On March 5, MMA Global India, in association with Publicis Groupe’s Publicis Commerce, launched a report, ‘The D2C Advantage X Toolkit: Guide to Maximise ROI of eCommerce Investments’.
The report says that, in the e-commerce space, India is projected to expand at 19 percent, reaching $400 billion by 2030.
Emerging consumer trends, such as a more balanced gender ratio (45:55 male to female), shifting geographical preferences towards Tier-2 and 3 towns, and comparable spending power in smaller towns and larger cities are expected to fuel continued e-commerce growth.
At the sidelines of the launch, Storyboard18 caught up with Anupriya Acharya, chief executive officer (CEO), Publicis Groupe, who talked about the report, the D2C e-commerce space, importance of digital technology for Publicis Groupe and a lot more.
Edited excerpts:
How disruptive is the Indian consumer market, with respect to D2C brands in the e-commerce space?
There has been a huge acceleration in the e-commerce space in the last few years, and projections are also very high. Overall, e-commerce is already a significant segment and it is crossing from $100 billion to $400 billion by 2030. So, that is a massive space to get into.
There are 225 million e-shoppers in India, which makes the country the second largest market, after China. The projection is that it will go up to 500 million by 2030.
If you look at investments, about $31 billion have come into the space in the last 5-6 years. More than 50 percent of the investments in 2023 alone have been on the D2C part of e-commerce. So, we expect a lot of excitement, a lot of energy and a lot of action in this space.
Could you touch upon the genesis of the recently released toolkit?
We handle e-commerce mandates for a lot of clients through Publicis Commerce and through our other agencies. For a lot of our D2C clients, we handle various segments of their businesses. It could be creative services, media services or public relations.
We’ve been getting a lot of queries about the D2C space from across all our agencies.
There are no ready answers because it’s a comparatively newer space. Everybody’s learning on the go. So, we thought that this is a good time for us to really delve a little deeper into this area and come out with answers that can help players decode the whole D2C aspect.
That was really the genesis of the report. As part of the report, we’ve contacted about 500 D2C practitioners in the overall e-commerce space. A lot of insights came on the back of very extended, deep sort of interviews with some of the key stakeholders. As I said, we handle a lot of clients in the e-commerce space. So, a lot of knowledge and experience from that area have gone into the creation of this report.
Could you highlight Publicis Groupe’s investment in the D2C space?
We invest heavily on e-commerce, which is almost like anything, anywhere, everything, right? We have invested both globally as well as locally. Even if you look at some of our acquisitions, they are pretty much in the area of e-commerce, data and technology. We also invest a lot in technology and talent.
Since there’s so much business in the market, there’s not enough talent. So, we acquire talent at scale, we invest in training, and certifications.
How important is digital technology for Publicis Groupe?
It’s at the heart of everything we do. It’s not just digital technology, but technology, in general. So we invest a lot there.
We are one of the few groups or maybe the only group which has a full technology council headed by our chief technology officer Roopesh Pujari. The whole purpose of the council is to ensure that we have a clear roadmap on where technology is headed and how it will impact our clients’ businesses, how it will impact consumers and our businesses. There are many parts of technologies which are emerging very fast.
One of the key things for the council is to keep a tap on everything fast emerging, new areas and see what impact they can have, and also segregate what will really sort of impact, and what is just like the flavour of the season. Because, not everything has a huge impact. That’s what the council does.
Then, they work on three key buckets. One is to ensure that we have the right technology capabilities and services for our clients to create the perfect consumer experiences, and perfect digital experiences for consumers online.
The second part is how we create products aided by technology, by AI, GenAI, predictive analytics and all of that, and how we are creating products for Publicis Groupe, which keeps us ahead of the market.
The third bucket is our own transformation, and how we’re keeping up with being a future-ready organisation at any given point in time.
At a global level, we just announced a huge investment on AI.
In 2023, Publicis stated that it is open to M&A (megers and acquisitions) in data, tech and commerce. Anything in the pipeline?
We are considering quite a few. But, of course, these are the areas that you move with adequate care. So, as and when there is something, we should be talking about that.
Which are the major driving factors for the Publicis Groupe in terms of revenue?
We have a very strong presence across all lines of businesses. I’m happy and very proud to say that all our lines of businesses are growing very well and doing well.
A lot of people talk about integrated services and how it’s easy for clients to sort of leverage our services.
The key part over there is also the specialisation that we bring onto the table. So, whether our services are in the creative, media, PR (public relations) or digital technology segments, all of them are well supported by specialist capabilities like commerce, content, and production.
No matter which part of the group a client is working with, whichever agency they might be working with, they have access to the power of the Publicis Groupe, across each of these specialist capabilities that we invest very heavily in terms of talent, training and technology.