CEO Insights Magazine

Every new experience brings its own maturity and a greater clarity of vision”. This quote of Indira Gandhi holds true for Hitesh Kakar (COO, CPM India), who has been able to leverage his more than a quarter-century of expertise in the areas of Sales, Customer Care, Brand Management and Customer Interface Strategy to help customers connect with the brand. Although Hitesh has worked alongside numerous prolific brands throughout his robust career, it was with The Yellow Pages business of The Tata Group at the early phase of his professional journey that helped him to understand the importance of the work culture and being responsible for his actions. “Not only did it allow me to express myself through my work and helped me take my ideas from concepts to reality, but it also cemented the message that for any team to succeed, a manager needs to put people first and help them develop their ideas into something substantial”, shares Hitesh. Throughout his career, this ‘people first’ mantra has become key to Hitesh’s management style, especially within the service industry and served him well while dealing with every business aspect, rendering to both employees and clients.

Below is an excerpt of Hitesh's interview with CEO Insights.

Define CPM India as an organization? What makes the company unique from its other competitors?
CPM India is a solutions focused organization enabling brands to excel in trade marketing, secondary and tertiary sales. What makes CPM unique is the technological and analytical advantage it has in the field. Being a market leader in this space CPM India regularly adapts best practices to ensure cost effectiveness and efficiency for clients here in India.

But more than that, what sets us apart is that we bring ideas to life with commitment, energy and positivity. We make things happen througha bespoke combination of sales, marketing, and customer experience. Investing and caring about what we do together as a team, our approach is centered around what the client wants to achieve. Our purpose is to inspire and influence human behavior. We lay massive emphasis on upskilling and retention. We take pride in the fact that the majority of our employees have been with us for more than five years, some even over a decade.

Tell us about the major factors that you take into account to manage your operations in line with customer expectations?
Field marketing is a specialized service that is a mix of sales, marketing and trade marketing functions. We understand the client’s objectives well enough to create solutions that are ROI-driven. Our customers like us for the speed of our go to market strategies which requires great agility and flexibility. While hiring people, we keep these factors in mind to ensure that they’re the right fit and relevant for the business.

Furthermore, technology is a great business enabler, one which we proudly weave through our deliverables by providing our clients state of the art reporting systems, supporting them with powerful data driven metrics and dashboards which aid them in quick decision making. Our focus has always been and will continue to be on hiring right, engaging & training, aspiring to execute and reporting in real time using technology.

What did the pandemic mean for your company as well as for you as a professional? How did you tackle the challenges?
The pandemic led to the quick adoption of newer practices that have helped the retail sector to

adjust to this sudden change.Digital transformation, which until a couple of years ago was largely a theoretical concept, received a real practical boost, as companies had to adapt to get products to an audience that was remotely making purchases online. The mantra of people first was no longer just a slogan for one to bandy about, but became the core focus for leaders to ensure the safety and security of their people.

CPM India understood these challenges and stepped up to the mantle of working with clients to help them navigate these changes. We began investing in upskilling the workforce through a multi pronged training approach. Apart from that, interactive digital learning and assessment lead to greater efficiency and aid in optimization for clients. Soon, online and offline stopped fighting for dominance and instead came together to give rise to unique cross channel shopping experiences to consumers. Merging offline and online, CPM India was at the forefront with our clients to ensure that the consumer journey was never compromised, and the quality of stewardship remained high.

What is the future roadmap you have planned for CPM India?
Today, it would do us all well to remember that we need to constantly keep innovating and calibrating & recalibrating risk to stay ahead of the curve, so we do not have to wait for another extraordinary event to ‘force’ us into changing. This is going to be my key KRA for going forward!

Hitesh Kakar, COO, CPM India
Hitesh has a rewarding career of more than 25 years, where he got to perform different roles in Sales, Client Services and Customer Services across top-notch companies such as The Tata Group, Bharti Airtel and the Network18 Group. This rich experience enabled him to develop a passion for pursuing his dreams, simultaneously remaining aligned with the values as well as the things that mattered to him the most.

Hobbies:Listening to Sufi music and cooking
Favorite Cuisine:Thai Cuisine
Favorite Book:'Whale Done!', book by Ken Blan chard and works of 'Devdutt Pattnaik'.
Favorite Travel Destination: Istanbul