The CEO of Rezolve outlines the company's strategies for the Indian market and the road ahead At a time when India continues to scale up its digital economy, Rezolve, an international leader in mobile commerce, has forayed into the mobile-first market in the country. The mobile commerce platform is helmed by the newly appointed India CEO Sunder Madakshira, the former head of marketing at Adobe. An industry veteran with more than 26 years in marketing leadership roles, Madakshira has worked with companies like Harman, Infosys, Wipro, and Hindustan Lever (Unilever). Talking about Rezolve’s entry into the mobile market in India, Madakshira expressed excitement and said, “There is so much to be excited for in a market like India, with its huge, and still growing, mobile-first population. There are so many strong, established brands as well as new players who all have global aspirations, making them a perfect fit for Rezolve and our experience in providing Enterprise SaaS to companies and helping them grow their brands and customer bases.” Rezolve currently has go-to-market partner agreements with leading global players that have a combined global reach of over 20 million merchants and over 1 billion consumers across China, Asia and Europe. Its platform already serves over 150,000 of those merchants today. The Rezolve Platform itself is a powerful set of mobile commerce and engagement capabilities that provide mobile application vendors with a range of valuable commercial opportunities that can be realized without having to develop code, host operations or manage security. The Rezolve Inside SDK allows mobile application vendors to quickly deliver innovation for their consumers into existing or new mobile apps. Highlighting the rapid mobile penetration in India, Madakshira notes, “When you’re talking about mobile, the first thing that would come to your mind is India. As an engineer, I’d look at it mathematically and through structures. And so going by three metrics, first there is India itself and its tremendous mobile penetration. Second is scale as India is all about scale, at an unprecedented level. And third, and perhaps most important, is that Indian brands have global aspirations as these companies don’t want to just be the best in the country, or in Asia, but the world, and many of them are working towards that”. Speaking on the scope of marketing in India, he notes, “The hottest thing these days is the meeting of technology, mobiles, and brands and that’s what Rezolve brings. It is a beautiful troika of ad-tech on one side, and it’s got mobile, and it’s got commerce, and all of these converge together, and which is where and how we can help brands”. Having worked with leading brands over his career in various roles, Madakshira says he keenly understands the aspirations of CEOs and business owners and can help them attain their goals with Rezolve. Madakshira emphasizes that Rezolve isn’t just a product or service but a whole new category that reaches out to the Indian consumer as well as the Indian marketer, which means, it needs to be tackled with a fresh approach. “We have some very different strategies for India. Of course we will use our learnings from other markets and see what is working best, as there are definitely commonalities between all the markets, but we are also devising strategies that are unique to a unique market like India”, he adds. Noting that Rezolve can provide solutions to a plethora of industries, Madakshira says, “Starting with commerce and e-commerce, payment organizations, media companies, and tech companies, basically anyone who has a consumer-facing app and is looking to leverage it more effectively is part of our target audience.” Other industries include F&B, Retail (both Brick-and-Mortar and online), travel and hospitality, and BFSI, which Rezolve is looking at very closely. “There are so many payment apps that are looking to expand beyond that, and we’re ideally placed to help them with that through partnering with them. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but what we’re starting with. We will obviously expand to helping more industries with their marketing needs over time,” says Madakshira. Madakshira spoke on how digital penetration saw a rapid surge during the COVID pandemic. He said, "The pandemic had many negative impacts and left a permanent scar on us all, but one positive thing I'd like to think that came out of it was the increased digital penetration. We saw online payments shoot up as people, especially older generations, became more comfortable with and having increased trust in doing payments online. This holds true for less urban areas as well as people from all walks of life have become used to doing interactions and transactions on their devices," he noted. Indeed, it is this increased comfort with technology that Rezolve will be looking to tap into when it comes to household management. "From electricity to gas to water bills all being paid online, we are going to be a lot of work with utility providers in streamlining their digital offerings and operations," says Madakshira, adding that Rezolve is also actively exploring opportunities in other sunrise industries like gaming, ed-tech and other digitally native businesses. Highlighting the effect of the pandemic on industries, Madakshira said the Covid crisis has changed how one of the largest industries in the world works. "Since the pandemic, insurance companies have seen a huge spike in young people looking for life and medical policies. The way they approach buying insurance is dramatically different from the elderly and companies are pivoting to product offerings that would be more relevant to them. This is another area where we are and will continue to work with insurance companies to cater to both existing and emerging client bases," Madakshira explains. “India is a mobile country, and this market is ready for anything and everything on a mobile platform,” says Madakshira, concluding, “That gives me a lot of confidence for Rezolve’s success in India. Rezolve has unlocked how you bring together brand, consumer, and technology for a fantastic experience.”