As India prepares to revive its economy in the aftermath of the pandemic, Schneider Electric, which is into energy management and automation, is looking ahead to capture an acceleration in megatrends soon to be driven by government initiatives.

“Access to energy and digital is a basic human right and yet there are over 1.3 billion people in this world who have no or bare minimum access to energy. We are witnessing tectonic shifts in the world which is putting huge pressure on consumption,” Bidisha Nagraj, CMO at Schneider Electric, India, told BusinessLine .

The company has been recognised as an essential business provider to critical infrastructure such as hospitals, data centres, IT networks, temperature-controlled food supply chain, energy and transportation.

Apart from ensuring the continuity of vital infrastructure, the company has deployed additional actions worldwide in response to the coronavirus crisis.

Covid-19 fund

The Schneider Electric Foundation has also launched an accelerator, Tomorrow Rising Fund, to respond and to contribute to recovery from the Covid-19 crisis and build resilience for the future. The fund will support emergency and longr-term reconstruction actions related to Covid-19 in all the territories in which Schneider Electric operates.

Employees in Schneider plants globally have also started the process of printing face shields to donate to local medical facilities. In France, more than 100 of the company’s employees have volunteered to work 24/7 for approximately six weeks at the Air Liquide site in Antony (South of Paris) to deliver 10,000 respirators requested by the French government.

In India, the company’s donations directly benefit more than 10,000 electricians and their families during the lock-down period, it claimed.

Nagraj said the target audience in India ranges from “electricians to CEOs who we market our entire range of IoT (Internet of Things) solutions for data centres, buildings, manufacturing plants, electrical utilities, hospitals and hotels, apart from homemakers who are an important target group, as we cater to them with our smart home solutions.”

With its Access to Energy programme, the company has electrified over 7.5 lakhhouseholds. The company’s Spreading Happiness InDiya Foundation (SHIF), a collaboration with cricketing icon Sachin Tendulkar, has empowered 350 households in Uttar Pradesh with solar power. The firm has also trained 95,000 electricians in skilling practices.

Focussed marketing

Though sustainability is at the core of the company’s vision and go-to-market programmes, Nagraj said it is achieved with the right mix of traditional and digital marketing tools to transform business practices.

“As an organisation, we look at the marketing function holistically and have been strategically using digital marketing tools with the right use of data analytics and consumer insights.

“We map the entire customer journey and the transformation that we have introduced within the company with a dashboard called the Brand to Order (BTO). The brand salience, digital engagement and influence on revenues are the three measurement pillars of BTO.”

However, marketing internally is equally important as marketing externally at the company. Nagraj believes marketing to internal teams and colleagues and educating them on brand proposition is as important as marketing externally to customers. “At Schneider, we also believe that the transformation is going to be a hybrid between taking the team on that journey as well as bringing in new competencies from the outside. It is going to be a combination of both.”