Informed i’s Weekly Business Insights

Visitors to Bangalore, India’s tech hub, quickly learn why locals measure distances in minutes and not kilometres. The city’s clogged streets turn every outing into a test of patience. Other large cities in the country are just as bad. So it is no surprise that Indians are getting everything from biryanis and books to mangoes and mobile phones delivered straight to their doors—often in under ten minutes. “Quick commerce” is a booming business in India. Zomato, the largest company in the industry, is valued at $26bn; its share price has nearly doubled this year. Swiggy, its closest rival, is expected to go public on November 13th at a valuation of $11bn. Zepto, another competitor founded in 2021, is now worth $5bn.

India’s startup scene has had a difficult few years, as funding dried up and once high-flying firms crashed back down to earth. Yet quick commerce’s success may mark the start of a wider revival, fuelled by consumers’ growing appetite for digital purchases and by the country’s vast engineering workforce.

Back in 2021 investors poured $35bn into Indian startups, more than the amount in the previous three years combined, according to Tracxn, a research firm. That year minted 40 Indian unicorns (unlisted startups valued at over $1bn). But as interest rates rose, the money dried up. In 2023 investment by venture capitalists (VCs) in startups fell below $8bn; only two firms joined the unicorn herd. As companies focused on preserving cash, layoffs and bankruptcies became common, with over 35,000 startups shutting down in 2023.  The funding slowdown also exposed lax governance at some prominent Indian startups.

Although venture funding this year is on track to reach a level similar to last year, there are signs of a revival in India’s startup scene. One promising area is e-commerce. Online shopping currently makes up just 7% of India’s retail sales, but its potential is big. Redseer, a consultancy, projects that e-commerce sales in India will grow from $65bn in 2023 to $230bn by 2030. It helps that India’s affluent class—defined as those earning over $10,000 annually—is expanding. Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, predicts that it will swell from 60m in 2023 to 100m in 2027.

A second area of promise is the small but growing number of “deep tech” startups in India working in complex fields like space and robotics.  The final area of excitement in India’s tech scene is artificial intelligence (AI). 

Venture investors are betting that this new startup wave will fare better than the last, with good reason. Indian startups are now less likely to be Western copycats and more likely to be designed around the specific needs and strengths of their country.

Deep Learning Indaba – the annual weeklong conference, was held most recently in September at Amadou Mahtar Mbow University in Dakar, Senegal. It attracted over 700 attendees to hear about—and debate—the potential of Africa-centric AI and how it’s being deployed in agriculture, education, health care, and other critical sectors of the continent’s economy.

Established in 2017, the Deep Learning Indaba now has chapters in 47 of the 55 African nations and aims to boost AI development across the continent by providing training and resources to African AI researchers like Okinga-Koumu. Africa is still early in the process of adopting AI technologies, but organizers say the continent is uniquely hospitable to it for several reasons, including a relatively young and increasingly well-educated population, a rapidly growing ecosystem of AI startups, and lots of potential consumers. 

However, researchers’ ambitious efforts to develop AI tools that answer the needs of Africans face numerous hurdles. The biggest are inadequate funding and poor infrastructure. Not only is it very expensive to build AI systems, but research to provide AI training data in original African languages has been hamstrung by poor financing of linguistics departments at many African universities and the fact that citizens increasingly don’t speak or write local languages themselves. Limited internet access and a scarcity of domestic data centers also mean that developers might not be able to deploy cutting-edge AI capabilities.

Complicating this further is a lack of overarching policies or strategies for harnessing AI’s immense benefits—and regulating its downsides. While there are various draft policy documents, researchers are in conflict over a continent-wide strategy. And they disagree about which policies would most benefit Africa, not the wealthy Western governments and corporations that have often funded technological innovation.

Taken together, researchers worry, these issues will hold Africa’s AI sector back and hamper its efforts to pave its own pathway in the global AI race.

