Touge : A Marketer’s Drift 2018

The business hemisphere has changed so drastically that many top international companies and brands had to shut shop. From being world leaders, their growth slumped and soon they disappeared from the market. What’s relevant today might not be relevant in the next six months. Only the ones who contain muscles of innovation, creation, product development and marketing are going to survive. With this the entire rule book of marketing seems to have changed. Welcome to the “dog eat dog” world. Here only the tough survive and it’s imperative to understand the changing dynamics and leverage it for the growth of companies into huge behemoths of success. This is what drove us to the theme of the Marketing conclave – Touge ’18.

The conclave started with a welcome speech by the Convener-Professor Ruchika Shokeen wherein she introduced the audience to the theme “Leveraging Disruption”. The panel of speakers consisted of a variety of extremely skilled industry experts. Mr. Amit M. Abhyankar, Sales Head CRS, Wipro, Ms. Rachna Dhaka, SP Marketing Head-India & SAARC, CISCO, Mr. Rajeev Kumar, Sr. VP-Market Development South Asia, Master Card, Mr. Sanjay Banerjee, CEO, Digital Advertising Tech Company), Mr. Ravikant Banka, Founder & CEO, Eggfirst Advertising Agency, Mr. Manoj Verma, Business Head and Product Manager, Lyra Network. The panel discussion was led by Dr. C. Babu, Director, DSIMS.? It consisted of an in-depth discussion about the disruptions in their industry and how they are leading the business and marketing hemisphere into a state of volatility. This further included talks of disruptions such as online payments, rise in vernacular media content and viewership as compared to western media, the Cloud Era, 3D printing of cars, VUCA, Machine Learning, Automation, etc.

The conclave concluded with a brief discussion on how to manage such changes. As there is an uncontrolled proliferation in the way people access the internet in dependable amounts, it would be better for companies to embrace the opportunity rather than miss the bus, else the business could meet the same fate as Nokia and BlackBerry. Change is a factor which is required to be carried out with a sledgehammer as it’s the people and organizations that need to show the results .The fastest growing firms have to find opportunities at every turn, taking market challenges head on, and transforming them into competitive advantages. Disruption must be embraced – not merely managed – to drive growth and differentiation. The event was concluded with the vote of thanks by Professor Dr. Chandrasekhar Kaushik.