Changes happening Observe the trends, take action to exploit those particular trends, because if we don’t, we might become obsolete very quickly. This specially holds true on mobile and technology front. One needs to listen and observe, both at the macro level and the micro level. Importance of customization Today, we have about 12-13 crore people who have downloaded our app. About 4-5 crore people use it every day. That’s a significant number. We have realised that there is an upper ceiling we are going to reach very soon. When we look at whatever is happening on social media, we see a lot of people who are using the app in English but whatever they are writing in terms of whether they like the app, or in terms of facing a particular problem, everything is essentially in their mother tongue but written in the English script. You as a marketer need to see that and realise that if you don’t go vernacular in India over the next two years, you will not grow. Tie ups with brands Three years back, we were very active on Twitter. We saw all the big FMCG brands run consumer promotions however, the consumers felt that whatever is being given to them (gifts) is not important. They asked, “Why can’t I get something like a mobile recharge?”, this is perhaps an isolated comment but one which allows for important insight into the psyche of what the consumer wants. Now, If you don’t listen carefully, you would miss such comments. We at Paytm talked to a lot of brands and told them that whenever they are running consumer promotions, they should use us as a gratification tool. Expansion through user feedback We are essentially telling our users that if there is any particular outlet where you would like to pay with PayTm, but it’s not being accepted, why don’t you inform us? This is a better approach rather than a push process, where a big distribution force goes out into the market. These things are very important from a marketer’s perspective. This can have a significant impact, both in distribution and into product development and delivery. Note to marketing Fraternity Earlier we would have one annual plan, two to three campaigns in a year and we would be very happy with it. Today, the annual plan is useless as the situation is very dynamic. There is a plan that happens once every month. There are different competitors coming in. If you really just focus on a rigid one year marketing plan then, chances are that by the time you go out in to the market, the market would have moved on and become something very different. The scale of change is so much that if you don’t listen to what people are saying across your distribution/ channels then there is a very good chance that some development in the industry will come and make you completely obsolete. Define your competition The single biggest learning for me and my organization has been that you need to define your competition set in a very broad way. If you are an app, at the most a consumer is going to have 15- 30 apps in his phone. So your competition set is not the two or three guys in the industry but you are fighting against a whole plethora of apps which may be there. Against those, you have to be in the top ten otherwise chances are that the person will just uninstall the app. This session took place at the Pitch CMO Summit, Delhi chapter, held on the 3^rdof May at Leela Ambience, Gurugram.