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| We have reengineered the way research gets done, blending consulting skills with offshore advantage. A prescriptive approach ensures we don’t just report numbers, rather interpret what they mean for you. |
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IndiaInfoline, Tuesday, 10 April 2007
Sudeshna Datta, Co-founder and Executive Vice President, AbsolutData Research and Analytics
AbsolutData Research & Analytics provides market research and advanced analytics services to help their clients to maintain and extend competitive positions. Clients have access to a pool of nearly 150 analysts who can create customized solutions for a range of marketing decisions regarding price optimization, new product introduction, market mix modeling and churn reduction, among others. The company leverages its pioneering industry experience in India and domain knowledge in advanced analytics to provide the entire spectrum of marketing services from data collection, data synthesis and analysis. The clients -spread over North America, Europe and South-East Asia- include the world’s top three consulting companies, the largest food company in the US, a leading credit card issuer, leading retailers, four of the top 20 market research companies and a number of technology and software leaders.
Sudeshna Datta is a Co-founder and Executive Vice President of AbsolutData Research and Analytics. AbsolutData is a fast-growing professional services firm that provides high-quality and cost-effective Marketing Research and Marketing Analytics Services to its global client base. Sudeshna is a member of the executive management team at AbsolutData and leads the Corporate Development, Human Resources and Marketing functions. She has more than a decade of experience in general management and marketing. Sudeshna began her career with Pfizer in New York where she was responsible for leading business development initiatives for a sugar-substitute product. Subsequently, she joined Kraft Foods in Chicago and managed a series of brands in the Oscar Mayer products. She led multiple large cross-functional teams to deliver substantial volume and profits and was responsible for more than $150mn in P&L. Sudeshna-led the development and implementation of a turnaround strategy for a core brand for the Oscar Mayer division at Kraft Foods. She was a co-founder of Globedécor.com; an Internet based international home décor business that brought home furnishings retailers and exporters together on one platform. Sudeshna grew up in Delhi and completed her schooling from Delhi Public School RK Puram. She went on to do a BA with dual majors in Architecture and Building Construction from University of Washington, Seattle. She went on to do an MBA with marketing concentration from Cornell University.
Speaking with Anil Mascarenhas of India Infoline, Sudeshna Datta says, "Off late, there has been a lot of interest among investors and VCs to fund companies like ours."
A number of processes and offerings have been moving up as far as Market Research and Analytics are concerned. What are the changing trends?
The MRO (Market Research Outsourcing) and Analytics Outsourcing industry has been moving up in the value chain in terms of its offerings. The industry started with providing mostly modular processes such as data collection and data processing to Market Research and Analytics companies in the US and Europe. Now, some of the companies have moved up in the value chain and are providing full service Market Research and Analytics to their clients. They are essentially competing with the Market Research and Analytics companies present in the US and Europe and currently serving clients there, or creating a need for serving those clients who currently are not utilizing such practices.
What kind of solutions do you provide? What is the estimated market for such service?
AbsolutData provides consulting-oriented Market Research and Advanced Marketing Analytics services to its global client base. Our teams provide the "marketing insights" that are needed by our clients to solve their business problems. Sometime the marketing insights are derived from the data that a client already has internally such as sales data, customer contact history etc. In this case, advanced marketing analytics are used by the ADT team to develop models and derive the insights for its clients. If the data is not available internally, AbsolutData Market Research Group surveys the clients’ customers to collect the data and analyzes the data to identify marketing insights.
The size of the Market Research and Analytics market is estimated to be $15 billion globally.
Who are your close competitors in India and abroad? What is the key differentiator?
In the market research area, AbsolutData typically competes with US based Market Research companies as there are not many companies in India that provide a similar service. Most of the companies that we regularly compete with are top 10 market research companies in the US and local analytics firms. We do not face too much competition from India-based companies as the industry is still young and we are rapidly becoming well-known in the US market for our services.
Our key differentiator is our consistent high quality, faster turnaround speed and cost efficiency. We combine our superior technical skills with a deep understanding of our clients’ business problems to deliver actionable results that our clients can use to solve their complex marketing problems.
Market research depends a lot on identifying the right sample size and target audience. How do you ensure correct sampling?
