The CMO’s MO: Gaurav Ramdev’s marketing strategy rests on three pillars—creativity, growth-orientation, and discipline

The CMO’s MO (modus operandi) shines the spotlight on some of India’s prominent chief marketing officers as they share their marketing mantra, trends for the future, and what keeps them up at night. In a free-wheeling chat with Campaign, the who’s who of the country’s leading marketers give a sneak peek into their personalities, plans, and passions projects for the year ahead.

In this week’s edition of CMO’s MO, we have Gaurav Ramdev, chief growth and marketing officer (CGMO) at Protean eGov Technologies, on the hot seat. An MBA from Pune’ Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, he has been associated with the IT solutions’ company since June 2023.

Post his elevation from the role of chief marketing officer, he is now responsible for the organisation’s profitable growth besides marketing. During his tenure, he has led all marketing functions—including brand, digital, performance, content and product marketing—corporate communications, and PR. He has also led the company’s go-to-market (GTM) strategy and innovation.

Here are edited excerpts of his interview where he shares his perspectives on subjects ranging from marketing challenges, business opportunities for Protean and the emerging technologies, such as GenAI:

What are the three biggest growth and marketing challenges for your company right now?

Our three biggest challenges include re-establishing recall and trust in the new brand identity of Protean, making it equivalent to the levels of NSDL eGov, which was the former name. The other important challenges are building digital acquisition as a growth driver for the organisation and GTMs of our new population-scale products to accelerate their citizen adoption.

What are the biggest opportunities for Protean?

Leveraging our competitive presence is an opportunity area for us, since we are a listed company and build digital infrastructure for the nation. We are unique in terms of scale and size and have six integrated business units. There is ample headroom to grow in our newer businesses like open networks, data stacks like account aggregator, and the public cloud. Now, we want to establish a self-driven team with a culture of winning.

Spill the C-suite strategy around generative AI (gen AI). How are you using it to democratise creativity?

Protean’s marketing team was amongst the early adopters of gen AI in our industry. We have democratised its use across teams—our social storyboards, creative inputs to agencies like visual briefs, copy writing, SEO, and digital campaigns. But we didn’t stop there. Our company’s first annual report features a cover and design elements created using GenAI.

Which industry topic doesn’t get talked about enough, and what should the industry stop talking about?

The topic that gets discussed about is marketing ROI and how marketing is perceived as a cost centre. On the contrary, more conversations should center around our ability to measure our marketing effectiveness across all acts. These do not get spoken enough. Except digital, in today’s world, all other marketing acts—brand campaigns, product GTMs, and how we measure long term mind-measures are not deliberated upon.

How exactly is your brand walking the talk on sustainability?

Financial and social inclusion are at the heart of our products and it is hard-coded in our ethos. We believe in open networks built on open protocols and in interoperability.

Just last month, we launched Protean Life, India’s first digital infrastructure on sustainability, which aims to unify India’s fragmented CSR and sustainability efforts by corporates. At a company-level, we include our social impact report as part of the annual report for everyone to see.

What separates your brand-culture from others?

Our brand-culture thrives on key pillars like ‘always creative’, ‘always growth-oriented’, and ‘marketing discipline’ to ensure high-quality work. The team members use these pillars to guide themselves and operate with agility, transparency and bias for action.

What is the best piece of professional advice that you have received till date?

As professionals, many times we beat ourselves, indulge in corridor conversations or even take shortcuts, sometimes. In this regard, the best advice I received was ‘Someone is always watching’. This advice has stayed with me from my formative years in career, making me strive harder, be focused, and always give my best diligently. This also comes in as a handy reminder when rewards for good work do not yield overnight.

How would you describe yourself as a CGMO?

Three adjectives come to mind—intuitive, disciplined, and data-driven.

Is there any brand campaign that you really admire?

My all-time favourite is Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola (Chill equals Coca-Cola). It led me to join Coca-Cola and spend half of my marketing career there.

Which brand, according to you, has an amazing and admirable customer experience?

I admire PhonePe as an organisation for its customer experience: lightning-fast products, intuitive UI, always trustworthy—never fails in any transaction!

What keeps you up at night as a CGMO?

The thought can be best summarised as: Where do we go from here? What is new and how can we be the first to experiment? What do we need to double down to scale up, what more can my team learn, what are the new experiences for our customers and experiences.