We Are Trying To Create A Monopoly In Digital Marketing: Sahil Chopra, ICubeswire

In an interaction with exchange4media, Sahil Chopra shares his perspective on how digital marketing has proven to be a boon for the development of the country and the future of mobile marketing in India.

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Adding another feather to the cap, iCubeswire has bagged the digital mandate for Printronix. iCubeswire caters to over more than 400 brands ranging from e-commerce, Automobile, Technology, Financial Institutes, to Travel, Hospitality and many more. In an interaction with exchange4media, Sahil Chopra, Founder and CEO of iCubeswire, shares his perspective on how digital marketing has proven to be a boon for the development of the country and the future of mobile marketing in India. Excerpts:

• How is the digital marketing domain shaping up in India?
  Digital marketing is showing no signs of slowing down in India. There has been a tremendous change in digital media as it is perceived now and the changes are coming from all corners. If I talk about iCubeswire, we cater to different sectors where a lot of advertising chunk is happening on digital rather than print, television or radio. The digital market has been very progressive, it has shown a spike and a downfall too. Overall, if we look at the current scenario, a lot of capital dumping has been happening in India, which helps big companies like Flipkart and Amazon to keep fighting. Taking everything into account, digital market is shaping up in a pretty good way and we are trying to go with the winds and be part of the journey, hopefully for a very long time.
• What are three important trends in digital marketing today?
  There are my numerous trends but in my opinion the first and foremost are smartphones. If we talk about a few years back, the penetration of smartphones were quite low but now if we look at data of any sophisticated online company, almost 60-70 per cent traffic is on smartphones, which is substantial. Companies like Reliance Jio have made affordability a lot easier, where people from different stratas can now easily afford a smartphone. Moving on to the second trend, I would say that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is paving its path in the digital sphere as well. It will be a phenomenal thing to look up to in the future. We already have a product, which is known as Instatalk and which is an AI based advertising solution. It is definitely going to have a much bigger impact than any of the preceding internet or .com booms. Moving further, the third most important trend is omnichannel because a lot of reverse integration is happening where you would see a lot of brick and mortar stores going online, and online stores going the brick and mortar way and one example of that is the company Firstcry, which has already opened stores in India.
• How is AI impacting the digital marketing game?
  Artificial intelligence has a huge impact not just on digital marketing but also on all other industries. Chatbot is a crucial invention. Nowadays, all the smart companies are building up their chatbots, which will definitely make things easier for both the companies and the consumers. If I would have to talk to my service provider, I would prefer talking to a chatbot than to a human because that is more accurate, almost error free and consumes less time. Imagine various steps you do on a webpage to buy a watch online getting consolidated by a chatbot. Coming to digital marketing, AI would definitely have a bigger impact but it’s way too early to say when and exactly how deep.
• How is iCubeswire offering differentiated services in digital marketing given the fact that this space is so cluttered?
  We are trying to create a monopoly in digital marketing. We do a lot of performance media, lot of social media and also heavily focus on creative and copy work. Keeping this together, we are also doing technology hand-in-hand, for example we have Instatalk and we are also going to launch Unified Digital Suite, which will be a one of its kind offering. Talking about the services, we have an array of services that are complementary to each other that will also help us to create at least a semi monopoly in the time to come. Every place is cluttered, it’s just that you have to be true to your work, which will definitely stand out.
• What are your views on mobile marketing? Has it become the most effective platform to target customers?
  India is experiencing a phenomenal growth in the number of mobile users and we are totally dependent on it. We literally eat and sleep on our mobile phones. The smartphone market has seen unprecedented growth in last few years… Imagine people have power banks because they don’t want their moblie to shutdown, because it’s that time when you can’t even book a cab without your mobile. So, in my opinion mobile marketing has grabbed a lot of attention from customers because it has become very easy to buy a smartphone as it’s cheap, data has almost become free and access to the mobile is almost 24×7.
• How do you see the battle between traditional and digital advertising shaping up in the coming time?
  I think they will co-exist, but eventually digital will become so personalised and with it getting back so much data, will definitely see a larger chunk of advertisements than traditional print media. But print media will also have its own importance, which we can’t deny because few people still like the touch feel of print. As they say, once a legend, always a legend; so print media is the legend, which will definitely exist in the picture but it not might be as popular as it was earlier.