The Martechno Beat: Decoding Martech!

The retail and eCommerce landscape has seen a sea change over the past couple of years. The pandemic caused a massive shift in consumer behavior as shoppers were forced to rely on online brands to do their shopping. Businesses scrambled to keep up with customer demands, in terms of inventory and technological capabilities. In such an unprecedented time, digital technologies have aided the survival of eCommerce and retail brands.

To learn more about the pandemic's impact on the eCommerce and retail industries and to understand what the future looks like, we caught up with Dhiraj Jain, the Co-Founder, and CEO of dotkonnekt.

dotkonnekt is a management consulting firm that enables collaborative disruption and collective enrichment for progressive retailers, innovative start-ups & smart investors.

Dhiraj shared interesting insights on:

Tune in to understand how global retail and eCommerce brands are innovating and leveraging the latest technologies to continue growing amidst lots of disruptions.

As the effects of the pandemic start to wear off after over 17 months, the travel industry is bracing itself for future growth as people are eager to start travelling again. The travel industry is also in a period of transition as they embrace technology like never before.Digital Transformation has completely transformed the way travel companies communicate and engage their customers.

Wakanow is Africa's one-stop shop for low-cost flights, hotel bookings, and airport pick-ups. They assist travelers in researching, planning, and booking trips. Founded in 2008, they recently raised $40 million in funding and focus extensively on being technology savvy.

To comprehend the issues that travel brands face in communicating with their customers and how digitization has helped them anticipate and meet customers needs better, we caught up with Sodie Osei-Bonsu, Country Manager at Wakanow Ghana and Chukwuemeka Anene, Team Lead- Creative and Digital Marketing at Wakanow Nigeria.

They shared interesting insights on:

Tune in to understand how travel brands can seamlessly address communication related challenges by leveraging digitization to effectively engage with their customers.

As smartphones continue to penetrate into smaller towns, users are depending on mobile apps for all their needs. From shopping online to completing payments on digital platforms, everything’s done at ease on mobiles. So much so that users have even started maintaining their ledgers on mobile apps. The beauty of this is it’s very easy to track and offers many more benefits than doing it in primitive ways.

Khatabook enables micro, small and medium merchants to track business transactions securely. It also offers features such as online payment collection through UPI and QR, sending periodic reminders to creditors via messages and report generation. Founded in October 2018, Khatabook has become India’s leading business management app for MSMEs with over 20M downloads in a remarkably short period of time.

We caught up with Damini Mishra, Senior Product Manager at Khatabook to get an understanding of how they are scaling customer acquisition, engagement and retention by delivering delightful mobile app experiences.

Damini also shared her thoughts on:

Tune in to this episode to understand how Khatabook has created different user segments and engaged with each of them differently to build and retain a loyal customer base.

The impact of the pandemic on the state of e-commerce around the world cannot be understated. According to Salesforce in Q2 and Q3 of 2020, e-commerce growth in Australia was the highest across the globe. Buyers turned to online shopping in lockdowns. But with e-commerce offering massive benefits as compared to shopping at a store, buyers continued to purchase from the comfort of their homes.

Kmart Australia Limited is a leading Australian-based retail brand that operates over 230 stores across Australia and New Zealand. Having been around for over 50 years, they are creating delightful shopping experiences by providing products at the lowest price. Catering to almost 97% of Australia’s diverse population, Kmart is one of the most popular retail brands in Australia.

We caught up with Anne-Marie Bodal, Head of Design, Forecast & Product Technology at Kmart Australia Limited to get a deeper understanding of the retail and e-commerce market in Australia.

Anne-Marie shared her thoughts on:

Tune in to understand how e-commerce brands are leveraging different channels and technologies like personalization to deliver exceptional shopping experiences.

Due to the pandemic, lockdowns, work from home, social distancing, and contactless deliver have become common terms. Due to these safety hazards, instead of making payments by cash, customers started to pay more online. This saw a surge in both, the number of new e-wallet users and the volume of transactions made.

This change is set to continue with e-wallets offering users a convenient and swift way of making their transactions online.

Globe Fintech Innovations is a partnership between Globe Telecom, the Ayala Corporation and Ant Financial, and provides innovative and first-in-world fintech solutions to consumers, merchants, and organizations. It operates two fintech companies, one of which is- GCash, a micropayment service that transforms the mobile phone into a virtual wallet for secure, fast and convenient money transfer.

