How COVID Supercharged India’s Digital Habits?

India’s booming manufacturing sector has put it on course to overtake Japan and Germany to become the world’s third-biggest economy by 2030, according to a recent Morgan Stanley report. In its digital maturity, too, the country is making great strides, according to Nisha Eapen, client relationship head at Preciso Smart Bid Platform.

Preciso is based in Italy and you operate from Canada, but you are from Kerala, your data scientists are based in India and you have plenty of clients there – what is your perception of the Indian market?

It is very well advanced, it has a wide reach. More than anything, that is because customers are moving from physical purchases to online buying. Especially since the COVID, we have seen a huge surge in this trend. For example, a website we previously worked with in India, selling baby toys and apparel, had 20,000 sales a day pre-Covid, and during the pandemic that increased to about 50,000 sales. Obviously during COVID, all the markets were shut down, all the shops were closed, and everybody turned to o***************, but what is interesting is that this trend is still continuing. People have discovered they like the ease of sitting at home and making a purchase – the comfort zone of buying from home. We have seen conversion rates doubling in the online market, and that trend is still continuing – it is no longer just a Covid reaction.

Is India setting a distinct course, or does it feel increasingly globalised?

India is absolutely becoming a part of the global market. The Indian market has grown a lot, together with the international market. And whatever the new trend may be – both industry-wise but also in consumer terms – whatever products we are seeing globally, whichever big brands are operating elsewhere, we can see them all in India now. In India, the big international brands have retail shops, whether through franchisees or having launched them themselves, and they also have the online presence.

What are the trends in the Indian digital advertising market?

In September I was at the India Affiliate Summit in Gurgaon, just on the border of New Delhi, and there was a lot of discussion of influencers, and a lot of content creators were there as speakers. We are obviously involved in data, but for us it is really good to know that this is something which is happening within the industry and that we have lots of alternatives now. In addition to the ad networks and the publishers and those conventional methods, increasingly brands are looking a lot harder at influencers, because their reach is so good. So I think it was good for people to see how these creators are making use of platforms like TikTok and Instagram and YouTube.

Other than influencers, what are the hot topics in affiliate marketing?

The main topics in Gurgaon specifically were data-driven strategies, because we are all about the data in this business. You run campaigns from different networks, or you run websites, and at the end of the day you get the results and it is all about how you look into the data and how you analyze it, based upon the different metrics. So most of the discussions were based on data-driven strategies, but there were also a lot of innovative ideas on affiliate and e-commerce, and also D2C. As I mentioned, there are a lot more influencers and content creators, and there was a lot of discussion about  how you can leverage their reach to sell to consumers directly – that side of marketing.

How was it to be back on the conference circuit this year after all those virtual experiences of the two years before?

When you go and meet people physically it makes a big difference. You can network a lot better at these kinds of conferences, because in person is how you build trust. What this industry needs to promote most of all is its transparency. Every day it is more about the revenue, the cost and the profit and the spend, so there needs to be a lot of trust for that, but it is when you go and meet clients in person that you can really build that trust with them, and you feel the connectivity. Virtual, you are not really connecting with them.

You are just speaking and then you are just agreeing on something and you work like that, but the connection actually happens when you meet them physically, and it is also how you learn about new things. At a virtual conference, you have a choice about what to watch, but at a real-life program it is happening all around you and you end up with a much better outlook on things. It is a learning process. You can upgrade yourself.