Renault India Is A Great Example Of How Technology And Marketing Are Integrating

Gone are the days when selling a cheap product in the market would have been part of the company’s objective. The Gen Y looks for a value-for money offering even if it involves more expenses. Those who innovate like Apple rule the roost while others remain mere followers.

Delineating his thoughts, Dr. Alok Bharadwaj, MD-India and Emerging Markets, CreoVate Transformations and Transformations, said, “Living in Singapore for the last three years, the only thing I have been watching is millennials impacting trends and companies about finding newer customer values. If you look at across the world including India, the leadership agenda cannot be complete without change management of business transformation. Cutting across all markets whether emerging or developed, this is an important part of leader’s group on creating what is their transformational agenda. Customer centricity or customer-driven strategies is another part of the agenda.”

Renault Motors India is one of the few companies which has been able to crack the passenger vehicle market by bringing in groundbreaking products like the Kwid, Duster, etc. It is also one of the OEMs which left the Indian market (through Mahindra JV) and has later successfully re-entered here with its own product lines. Already being figured among the top 5 carmakers in the country, the company believes technology and disruption will be the name of the game across various industries like automobile, consumer electronics, etc.

Sumit Sawhney, Country CEO and Managing Director, Renault India said, “The whole meaning of marketing has changed. Earlier, it was all about advertising.  But today it is true marketing.  And if somebody tells, you should know your customer. I think all of us know what a customer wants because we ourselves are customers. The biggest challenge that we see in our industry is how we can make sure that we have the right conversation with our customer. We engage with our customers and we make sure that he understands what we want to communicate. What is happening in today’s world and specifically my industry is that technology disruption has become a hygiene. What is more important is to make sure that you create a differentiation and in today’s marketing world, I don’t believe in change management. Today is the era of disruption and you have to go for it. If you are going for a change, you are just doing better than words. But if you are going for disruption, you will be different than others. Two words that are very important are: Disruption and Innovation.”

"What was very important for me was to have the right product with the right features at the right value at the right time. When we were working for the right product, we wanted to offer something which was very different in terms of design elements, features, etc. for Kwid. We launched a car (in 2015) without displaying it in the showrooms and offering any test drives.  At the same time, we didn’t want to miss the festive season. So we launched Kwid on a Car App, wherein consumers could have a 360 degree view of the model on the lines of a virtual showroom. We managed to sell 23,500 cars on that app in the first few months. This was despite the fact that we had only 150 showrooms which was not good enough to retail a mass market car. So what is important is that technology and marketing are getting integrated", Sawhney said at the 13th Edition of BW Businessworld's Marketing Whitebook launch event.