11 Digital Success Stories from India

While many companies are still struggling to find their digital footing, few have positioned themselves to capture the real business benefits. After studying a number of cases in digital transformation, we have identified companies that stand out from the rest and are at the forefront in using digital technologies.

There is no definite mantra for success, but there are plenty of real cases that showcase that ‘going digital’ could be a winning formula in a company’s growth story. Considering the massive productivity gains and competitive advantage that the digital technologies bring in, companies across sectors are aiming to ride the digital bandwagon. However, as digital transformation demands strong enterprise-level governance and rapid development of new skills, many companies still have a long way to go in their digital transformation journeys.

While some companies are still struggling, others have started deriving business value from their digital efforts. Dataquest spoke to such leading companies that have scripted their success stories using digital technologies. Here is a firstperson account of representatives from these companies:

Kotak Mahindra Bank

Our digital product Jifi, which seamlessly incorporates social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook with mainstream banking, has received an extremely encouraging response from our customers. Features such as Hashtag banking, Personal Finance Management solution called MoneyWatch, referral program, and free credit score have seen good usage.

With Kotak rewards, we have built eCommerce and mCommerce shopping experiences within banking. With these initiatives, over 90% of our savings account customer transactions have moved outside the branch to various self-service channels including mobile and net banking. Further, around 30% of our customers have leapfrogged to mobile over net banking. Another noteworthy fact is that our financial transaction value and ticket size through the app is amongst the highest in the industry.

We have also tried to simplify payments without compromising on security through innovative propositions like Mail Money and Message Money. In line with this, we have launched KayPay, a first of its kind social, bank agnostic, and real-time funds transfer platform. Theplatform received a positive response, with over 20,000 people using it in a very short period post its launch.

—Deepak Sharma,Executive Vice President–Digital Initiatives, Kotak Mahindra Bank

Walt Disney India

Few years back, we relied on tapes for recording, which were then given to editors for editing. As this was a cumbersome and time-consuming process, we went ahead and digitized these activities in 2013. Today, all our internal work processes, as well as content coming from third parties into our facility are digitalized. We store them on our server and then do all kind of work—editing, packaging, adding different languages, and animations.

Also, as we do translation activities in our Noida facility, all the tapes need to be sent there. In the past, we used to courier each and every tape. However, since last 18 to 19 months, we have started transferring the content through fiber network. So with digitalization, our work efficiency has increased significantly.

—Manas Mati,Executive Director & Head of Technology, Walt Disney India

Da Milano

Being a retailer, marketing is a very important exercise for us. Before our marketing became digital, the direct customer engagement program, brand recalling, and most importantly, brand awareness was very less for us. By going digital, the direct approach with customers on various social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest has become way easier.

These digital platforms are a wonderful way to share our brand information with our customers and simultaneously taking feedback from them. We are using social media platforms extensively for customer engagement campaigns.

Our Diwali campaign, which was designed as a one liner contest, ‘You are my BAG full of
happiness, because...........’ to be creatively completed by fans was a huge hit. Digital presence has helped in our sales figure too.

—Sahil Malik,Managing Director, Da Milano

Kairali Ayurvedic Group

We have our own in-house ERP and database management system, whereas in terms of sales and marketing, unlike hoteliers, we have our own PMS sales and lead management customized to our
industry. This is in line with our online and social media strategies.

So, in terms of lead conversion we have grown by 30% which represents a significant growth. Also, time required from a manufacturer has been reduced to 15% and we can now manage and tweak at a whim.

After going digital, our extended HR platform handles all incoming CVs that helps us manage resumes across various roles—from therapist to senior management—perpetually at a substantially low cost to the company. In addition, digital has helped us form a diverse strategy to reach out to our core and targeted audience.

—Abhilash K Ramesh,Director, Kairali Ayurvedic Group

Yash Raj Films

In recent years, we have witnessed a paradigm shift in consumer behavior and consumption patterns. In accordance with changing times, we’ve adopted a ‘digital-first’ strategy at Yash Raj Films. From movie campaigns to catalogue content promotion, digital is the key.

For movie campaigns, efforts are driven towards releasing movie assets online, as opposed to hosting grand event launches. Similarly, for our catalogue content, it’s imperative that we reach out to our audiences at all digital touchpoints.

More often than not, Bollywood is a game of numbers. If there is one platform that allows a direct calculation of RoI, it’s digital. The tangibility spectrum that digital medium provides goes beyond analytics and allows for direct actionable insights. When a trailer or a song or any other audio-video asset is released, the number of views and comments on the asset, for instance, serves as a direct benchmark to gauge popularity, reactions, and reception of the content served. This sort of rich data helps us not only in tweaking our strategies and marketing approaches but also steers us in taking important business decisions. With the help of our digital ecosystem, we’re opening up newer avenues, geographies by the day.

—Anand Gurnani,Vice President–Digital,Yash Raj Films

Haldiram’s Foods International

Haldiram’s is a brand with a lot of legacy. When we ventured into the digital world, our biggest lookout was to not disrupt what we have already created. Our digital strategy focuses on augmenting the brand in every possible way. We now actively spend on digital initiatives such as our online store and our outreach on Google,Facebook, and Twitter.

