Sumit Ramchandani exits AirAsia Media Group to set up APAC ops for CDP firm Blueshift

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AI-powered customer data platform Blueshift has expanded into Asia Pacific with Sumit Ramchandani (pictured) at the helm as MD, months after it raised US$30 million in Series C funding in February this year. Ramchandani, who was previously CEO of AirAsia Media Group, told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE that he was seeking for a business with a unique proposition to launch it in Asia Pacific and came across Blueshift on Techcrunch.

According to him, Blueshift's unique platform proposition of unifying customer data platform (CDP) capabilities with AI-driven personalisation and cross channel orchestration, impressed him and spurred him to join the team. He approached Blueshift with a go-to-market plan for how the technology could be introduced to Asia Pacific brands and scale, and that convinced the company to build out a team in Singapore under his leadership. He became its first employee in July this year and since then, the team has done PR for Asia Pacific and EMEA via its North American office.

Blueshift counts Discovery+, iTalki, and the Winning Group as its clients in Asia Pacific. According to Ramchandani, the company managed to bag new business and continues to receive several inbound inquiries without having an office in Asia Pacific or doing any type of marketing. Some of the key verticals it focuses on include eCommerce, media and entertainment, consumer finance, edtech, and healthtech.

blueshift

Ramchandani's end goal as Asia Pacific MD is to successfully establish Blueshift's presence in the region by helping B2C companies grow in much the same way as the company has in the US or in EMEA . To that end, his first order of business was to assess the product-market fit for the different countries within Asia Pacific. "And it’s about putting some runs on the board, scaling the business, hiring people and last, but not the least, adapting our offering, product, services pricing, to the region. Overall, my job scope and expectations are no different from what you would expect of a MD," he explained.

The San Francisco-based company currently has a growing team of four to five individuals in Singapore on the commercial front and about 50 individuals in India with product, engineering, customer success and implementation expertise. "We are continuing to look for special talent in Singapore to lead our solutions consulting and support direct sales," Ramchandani added.

He spent close to two years with AirAsia, during which he was CEO of the newly created group known as AirAsia Media Group comprising five pillars - content and creative, media, data and adtech, talent and celebrities and channels. It was first launched in 2020 and Ramchandani said previously that the closest parallel to AirAsia Media Group, in terms of offering, is Amazon Advertising.

Before that, Ramchandani was with Lion & Lion as chief client officer as well as MD, Singapore; Leo Burnett as regional business director, digital; eBay Enterprise as director, marketing strategy; and Macy's as director, digital strategy, according to his LinkedIn.

"Every new role that I choose to take up, has had areas that allow me to contribute straight away and hit the ground running but also had enough new challenges for me to learn and grow. In all of my recent roles at AirAsia Media Group and Lion & Lion, a common thread has been building a business scratch. Whether it was starting the Singapore office for Lion & Lion to creating a new media group AirAsia to now, at Blueshift, where I have launched and been tasked to build the Asia Pacific operations as employee number one," he explained.

However, the newness of moving from a digital agency to a first-party media business to a SaaS martech has kept Ramchandani as grounded as a student with plenty to learn, opportunities to make mistakes but grow nevertheless, he said. Nonetheless, he has built great memories at AirAsia Media Group, having worked with a group of amazing individuals and young entrepreneurs led by a genuine, people-caring leader in group CEO Tony Fernandes. "As for the achievements, it was really being a part of an audacious vision to transform an airline into a super app and defining how the resultant richness of the first-party data would propel the media business," he added.

Meanwhile, moving forward, AirAsia Media Group will be led by Sean Ter (pictured below), who is currently head of sales. Some of the new clients that have come on board this year include Luno, Walch, Genting, Epsom, and Tune Protect. Ter told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE that 2022 will see the super app continue to grow in ASEAN and the media group will be part of that growth. It also seeks to hire a variety of talent, from business development to operations in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.

sean ter image

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Filling the market gap with an integrated proposition

The martech scene is constantly growing, with various players and offerings in the market. When asked about its competitors in the market, Ramchandani said it is "not something [Blueshift] worries about too much" because its unified SmartHub CDP platform has "a differentiated and a superior proposition from a pure CDP player".

He listed three USPs that make Blueshift stand out. First, the company touts itself to offer unified customer data available seamlessly to non-technical marketers. The platform is also fully integrated and has an intuitive AI. At the same time, it is also a user-friendly orchestration hub that enables marketers to leverage data at every step of the customer journey.

"Most of the traditional legacy solutions were built through a patchwork of acquisitions, and don't offer a seamless experience for marketers. That's the gap that we are looking to fill. The other gap we are looking to fill is about creating awareness and educating the market on the importance of the first data and helping brands realise it’s full potential," he added,

At the same time, Ramchandani said Blueshift does not have much control over what its competitor does or communications. Hence, its efforts are focused on educating marketers on the effectiveness of building a first-party data strategy and bringing in the best-in-class learning of activating that data to help grow their business.

"One of the challenges in Asia Pacific is that not all countries are at the same level of readiness when it comes to the first-party data strategy. Hence, we have segmented the countries into three tiers based on their readiness and maturity and their business potential," he explained when asked about the company's expansion efforts in the region following Singapore. Blueshift's marketing efforts are also indexed and calibrated accordingly.

Aside from its Asia Pacific expansion, Blueshift also set foot in Europe in August this year with Stuart Gordon at the helm. The company was co-founded by Vijay Chittoor, Mehul Shah, and Manyam Mallela and has raised US$65 million to date. Its US$30 million Series C funding round in February this year was led by Fort Ross Ventures and Avatar Growth Capital. Existing investors including Softbank Ventures Asia, Storm Ventures, Conductive Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners also participated in the round.

Read the rest of the interview here:

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: There is plenty of talk about doubling down on first-party data nowadays to prepare for a cookieless world. What else can brands do to prepare for the deprecation of cookies?

Ramchandani: The deprecation of cookies could be a boon for in-house marketers as it would force them to build their own audience and have them focus on delivering superior cross channel experience. Delivering superior customer experience starts with first and foremost having a clear single view of the customer followed by knowing the cross channel journey of their interaction with the brand and then personalising the experience, at scale but at an individual level.

The last bit is to capture the individual level performance data and feed it back into the single view to create a closed loop optimization cycle of personalisation. To make this happen, marketers have a choice to implement multiple technology pieces to address data, personalisation, orchestration and delivery separately or to opt for next-gen unified platform.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: In general, MNCs are at an advantage when it comes to building up first-party data, given the company's size and the amount of resources they have. How can MSMEs prepare for a cookieless world?

Ramchandani: You are right and as I mentioned earlier, a marketer opting for multiple martech solutions to deliver cross channel personalisation would likely have or at least ample resources to licence, implement and then maintain all of these disparate systems. Fortunately, marketers now have the option to go for a unified SmartHub CDP platform. A unified platform would deliver all of the same or better personalised experiences at a significantly reduced cost of ownership this maximising the ROI.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: What are some marketing trends and innovations you are excited about and marketers should keep an eye on?

Ramchandani: I am most excited at this current inflection point of marketing moving towards the first-party and the potential this offers to the marketers in crafting exciting differentiated campaigns, on the platform that they well and truly own.

Join our Digital Marketing Asia conference happening from 9 November 2021 - 25 November 2021 to learn about the upcoming trends and technologies in the world of digital. Check out the agenda here.