Imagine this: you"ve just landed in Barcelona after a gruelling 24-hour flight. You"re exhausted, and all you want is to check into your hotel and rest for a while in those soft new fancy pyjamas you bought for this trip. But then, reality hits—you realise your baggage hasn"t arrived. Panicked, you rush to the airline authorities, and they assure you that your luggage will be delivered to your hotel... in two days. Frustrated, you turn to social media, venting your anger and tagging the airline. Within seconds, you receive a response. But instead of empathy, you"re greeted with the last two words you want to see right now. Any guesses? "Thank you for sharing your feedback."
Now, your frustration multiplies. The airline seems robotic and indifferent—completely out of touch with your situation. You might even vow never to fly with them again. So, what went wrong here? The airline relied on automated technology to send an instant response, but the message lacked context, empathy, and personalisation.
Could the airline have used smarter technologies to gauge your frustration and tailor a response using generative AI? Absolutely. And that"s exactly what we"ll explore in this article—how marketers, particularly in India, are adapting to MarTech. We delve into the unique challenges Indian marketers face, especially when bridging gaps arising from multiple cultures, languages, and geographies, and how technology can be a game-changer in delivering personalised, contextually relevant experiences.
Scott Brinker, a thought leader in the MarTech space and editor of the ChiefMartec blog, popularised the concept through his MarTech Landscape supergraphic, which categorises over 14,000 marketing technologies across six broad groups:
At each stage, marketers will come across multiple tools within each category. However, the choice depends on their short- and long-term marketing goals and the available resources—be it people or budget. Considering the end goal of a Marketer is to enhance Customer Experience and Increase Marketing ROI, the marketer first needs to assess where they currently stand across three key areas:
While the late 1990s ushered in India"s digital age with a surge in internet and e-commerce growth, it wasn"t until the mid-2010s that MarTech tools began to gain traction. Businesses transitioned from old-school "spray and pray" media strategies to more sophisticated, data-driven approaches. The 2008 global financial crisis heightened the focus on ROI, and Indian companies quickly followed suit. The maturity of the IT sector and the explosion of smartphones and affordable data further accelerated MarTech"s rise.
A few use cases can help clarify how Indian marketers can navigate the MarTech landscape with flair and creativity.
Despite all the positives, MarTech adoption continues to be a work in progress. Indian marketers have been extremely cautious about adopting technology, and MarTech is no exception. This is because MarTech enjoys a direct linkage to Customer Experience, which in today"s age of social media has the potential to impact the company"s reputation. As we saw in the airline"s example at the beginning, from customers receiving any response at all from the airlines only during work hours to receiving an instantaneous response was a positive evolution. Still, because the element of sentiment analysis was missing, the automated response backfired.
Indian marketers are tackling the vibrant diversity in languages, cuisines, cultures and consumer lifestyles with some impressive strategies:
Marketers use Generative AI to craft content in multiple languages and dialects to connect with India"s myriad regional audiences. Here, gen AI helps marketers create content faster and enable personalisation at scale, and that too at the right time. It"s like speaking to each customer in their native tongue—whether from a bustling metro or a quiet village. For example, Cadbury leveraged AI to create hyper-localised advertisements for their "Not Just A Cadbury Ad" campaign. The AI-driven campaign allowed local businesses to generate personalised ads in multiple regional languages, promoting their products alongside the Cadbury brand.
The answer is that digital platforms allow for laser-focused advertising. Marketers gain valuable insights into consumer trends and behaviours using technologies like CDPs, which analyse data from various sources. This ensures customer profile enrichment, which enables marketers to segment audiences based on location, language, and interests to ensure their ads are relevant. This level of precision means the customer is not getting ads for fancy international vacations when they are just looking for a local dinner spot. While Facebook and Google Ads have enabled Indian brands to run hyper-localised campaigns that resonate with specific regional audiences, Reliance Jio has used data-driven insights to target rural and semi-urban consumers, offering plans that meet their specific needs.
Technologies like CDPs with machine learning capabilities analyse consumer behaviour and preferences, enrich customer profiles, and append detailed persona attributes, enabling marketers to craft micro-segments that help fine-tune their strategies. Since manually creating such precise segments and personalising content is nearly impossible, marketers can use Gen AI for faster content creation and CDPs for segmentation, lookalike modelling, and hyper-personalisation, making running targeted campaigns at scale easier. This is like having a super-intelligent shopping assistant who knows exactly what your customers want before they do. Companies like Myntra leverage AI-driven recommendations to personalise the shopping experience for each customer, enhancing engagement and boosting sales.
India"s MarTech landscape is like a vibrant tapestry, constantly evolving and brimming with potential. As the country"s digital footprint expands with over 850 million internet users (second largest in the world, next to China), it will be exciting to see how marketers continue to innovate and bridge the diversity gap, turning challenges of diversity and variety into opportunities for deeper connections and growth.
Namrata is Director - Consulting & Customer Experience at FirstHive, a Customer Data Platform. Priya is Assistant Professor of Marketing at IIM Kozhikode. Aditya is Founder & CEO at FirstHive.
First Published: May 23, 2025, 14:34
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