What Gaurav Mehta teaches about privacy-first marketing

I hope you won't laugh if I would like tell you the right answer but then to unwind I just go more into data. So talking about data, we're an ecosystem where we have we are facing constant challenges when it comes to data privacy, data theft. So in the ecosystem you know the business that you kind of function in today, how do you kind of and what is your perspective to deal with these challenges? Look, there's this data theft and like you know unethical marketing happens when you

don't have a relation to the consumer. When you have a relation to the consumer it's always based on like you know some give-and-take. You're giving value to the consumer and consumer says okay I need this value again at certain intervals so let me like you know tell you that I want this at this particular specific interval and that can be enabled by a great consumer experience. For us consumer experiences unlocked by great content practices and very good product experience. So I think for us we put a lot of focus on these two basis that

actually people give their details to us that hey you know what I'm ABC looking for ABC car help me further connect with me on WhatsApp and if you're connected on WhatsApp you know you like you know pretty much talking to a person from a one-on-one level on his most often used app as a brand now. As I said this stage doesn't happen like I'm making over quickly. The consumer experience the more pristine it is the better off you will be in terms of like getting that person to say hey you know what I trust you here are my details and talk to me further

whenever you have more details. We constantly talking about online offline and you know people want to search a car today they go online search for it right. How do you kind of you know get this entire seamless ecosystem in place it's obviously easier said than done. The offline online integration could you share some your thoughts on that? So there's certain things which are easier to control like the online piece we are digital native so for us it's almost in our DNA. We found that like car buying is

sequential in nature with certain time intervals in between so it's fairly predictive when it's predictive then you can like set your business operations in play so that's the easier part but we also know that car buying or car transaction or car actually going to the showroom happens offline. How do you enable that consumer experience over there is the tricky part that but then we work with our business partners or the extended auto ecosystem we eat like the dealers or be the people who are giving finance loans and insurances and so on and

so forth. What we are trying to do is we are trying to digitize their touch points that they have to consumer through our platform. So we work with our partners and we digitize their experiences. To give you an example like a dealer a salesperson and a dealer in an olden time he'll have a register of like some 20 people names through a dealer app something this guy can actually enable a lot of those in real-time perspective. Know what's the next demand and so on and so forth.

How important is the role of content in you know from your perspective and how do you distinguish between talking to your target audience because at one level you're talking to the auto geek at one level if I can say so on the other maybe someone who's not so evolved but wants to know so how what is your approach to that? Great question Amne. This is something that I immersed myself when I came to Grinnell like in a couple of years back. We have a problem plenty. Car deco, gadi,

zig wheels, bike deco and now PowerDrift is a part of the family. So there are almost like five people who are catering to people who want to know more about auto. Through data we understood that car deco, bike deco are the right platforms for people who want to buy cars and bike. There are other people who will live and breathe cars and bikes on a daily basis. Maybe they buy a car five years or a bike two years and so on so for three years. So the entire content shifted to answer only one

question which is the right car for me. I'm fairly tall I'm six feet four so I need a car which has like enough cabin space. For some people because they are traveling hundred kilometers per day in Delhi NCR they require a car with a good mileage. So I believe there's nothing like a bad car anymore. It's just like which is the right car for me. Right. So car deco became obsessed with answering that question of enabling a decision basis your need state or your personal life stages. Right. Zig wheels became all about the petrol head who wants

his or her daily auto fix. So what's the latest and greatest in the world of auto. So if there's a new car which is being launched the way car deco is going to analyze that car from a transaction point of view or car buyers point of view versus the zig wheels which is like going to look at hey what's the torque what's the BHP and so on so from experts and enthusiasts point of view it's going to be like very different. So that is something that we did about 18 months back.

So marketing for a tech startup can be very exciting it's also extremely exhausting. How do you unwind how do you stay creative what is your mantra? I hope you won't laugh if I would like tell you the right answer but then to unwind I just go more into data because I think data really demystifies a lot. So for me I'm like you know having been at OLX and at Ginnard as a CMO we get access to a lot of data and data can be a little bit paralyzing to people who are not at ease with it and it can be a liberator for people who are at ease with it.

So fortunately I'm in the latter half. It just like makes my workday shrunk into like rather than a 10 to 12 hour workday it just becomes like a 7 to 8 hours workday because my decisions are faster. Right. And that is the biggest enabler to like not get exhausted. Right. So for me actually data enables me to work faster smarter.