Neelima Burra on digital transformation and sustainability

Luminous is a mere 35 years old. A spring chicken versus the 126 year old Godrej. Before we dwell too much on history, how busy are you in your day to day, Nelima? Pretty busy from morning 7 to evening 11, 11.30 in the evening. Okay, we're all busy, you're busy. If our bosses are watching, we have to say we're busy anyway. But how on earth do you get the time to even think about the future before we lose ourselves in the philosophy of the future? That's a good question. Even ants are busy. But it's about being busy with a purpose. And that purpose and goal drives you for day to day activities which keeps you busy.

When you say I'm busy, it's about thinking, it's about doing, it's about executing, it's about reviewing, it's about monitoring and managing it. So that's what keeps you busy. Out of which probably a lot of things is on what's long term and what's short term. And balancing most of the time, which is you're striving to balance the long term versus short term, which keeps you busy. But you need a, as you're kind of alluding to, you need a future focus to provide meaning to the busy present, right? Absolutely. How do you, how do you create that context? Do you, do you sort of say, well, the future is quite hard to judge? So you navigate it like Manos through a series of institutional values?

Or are you as as luminous and you've done, you've done quite a few things in your career. Do you get into sort of future gazing, forecasting, all that kind of stuff? By nature of my job, since I lead strategy and transformation for luminous along with marketing. So to me, probably is a bit easier versus any other market here. Because to me, the beginning point was a five year strategy and a roadmap, which has the complete organization in terms of capability, talent, people, infrastructure, technology. And then there is business and the brand and the goal of the organization. So it's much bigger than marketing, right? This is not just a marketing thing.

So now, since you have that in place, marketing is a section to reaching to that goal and the most important function to actually lead to that goal. So basically, with marketing, what you do is drive business growth, which is keeping it ahead of all the industry trends. You're also making sure that there is complete digital transformation and technology is leveraged to drive those growth for various business functions. Plus, you're having customer centric strategies, which will lead to keeping the growth ahead of the industry trends. Now, all these three things which I talked about is essentially the role of marketing, which actually keeps you busy to actually reach those goals. So marketing have a pivotal role in understanding the future.

Marketing can't do that except in the context of the business, right? They're one part of the business. But Neelima, if you line up ten marketeers and we've got five or six here, what makes one of them any better at future forecasting? Is it their experience? Is it their gut? Is it their insight? Talk to us about that. I think it's a combination of business acumen to understanding consumers better or customers better because it's B2B, B2C, and it's important to know your customers and consumers well. Along with that is the business acumen, the ability to link the insights to actually leading to a strategy which will lead to growth. I think that is what will set marketeers apart from each other.

Well, to that extent, I mean, you've had a trailblazing career, a multifaceted career, Whirlpool, Britannia, Oberoi. It's easier to name the companies you haven't worked for. Has that been helpful to you, that range of experience in thinking about the future? A lot, actually. I would say one is I started my career with sales, so that's the foundation to marketing. To me, sales gives you the ability to understand customers and consumers better. They are the closest to the market, closest to the customers. It also enables you to understand what will drive growth from profit, from pricing, from revenues, everything you understand there. So, to me, what helps is the career of sales to marketing, to profitability and business.

And, of course, multi-industry gives you different execution models which you cross leverage across the industries you have worked with. Well, it's interesting that. So, diversity of experience, the more past you have, the more predicting the future helps. I like what you're saying about selling, right? Because it's, whatever the future holds, selling will always be there, right? And that skill of selling, yeah, no sale, no money. But, Mernosh, I'll bring you in here slightly. A woman who's done multiple roles in multiple companies, a totally monogamous man who's been with one outfit, right? How do you get the diversity into things, right? First of all, do you agree that having a diverse background, and Kevin's had a diverse background, helps?

Are you feeling a bit insecure about your mono career? Jasper, you're putting me in the spot. But I completely agree with you that it makes a difference. The advantage that we have in Godwish is that we've got 14 businesses. So, you get to move from one business to the other, one function to the other, and therefore you learn a lot of things across B2B as well as B2C. From that point of view, it helps, yeah. But yes, having against a monogamous career that one has, sticking to just one job, whereas having varied experience definitely helps. But in Godwish, we do have that benefit of moving across divisions. Fair enough. And I'm not, as the host, it's not very DT, Dave or Bava to put you on the spot like this. So, I better go. Okay, Jasper, thanks.

Back to the main event. Thank you, Murnosh. Okay, so let's move on a bit here. So, if someone was conducting a kind of demographic poll of our guests, it wouldn't take too long to realise that the gender imbalance is pretty stark, right? Let's talk a bit about inclusivity. Because when you look at the future, I'm just picking a future topic. Inclusivity, it matters, clearly. Where are you on that? And how do you champion that item which is so essential to the future? I think there are two to three things which is very essential to the future. Of course, businesses need to make money. Cash flow is the reality. But what's also critical is inclusivity.

Having diverse opinion, diverse mindset to actually understand the dynamics for the future is very important. Rather than just being on one way of thinking, there are multiple facets of thinking. So, I would say, sadly mistaken, inclusivity people take men and women. But I always felt inclusivity is about younger and older audience, men and women. And then there are regional differences, multi-country differences of culture and people and the nuances and the insights with it. And apart from that, even more important is technology savvy versus non-technology savvy. Because a lot of businesses are very traditional, 35-year-old business, 125-year-old business.

A lot of traditional distribution system and setup with people, with the new age employees who are joining the organization with newer skill sets, which is more tech-driven. So, having this new and old, men and women, and then there is a diverse regional mix of it, and then the country mix of it, is the inclusivity which I would say will give more insights to the future in predicting better trends for the future. Number two is sustainability. That is, again, one of the big impact which I feel for the future.

Whatever businesses we are all working in, if it is not sustainable, if it is not relevant to the environment, to the economy, to give it back, to circulate, it is going to be even more challenging times for marketing in the future to stay relevant to the consumer segments. I think this is, I can't think of a better place to wrap this up. That was very elegantly done at the end, this idea that inclusivity is actually openness, and openness surely helps with the future. Sure. And sustainability, you know, you ain't doing it, you ain't nobody these days. You've been a fantastic guest. Thank you so much. That's the coming on trailblazer.