Tag: The Media Dialogues

India is predominantly a self-employed market, says Piramal Finance | Media Dialogues

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

Jairam Sridharan, Managing Director, and Arvind Iyer, Chief Marketing Officer at Piramal Capital and Housing Finance, addressed the diverse financing needs of the under-served and un-served people of the ‘Bharat Market’ in an interview with Storyboard18 Media Dialogues.

According to Sridharan, India is predominantly a self-employed market. “80% of India is self-employed. And, only the rest of the workforce in India is salaried, which means that all the services are being directed at that 20% and all the rest is getting ignored. That is the market, we at Piramal have been attempting to serve,” he said.

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Piramal Capital and Housing Finance focuses on suburban and small-town self-employed families with moderate income. They call them ‘Budget customers of Bharat’.

“What we mean by that is, geographically, these are customers who live in the outskirts of big cities or tier-II or tier-III towns. They are not holding formal white-collar jobs,” said Sridharan.

Sridharan believes this segment is highly underserved in the market.

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Only above 30% of all bank branches are in rural areas where over 60% of India’s population lives. This one data point shows the major gap in access to formal sources of credit and dependence on informal money lenders in the country’s rural markets and even in tier-II and tier-III markets.

Piramal Capital and Housing Finance is attempting to bridge this divide through its products, media strategies and marketing initiatives that break conventional perceptions about credit access. It focuses on suburban and small-town self-employed families with moderate income.

According to Iyer, the company has to inform the customers what the brand proposition is. “A brand promise or a brand proposition is a bolder thing to do in many ways because it forces you to calibrate your own organisation, you are able to figure out how do we treat this customer and give them what they want in a manner that we are able to provide it to them. That has been the bedrock with which we have laid the foundation of saying how we should be doing business with the ‘Budget customers of Bharat’”.

For more, watch the accompanying video

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

The dynamic alliance between marketing and finance: Reshaping brands and businesses

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

Traditionally, marketing and finance have operated in isolation, often regarded as separate entities and even labelled as frenemies. However, recent trends have paved the way for a collaborative partnership between the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and the Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

This dynamic alliance has the potential to reshape brands and businesses in today’s complex world. A CNBC-TV18 special show, Media Dialogues, explores the transformative power of the CFO-CMO partnership and its real-world impact on organisations.

Shubhranshu Singh, Vice President and CMO of Tata Motors Commercial Vehicle Business Unit, and CFO GV Ramanan, Vice President and CFO of Tata Motors Commercial Vehicle Business Unit shared their insights about this alliance.

Ramanan acknowledged that marketing and finance were traditionally operated in silos, unaware of their common ground. Finance often viewed marketing as a budget guzzler, while marketing believed finance did not grasp the essence of branding. However, over time, both functions have recognised the need for collaboration. They understand that they are enablers, essential to driving business growth and profitability.

“They never thought there is anything common that they can work on. Finance always thought that marketing is a budget guzzler and marketing always thought that finance never understood what brand means. But, over the years, what is happening is both these functions are able to find a common ground. They both understand that they are both enablers, they have to enable to business growth, profitable growth,” he said.

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Singh emphasised that the CFO-CMO partnership is essential, despite being stereotyped as a clash between logic and magic, creativity and number crunching. By combining logical creativity and creative logic, they find a meeting point where their expertise converges. This hybridisation of ideas leads to innovative solutions that benefit the organisation as a whole.

“The partnership is an essential partnership. it is stereotyped as the battle between logic and magic, between creativity and number crunching but my take is if you hybridise it, if there is logical creativity and creative logic then you come to a meeting point,” said Singh.

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The collaboration between marketing and finance is a game-changing force that fuels success and growth. By aligning their strategies and objectives, CMOs and CFOs can steer organisations towards sustainable growth.

The partnership provides a unique opportunity to leverage financial insights and market knowledge, enabling brands to make informed decisions and develop effective marketing campaigns. Finance brings data-driven analysis to the table, while marketing adds the human touch and the ability to connect emotionally with consumers.

ALSO READ: Media Dialogues: Digital advertising will grow further as it allows personalisation at scale, says expert

The CMO-CFO alliance goes beyond individual departments and has a profound impact on the overall success of organisations. By working together, marketing and finance can optimise budget allocations, ensuring that resources are allocated to the most impactful marketing initiatives.

This collaboration enables greater transparency and accountability, leading to improved financial performance and return on investment. It also fosters innovation by facilitating the exploration of new business models, technologies, and market trends.

For more details, watch the accompanying video

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

India has seen consistent growth in book sales, says CEO of HarperCollins Publishers

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

This is the season to celebrate authors, books, and ideas as literature festivals play out across the country. Mumbai, Indore, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Dehradun, almost every city hosts its festival today.

The question arises how indicative is the turnout and buzz of how much we are reading or if we are a country of readers. So, to check the pulse of publishing, CNBC-TV18 spoke to Sanjoy Roy, MD of Teamwork Arts Private Limited and Co-Founder of JLF; Ananth Padmanabhan, CEO of HarperCollins Publishers India and author Amish Tripathi.

According to Padmanabhan, India has seen consistent growth in book sales. He added that online bookstores increased the readership by at least 20 percent during COVID times.

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“At this moment there are at least about 100 authors in various festivals. COVID and being at home meant that people got into the habit of ordering books online and got the convenience of getting them delivered. So online bookstores increased the readership by at least 20 percent. So now between 60 and 65 million people buy books. India has seen consistent growth in book sales, especially in a country that speaks English as a second language and with reluctant readers,” Padmanabhan said.

Watch the video for more.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Media Dialogues: Challenges, opportunities for financial services marketing in changed landscape

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

As customers of banking and financial services, we are bombarded with frequent tech-led changes that ease access but are also confusing and for some of us really challenging. Cash continues to be king even though the COVID-19 lockdown has accelerated digital payments like nothing else before.

Ravi Santhanam, CMO, Head-Corporate Communications, as well as Head-Liability Products and Managed Programs at HDFC Bank; Sujatha V Kumar, Head, Marketing-India and South Asia, Visa; and Shalini Pillai Banerjee, Head-Marketing, Google Pay and Next Billion Users (NBU), India, discussed the challenges and opportunities for financial services marketing in this changing landscape.

“This sector has been extremely fast and sometimes we have been left behind by what the consumers want and what they have got from the rest of the players. Before the pandemic started, 90 percent of the transactions were anyway digital in the banking industry. What the pandemic made sure is the remaining 10 percent of the transactions also started coming into digital and these are all the people who didn’t want to do digital earlier. While transactions were digital, the actual sales of many of these products were still not digital, it was still a highly distribution-led environment. The pandemic made the consumers move in that direction – if they can buy a ticket in an app, I can as well buy a personal loan also in an app and that was the biggest change that we have seen in the last 18 months,” said Santhanam.

“We have seen huge growth in adoption of cashless payment methods over the past one and a half years. It has been spurred since the pandemic started because the consumers who largely used cash have had to move to cashless methods whether it is at point-of-sale or even at home they use e-Commerce and it has gone up,” said Sujatha.

“There have been changes across in terms of digital behavior. The changes that we are seeing in the last 10 months would have usually taken 10 years,” Shalini mentioned.

“The pandemic has made every person operate very differently and forcing them to live online in the way they do their day-to-day things, the way they transact, the way they talk, the way they interact. Digital has made them self-reliant,” Shalini shared.

For the entire discussion, watch the accompanying video.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow