The Next Billion Customers Are Digital But Not Always Savvy

At the recent Mumbai leg of the Forbes India One CEO Club roundtable, India’s top chief executives spoke about how to tap into the next billion customers and the challenges their businesses face in doing so.

- Samar Srivastava

Five chief executives from both new-age ventures and traditional businesses sat down on October 15, 2019, to share their thoughts on the ‘Next Billion Customers of Digital India’, at the Mumbai leg of the Forbes India One CEO Club’s Digital Leadership series roundtable, conducted in partnership with Google Cloud India.

The round table saw Ritesh Pai, Group President, and Chief Digital Officer, Yes Bank; Avlesh Singh, co-founder and CEO, Web engage; Jamshed S Daboo, managing director, Trent Hypermarket; Arnab Banerjee, chief operating officer, CEAT and Tarun Katiyal, CEO, ZEE5 shared their thoughts on how the next billion customers are different from the ones businesses have been used to selling to so far, and what they can do to get them into an ecosystem where they can use these services in their native languages.

For those who think just getting websites up is a challenge, Jamshed Daboo, managing director, Trent Hypermarket believed that it is equally important to get customers to be aware of their products online. So while there is one set of customers shopping online, there is a huge mass of customers who while digitally savvy (they watch videos on their mobile) are not aware of the kind of products one can shop online.