Brands
“Winning trust early in the game ensured that the customer retention and repeat buying was high”: AS-IT-IS Nutrition’s Himmath Jain
Mumbai: AS-IT-IS Nutrition, headquartered in Bangalore, has recently unveiled some remarkable insights that have largely evaded media coverage. In the fiercely competitive landscape of Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) ventures. With a remarkable turnover of 200 crores already achieved, the company sets its sights ambitiously, targeting a turnover of 500-600 crores within the next three years.
Setting itself apart from the competition, AS-IT-IS Nutrition adopts a strategic marketing ethos, allocating a mere four per cent of total revenues to marketing endeavors. This frugal approach not only distinguishes them but also underscores the efficacy of their marketing strategies, showcasing substantial outcomes achieved on a lean budget.
Himmath Jain is the co-founder and director of AS-IT-IS Nutrition; a manufacturer of pure dietary supplements. He completed his MBA in 2003 from the Goa Institute of Management and subsequently worked with India Bulls and Morgan Stanley. After working for India Bulls and Morgan Stanley he joined his family’s pharmaceutical business in 2007.
After joining the family business, he discovered there was a paucity of branded supplement BRANDS in India. To fill the existing gap in the supplement market he launched his own nutrition site MyNutraMart.com and launched Zenith Nutrition brand along with his brother Arvind in 2009. In 2012 he sold his family-run pharmaceutical business to pay greater attention to the nutrition business including focusing on its branding and online sales. In March 2018 his interest in nutrition and supplements led him to introduce AS-IT-IS Nutrition to the Indian market.
Indiantelevsion.com caught up with Jain, where he shared numerous insights of their company right from its achievements, to its marketing strategies and expansion plans and much more…
Edited excerpts
On elaborating AS-IT-IS Nutrition’s journey towards profitability while being bootstrapped and the key strategies that enabled this achievement
AS-IT-IS Nutrition’s journey to profitability is rooted in our commitment to purity and quality, supported by lean operations, customer trust, and targeted marketing. We optimized expenses by focusing on product quality, streamlined our supply chain, and built customer loyalty through transparency and quality control. Our customer-centric approach and effective use of digital marketing also played crucial roles in our financial success. Not raising funds also helped us devise cost effective marketing campaigns and stay away from significant burn which other brands are susceptible to.
On the company managing its resources effectively to achieve a turnover of 200 crores
Winning trust early in the game ensured that the customer retention and repeat buying was high. Our resource management centered on cost-efficiency, scalable operations, and strategic investments. By optimizing packaging and logistics and leveraging technology in inventory and customer relationship management, we kept operational costs in check. Strategic investments in product development and marketing, coupled with a focus on cash flow management and a robust sales strategy, propelled us to achieve a 200-crore turnover.
On shedding some light on the specific marketing strategies that have yielded substantial results for AS-IT-IS Nutrition
Our effective marketing strategy, focusing on content marketing, customer advocacy, strategic partnerships, and consistent brand identity, has allowed us to achieve significant results with just 4% of revenue. By creating valuable content, leveraging customer testimonials, collaborating with aligned influencers, and ensuring cohesive messaging across platforms, we’ve built a strong brand presence and customer base with minimal spend.
On the lean marketing budget aligning with the brand’s overall business strategy
Our lean marketing budget reflects our ethos of efficiency and authenticity, supporting our financial success and sustainable growth. This approach emphasizes targeted, meaningful engagement over extensive spending, fostering brand authenticity, and credibility. It enables us to invest in innovation and maintain a customer-centric focus, ensuring long-term sustainability and brand relevance.
On steps implemented to foster innovation amidst a rapidly changing business landscape of the company
To foster innovation, AS-IT-IS Nutrition invests in R&D, adopts a customer-centric approach, monitors market trends, encourages cross-functional collaboration, and remains agile. These strategies ensure our products and practices are at the forefront of industry trends, allowing us to respond proactively to market shifts and customer needs, thereby sustaining our growth and market relevance.
