REDPILL LAUNCHES ITS C-LAB IN CHENNAI

Suresh V Shankar Singapore-based customer management consulting company, RedPill Solutions, has formally launched its Indian operations by setting up c-lab, its customer innovation and insights centre in Chennai. ‘c-lab will function as a full-fledged insight and innovation development and delivery centre for all our clients and offices across the world,’ says Suresh V Shankar, chief executive officer, RedPill Solutions. ‘It will also serve as the centre for our Indian operations, and will enable us to reach out to all existing and new clients in India and the Middle East. We will centralise all our current research and development, marketing, pre-sales and knowledge management practices and efforts at c-lab.’

Eight years old RedPill has local offices in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Middle East. ‘Singapore will continue to be a regional hub for many large Asian and Western multinationals, and will continue to be our corporate headquarters,’ informs Shankar. These offices will primarily be involved in business development, client interaction and onshore project delivery, apart from providing the local business context and understanding. The company currently has staff strength of 55 people which it plans to increase by another 3035 people in the next 6 months.

‘c-lab is our largest office, employing a third of our total staff strength,’ says Shankar.

RedPill offers the following three types of consultancy services:

  1. Analytic services that generate customer insights and actions using data
  2. Strategy consulting services that provide ideas to increase the return on customer
  3. Mobility services that enable clients to interact with customers more innovatively

Its clients in banking domain include Standard Chartered Bank, MasterCard; Bank Danamon, BCA and BII in Indonesia; ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank in India; Samba, Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, Al Rajhi Bank in the Middle-East; Bank of

Ayudhya, Siam Commercial Bank and Kasikorn Bank in Thailand. Other clients are mainly in telecom vertical.

RedPill India and c-lab is headed by Durjoy Patranabish who was earlier heading CapitalOne’s outsourced operations in India and Philippines. Its head of analytics services is Dr Rita Chakravarti, who was head of Asia Pacific analytics team of Citibank prior to joining RedPill. Which sectors amongst banking, telecom, retail and hospitality would RedPill be focusing on in Indian market? ‘BFSI and telecom sectors will remain our primary focus in India. However, we also feel that there is a wealth of potential in the technology, retail and hospitality sectors as well in India,’ responds Shankar. ‘We do believe that India and the Middle East are the key markets,’ he emphasises and adds that ‘in these times of economic distress, we believe that customer-focused strategies, driven by analytics and innovation, are even more relevant and cost-effective than before, delivering greater value than conventional marketing strategies do’. This would hold true across geographies. Every organisation is now seeking effective ways to increase their return on investment (ROI) and more specifically their return on marketing investment (ROMI).