To gain deeper insights into how the Fintech sector in emerging markets has evolved and grown over the past year, we caught up with Oscar Patrick Pobre, VP - Decision Science & Data Monetization  at Globe Fintech Innovations.

Oscar shared insights on:

Tune in to learn how the fintech industry is evolving rapidly by adopting the latest developments in the digital landscape.

The BFSI industry acts as the foundation of a country’s economy. In 2020, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, asset prices began to fluctuate whereas bitcoin began to outperform by getting a 6X price uplift in Southeast Asia.

Indodax is the largest Indonesia Digital Crypto Exchange that acts as the backbone for the entire finance ecosystem in Indonesia implementing public blockchain technology. Formerly known as Bitcoin Indonesia, it has been serving Southeast Asia since 2014,and has more than 2,000,000 members.

To understand how digital technologies are helping financial institutions build a personal touch with their customers, we caught up with Bagas Satriadi, Commercial Vice-President at Indonesia’s crypto-currency leader Indodax

In this conversation which is in Bahasa, Bagas highlights the following:

Tune in to learn how bitcoin and cryptocurrency prove to be the future for investments and how improved engagement through digital transformation can prove beneficial to brands and their customers.

With the podcast impacting the lives of people from all walks of life, students were left with no choice but to attend classes online. Edtech companies have been major beneficiaries amidst the prevailing situation as the lack of physical classes meant that students depended on digital platforms to enhance their learning.

To understand how ed-tech brands have built solid digital marketing strategies to improve the engagement with their users, we caught up with Rhezandra Priatama, Chief Technology Officer at Sekolahmu.

Sekolahmu is the pioneer of a blending education technology system in Indonesia. With a high standard and well-structured curriculum, this digital platform has been acquiring more than 2.5 million users within 15 months since the app’s launch on Google Play Store. They also reached a record of 12 million page views a day.

Rhezandra also shared insights on:

Tune in to gain actionable growth tips on how to build a solid digital marketing strategy by extracting the best out of each online channel.

The pandemic has forced brands from all industries to rely on digital channels and platforms to maintain strong communication with their customers. Traditional brands have also adapted to this need for change by building effective digital communication strategy that engages effectively with their customers.

To understand the role of digital communication in the pension fund administration, we caught up with Oluwadamilola Ayinde, Corporate Communications Officer at Nigeria’s Fidelity Pension Managers.

Fidelity Pension Managers is one of the licensed Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) in Nigeria. They aspire to be a leading and innovative PFA that manages pension assets transparently and profitably. Their mission is to provide safe and rewarding pension services for a happy retirement.

Oluwadamilola shared insights on:

Tune in to gain insights on how you can extract the best out of each of your marketing channels and platforms to build a robust digital communications strategy.

The pandemic has highlighted the importance of health and life insurance. Digital transformation and personalization have become critical levers of growth for insurance brands; in the absence of a physical connection with their customers.

Max Life Insurance Co. Ltd. is a joint venture between Max Financial Services Ltd. and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co. Ltd.  Max Life offers comprehensive life insurance protection and long-term savings plans through its multichannel distribution including agency and other distribution partners.

We caught up with Sameer Jain, AVP- Digital Marketing at Max Life Insurance to understand how digital transformation and marketing automation have changed the game for insurance companies over the past year.

Sameer shared his thoughts on:

Tune in to learn how understanding customer behavior and effectively engaging with them on the relevant touchpoints has proved to be a gamechanger for insurance brands.

Danube Home is a leading home improvement and home furnishing retail brand with a strong and ever-growing presence in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. Danube Home is ranked among the top retailers in the Gulf region, which has been growing at an average rate of 25% growth rate since 2011.

After establishing its foothold through physical stores, Danube Home launched its new tech-focused online market called ‘Danube Home.com’ that operates in UAE, Oman, and Bahrain.

We caught up with Mithil Ajmera, Head of Marketing- E-commerce at Danube Home to understand how traditional retail brands like Danube Home are leveraging digital technologies to build a strong e-commerce platform.

Mithil shares his thoughts on:

Learn how Danube Home is building a strong presence across all their offline and online channels to grow their business globally.