Brands
Creative Intelligence: Using AI to Predict Which Ads Will Actually Convert
Priyanka Aeron, Director & Co-founder of Thrive Global AI
MUMBAI: In a heavily populated digital landscape, simply being creative with your advertising will not guarantee that your ad will be successful. In fact, brands today are producing more content than ever. However, very little of that results in actual engagement or sales. However, Creative Intelligence, powered by AI, is fundamentally transforming the advertising industry.
Creative Intelligence utilizes data, machine learning, and statistical behavioral insights to analyze and predict how well a creative asset will perform prior to it being published. Therefore, marketers no longer have to rely on either their gut instincts or post-campaign analytics for making informed decisions before production. That said, AI-powered creative intelligence greatly improves results and decreases wasted dollars spent.
Moving Beyond Guesswork
In the past, making ads was a mix of gut feeling, experience, and A/B testing. These methods were useful, but reactive by nature. People have already spent their budgets by the time the results are looked at. AI models can find patterns that are linked to higher engagement and conversion rates by looking at huge datasets. These datasets can include things like past campaign performance, audience behavior, and visual elements like color, composition, and facial expressions. This helps marketers guess which ads will do well even before they go live.
Decoding What Truly Drives Conversions
AI-powered creative intelligence allows for an evaluation of advertisements that is not limited to the basic data but also explores the elements of an effective advertisement through subtle reactions; clarity and directness of the ad message and how well the ad captures audience’s attention in the first three seconds. AI can also provide insights into the successful use of advertisements directed to human faces, which connect through eye contact based on media channels, and how advertisements that utilize shorter but clear calls to action may produce more clicks from certain populations. The insights, provided through AI, provide marketers with the ability to think beyond creating more advertising material and additionally create more effective ad campaigns that actually convert.
Personalization at Scale
Consumers expect relevance more than ever. Irrelevant mass messaging is not going to work in a society inundated with information. Hyper-personalization, using AI, allows companies to create content that suits individual segments within their target markets based on their demographics, interests, and behaviors. Rather than having one single message that aims to reach everyone, brands can have many versions of their messages tailored to each segment within the market. Such flexibility is what makes campaigns successful nowadays.
Faster Iteration, Better Results
Another advantage to using AI in creative decision-making is speed. Companies must improvise because their campaign cycles are shorter than ever before, and having the ability to iterate rapidly is more important than it has ever been. There is no greater way to do this work than through AI, as new technologies give brands the ability to test multiple creative avenues and figure out which ones are working well. This reduces a lot of the testing that companies would otherwise have to do and makes the process faster.
With AI, brands can also make creative changes in real-time during a campaign, allowing the, to make vital decisions and adjust their creatives, rather than waiting out. This allows for faster adaptability, well-tested campaigns and reduced lost ad spend.
The Human-AI Collaboration
Even though AI is capable of performing certain tasks, its purpose is not to eliminate human creativity. Successful campaigns require human collaboration with computer intellect since both complement each other. While computers are capable of dealing with massive amounts of information, discovering patterns, and providing predictions, humans are the one to inject stories and emotions into campaigns.
The Future of Advertising
As the complexity of advertising becomes harder with the passage of time, Creative Intelligence will play a significant role in helping marketers formulate a strategic approach. The yardstick that will set standards for determining whether a marketing firm has fulfilled its responsibilities will be the forecasting of future outcomes, as well as personalized content and optimization of creative elements in real-time. In contrast to the existing scenario where the campaigns remain fixed, these campaigns will be capable of adjusting themselves according to the customer interacting with the brand, as well as other trends on social media channels. This will enable brands to offer customers an engaging experience that will exceed expectations. The biggest hurdle marketers will face will be finding ways to utilize these capabilities without compromising branding and enhancing the creativity of the team involved.
