Adapt, survive & thrive are the key learnings for 2022: Priya Patankar, PhonePe

Emerging from the severe disruptions in 2020, brought on by the global pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns, the year 2021 has seen the industry fight back to regain growth. And leading this growth saga have been the captions of the industry, who have been leading from the front.

The most definitive compilation of the most influential leaders of India Inc. across sectors, the 4^th edition of Powerful Influencers 2021 was launched at a virtual event on December 22, 2021. In keeping with the current times, the Powerful Influencers 2021 has the overarching theme of Resilience | Rebuilding | Resurgence.

Delivering her keynote address, Priya Patankar, Head of Communications, PhonePe, shars her views on the new normal in terms of digital payments as well as the Resilience | Rebuilding | Resurgence seen in the industry as we usher in 2022.

At the outset, Patankar remarked, “We couldn’t have any more apt theme for Powerful Influencers. 2021 has just gone past, and as we set our sights on 2022, we are here to look at what we have learnt last year that will take us optimistically forward. I was thinking what Resilience, Rebuilding and Resurgence mean to me personally and also for the business that I am a part of. The last two years have been a tough personal journey for a lot of us.”

Patankar further shared her experience with gardening during the work from home period and said, “Gardening is a very fulfilling but frustrating hobby due to the vagaries of changing seasons – not enough sunlight, too much rain, things are not really in your control. But I was surprised by how many of the plants bravely survived despite the elements. I actually witnessed the resilience of nature first hand.”

“I work with PhonePe, which is a fintech platform where we enable digital payments for literally millions of Indians. When the pandemic struck in 2020, it was an inflection point for the digital-based brands. Overnight, we saw a surge in the number of users and businesses going digital. Interestingly, what was different this time was that these users were often first time adopters of the digital payments. Some of them were trying the whole digital ecosystem for the first time. This was very unlikely for the users we saw for the very first time on the PhonePe digital platform – from small neighbourhood kirana stores who digitised overnight as customers were no longer paying cash, to older people; incidentally my parents went completely digital during the pandemic!” she noted.

Patankar also talked about users from Tier 2 and 3 markets, where a lot of them were new to digital payments. In order to cater to their needs, PhonePe had to completely relook at its payment strategy on how it talked to its customers – be it the onboarding process, where the company had to make the process simple to understand, ensuring that there were enough videos in multiple languages to explain the process, to hand hold the customers.

“There were enough visual cues and these were the huge challenge to the communicators. In the first six months of the pandemic, we also completely revamped the app home page to focus more on the essentials such as groceries and medicines, which were getting home delivered, etc. It was an extremely interesting time for all of us as communicators as we were re-looking at what we were doing. All this while we had thought of communication in a certain way, but we had to relearn and quickly adapt during the pandemic period.”

In the beginning of the year, PhonePe also decided to digitise over 25 million kirana stores, covering 99% pincodes in the country. The company’s sales team undertook this mammoth task and reached this milestone just last week, informed Patankar. “What this really made me realise was that nature, companies, industries, have a great need to adapt, survive and thrive, and I saw this action during the last two years. This is the learning which we will be taking with us in 2022,” she said.

These are edited excerpts. For the complete keynote address, watch below: