An electrical engineer and an MBA, Gunjan Ghai, Vice-President (Marketing & E-Commerce) at Tata AIG General Insurance has experience of 14 years in diverse sectors ranging from consumer goods, insurance, IT and e-commerce. He began his career in 1998 at Asian Paints Ltd after which he joined an IT start-up. Later, he joined Tata AIG as Head of Direct Marketing and went on to work with AIG in the UK to launch a health insurance product. He rejoined Tata AIG in 2011 in his current role where he oversees marketing communications, corporate communications, e-commerce and direct marketing. He is credited with managing and turning around a $100-million direct marketing portfolio for the company.

most memorable marketing initiative

Setting up the direct marketing practice for Tata AIG. This involved building the foundation, process controls, vendor hiring, staffing, creating system policies, process development and customer communication.

The amount of freedom I had to design, fund and deploy the business unit was immense. This and the fact that an old set of highly skilled team members from my previous organisation were keen to work with me again helped in making the unit a success.

The experience also taught me that I enjoy working in a start-up environment and that it is possible to have a start-up experience within a large organisation.

My first product launch

Launching a polyurethane-based wood finish for Asian Paints. Part of the marketing team’s involvement after a launch used to be a visit to the dealers to take the first orders for the product and put up the in-shop marketing material followed by workshops for painters to let them get a feel for the product. The amount and quality of learning for a marketer that comes from being on the field and taking sales orders like a front-end sales person is beyond comparison.

The trick to surviving the grind was to never say no to a cup of tea offered by the dealer (it gives you more time to interact with the owner) but to have only two sips of it at every counter and no more.

A setback I learnt from

I left Asian Paints towards the tail end of the dotcom boom in 2001 to join an ISP start-up which was set up under a large IT brand. Everyone was excited about dotcom at the time as it was a new and emerging trend. I got infected with the excitement too and moved. Soon thereafter, the retail business that I was in went through a challenging time as the dotcom bubble burst.

To spot the true potential of a seemingly good-looking opportunity is a skill I learnt after post this experience.

My marketing idol

There are many whom I looked up to. From the people I know, Professor M. M. Anand at FMS and V. Chandramouli from my days at Asian Paints stand out. The former for encouraging original thought, the latter for teaching me that all marketing plans are best designed if the customer – and only the customer – is at the centre of one’s thinking. This may sound elementary for someone who has studied marketing but is one of the most difficult principles to adopt in real life. From the academicians and authors pool, I am quite taken in by the concept of ‘ The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid ’ by the late Dr Prahalad.

Where I get my insights from

Data and a scientific approach learnt during engineering. Often, a concept could occur almost as an impulse. But the process for me has been to define the concept first as a hypothesis, then look for data to validate/reject the hypothesis. If a hypothesis stands up to the data, then it can form the core of a marketing programme. Usually, the money is where the data is. However, analytics would be incomplete unless tested on the field. Many of my insights originated from the field and there are not many better places to create insights than talking, working with and learning from the field.

How much B-school helped in my career

A lot but in ways very different from what common sense would indicate. FMS has a strong marketing curriculum and studying there helped in coherently articulating marketing principles into real strategy at the workplace. It also helps to understand how a marketer’s role fits in an organisation and how it links up to finance, operations, distribution and HR.

insurance marketing in India, in the UK

In the UK, due to a relatively higher product and services standardisation, a number of purchase decisions are made independently by the customer. In India, the intermediary continues to play an important role in the customer’s decision-making.

Most marketing communication in the UK addresses an audience pre-disposed to purchase but looking for a differentiator to choose a brand. In India, the marketing communication has been about demand creation, although this seems to be changing in some categories. Web aggregators in the UK also play a very significant role in product distribution.

India could learn from how the UK has moved forward on the e-commerce front and on building a strong framework of regulations and controls. rom India, the UK could learn that innovation in products, services and distribution is possible even in a tightly regulated industry. In fact, Indians tend to be a walking lesson for many in the Western world when it comes to problem-solving and managing chaos.

E-commerce in insurance

Besides offering customers a platform for buying, renewing, claiming and demanding service, e-commerce is also likely to reduce the costs of these transactions in the long run. Customers entering a portfolio through the e-commerce platform also tend to renew better. The current guidelines for distance marketing also allow the customer to make self-driven decisions for purchase, without the risk of mis-selling, while offering a comfortable exit in case the product does not meet the customer’s expectations.

e-commerce will become significantly more important for all companies, especially for the relatively more standardised products such as travel and motor insurance.

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