In 2021, the authors asked whether the private-brand trend would last. At the time, consumers were eagerly snapping up retailers’ owned brands, which were lower-priced and more readily available than similar products from many national brands. Fast-forward to today: the author’s research clearly shows that consumers are continuing to opt for private brands.

The trend is continuing in both Europe and the United States.   What’s more, private brands are appealing to customers not just because of price and affordability; these brands are now also becoming known for their quality.   But not all retailers will benefit. Retailers that are intentional about their private-brand portfolio—by providing both affordability and differentiation while shifting their mindset to think more like consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) players—will be better positioned to boost margins, consumer loyalty, and market share.

A recipe for excelling in private brands in the form of three core capabilities are: 

1. Merchandising and brand building.  Retailers now purposefully develop private-brand offerings that have a clear customer value proposition and a set of differentiators from national-brand alternatives.  These requires new merchandising and branding capabilities, linked to the retailer’s value proposition and supported by advanced technologies such as AI. Specifically, retailers need to be much more intentional about their private-brand portfolio and architecture. They need to ensure sufficient scale by SKU to manage complexity and value, and they need to leverage digital channels, loyalty programs, and personalization.
2. Insights-led product development.  With private brands playing both a value-for-money and differentiation role for retailers, advanced product development skills have become more important.  These include not only new product development but also optimizing existing products. Product development can be a powerful driver of both revenue and margin growth when informed by deep consumer insights. Today, generating consumer insights has become much easier and faster, thanks in large part to digital tools and AI.
3. Next-generation sourcing.  The third ingredient in the recipe for private-brand excellence is taking sourcing to the next level. Getting to the right cost is critical to making the penny profit equation work. Depending on the category and the role of the private brand, retailers can often offer value to consumers without eroding margins—but this is no easy task, given that merchants and sourcing managers deal with thousands of SKUs, each of which requires component-level cost management. One way that retailers can address this significant challenge is through a digitally enabled next-generation sourcing model. The following actions have helped retailers: create real-time visibility into input costs; Adopt an at-scale, ‘should cost’ approach to costing; and drive supplier competition at the cost component level.

How can retailers best operationalize the three ingredients?  By creating a centralized team of specialists i.e., the private-brand center of excellence and by establishing strategic partnerships.

Despite investing heavily in technology that could make personalization easier, faster, and smarter, most companies struggle to achieve Spotify’s degree of personalization.  A BCG survey of more than 1,400 global C-suite executives found that 85% of business leaders plan to increase spending on AI in 2024. But most of that is earmarked for cost-saving initiatives rather than personalization – which is a mistake.

True personalization requires creating experiences at scale, which get fine-tuned with each successive interaction and empower customers to get what they want—faster, cheaper, or more easily. Doing so requires delivering on five implicit promises that shape customers’ expectations:

To complete a self-assessment, companies must answer dozens of questions related to their personalization efforts. The following is a small sample of questions marketers should ask to determine the maturity of their personalization efforts.

1. Empower me:  Do we personalize experiences at each step of engagement throughout the customer journey?  Do we provide cross-channel personalization capabilities?  Is every communication channel used for personalization?  Use mystery shopping activities and customer surveys to assess the level and quality of personalization that companies are delivering.
2. Know me:  Does customer data live in a single repository?  Is customer data integrated throughout our other marketing systems?  Do we have high-quality identity resolution in place?  Look at the number and depth of digital relationships a company has with customers and its ability to retain them
3. Reach me:  Do we conduct A/B testing on our personalization efforts?  Have we deployed a next-best-action deci-sioning or product recommendation engine?  Do we automate customer segmentation?  Use AI to identify triggers to reach out, such as when a customer browses online or makes an inquiry.
4. Show me:  Do we offer tailored experiences on a 1:1 basis for every customer? 10:1? 100:1?  Are we able to conduct personalized experiences or campaigns quickly from ideation to launch?  Do we use gen Al to automate the production of marketing collateral?  Looked at how sophisticated their content creation and management capabilities were and how well they personalized text, images, and videos for individual customers.
5. Delight me:  Do organizational or technological impediments keep us from measuring progress on personalization?  Do we run weekly tests related to personalization?  Do we implement improvements on a weekly or more frequent basis?   Measure the speed and scale of the company’s test-and-learn process, the sophistication and automation of its measurement, and how the organization is set up for personalization.

