Global companies want to replicate India’s digital model

“We have India for India, and India for the world. In tech and digital, India is amazing. So, we are discussing how India can contribute to the world as well,” said Barbara Martin Coppola, chief executive officer of Decathlon.

The French sporting goods retailer’s entire leadership, along with its chief digital officer, visited the country recently to have discussions on “how India can contribute for the future including technology”, he said.

For denim maker Levi’s, apart from being one of the sourcing hubs, India also has a global capability centre in Bengaluru, an engineering hub to accelerate omni-channel capabilities globally. “We are building an engineering base as we grow both technology, our digital operations, artificial intelligence, and India is making a big difference,” Harmit Singh, global chief financial and growth officer at Levi Strauss & Co, told ET.

Last year, Unilever had said India will be a beacon of digital innovation for the packaged consumer products firmglobally.

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While India has been a sourcing and talent hub for many companies, the country’s adoption for ecommerce and innovation in manufacturing accelerated significantly during the pandemic. And global markets can replicate the process, especially as omni-channel gain importance to sell their products, executives said.

“The digital infrastructure we have been able to create in India is quite impressive and that’s contributing to our ability to drive disproportionate growth, both from a sales capability standpoint and from a media capability standpoint,” Andre Schulten, chief financial officer of Procter & Gamble Co, told investors recently.

According to a Deloitte-Ficci report, technology-led transformation of retail accelerated over the past two years as the consumer and retail industries went phygital to survive the offline retail lockdowns in the new normal. “As we enter the endemic stage of Covid-19 and with the economy gradually recovering, more retailers are expected to fast-track the adoption of digitally enabled omnichannel strategy to operate proficiently and mitigate the supply chain disruptions and increasing competition,” the report said.

Last month, Alexis Perakis-Valat, president, consumer product division, at L’Oréal, told analysts that the French personal care company is bullish on India due to its technological advancement across operations. “I have seen changes in the last two years like never before – in terms of sophistication of the market (and) in terms of change of the distribution – thanks to ecommerce. And all that powered by a super digital ecosystem,” he had said.

Over the past two years, companies innovated across value chains to enable greater agility, flexibility and efficiency.

For instance, Hindustan Unilever set up nano factories that allow them to produce in batches of kilograms rather than tonnes and help them with faster product rollouts. Parent Unilever is rolling it out in other markets to bring innovation lead times and cost down.

“An untold story is the amount of digital innovation that’s happening in India…how we run our supply chain, route-to-market innovation, digital innovation, some of the marketing programmes that we are doing there…” Alan Jope, chief executive officer of Unilever, had said last year. “I hope India will be…a beacon of digital innovation as well as a powerhouse commercially.”