Building Brands of Tomorrow: How to Up the Cool Quotient?

In her opening comments, Anurima Das, Executive Editor of IMAGES RetailME raised some pertinent questions: What makes brands cool? How can brands create a unique proposition to stand out in a rather crowded landscape? What kind of innovation goes into upping a brand’s “cool” quotient?

“Our make-up is safe enough to eat – that’s our USP,” shared Nerissa Low, Founder, Liht Organics. “A pain point on the other hand is to help an online buyer understand if a certain make-up will suit them. So, we offer AI-based solutions, online beauty consultancy and 14-day free refund and exchange along with easy payment plans to make the shopping journey easy and convenient.”

“Our uniqueness lies in the fact that Etika Jewels offers sustainably sourced, lab-grown diamond jewellery delivered to the customer’s preferred doorstep,” said Basma Chaieri, Founder, Etika Jewels. “Since ours is an online platform its crucial for us to stay very close to our customers in the way we communicate curating useful content to help them easily visualise the product.”

“Great taste, great product, great service is our success recipe helping us to resonate with people of all ages,” said Sandeep Sharma, Director Group Procurement & International Markets Supply Chain, Alamar Foods – Domino’s Pizza. “Our product engages with the consumer’s tongue, brain and feelings. If one of these go wrong the customer will most likely never order again, especially when there’s umpteen choice. So, offering quality, consistency, convenience and value are crucial for us.”

“Through our digital platform we connect 3.5 million students across 15 countries with the right tutor from our 70,000+ database in less than 60 seconds,” said Haaris Ahmad, Strategy and Operations, Filo. “Since it can never be a one size fits all approach our patented AI/ML algorithm maps 27 parameters for students and 43 parameters for tutors to find the perfect match.”

“We found a unique opportunity to deliver in 15 minutes which is one of the biggest reasons why customers use our application,” stated Anthony Nehaenko, Co-Founder and CCO, YallaMarket and YallaHub. “To always delight our them we constantly seek their feedback and update the app with new features and capabilities.”

Staying with delivery, more than 150 merchants offering 150,000 products delivered to consumers in 45-60 minutes makes the Yeepeey platform quite cool, stated Co-founder & CEO, Monish Chandiramani. “Lowest delivery fee in the market, no markups on products and dynamic real-time discounts on the app are our strategies to win over our users every time they place an order on Yeepeey. Having said that since we don’t own the inventory out of stock situation is one of our biggest challenges.”

With e-commerce being non-negotiable for businesses today, Jiffy Software enables online players to do business efficiently, shared Igor Demishev, Co-founder & CTO, Jiffy Software. “From a smooth and frictionless UI to fulfilling every order in the most efficient manner and constantly innovating are major focus areas for us.”

But is there an innovation that backfired, Das asked. Over digitisation can backfire, Sharma responded. “That’s why we’ve consciously made ordering easy on our platform through a largely two-step process,” Chandiramani added. “While AI facilitates the make-up buying process it can also backfire and it did for us initially. We had to scrap that solution altogether,” Low stated. “Vetting tutors has been a challenge for us,” Ahmad shared. “International shipment has been a challenge for us, so we decided to step back and first consolidate our brand in the region before going global,” Chaeri concluded.

Looking ahead, innovation, collaboration, convenience, accessibility and strategic expansion will continue to drive businesses forward.