Our initiatives have helped us build our brand presence among the younger generation.
Our online sales are now 10% of a physical store, with a fraction of the cost. We are
now looking forward to launching apps for Android and iOS in the coming months. With
these initiatives, we are targeting 1,000 orders per day from the online store and apps
this festive season.

—Neeraj Agrawal,Director,Haldiram’s Foods International

Royal Sundaram Alliance Insurance Company

As a part of our digital journey, we went through a complete change for our website with a new look and functionality enhancements a few years ago. The website features specific product information and provides functionalities such as quote creation, premium payment,
policy issuance, emailing of policy document, and SMS dispatch status and renewals.

We have also integrated the website with an intelligent claims management system, which was developed to handle motor own damage claims. This system provides regular status updates and reduced TAT on claims settlement. We have implemented a standard interface called I-policy, enabling partners to access configurable web services for online policy issuance for our affinity partners and property and casualty business lines.

With these initiatives, we have accrued several business benefits. Time to on-board new partners has reduced by 50%, while average time to roll out a target product has reduced from a couple of months to less than a week.Further, employee productivity has increased by more than 20%.

—Ajay Bimbhet, MD,Royal Sundaram Alliance Insurance Company

Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance

We keep running various campaigns on digital platforms to engage with different sets of audiences. The two campaigns—Tax Monster – Tax Saving Campaign and ULIPedia – An Investor Awareness Campaign—have been the most successful for us in the past year and have resulted in improved visibility and increase in the number of leads as well.

Tax Monster – Tax Saving Campaign: Every year, the salaried class employees face a challenge to ensure their savings are protected against tax. At Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance, we used this opportunity to cash in on the digital space by aligning the needs of saving with the fear of a ‘tax monster.’

The idea was to give an understanding of the tax instruments available, which could help any salaried professional enjoy his bonus or increment with minimal tax deductions. Tax Monster campaign was a huge hit; in terms of numbers it achieved several milestones like a total of 31,419 new likes on Facebook ,14,050 new followers on Twitter, 2,115 new followers on LinkedIn, 3,080 visits to the Tax Monster web page, and 507,408 cumulative video views on YouTube.

ULIPedia – An Investor Awareness Campaign: This campaign aimed at educating investors about unit linked insurance plans. The initiative covered more than 1.1 mn people, explaining in detail about the long-term advantages of investment and dual benefits of ULIPs as a category. The ULIPedia campaign received a total of 19,780 new likes on Facebook, 127 new followers on Twitter, 2,115 new followers on LinkedIn, 11,347 visits on the ULIPedia blog, and total campaign engagement of 112,712 people.

—Subrat Mohanty,Head of Marketing and Sales Quality,IB, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance

Passport Seva, Government of India

We are moving towards eGovernance or in other words we are aggressively adopting digital in the government departments.If we talk in measurable terms, we were providing passport-related services to 20-25,000 people per day before digitization.

Today, we are able to serve 50,000 people per day. So, with digitization, we are able to serve double the people in a day.Till 2011, we just had 37 passport offices as far as reach is concerned. Today, we have 37 passport offices plus 100 Passport SevaKendra, so the reach has increased significantly and we now cater to 23 states and 64 cities across India.

Our portal has received a tremendous response from the citizens—we are getting more than 2 crore hits on our portal per day. In terms of mobile apps, we are getting 15,000 hits per day and in terms of call center (which supports 17 different languages) we are getting almost 20,000 calls per day. Similarly, SMSes being sent from the system, like police verification, passport dispatch, etc, are 35,000 per day.

These numbers would not have been possible without digitization. In addition, if we wish to improve something within the department or do a trend analysis, all this information is now available at a single click due to digitization.

—Golok Kumar Simli,Principal Consultant & Head—Technology, Passport Seva,Government of India

Nightingales Home Health Services

As a part of our digital strategy, we have integrated the vital signs measurement smart devices from third-party vendors into our application. Thus, the care providers need not do any manual entries.

This has eliminated the chances of manual errors. Also, these vitals are available on the patient app too for the patient info/records.

We are also enabling all our caregivers with mobile devices to help them optimize the routes, which in turn enables more patient visits. Also, our social media campaign has helped in generation of more number of calls/footfalls, and thus improved revenues.

-Lalit Pai,Co-Founder & CEO,Nightingales Home Health Services

Anytime Fitness India

Our digital initiatives like Google AdWords, displaying and promoting our club culture on social platforms, frequent press releases, and cross promotion over other platforms have helped us increase our franchise sale, brand awareness, and membership sale along with reduced attrition.

In terms of numbers, our membership sale has gone up by 20% Month-over-Month and we have witnessed a fourfold increase in
franchise sale. Further, we have been able to retain approximately 90% of our customers at each gym center.

—Charu Kamra,Digital Marketing Manager, Anytime Fitness India