High on Stories Karthik Subramanian and Kaushik Kannan

For TV Naarayan, Head of Marketing, Paypal India, marketing has always been the first choice and it surprises him to no extent when he hears terms like ‘Influencer Marketing’ or ‘Digital Marketing’ thrown about.

That’s because he feels these forms of marketing have always existed, and marketers have a bad habit of renaming old trends with new names.  At the same time, he cautions us, “Don’t confuse a celebrity with an influencer. An influencer is a person who has credibility built over a period of time.“

When we asked him to name his favorite marketing brands, he says, “Swiggy is extremely good at their messaging, they’re able to go to the core of their feature and bring out its benefit. Similarly, if you were to ask any Indian where would they park their money for long-term stability, they’d probably say State Bank of India. That is the power of their brand.”  However, he feels marketers must stop chasing small metrics for the larger story.

“Marketers must not lose sight of the bigger picture and settle for leads in the short-term. Rather, they must humanize their messaging, because the customer is a human too.“

His one piece of advice to the younger marketers? “Never stop questioning. It doesn’t matter if the person sitting next to you is a manager or is three levels above you. When you begin asking questions, you learn more. And, no matter how young you are, you must have an opinion that you must share.“


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Did you know that India had a women's ice hockey team? Don't believe it? Watch this video. If you felt the thrill in your veins, so did we when Siddharth Pal, Head of Marketing at Under Armour India told us about it.

"In terms of pay, it is not extremely rewarding, but the experience of working with sports brands is unmatched. As a sports marketer, you get to work on so many innovative marketing campaigns that you'd probably never get anywhere else. If you look at the best ads over a period of time, you'll notice a lot of sports brands in them. That is because sports-related ads are inspirational," says Siddharth.

"At Under Armour, we believe in supporting athletes who need support, not the celebrities. And, more importantly, for unconventional sports like skateboarding or roller skating to pick up in India, we need participation at all levels - by sportspersons at the grassroots level, government, sporting bodies, and brands.

At present, football is growing in India because of inter-school tournaments like Subroto Cup, which has a famed 60-year history. I'm waiting for an Indian to play in the English Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, NBA, etc. Sports like wrestling and shooting have become famous because our athletes performed well on the world stage," he adds.

How would you react when you walk into a restaurant and it is smelly? Uggh! You'd probably take a U-turn and walk away.
According to Prem K Viswanath, Head of Marketing at Hipbar, "Customer experience is everything for a business, and it is not about one-size-fits-all.  Today, customer experience is THE product itself. A shoe is a shoe, a car is a car, food is still food, but it is the experience and ambiance that matters. As a matter of fact, customer experience has become a big differentiator for businesses. Marketers can be confident of their campaigns knowing that their customer experience processes are in place. Any business can have a bad experience with a customer. But, the extent to which a company goes in fixing a poor experience shows its customer obsession."

This one is a seriously fun conversation with Prem, where he talks about his early life, advertising stints, founder's journey, and cracking the alcohol delivery code in India. And, he left us stunned when we asked him to name his favourite marketers. Watch the below conversation to know what he meant. [HINT: You'd never have imagined it and it appears in the last 10 minutes of the interview] :)

How many times do you persist with a customer for a sale? Once, twice, thrice…how about 40 times?! Ha ha. When you have Vas Shankar, on the show, anything is possible.

But, the lesson here is that if you’re a sales rep, you must never give up on a customer. You never know when they’ll award you the deal. Vas is the quintessential salesperson, who treats his team as family members. “If you’re passionate about numbers, striking conversations with people, and building relationships with them, then sales is the right career for you,” he explains.

When we asked him what makes a good sales team, he responded, “Look for people who’ve had a few struggles in their lives. Such people may not be fabulous communicators or have fancy degrees, but they are quite trainable. They are the future rock stars you need in your team. Besides, they’ll forever be grateful for the opportunity you’ve given them.”

If there is one thing you can take away from our conversation with Vas, it is this: Never give up on a customer. That is because the customer may not have a need today, but who knows, he/she might need it after 3 months. Even if a customer moves to a different company, you can still sell your products/solutions to them because you’ve already earned their trust.

This one is a power-packed conversation with solid sales lessons in 30 minutes.

Listen to our conversation to know about his journey and what a customer told him when he called him 40 times.

“Sales is about getting the process right, the numbers are only an outcome. And, when you get that right, it can be super fun. If you can make small improvements in the sales process, you’ll surely reap rich rewards,” says Chaitanya Jha (CJ), Director of Sales at Chargebee.

From being a former founder to a builder of high-growth sales teams, CJ has witnessed quite a few sales cycles in his career. He insists that sales reps must focus on quality conversations and there isn’t any magic to it.

“The last days of a month can be very stressful. But, the impact that you can have as a salesperson is huge and that’s what I love about it,” says CJ. “And, it is important for founders to first hire the right set of people before encouraging them to adopt a mindset of Adapt-Experiment-Build.“

CJ feels that all the talk about a ‘learning culture‘ is certainly not unwarranted unlike how some people feel about it. “You need a culture of learning within your team – from peers, across teams, and business functions, and you need to protect that culture of learning zealously,” he explains.

Listen to our conversation with CJ to know how he keeps a cool head even when he’s under pressure to get sales numbers.

Marketing is such a wide discipline that you need to continually experiment. With experimentation, comes failure. “But, the thing with marketing is that if you haven’t failed in marketing, you haven’t really explored it,” says Shobhit Mohan, Head of Marketing, Salesken.

“Today, there’s a generation of marketers out there that wants to do things because they can prove it with numbers, instead of doing it creatively,” rues Shobhit. He further adds, “If at the beginning of my career, I did everything thinking how will this look during my mid-year review, I wouldn’t have done half the creative things that I ended up doing.“

He says even top brands are becoming lazy by leaning on celebrities for their marketing instead of doing it creatively. He further explains, “Marketing is all about experimenting, taking bets, and putting your heart and soul into it. Sometimes, things work out, while sometimes, they don’t. I think marketers are looking for a shortcut to achieving great results as opposed to doing the right thing.

And, we loved Shobhit’s thoughts about content marketing. “There is no way we can define how a blog or a white paper will drive leads. Instead, we should look at producing great content over a period of time to get organic traffic .”

Here’s our conversation with Shobhit. Let us know what you liked about it.