Several high-level takeaways from the authors’ research into personalization that can help businesses move forward are:  personalization leaders can be found in every industry, Advanced personalization generates lots of revenue, Better Personalization Leads to Faster Growth, Personalization leaders deliver superior value creation

Personalization leaders follow a playbook to deliver on each of the five promises of personalization, starting with how to empower the customer. Three areas of focus that make the difference between success and failure:  rethink leadership roles and set a clear vision; secure the personalization foundation; and personalization depends on the speed and scale of learning.

Vigorous debate is critical for any organization that is attempting to innovate or respond to changing market conditions. When people are willing to question authority and let the sparks fly in discussions, this helps organizations tackle novel problems head-on, view ambiguous situations from different perspectives, and surface the best ideas, regardless of where they come from. Terminal niceness i.e., cultures avoided difficult but necessary discussions, in contrast, can end in bankruptcy. 

The authors recently talked with Whitehurst, who  served Red Hat and Delta Air lines as CEO and currently serving as executive chair at Unity Technologies and as a managing director at Silver Lake. He shared some practical tips to help leaders stimulate candid discussion in organizations that typically avoid it.

1. Create space for open discussion.  When he joined IBM, Whitehurst noted that the agendas for staff meetings were jam-packed with report-outs, leaving no time for open dialogue. “One of my observations early on,” Whitehurst observed, “was when you tell people, ‘Hey, if you have something, bring it up; let’s talk about it,’ … if they have to actually go schedule time with their boss to bring it up, you’ve created a hurdle that makes that hard.”  Whitehurst mandated that leaders leave 30 minutes at the end of their staff meetings for open dialogue.
2. Publicly thank people for providing tough feedback.  Leaders can lower the cost of disagreement by clearly signaling that they value and appreciate feedback, especially when it’s critical feedback. In meetings at IBM, Whitehurst went out of his way to celebrate colleagues who were willing to speak up and thank them for giving tough feedback, even when the feedback was difficult to hear in the moment.
3. Role-model respectful debate.  As CEO of Red Hat, Whitehurst thought of himself as the company’s head debater: He was engaging in candid discussions on important topics and making sure others did the same. He recalled that IBM was different: “I’d walk in a meeting at IBM … and everybody tried to say, ‘OK, what kind of mood is he in?’ And then it’s like they wanted to structure things around what I wanted to hear.”  To counterbalance employees’ desire to agree with the boss, Whitehurst would sometimes argue the opposite side of what he believed. Once team members realized that he was using that tactic, they felt more comfortable sharing their candid opinions. Whitehurst and his second-in-command made a conscious effort to model the kind of open debate they expected from the team. When IBM employees saw two leaders who respected each other engaging in heated exchanges but walking out of the room as friends, they realized that respectful disagreements were not just acceptable but encouraged.
4. Provide basic skills training on critical conversations.  Encouraging constant debate helps organizations navigate uncertainty, but it can be hard on leaders: They must listen to a constant stream of critiques, manage emotional debates that can boil over, and avoid taking negative feedback personally. To help build these leadership skills, Whitehurst’s team at IBM introduced a framework to help structure and lead difficult discussions, and they required all people managers to receive training on using it.
5. Demand progress, not perfection.  When someone is trying to build any new leadership capability, including candid discussions, it’s important not to let perfection be the enemy of progress. Learning to lead and engage in vigorous debate takes time. Whitehurst framed stimulating and managing debate as a behavior that leaders exhibited on their best days to emphasize that the capability was aspirational.

High-stakes risk has been a hallmark of Elon Musk’s career: defying industry standards with reusable rockets at his $210 billion interplanetary exploration company SpaceX—or, at $1 trillion Tesla, spending billions on titanic production facilities to manufacture electric-vehicle components in-house.

