iMedia’s Online Retail MD Jaswant Singh with local entrepreneurs Nupur Agarwal (Kiwi Kisan Window) and Tulika Gupta (Bow and Square Ltd) at the iMedia Online Retail Summit being held at Hotel Hyatt Regency in Doon on Thursday. Pic: Bhuvan Chawla.
By Arun Pratap Singh
Dehradun, 17 Nov: A three day iMedia Online Retail Summit began at Hotel Hyatt Regency, here, yesterday. This summit brings together leaders from Retail Marketing, Technology and Digital Innovation at Hyatt Regency in the city. This is first time that a summit of this level and kind is being held in Dehradun.
Speaking to Garhwal Post, Jaswant Singh, Managing Director, India, iMedia Online Retail Summit emphasised, “This 3-day event is a unique environment where e-commerce meets business networking, thought-leadership presentations through one on one meetings and interactive discussions.”
Singh added, “The summit aims to create an environment that brings together leaders from the intersecting roles of retail technology, marketing and digital innovation. We are so excited to reunite the community as the country’s finest marketing leaders and solution providers gather at Dehradun to discover the latest industry insights and innovations.”
It is pertinent to point out here that India’s online retail market is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 19.8 per cent to reach USD 85.5 billion by 2025, according to a report by Forrester.
Singh reminds that for more than 10 years, iMedia Summits have brought the power of face-to-face to life by connecting senior marketers from major brands with agencies, publishers and innovative tech and service providers. Through world-class content, unique event experiences, and outstanding networking, iMedia fosters leadership, industry advancement, and partnerships that have the potential to take any particular business to the next level.
The ongoing three day online retail summit in Dehradun has brought to the city brands like Citrus Ad, Paytm Ads, Value First, ICS CPaaS& Engagement Platform, Affle, Criteo and YOptima as sponsors of the event and Amazon Ads as major participants. HDFC Bank, Duroflex, Titan, Tata Clique, Matrimony.com, Bel Group, Go Desi, Wingreens, Marks & Spenser are other major participants at the event. Not only this, Kiwi Kisan Window and Bow and Squares are two local start-ups which are doing very well and are participating here.
On the first day, yesterday, Prashant Puri of AdLift, Vineet Khanna of Supertails and a representative of Fireside Ventures had spoken on Winning Marketing Strategies for India’s new age Brands from an investors’ perspective. Later, yesterday, Vijay Iyer, India Head Ad Sales of Amazon Heads addressed the summit on The Changing Paradigm of the Media Landscape. The final speaker yesterday was Shoury Gupta, Vice President of Value First, who spoke on the theme, “Roto, Kapda, Makaan: Aur Dikhao is More About Conversations”.
The second day today also had interesting sessions following breakfast. There was an Ice breaking session called the One Minute Match up, in which the participants got to know each other. This was followed by a talk on the theme, “How Plum Goodness is Driving Growth by Understanding the Audience & Personalising the Experience” by Shankar Prasad, Founder and CEO of Plum Goodness. This was followed by a talk by Deepak Oram, on the theme, “Digital Transformation Strategies from HDFC Bank: Tech, Talent & Tenacity that no one talks about.”
An interesting session followed on the theme, “How Brands can Leverage Payment Insights to Build an Omnichannel Marketing Approach” which was addressed by Aditya Swaminathan, Associate Vice President of Paytm Ads. Satish Kadu, Co Founder and CEO of YOptima spoke on “The Brand Performance Continuum via Programmatic”.
The importance of proper monetisation of businesses was explained by Abhijit Kumar and Rohit Monga of Criteo. SmitaMurarka, CMO of Duroflex explained ‘How Duroflex is Cracking the D2C (Direct to Customers) Strategy in Bharat’. This was followed by another interesting session at which Gagan Arora of Pristyn Care, Sai Thota of Ferns and Petals, Kushal Sanghvi of Citrus Ad and Rithish Kumar discussed, “What is a Good Ecommerce Customer Acquisition Cost?”
Later the participants interacted on one on one basis which continued even in the Networking Luncheon. First post lunch session was titled, “The Maturity of Retail Media” and this was addressed of Chief Product Officer of Citrus Ad, John Chaplin.
Another session sponsored by Amazon Ads was a discussion on Utilising the Blurring Lines of Online & Offline Consumer Shopping Journey which was led by Ajay Sharma of Amazon Ads, Tathagat Jena of HMD Global and Sanjay Sharma of Harman International. Mayur Pathak, Titan Company’s Head Product and Digital Customer Experience led the session on the theme, “Building Delightful Oneline Experiences for Omnichannel Retailers. Arjun Bhatia of Matrimony.com spoke on how can brands in India stay ahead of the cure with right resources and investments. Alamjit Sekhon of Bel Group spoke on The Laughing Cow Journey while Vinay Kothari of Go Desi briefed the participants of the Go Desi journey. The day ended with a “Mixology Session” and a comedy show by NitiPalta.
Tomorrow is the final day of the summit. Jaswant Singh expressed confidence that this summit would result in enriching every participant and benefitting them and, hopefully, more such events would be held in Dehradun.
