'Language is single-most important factor for growth of mobile business'

Even as India accelerates its shift to mobile, businesses too need to adopt mobile strategies at a faster pace in order to be better engaged with today’s mobile first consumers in India. This fact was brought forth at an industry event held by Facebook in Mumbai yesterday. 

Christened ‘Mobile Moves Businesses’, the event saw Siddharth Banerjee, SVP - Marketing, Vodafone; Kanika Kalra, VP - Marketing, Snapdeal; and Ashish Bhasin, Chairman and CEO, Dentsu Aegis Network, South Asia, sharing their key learnings on digital and also how Facebook has provided them the growth opportunities in a fragmented commerce landscape. Umang Bedi, Managing Director, India & South Asia at Facebook, moderated the discussion. 

Citing some numbers to highlight the growing prowess of mobile in India, Bedi pointed out, “The world has already gone mobile, and India is leading the way on mobile purchases.76 per cent use mobile for shopping and exploration, 74 per cent use mobile to post purchases, while 42 per cent use mobile to transact/ purchase.” He further noted that 90 per cent of the consumers who sought information on Facebook were likely to buy the product. “Facebook is at the heart of the mobile-first shopping journey and Facebook users are heavy mobile shoppers. Nine out of 10 e-commerce shoppers are active on Facebook,” Bedi said, adding, “Our journey has been focused on connecting people.” 

Facebook has partnered with India’s top 100 advertisers, wherein they have launched their products or engaged with consumers on Facebook, which has led to conversions. Among these advertisers are Modelez, Kingfisher, Tanishq, Goibibo, Adidas, Garnier, Durex, and Shopclues. 

Speaking about Vodafone’s key learnings from digital, Siddharth Banerjee, SVP - Marketing, Vodafone, observed, “It is not just about digital marketing in a box, but about doing digital marketing in the real world. I see three trends in this. First one being – understanding the marketing trends, that is, what will Facebook/ Twitter deliver to my business? The second trend is reorienting the creatives. We at Vodafone have always understood the value of good storytelling. The third trend is area measurement, which has enabled us to put in more funding. We brought the pug back in our ads because the pug connected with our audiences.” 

Further briefing about the future of mobile and digital marketing in India, Ashish Bhasin, Chairman & CEO - South Asia, Dentsu Aegis Network, said, “Video is very important for us and with Reliance JIO and Vodafone coming in the market, data cost will fall and once that happens, the lines between digital and outdoor and other mediums will blur. Everybody who predicted that about 40 per cent will be all digital will be proven wrong, because by 2020, I think 80-100 per cent of all the work and consumers will be on digital.” 

Agreeing with him, Banerjee added here, “Soon there will be a leap from 2G to 4G and we will have the services and offerings to power the road to digitalisation.” 

Facebook’s strategy to tap regional market in India 

When asked about how Facebook is strategising to tap the huge potential of regional market in India, Bedi replied that from Facebook’s perspective, regional language is growing in extremes. “Today, we at Facebook are available in 12 languages and have been driving a large amount of engagement and content from publishers across multiple languages. We believe that language is going to be critical in the adoption of mobile and digital for growth as it has become imperative for this medium’s ability to serve locally relevant content in the right language and on the right device. 

Adding to this, Bhasin said, “India is much bigger than Delhi and Mumbai. Most of us are much more comfortable in our mother tongue that we grow up with you know; that’s our natural communication. And I think that is going to change in a hundred years, so we will have to change our content and our approach to get people’s attention. So, what you have asked is going to be the single most important factor for rapid growth of the mobile business.