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Become A Startup Insider With Inc42 Plus
Join our exclusive community of business leaders &makers for in-depth tech stories and intelligence on India’s tech economy you won’t find elsewhere.
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Become A Startup Insider
Become a Startup Insider in 2024 with Inc42 Plus. Join our exclusive community of 10,000+ founders, investors & operators and stay ahead in India’s startup & business economy.
Inc42 and Google Cloud recently held a roundtable in Bengaluru on The Consumer-Centric Startups’ Guide To Drive Business Agility And Expansion With Data. The discussion explored many critical areas such as:
- Building customer experience and managing expectations using data
- Leveraging data to solve acquisition and retention puzzles
- Solutions to help businesses tap into new avenues and drive innovation and expansion
Moderated by Mahesh Makhija, partner and leader of digital and emerging technology at EY India, the event was attended by many business leaders from various industries.
The discussion also included:
- Anup Daware, CTO of Hector Beverages
- Dayanidhi MG, CEO of nCore Games
- Dinu Nair, VP of engineering at Freo
- Pranil Bafna, director of products at Leap Finance
- Sandeep Cashyap, head of startups at Google Cloud India
- Shobhit Gupta, head of engineering at FamPay
- Sudarshan Lodha, founder and CEO of Strata
- Rajarshi Chattopadhyay, VP, product, data and revenue at RentoMojo
- Natraj Choudhury, head of engineering at Zolve
How B2C Startups Can Leverage Data To Accelerate Growth
India’s consumer internet economy is at a late growth trajectory, thanks to the rapid digital transformation fuelled by the pandemic. The country currently has 931 Mn internet users, and the number is expected to breach the billion-mark by 2030, according to Inc42’s recent report, The State Of Consumer Internet In India.
The startup ecosystem, in particular, has risen to cater to this growing consumer base. Today, India is home to more than 39K active startups, led by enterprise tech (18.7%), ecommerce (12.8%) and fintech (12.1%).
Having minted 105 unicorns, as we speak, India has emerged as a startup powerhouse. But with great opportunities come great challenges.
Most companies are now overwhelmed with data, stored in different systems and channels. This results in data silos and massive data fragmentation that can clog systems and increase operational costs.
Weighing in on this, neobanking platform Freo’s Dinu Nair said, “A lot of focus today is on AI/ML, but the biggest challenge for us is data cleanup. You need to filter out inaccurate, irrelevant data from what is relevant.”
Google Cloud’s Sandeep Cashyap agreed. “Unless data cleanup is done right, one cannot move to more enhanced domains like AI and ML,” he added.
The participants also discussed how businesses could use data to solve acquisition and retention issues. Anup Daware of Hector Beverages (Paper Boat’s parent entity) narrated how the company successfully scaled its website during Covid times.
“We track key consumer metrics such as demographic data and the data generated by ad runs on Facebook and Google to understand potential markets,” he said.
Dayanidhi MG of nCore Games emphasised the need for analysing consumer data and making it part of one’s go-to-market strategy. He explained how the company tests the water for a new product by analysing engagement and retention before monetising it. “We keep improving these metrics (retention and engagement) before expanding and reaching a wider audience.”
On the development of metaverse and its potential impact, the speakers had some interesting thoughts.
According to Sudarshan Lodha of Strata, a real estate investment startup, the metaverse is still a futuristic concept and is not likely to affect industries across the board. “Most of our customers are aged 39 or above. They are still sceptical about concepts like blockchain, and this is not likely to change soon,” he said.
However, Dayanidhi MG was pretty optimistic about the outcome. “This decade belongs to the metaverse. The gaming industry has already embraced cryptos and blockchain technology. And metaverse will soon touch every sector,” he said.
From instilling confidence in consumers to unlocking business opportunities, tune in to this roundtable to know how startups can streamline internal processes, target audiences and achieve growth by leveraging data analytics.
