Gen AI is a game changer for MarTech companies: Netcore’s Kalpit Jain

In the evolving business landscape, Marketing Technology (MarTech) and consumer experience company Netcore Cloud’s Group CEO Kalpit Jain strongly believes that generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) is a game changer for the industry. In an interview with TechCircle, he revealed company’s the role of Gen AI, collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and upcoming strategies. Edited excerpts:

How Netcore meets the needs of businesses in today’s digital era with its products and services? 

Netcore is a top customer engagement and retention platform. We assist brands in boosting revenue from their existing customer base. Many brands struggle to maximise revenue from their current customers. Netcore offers solutions to increase revenue, repeat purchases, average order value, and overall revenue for digital-first, retail, e-commerce, banking, financial, and security companies. We achieve this through the "4 Rs of marketing" — reaching the right person in the right customer segment with the right content on the most suitable channel at the perfect time. In a nutshell, Netcore helps brands maximise revenue from their existing customers.

Have you noticed any significant post-pandemic trends in cloud technology, and how is your company staying ahead in this evolving landscape? 

We've embarked on a journey, transitioning from our private cloud to AWS over the past year and a half. Our goal with this shift was to enhance reliability, scalability, and reduce dependencies, which were common in our previous private infrastructure. Moving to AWS has allowed us to leverage cloud technology trends, notably auto-scaling, which is a game-changer for handling traffic spikes during events like IPL games and festive seasons. This was challenging with private clouds but is now easily achievable.

Serverless services have been a significant shift too, saving time and costs by removing the need to manage servers and infrastructure, only paying for what's consumed. This trend has gained momentum over the last few years and offers considerable scalability. Experience-Based Acceleration (EBA) involves containerising applications and using orchestration tools like Kubernetes for seamless scaling and deployment. EBA also encourages the move from monolithic applications to microservices, improving deployment flexibility. Cloud-native services and Gen AI-based collaboration are on our radar for future adoption, promising faster iterations and experimentation capabilities for our marketing campaigns. 

Lastly, security remains a top priority, with cloud providers investing heavily in advanced security tools and certifications to safeguard the data we manage for our brands. Our journey involves leveraging these trends, with some already integrated, while others are a work in progress.

What is AI's role in cloud computing and how your company plans to integrate it in the future? 

AI has been around for a while, but Gen AI is a recent development that's gained widespread attention over the past 9-12 months. For companies like ours in MarTech, Gen AI is a game-changer. We leverage it for various purposes, with content generation being a prime example. It allows you to experiment with different content for specific user segments and conduct AB tests to identify what works best. This has proven to reduce dependencies and improve efficiency by up to 30%. 

Another common application is personalising content based on user demographics, tailoring messages to age groups, which we've successfully used with brands like Thomas Cook and Crocs. Gen AI also offers a tool called "copilot," which simplifies campaign creation. You can instruct copilot in plain text, and it takes care of creating user segments, subject lines, and email content, automating many routine tasks for marketers. 

We've also harnessed Gen AI for product catalog enrichment in e-commerce and retail, enhancing product attributes through image-based technology. This makes it easier for consumers to find exactly what they're looking for. In essence, Gen AI empowers software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms to automate tasks, making marketing teams more efficient and productive. There are countless possibilities for its use, and it's shaping the future of marketing technology.

Can you briefly explain the AWS collaboration's impact on your company and customers, and mention any other recent or upcoming collaborations? 

We initiated our partnership with AWS approximately 18-20 months ago with a primary goal: transitioning from our private cloud to AWS. This collaboration has proven highly successful. We've not only migrated numerous workloads to AWS but also harnessed their robust capabilities for platform providers. 

One standout use case is the adoption of AWS Lambda to handle the massive influx of events into our system. We process billions of events related to user interactions with brand apps and websites. This transition has significantly improved our scalability compared to our previous approach. Additionally, we've effectively employed Amazon EventBridge to orchestrate event workflows across our internal microservices. 

Another pivotal area is our utilisation of AWS's database services, such as Amazon RDS and DynamoDB. Given our extensive consumer data collection, these services have played a vital role in expanding our storage capacity. We also rely on AWS services like Fargate, Application Gateway, and Amazon Simple Queue Service to manage our event pipeline. 

In our ongoing partnership with AWS, we're exploring serverless applications and AI/ML capabilities to enhance real-time data analysis and campaign forecasting. Amazon SageMaker is a notable tool in this regard. Lastly, as we expand into various global markets, we're committed to meeting diverse compliance and security requirements. We'll continue to tighten our security measures and ensure that we have the necessary certifications in place to support our global expansion. 
 
In the near future, will your company focus on specific areas for more investment and innovation in its products or services? 

In the world of MarTech, brands are focusing on profitable growth, not just expansion at any cost. To achieve quick profitability, companies must optimise customer acquisition costs (CAC) and increase the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) or customer lifetime value. This is where companies like Netcore, specialising in engagement and retention, come into play. 

Rather than relentlessly spending on acquiring new customers, the key is retaining and growing revenue from existing customers. Netcore invests in helping brands optimise their advertising spend and maximise revenues, with tools like Gen AI to reduce tedious tasks and enhance content creation. 

Another significant area of investment is understanding and connecting with users. Knowing the consumer better enables brands to provide the right recommendations and messaging for conversion or repeat purchases.