Unlike the existing facilities in India, which cater more towards exports,
the production partners that Uniqlo will bring to India will be specifically
meant for the domestic market.”
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One of the company's production partners that ET spoke to confirmed

that their current mandate is to produce only for exports.

Uniqlo, which is Asia's biggest clothing brand, had said India is one of the
top priority markets for them where consumers are increasingly shifting
from ‘fast-fashion’ to long-lasting essentials and functional wear.

The company’s ambitions for India are considerable with its CEO
Tadashi Yanai indicating that he wants Uniqlo to become the “best-
selling retailer in India”.

The Japanese brand opened its first door in September 2019, but
stringent lockdown measures announced to contain the outbreak of the
pandemic in March 2020 delayed the expansion plan.

The brand is now planning to enter Mumbai and Bangalore. It has

already opened stores in Lucknow and Chandigarh after Delhi.

Uniqlo does not own any factories. Instead, it outsources production of

almost all its products to factories outside Japan.
 As per a report titled ‘The Uniqlo case: fast retailing recipe for attaining
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market leadership position in casual clothing’, this model allows Uniqlo

Newsto keep its breakeven point low and improve

Awardsreturn on investment.
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“As we expand our global sales, we continue to grow our partner factory B
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network in countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and India,”
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the company has stated on its website.

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As per its list of garment factories, as on March 1, 2023, Uniqlo has 227
factories in China, 54 in Vietnam, 33 in Bangladesh, 13 in Indonesia, and
16 factories in India and Japan among several other locations.

As the world’s second most-populated country, India is an attractive

market for apparel brands, especially with youngsters increasingly
embracing western-style clothing.

Over the past decade, global brands Zara and H&M became market
leaders in the fast fashion segment in India.

“For global brands, India should be one of the most logical sourcing hubs
given its large vertically integrated manufacturing sector on the one
hand and the large, growing domestic market driving demand on the
 other hand,” Devangshu Dutta, founder of retail consulting firm Third
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Eyesight, told ET. “However, its weight in the sourcing baskets has

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visible for decades to the management teams of brands and retailers as a
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Uniqlo’s existing production partners in the country include Shahi
Exports, Brandix Lanka, Tangerine Design, Maral Overseas, Shingora
Textiles, Silver Spark Apparel, SM Lulla Industries Worldwide and
Penguin Apparels.

As per Fast Retailing's first-half results, the company said its revenue was
1.4672 trillion yen, or around $10.2 billion, and that its operating profit
had risen to 220.2 billion yen ($1.53 billion), bolstered by strong
performances from operations in several regions, including India where
it said it generated significant increases in both revenue and profit.

With regard to Uniqlo International, in particular, it said revenue stood

at 755.2 billion yen ($5.25 billion), while operating profit was 122.6 billion
yen ($852.93 million).

The company said regions like India “reported significant revenue and
profit gains as they enter a full-fledged growth phase”.

Published On Jun 29, 2023 at 09:22 PM IST

uniqlo india tangerine design india uniqlo international uniqlo

manufacturing presence maral overseas consumer goods apparel

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