SureWaves Mediatech is a Bangalore based Media company with disruptive advertising technology that has a combination of cloud based solution and expert consumer profiling with its offices spread across India. The Company has a patented technology that allows Advertisers the absolute freedom to pick their audience on a market by market basis.
Rajendra Khare is the Founder of SureWaves MediaTech, a media convergence pioneer with solutions that interweave television, digital displays, mobile and internet. SureWaves, through its groundbreaking technology, is mapping, aggregating and consolidating diverse and dispersed consumption markets and consumers across India, through information, technology and knowledge tools, to usher an era, where markets, media and consumption converge to deliver unprecedented growth through inclusion and innovation.
The Founder Chairman and Managing Director of SureWaves Mediatech Mr Rajendra Khare speaks exclusively to tvnews4u.com:
1) We happened to read one of your statements which typically signifies what Foreigners aptly think of India. ‘That India is not just a country, but countries within a country’, so much for the diversity it represents. With the diversity also arises the challenges it imposes on the Marketers. Can you elucidate?
The beauty of our country lies in its diversity and here-in lies the challenge for a marketer. Consumers in different cultures/setup have different values, ethics, experiences and ways of interacting with each other. Even within a particular culture, such differences are quite apparent among distinct subgroups—not just in terms of ethnicity, but also profession, religion, age, gender, family size, physical environment et al. Thus marketers face the challenge of reaching out to a vast and diverse consumer base in a linguistically and culturally nuanced manner, apt for that TG. Hence the life of a marketer of an Indian brand is difficult!
Nowadays, marketers are realizing the importance of having a diverse customer base. After all, a diverse consumer base would mean revenue flowing in from various sources and not just two or three demographics. This ultimately means you will be able to increase the reach of your business.
2) Can You explain Diversity Marketing?
SureWaves is spearheading a concept called Diversity Marketing that acknowledges that marketing must offer an alternative way of communicating to the diverse groups. Diversity Marketing basically means adapting a Brand’s message according to the market dynamics and communicating through a medium which is most appropriate to best reach out to the selected TG. Marketers should aim to develop a different mix of options of communication, in order to reach out to a bigger audience in a linguistically and culturally nuanced manner.
In a dynamic market like India, people feel more connected to a brand, which understands their culture. A marketer must first understand the lifestyle and background of the group that they plans to target and how much they wish to invest in tailoring the business services to meet their needs…. For a brand to become successful and earn loyal customers, it is imperative to have cultural awareness. Marketers should constantly assess how their target market is evolving and varying over time.
3) When we have to address diversity, how does SureWaves technology help the Advertisers reach on to cross section of the Diasporas?
We are a technology based media company. We create exciting products to plug in critical gaps in the way a marketer would reach out to his or her audiences. With our flagship product – SureWaves Spot TV Network, we have aggregated a 450+ strong local cable channel network which reaches out to over 90 million households across India. These channels are across 29 states and have content in 16 languages. Our patented technology ensures that there is proof of play, ad break archival as well as centralized scheduling in these channels.
A marketer can use our Network to customize the brand’s message across as many languages as per the need of the brand, regions as well as content genres be it movies, music, news or variety entertainment. A brand can test market a new variant or a new message effectively for a socio-cultural region. A marketer can also use our Network to push across offers specific to a city or a region or a language. Our Network can also effectively complement the digital strategy of a brand.
If all the cable channels are considered together, their combined viewership makes them actually among top five most viewed channels in India. The reason for this is that the content planners of our Network channels understand the local pulse much better and are able to customize the content accordingly. Adding our Network in the media plan increases cost efficiency by as much as 5 to 8% as our Network adds incremental audiences over traditional television media plan.
4) How has been the clients reactions to this?
Our clients have understood the value we add in helping their brands reach out to diverse audiences. They utilize our Network to push out messages to diverse audiences customized by languages and by occasions. These are from FMCG, Consumer Durables, BFSI, Automobiles, Telecom and the e-Commerce sector. Over 300 brands have advertised with us. Many have increased spends on us after seeing better offtake and favorable distributor feedback post the initial trial campaigns for a couple of months.
We also have a couple of exciting products under development, which will create a path to link television viewing to engagement on mobile. Once these products are developed, they will effectively complement our existing suite of products to help the brand engage with its consumers even deeper.
5) By understanding the consumer and addressing customization do you think the Advertiser can ensure accountability and ROI through your technology?
The distinct socio-cultural regions in India make it necessary that advertising be communicated in the right language and in a locally relevant context. Given the huge popularity of local cable and the niche regional satellite channels in India, they offer a huge opportunity for advertisers to deliver highly targeted advertising and at a lower cost. The challenge is to be able to aggregate the inventory of these channels across the country to provide a single window for advertisers to buy inventory and provide accountability.
SureWaves’ ground-breaking technology enables large scale aggregation of audiences across multiple television channels and offers a single window interface to national advertisers to effectively reach out to mass audiences on a market by market basis.
6) When you speak of Patented technology, how do you put it to use?
SureWaves’ patented technology uses a centralized delivery and scheduling mechanism to air the adverts within the same time bands in multiple TV channels and provides telecast reports in real-time for each of the spots across all channels with time stamps and the ways and means to further analyse the effectiveness of the campaigns. SureWaves’ technology goes a step further to allow live viewing of the channels on the SureWaves Spot TV Network and maintains video archival of commercial breaks to enable effective monitoring by 3rd party agencies, hence making advertising on the Network measurable and accountable.
7) Who are the current Advertisers you have on your network?
We have top national advertisers from across sectors like FMCG, BFSI, Automobiles, Telecom and e-Commerce. Some of our top clients include HUL, GSK, Dabur, Wipro, Vini Cosmetics, Tata Beverages, LIC, TVS, Idea, Airtel, Vodafone, Flipkart etc.