What Ramin Saherwala teaches about brand purpose

We would probably know based on your travel patterns around whether you are the one who likes to go to the mountains or to the sea. Are you the adventure type who does a lot of activities or are you the comfort seeker who would or have you ever experimented or used a spa. So depending on that we you know we have personalized campaigns coming in which ultimately helps in driving revenues at our sorts. Hi Ramin, welcome to the Hindustan Times newsroom. So Ramin Saharwala is a CMO of Mahindra Holiday and Resorts right and so you have worked across

several sectors from auto to telecom, FMCG and now to hospitality. Tell us about this journey and what are these experiences that hold you in good stead today? So it's been in fact I would say a very enriching learning experience because each sector was very diverse. You know auto is not linked to finance, finances doesn't have too much of similarities with telecom but what it actually gave me was working across cultures you know understanding the nuances of each business whether it's telecom, finance or even consumer healthcare which was

my last stint before I joined India and even though some of the basic marketing principles are the same but how do you apply those insights to the target group and through what modes of it would vary quite a bit in fact. So I would say the building blocks of my probably career journey were a lot more with telecom and finance and in fact I was involved in building the brand idea at very early stages when it moved from patata to idea. And also setting up the digital marketing channel for ICC bank.

So being an early evangelist in pushing the digital agenda through and that actually found the foundation of my journey for the next 10s across. So Mahindra holidays where do you think it is in its sort of digital journey that you've been that you just mentioned and what kind of a transformation does it need to be relevant to a sort of the other. Yeah. So we have already embarked on our journey on it in fact we have a very strong referral sales which comes from our existing members and combine that with digital almost contributes

to 50 percent of our business coming in and that's a very high percentage of it. And in fact what we are looking at is digital is fairly effective tool because the quality of leads which we get on digital are far superior compared to the conventional. There's more intent in those leads. Yeah, because they are definitely intent driven and what we see is also better conversion of those leads into final sales. A lot of back end happening we use Smartick very effectively.

In fact we try to now get into the personalization support at the acquisition side as well as serving existing customers. In fact we use a lot of analytics for example you know one of the two primary things in hospitality is to drive occupancy and F&B revenues. We have the benefit of a member vacationing for us for 25 years. There is a lot of footprint in analytics which they you know which gives us the usage patterns of typically how the member spends his days at our resorts. And we use that those inputs to it to give them customized campaigns.

We send customized messages. Personalized messaging. Personalized. Depending on your message. Yeah. So, we would probably know based on your travel patterns around whether you are the one who likes to go to the mountains or to the sea. Are you the adventure type who does a lot of activities or are you the comfort seeker who would or have you ever experimented or used a spa. So, depending on that we you know we have personalized campaigns coming in which ultimately helps in driving revenues out of sorts. Right.

So, Mahindra holidays largely targets the Gen X right and with millennials of course are becoming a larger and larger consumption class and for the next 10-15 years that is going to be the story. How are you reimagining the product to appeal to this audience especially in the digital platform both in terms of marketing and finally the product itself. Right. So, what are you doing there? So, you know the brand credo is making every moment magical. Right. And we have three generations of you know from kids to parents to grandparents doing vacationing

with us around and also kids would age would vary from you know the young kids to preteens. Okay. So, it is very important that we offer experiences immersive experiences which are relevant to all the segments in fact. Right. Typically for millennials around for it we have a product called GoZest which is a short shorter duration product which encourages the generation to experience our resorts. And we found that once our members experience our hospitality and the immersive experiences

what we offer they definitely get associate with us for a much longer period of time. So, the focus is on how do we customize those experiences. We have a host program. So, once you enter our resort around there is a customized host which actually makes an itinerary for you on what kind of experiences you can take when you are at the resort. People have also become a lot more experimental with food. Right. So, we offer a wide variety of authentic food experiences. We have a barbecue bay which is a very popular restaurant brand.

So, the idea is to offer not only authentic experiences but the best of cuisine across. Right. And we also encourage in fact we have a marketing plan to encourage people to use spas for example on it. So, the mix of experiences, physical experiences, food, spa, in and around destinations that all combines you know to drive our revenues over there. So, this generation the millennial generation loves to experiment and look at experiences right. That sort of that becomes bigger. Right.

Would that sort of push your product to more focus on this area maybe talk about offshoots, extensions etcetera. Yeah. Focus on that is that something that you would. Yes. So, one of one of the primary objectives in fact is to also look at offbeat destinations, promote offbeat destinations. We create also a lot of destinations. We have been credited years back of you know creating Munnar as a destination for it. And we found a lot of millennials would like not to go to the conventional places of Rajasthan

or Goa but experiment a bit and look at some of the local experiences around. So, holidays is all about experiences right. Do travel influencers work well as a marketing strategy for you? Yeah. So, it all starts with you know what the core big brand idea is. Right. And if it has got a consumer benefit to it then what influencers generally do is help us amplify that. So, I do not say that probably we drive our marketing initiatives. More targeted reach right. Yeah. But we definitely use them for amplifying it.

But for us to our biggest endorsers are members ok. Because when they share the experiences it is a lot more authentic ok. And people believe that yes it is a genuine experience which a genuine content which is there on digital.