Intel Startup Program, in collaboration with the Indian School of Business, is excited to announce the first session under ‘Growth Tunes’. Participation in this exclusive session is by invitation only for a limited audience.

Prof. Madhu Viswanathan shared his knowledge on ‘Digital Marketing for startups to accelerate B2B growth’. It will address specific questions and challenges to grow the B2B business by leveraging digital marketing through a combination of fundamentals and exclusive interaction with the Professor for guidance on specific challenges.​

Summary of the above webinar

 

The Indian School of Business (ISB) and the Intel Startup Program hosted the second session of the 'Growth Tunes – A Leadership Series' on the 18th of August, Thursday, by Madhu Viswanathan, Associate Professor, Marketing, Indian School of Business (ISB) and Research Director, ISB Institute of Data Science. It was an invite-only event that included the participation of an exclusive set of startup leaders, ISB faculty members, and startup mentors from the Intel Startup Program.

 

The leadership series is one of the first initiatives under the aegis of the Emerging Technologies Centre (ETC), powered by ISB and Intel's collaboration, and is designed as a niche offering for the founders and leaders of the high-impact growth-stage startup ecosystem. The academia-industry partnership offers an exclusive coterie of erudite faculty members from leading B-schools and expert industry professionals to share their knowledge through talk series, interactive workshops, etc. Growth Tunes offer growth-stage startups opportunities to learn from and engage with these mentors to leverage their insights in overcoming technology and business challenges and embarking on their journey to growth and scale across the country and in global markets.

 

Fostered by ETC, the Session 2 of the 'Growth Tunes – A Leadership Series' hosted a live talk session by Prof. Madhu Viswanathan, who shared his insights on "Digital marketing for startups to accelerate B2B growth" with the startup founders and leaders, especially from the deep-tech startup ecosystem. As an advisor to numerous early to matured startups, the professor has profound knowledge of digital marketing and its changing trends for businesses.

 

In the talk, Viswanathan talked about the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, especially in the B2B context, and according to him, the most important strategy is to never "be wedded to the marketing channels"; rather, to keep moving with the flow and change as per the trends. Citing a Gartner report, Viswanathan said, "By 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers are going to occur in digital chats." By then, sales strategies and processes will undergo a paradigm shift as the allocation of resources shifts from a seller-centric to buyer-centric orientation, which would see a major rearrangement from analog processes to a hyper-automated digital-first engagement with customers.

 

The professor goes on to discuss the key challenges in adopting a digital B2B channel and the utmost importance of complete reorientation of businesses and change in organizational culture and structure to commit to digital adoption at a strategic level. In the talk, Viswanathan cites use cases of General Electric and Netherlands-based bank ING, which have adopted digital to ensure a consistent customer experience across both online and offline channels.

 

He also outlined a framework for companies to adopt a holistic digital B2B strategy that includes redesigning and orchestrating customer journeys, integrating marketing with sales, modernizing core commercial processes, and digitally disrupting communication and transaction channels.

 

Later in the talk, a participant sought the professor's insight on whether shifting to digital would significantly cut down the long time involved before a B2B deal gets closed. Agreeing with the point raised, Viswanathan replied that though the bureaucratic hurdles might persist, digital adoption would make communication and interactions seamless and quick, significantly reducing the time of closing deals.

 

Mahir Mehta, Business Development Director, IOTG BU and Intel Startup Program, who delivered the vote of thanks for the session, called it a day as he suggested that the next installment of the series is anticipated to be something big.