But it was Musk’s recent zero-sum bet to stake his reputation, his newly purchased social media platform, and more than $130 million in political donations to Republicans and Donald Trump’s third presidential campaign that has propelled him—and his companies—to an unparalleled level of power and influence in both business and politics.

Musk, whose sometimes callous opinions and tweets have made him a polarizing figure, was already immersed in international politics. With SpaceX, which is one of the Department of Defense’s most important contractors, Musk has special security clearance, and his satellite network Starlink has played a critical—if sometimes controversial—role in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.

But in President-elect Donald Trump’s White House—so long as Musk and the incoming POTUS continue to get along—Musk will have Trump’s ear. He’ll know Trump’s cabinet. And he’ll have access to the heads of all of Trump’s regulatory agencies, some of whom will be overseeing his constellation of companies that span the artificial intelligence, space, solar, brain implant, tunneling, and electric-vehicle industries. Musk may even get his own seat at the table—as head of a new “government efficiency commission”—all of which would heighten his power both locally and abroad.

As Trump assembles his new team, the extent of Musk’s influence will be on full display. The world will be waiting to see if Trump makes moves in artificial intelligence that benefit xAI or backs off his harsh campaign-trail stance on EVs that collides with Musk’s personal interests. The president-elect has also threatened to impose tariffs on all vehicle imports from China and Mexico, though Tesla has an important gigafactory in Shanghai and has been working to open one near Monterrey. Musk told shareholders in July that Tesla’s Mexico plans were “on pause” as a result of the potential Trump tariffs.

Musk was reportedly already asking for favors even before Trump won the election, with the New York Times writing that Musk asked him to hire some SpaceX employees for government positions – a claim on which representatives for Musk and President-elect Trump did not respond to a request for comment.)

Will Musk’s period of heightened influence last in the next four years, or will the two men’s histories of erratic behavior and obsession with the center stage clash once Trump returns to the Oval Office? Either way, Musk’s innovative spirit—and his intuition on which risky bets are worth taking—has turned him into the most powerful person in business.

As another year winds down, leaders often fall into one of two costly traps: prematurely shifting focus to next year’s goals or charging through December on frenzied autopilot. Both are missed opportunities, as the final weeks of a year are crucial for strategic planning and positioning.

Instead of letting valuable time slip away at year-end, leaders can approach these final weeks of 2024 with intention, reflection and purpose.  Here’s a six-week strategic roadmap to help you close the year off strong and set yourself up for sustained success in 2025.

Week 1: Relationship Audit And Power Mapping.  Map your organization’s existing and incoming power players for 2025. Pay extra attention to who makes budget decisions and who leads high-priority projects and verticals. Identify three key relationships that need strengthening before year-end.  Schedule meetings and coffee chats for early January.  Action item: Create a “Strategic 10” list—the relationships that will be most important for your leadership trajectory in 2025. In crafting this list, consider each candidate’s scope of influence, decision-making authority and ability to champion your advancement.

Week 2: Visibility Sprint.  Document your 2024 wins (quantify and add metrics to everything you can).  Share three significant project outcomes with influential stakeholders.  Secure one speaking opportunity for Q1 2025 (this may require pitching yourself for multiple opportunities).  Action item: Draft your Impact Report, a one-pager detailing the value and positive contributions you made in 2024.

Week 3: Knowledge Gap Assessment.  Review and reflect on industry trends that emerged in Q4.  Identify two high-priority skills you’ll need to strengthen for 2025 and beyond—for example, learning to use AI technologies to improve decision-making and developing stronger team leadership abilities.  Register for one high-impact learning opportunity in Q1.  Action item: Develop a 2×2 matrix of skills relevant to your 2025 goals with urgency and current proficiency level as the axes. Focus primarily on building the skills in the high-urgency, low-proficiency quadrant and secondarily on those in the high-urgency, high-proficiency quadrant.

