Mritunjay Kumar, Co-Founder & CEO and Padmanabhan Ramaswamy, Co-Founder & MD,InsightzClub
There are three crucial elements of a successful start-up: people, product and purpose. When the right people come together, provide really useful products to customers and work towards one common purpose, they are on the path to success.
A great example is the Malaysian digital marketing start-up InsightzClub. It’s a three-year-old company, with its headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, founded by seasoned digital marketing experts. The founders share more than 30 years of combined leadership experience in areas like consumer insights, digital transformation, data science, Ecommerce and digital marketing in notable companies. They recognized the radically changing nature of marketing, the increasingly bigger role played by digital data and the right tech tools to harness the power of this data. They understood that businesses now faced the critical challenge of adapting to the newer, more modern way to market their services and they began working together to deliver exactly this.
Helping Business Overcome Critical Challenges in Marketing
In 2017, the company’s co-founders Mr. Mritunjay Kumar (affectionately called M. J.) and Mr. Pamanabhan Ramaswamy (affectionately known as Paddy) started to discuss and brainstorm practical ways to offer help to the market research industry and support businesses as they transition into modern digital marketing methods. This was the origin of InsightzClub. They faced challenges initially: developing the right product for the market, raising funds, finding the right team members with the right skills, acquiring customers and building credibility. Overcome these were crucial to their survival as well as later success.
“From brainstorming and planning at coffee shops every day for 6 months, we opened our first offices in both Singapore and Malaysia in 2017. We hired more than 12 team members, covering data analysis to customer success, from technology to operations,” Mr. Mritunjay, the CEO and co-founder, says. The founders have always believed in hiring the right people, valuing quality over quantity and as they found the best people, with adequate skills, similar drives and creativity, the start-up was ready to practically help customers.
“The critical challenge for businesses now is adapting to a data driven landscape, to make use of digital data to enhance the marketing process, to provide a tailored experience to customers and to stay agile to their wants and needs,” Mr. Mritunjay explains.
So, many businesses are investing in modern digital marketing practices to effectively reach out to their customers. In contrast to traditional marketing, they participate in a hi-tech environment: having the right tech tools, availing help from digital marketing experts and developing the best approach to achieve goals.
“At InsightzClub, we understand that time is crucial to be relevant and on top of your game. By combining technology with market research, we can provide you with more agile, rich, accurate and personalized data to strategize, understand customers, and make business decisions with a better light,” Mr. Pamanabhan, the managing director and co-founder, says.
Applying the Power of Technology for An Exceptional Digital Marketing Experience
InsightzClub applies the immense power of artificial intelligence technology to examine vast amounts of digital data in an exhaustive way and finally offer valuable, personalized and actionable insights to clients. Their suite of solutions offers help for every stage of the marketing journey. Some include: iFeed (an agile way to get quick access to consumer opinions), iEval (an assessment tool for users’ rational, emotional and behavioural data), iConsume (to track users’ beverage consumption on the go) and iCheck (to assess, activate and convert users in their brand experience journey).
Their solutions are available on an online dashboard as well as mobile apps, all updated in real time. Some are available on an annual subscription basis and others through a pay per use basis. According to their needs, clients can choose the relevant solution.
“Our unique solutions are customizable and vast. In addition to quantitative and qualitative studies that traditional market research companies do, Insightzclub adds another layer of depth by processing data related to eye-tracking, facial expressions, location, mobile device ID, app usage and more. We also process behavioural and passive data to make our digital marketing insights more accurate and actionable,” Mr. Mritunjay says.
At the Workplace: A Supportive and Nurturing Environment
“We have great individuals, each one with unique and strong qualities. Each one compliments and gels well with others in the team. I strongly believe that in any business, the work culture is very important. At InsightzClub, we encourage everyone to always strive for growth, personally and professionally,” Mr. Mritunjay says.
At the workplace, all are encouraged to think creatively and openly express their concerns as well as initiatives. Away from office, they are encouraged to pursue personal or professional interests in ways like conferences, workshops, and giving back to the community. In fact, the company takes time to simply relax, hang out and to do fun team activities to strengthen their bond – a beloved tradition they want to uphold continuously.
An Honest Approach to Building Customer Relationships
InsightzClub has helped so many prominent international brands: Maxis, Carlsberg, Colgate-Palmolive, Clorox, Kimberly Clark, Unicharm, Taylor’s University, AirAsia, Club Med, L’Oréal, Astro, Invictus Blue, Whisper Media, NET., Media Partner Asia and many more. All of them choose and trust the company for their agility, for their personalized help, and the value they provide through data. Through delivering a modern digital marketing experience, the company supports their clients to make well-informed and intelligent business decisions.
“As a tech and marketing start-up, we can customize our solutions to provide exactly what our client needs and more. Over the past 3 years, we are grateful to have many loyal and returning clients that grow with us,” Mr. Pamanabhan says.
The company believes that great customer relationships begin by first understanding how they work. They take time to learn their pace, their problems and then find out the right solution. While every business is different, with different needs and ways of working, they spend time to observe them and develop a genuine rapport with them. Further, they treat them as partners to openly share and grow.
Towards Improved Services and International Expansion
As one of Asia Pacific’s top digital marketing tech start-ups, the company’s present and future is bright. Now, their primary focus is to disrupt the market research industry. So, they want to continue improving their proprietary technology to remain agile, accurate, offer more value to their clients and enrich everyone’s lives. Particularly, they want to better their products to provide clients with newer tech tools and also develop their subscription model.
“In the next three to four years, we are looking to expand our company branches to more markets in the world and build strong synergy amongst the InsightzClub team members as well as with our clients and partners,” Mr. Pamanabhan sums up.
