Sachin Kapur, Cmo Groupon India on Inbound Marketing in 2014

I think in the last 12 months the biggest trend that I've noticed in India is that people are getting increasingly comfortable with e-commerce. There are more and more people who are trusting e-commerce using credit cards to buy stuff that is regular off-the-shelf which includes books, movies, products, electronics apparel, apparel really has taken off. But one of the most interesting trends are especially from a Groupon perspective that we've noticed is that people have started buying more than you know books and all these regular stuff offbeat things. For example in our case we've seen a huge uptake of people buying services online which include meal vouchers, which include membership to the gym, which include are you know a lot of other off-bead stuff and that is a very very important trend. People have started using India's is really skiping the PC and other you know the laptop revolution, and going directly to mobile. This is not only happening in the US where we see a lot of people using you know mobile for transaction, in India example we've seen that 12 % of our revenue is coming in from mobile, which is very very interesting. And its not only coming from Tier-1 cities, but also coming from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, which is a very very exciting proposition for us. And beyond that I think not only from a consumer perspective but also from a Marketeer perspective. We've seen that marketeers have started focusing a lot more on inbound marketing using a lot more content. Especially to engage their existing users because they've realized that things like customer service things like point to see the experience for the customer matters a lot. and it takes a lot less to retain your existing customer than to actually go out can get a new customer. A new customer acquisition costs in India are increasing and India in the next I think one year will be one of the most expensive markets to acquire new customers, whether it's the e-Commerce or whether it's other internet services. From a marketing perspective I think more than you know as you look at one the marketing structures within every organization data becomes increasingly important. I know a lot of people have been talking about big data but that would really come into you know focus in 2014. A lot of people have realized that they're not doing enough with the amount of information that they have about their customers. They are not customizing their proposition, they are not customizing their offerings which will happen in 2014. I think content will again play a very very big role. I think 60 to 70% of companies will start focusing on content which is not essentially related to the product or service that they are you know selling, but also related to the amount data they have about the customer, what are the customers doing, where is he moving, and with all the mobile apps coming in, which are tracking you day out. The marketeer today knows more about you, what time you go to work, what time you come back what are the various touch points that you have during the day, what is your social life like, and based on that are contextually relevant advertising will become very very big and it would be a seamless experience that most to the marketeers as we try to create so they will try to hit you with advertising across traditional mediums like outdoors and media television but that with seamlessly integrate into web and more importantly Mobile.