Week 4: Support System Strengthening.  Evaluate your current mentor and sponsor relationships.  Identify potential new sponsors based on your 2025 goals.  Schedule year-end check-ins with your personal board of directors.  Action item: Map out your 2025 support network action plan—a list of who you’ll approach for different needs and how often you’ll initiate outreach to them.

Week 5: Strategic Positioning.  Review upcoming organizational changes and opportunities.  Identify two high-visibility projects to pursue in Q1.  Draft your narrative for desired role changes or promotions.  Action item: Plot your 2025 advancement timeline with projects, initiatives and role transitions you’ll pursue each quarter.

Week 6: Personal Brand Refinement.  Update your leadership story and personal brand statement with your 2024 achievements.  Refresh your LinkedIn and professional materials and assets.  Schedule Q1 writing opportunities on platforms like LinkedIn, your website, your company’s blog or newsletter.  Action item: Outline your thought leadership calendar for Q1, repurposing content where applicable. Keep in mind significant events of the year.

Unlocking customer insights using data analytics has become imperative for successful business operations. After all, how can you effectively serve your customers if you don’t know their needs?  This article offers advice from eight experts on how to use data to your advantage. Discover how they fine-tuned their tactics to stay ahead in a competitive market.

1. Utilize heatmaps for redesign.  If you want to know how customers experience your website, heatmaps are the best way to gather that data.  The tools can inform you where on your website visitors hovered and clicked predominantly.
2. Launch a referral program.  Net Promoter Score is another effective way to collect customers’ opinions about your business. Take it from Mira Nathalea, the chief marketing officer for SoftwareHow, a software development company “When we analyzed our NPS, it became evident that, despite that many customers were satisfied with the product, there was a significant gap in how often they recommended it to others.”  Nathalea continues, “With the help of this insight, we built a referral program, offering customers incentives if they recommended the product to friends or colleagues who might find it useful.
3. Track weekend leads for better conversion.  It can be helpful to know when your customers are most active and likely to purchase. Ravi VC, the founder of business advisory service GoGLOBAL101, says, “We began tracking inbound organic leads by each day of the week, and correlated them with customer responses.”  VC elaborates, “The data revealed a consistent spike in leads during weekends. When we responded to these weekend leads within the same week, subsequent week responses increased, and we received higher, more serious intent from these customers compared to weekday leads.”
4. Refine features based on user needs.  By analyzing customer feedback, reviews, and other data sources, you can better understand your customers’ needs and behaviors to improve retention. According to Jovana Kandic, the head of product management at CAKE.com, a California-based software development company, a significant strategic insight involved the adoption rates of billing and invoicing features.
5. Analyze data to improve patient care.  In a field like healthcare, data analytics is a vital tool for improving patient care. “For example, analyzing appointment data revealed a high rate of missed follow-up visits among diabetic patients,” says Max Burchett, Jr., chief information officer at Oklahoma City Indian Clinic.  Burchett, Jr. explains, “Upon further investigation, we found that transportation challenges, long waiting times, and rigid scheduling were significant barriers. To address this, we introduced flexible scheduling with evening and weekend slots and expanded telehealth options for those with mobility or transportation issues. These changes led to fewer missed appointments, better continuity of care, and improved patient outcomes, with more patients meeting glucose-management goals.”
6. Identify repeat purchases.  Data can reveal trends that challenge your assumptions. Abbas Abidi, the co-founder of online visa service LeSo, says that they initially thought they wouldn’t have frequent repeat purchases because people wouldn’t need more than one visa per year, but this was not the case.  “We noticed that customers were coming back for visas to other countries, particularly those offering longer validity periods, such as the U.K. or U.S. 10-year visas,” says Abidi. “Our data revealed that we were achieving an almost two-visas-per-customer metric when we actively focused on pitching the right deals and SKUs to our existing customers. 
7. Tailor messaging for personalization.  Collecting data from first- and third-party sources, along with behavioral insights, can help you offer personalized recommendations to your customers. “By understanding customers’ habits, we’re able to offer products like solar, batteries, and upgrades at the ideal time in their buying journey, maximizing engagement and conversion,” says Matt Zothner, the founder and CEO of Currents, a clean energy advisory company.
8. Leverage data for successful rebranding.  One of the most challenging undertakings for a business is rebranding, but data can be your compass. For Kate Smiley-Rodgers, the Global Brand Director for GE HealthCare, leveraging data analytics was instrumental in rebranding a 100-year legacy.  “We had to dive deep into data across both long-standing and new audiences to truly grasp where the brand stood and determine how we could position the business for future growth,” says Smiley-Rodgers. “We then took this data-driven insight and crafted a strategy that brought the brand’s transformation to life both internally and externally. The outcome? A successful rebranding of GE HealthCare from an industrial company into a healthcare technology provider.”

