Luckee R. Saini, the former vice president and head of brand at the e-commerce platform Meesho, has launched an independent brand marketing consultancy called The Growth Collective.
“Unlike consultants where there are only inputs based on problems, we engineer growth playbooks unique to each business. So, I am not competing with other marketing consultants or marketing consultancies out there,” Saini says in an exclusive interaction with Storyboard18.
The Growth Collective has worked with a variety of startup clients, including Bengaluru-based fintech startup CheQ, Y Combinator-backed healthtech startup Kindly, and smart price comparison app PrizWiz.
It is looking to collaborate with SMEs, MSMEs, startups (early stage or late stage), and traditional businesses that are looking to get into digital commerce or launch digital-first brands.
“Not many marketers are joining smaller companies, SMEs, or startups that may have good products/services but they don’t have the infrastructure to market themselves well. We wish to help such companies as well,” Saini notes.
The Growth Collective business model will include fixed fees or a retainer model, but it is also looking to pick up equity in companies and build them from the ground up.
Saini says that his venture works on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) model where they take up companies, create models that can be executed at scale.
“We are actually growth partners who help create executable and scalable playbooks. It’s a BOT (build-operate-transfer) model. We understand and discover. We then build, and then we transfer it to your internal team or agency partners. If there is no internal team, we can also help in building that team. We are building something that’s in between an agency that only does execution and consultants that only give high-level inputs,” he explains.
Currently, The Collective comprises a group of like-minded experts across verticals like app growth, content strategy, performance marketing, UX and consumer journey design, and communication.
“The plan is to keep a lean core team of diverse and experienced professionals and have a floating base of freelancers that can come in depending on the project,” Saini shares.
Some of the services provided by Growth Collective include integrated GTM (go-to-market) planning, product-market fit advisory, product positioning & market fit check, content-to-commerce playbook, martech playbook, brand experience design, and brand measurement.
Addressing the slowing down of funding and marketing budget cuts, Saini admits that there are budget cuts, and the focus has been shifted on what matters the most.
“Marketers have adopted a cautious and performance-focused approach. They are asking questions on profitable growth versus growth at all costs. Marketing teams are being asked to do brandformance, which basically means build brands while doing business,” he explains.
Since there is less money, problem identification has to be precise. You can’t chase too many problems now, says Saini.
“Chase a few and chase what will make the maximum impact. Cost pressure means one needs to be razor-sharp in portfolio strategy. Not everything in your portfolio has equal demand and good margins. Identify what’s the acquisition driver and what’s for cross-selling and retention. A healthy funnel is more important vs a top heavy funnel,” he notes.
Saini also talks about the disruption that artificial intelligence (AI) has made in marketing. According to him, predictive marketing will become sharper because of AI, and consumer insights will also become sharper. AI will also disrupt branded content, social media monitoring, and sentiment analysis as well.
“At Growth Collective, we are looking to do workshops on AI’s impact on marketing and prepare marketers for this new world,” Saini says.
Prior to joining Meesho, Saini was working with Vedantu as the head of brand marketing. He has also worked in the advertising space. In 2019, he was working with Dentsu as the VP heading the digital and marketing solutions unit of Dentsu India. He has also worked with Flipkart for over four years, having joined the e-commerce firm as a brand manager and later being promoted to associate marketing director.
He has also been associated with Manipal, Ogilvy & Mather, Autumn Worldwide, Star TV Network, and Technopak Advisors.