Ritesh Ghosal on Croma’s customer-centric initiatives & their start small, scale fast approach
In this Research NXT Interview, Ritesh Ghosal, the Chief of Marketing and Insights – Infiniti Retail Limited, Croma (A TATA Enterprise), talks about his journey across top retail brands and his preferences for organizations that thrive on the premise of growth and innovation.
Key takeaways from this Research NXT interview:
- How Croma follows the start small, scale fast strategy to empower internal teams and to optimize the inflow and stickiness of customers.
- The advantage modern marketers have with mobile technologies in fast-tracking campaign development and launch.
- There various customer-centric initiatives under development in the new “tech-heavy” stores of Croma.
Here are some extracts from the insightful conversation we had with Ritesh.
Research NXT: Hi Ritesh, tell us about your role and journey through top retail brands until now. What inspired you to take up the position at Croma, Infiniti Retail Limited?
Ritesh: I have been a bit of a nomad throughout my working career. I have shopped for assignments that interest me rather than organizations that offer stability or a long career path. Starting my career as a media planner when India was opening its skies to satellite television, I have always looked for opportunities that put a premium on growth and innovation. In my experience, a team or an organization chasing growth offers a more energetic and engaging work environment.
What attracted me to Croma back in 2015? Croma was a pioneer in modern retail whose fairy-tale start had lost its path in the face of aggressive discounting by online marketplaces. Croma was convinced that superior consumer insight and sharp, targeted marketing programs would be their approach in the battle for the Indian consumers’ heart and wallet. I was offered a large canvas and a relatively free hand in shaping the strategy of the company. As most organizations these days tend to restrict marketers from just delivering “pretty picture” communication campaigns, I found this assignment extremely attractive.
Data is like the letters of the alphabet –the story has to be woven by the marketer.
Research NXT: As the owner of the marketing organization for Croma, how do you empower your team to optimize the inflow and stickiness of customers? Are you leveraging AI and ML to deliver marketing ROI, and how?
Ritesh: All decisions taken at Croma are based on insight, and all large-scale marketing programs are based on the premise of start small, scale fast. What this means is that we need access to much data and as near real-time as possible. Every vertical in the marketing team is engaged in understanding the impact of decisions taken last week, assessing pay-offs, and deciding whether to continue, refine, or desist.
We have invested in data collection tools right from social listening and internet crawling to doing conventional market research surveys. Each of these tools provides KPIs we track and lead metrics of those KPIs.
While it sounds very clinical and mathematical, it’s not. I have never believed that data tells the full story. Data is like the letters of the alphabet –the story has to be woven by the marketer. I like my team to build the hypothesis of what might be happening or might happen in the future and use data to support this hypothesis. If the interpretation is convincing, then we design an experiment to test the theory. If validated, we expand the scope of the program. Every change that has happened at the Croma stores and on the croma.com website has followed this strategy of start small, scale fast.
As you would have understood from the above, I am not much of an automation guy. We do use AI-driven algorithms in consumer targeting of communication in digital media, but its minimal and one of the few areas where we do not yet have a firm assessment of the ROI.
Reliable data at good speeds and reasonable prices combined with low priced smartphones are silently revolutionizing the country.
Research NXT: Which aspects of marketing and technology integration interests you most? Something that excites you on a personal level, and why?
Ritesh: I think the entire digital revolution that our country has observed starting with the advent of smartphones in the pre-2010 era is a fascinating story – one which has many chapters still to be written. IT has transformed India once, and I think there is room for one more transformation. Reliable data at good speeds and reasonable prices combined with low priced smartphones are silently revolutionizing the country. I started my working life when “boot floppies” and “telexes” were still in use. For me to be able to access everything I need from the office sitting in the comfort of my home is simply incredible. Indeed, I have lived through probably the most transformative 25 years; and with this COVID episode, I am probably looking at a period of even more rapid innovation.
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