Determining the right sample size is a critical issue for all market research. The sample size depends on a number of factors such as the degree of accuracy required, number of sub-groups that have to be analyzed, statistical analyses to be used for generating insights as well as the research budget.
You have varied experiences from Pfizer to Kraft and a home décor company? What are the learnings, which you have brought to this business?
I’ve had a multitude of learnings from both these organizations especially in the overall scheme of general management. Specifically, one key learning was how to develop robust systems and processes for delivery that could be scalable. Another was to manage teams effectively, especially teams with varying cross-functional strengths to deliver results effectively. Another key learning was to analyze various types of information to make better decisions. Globedecor, a B2B portal for home furnishings was interesting since it gave us the experience of a new startup. It helped the core founding team of Anil Kaul (CEO, AbsolutData Research and Analytics), Suhale Kapoor (One of the Founder and Director) and me come together with an idea of bridging India with rest of the world. It gave us the exposure to all facets of running and growing a business and develop sustainable processes to deliver results to our clients. This also gave us a key learning of developing a talent base in India to add value and deliver to the rest of the world.
What is your team strength? Any expansion plans?
Presently, we at AbsolutData are at an exciting juncture. There is a lot of industry growth and excitement around our clients. I see there is a challenge to grow our team effectively and develop the talent pool while understanding and developing new cutting edge processes and techniques to deliver to clients efficiently.
Our current team strength is 130. We do have immediate plans to expand the team size, we are hoping to be around 250 by the end of the year and we are well on our way to achieving that.
Do you have operations other than India? How much does India contribute to your overall revenue?
Since most of our clients are located in the US, we have relatively smaller team located in San Francisco that is responsible for front end interaction with clients and business development. Currently, all of our revenues are derived outside of India, with the work being delivered from India. US contributes majority of our revenues, though Europe and Asia-Pacific are beginning to grow as well.
Brief us on your financials. What is the outlook going ahead?
We are currently a privately held company so we can not disclose precise financials. However as an indicator, our revenues have been growing very fast. In 2006, we more than doubled our revenue as well as our company size. We are hoping to keep this momentum going and are targeting doubling to tripling of our revenues this year and ahead.
Who are the promoters and investors in your company?
The company has three promoters - Anil Kaul, Suhale Kapoor and myself. The company is self-funded; we have grown the company from internal accruals.
How do you propose to fund your expansion plans?
Currently, we are planning on growing the company through internal accruals. At the same time, we are constantly evaluating if we need to take any external funding to accelerate our growth. Off late, there has been a lot of interest among investors and VCs to fund companies like ours.
Tell us more about your clients. How much do the top 3 contribute to your revenues?
We currently have more than 30 clients. Our clients include 4 of the top consulting companies, largest food company in the US, a top 3 credit card issuer, a large insurance company, 2 of the largest online companies, 2 leading retailers and many others. Our client base is quite diversified; the top 3 clients contribute about 30% of our revenues.
What are the different kinds of analysis you do? Briefly give us an instance of how your analysis has made a company change the way it functions?
I’ll give you a couple of examples. In one instance, one of AbsolutData’s clients, an online music company, had been losing a large number of its subscribers. Using the product usage data that was collected each time a subscriber listened to the music, AbsolutData team developed an attrition prediction model that predicts which subscribers are most likely to cancel their subscriptions in the next month. With the advanced information, the client is now able to contact these customers and solve their issues. This has substantially reduced the number of customers who have cancelled their subscriptions since the client started using the AbsolutData model.
Recently, another of AbsolutData’s clients, a large retail company in the US, wanted to introduce a new lock, it needed to find the combination of product features (such as size, color, finish and name) to maximize sales for the product. AbsolutData conducted a survey among the clients’ customers and by using an advanced technique called Conjoint Analysis was able to find out the feature combination that would maximize sales of the new lock. The product has been launched and has been a very successful product for the company.
You do Econometric & Statistical Modeling. How closely can you predict any macro economic or stock market related event?
While we do Econometric and Statistical modeling, our focus tends to be on predicting consumer behavior. Our models predict which consumers are likely to purchase a product, when they are likely to purchase and what they are going to purchase. Our models also forecast sales for new products and services.
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