2 key takeaways from the article

1. Unlocking customer insights using data analytics has become imperative for successful business operations. After all, how can you effectively serve your customers if you don’t know their needs?  
2. Advice from eight experts on how to use data to your advantage. Discover how they fine-tuned their tactics to stay ahead in a competitive market.  These advice are:  utilize heatmaps for redesign to know the part the part of the webpage your customers are spending time, Launch a referral program, track weekend leads for better conversion, refine features based on user needs, analyze data to improve patient care, identify repeat purchases, tailor messaging for personalization, and leverage data for successful rebranding.

According to the author in his early years, he spent a decade in the restaurant business — owning several places and dealing with every challenge we can imagine. If he has learned anything from his time in the restaurant industry, it’s how to stay sharp, pivot fast and manage chaos calmly.  Years later, as a tech CEO, he still rely on the lessons he learned in those kitchens and dining areas. The restaurant industry runs on principles that translate seamlessly to any sector, and the smartest businesses are the ones that take a page out of their playbook. Three practices are crucial for success, no matter your business.

1. Have a contingency plan.  Always be ready. You know things may go sideways really quickly if you have ever worked at a restaurant. One minute, operations are running perfectly — then in the next moment, the fryer goes down mid-dinner rush, or worse, the point-of-sale system (POS) crashes.  Successful restaurant managers have mastered the art of managing panic. They pivot quickly. Handwritten orders are scribbled out, alternative cooking methods are deployed and the operation continues without missing a beat. This approach of adaptability is something every business needs to adopt.
2. Study your competitors.  In the restaurant business, every thriving establishment keeps a close eye on its competitors. As they say, “Success leaves clues.” If the new place across the street is packed every night, you’d better believe the local owners are heading over there, taking notes. What’s their pricing strategy? How are they marketing? Are their menu items seasonal or trendy? Restaurants study this information not to copy but to adapt and innovate.  Paying attention to the reasons behind your competitors’ success is crucial, yet simply replicating their strategies will not lead to significant progress. The real value is found in recognizing opportunities for improvement. Although studying the competition has statistical significance, too much attention to them can limit your own potential. You run the risk of moving from proactive to reactive. Use competitor analysis as a springboard for innovation. By studying their strengths and weaknesses, you can push your business in a direction they haven’t considered.
3. Work on soft skills.  Soft skills are just as important as technical skills in the restaurant industry. It may sound like something that belongs in an HR training module, but in business, they’re essential for survival and growth. For instance, it is imperative for the cook to notify the dining staff and guests right away when a popular dish runs out to manage expectations. Real-time communication among staff, clients and managers helps reduce preventable errors, minimize frustration and preserve high standards of service.  In a more general corporate environment, relationships must be maintained by soft skills, including feedback, empathy and communication. Minor difficulties could develop into major issues if you struggle with effective team and client communication. Maintaining trust, loyalty and efficiency depends on handling circumstances as they abound, whether it means telling a client about a delay or providing a team member with constructive criticism. Leaders who master soft skills tend to have happier teams, lower attrition rates, and more satisfied clients.