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In an age where consumers are bombarded with content, campaigns, and notifications at every scroll and click, it becomes essential for brands not just to reach users—but to reach them right. At the recent edition of TechTalk hosted by exchange4media, Anand Jain, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of CleverTap, joined us for a wide-ranging discussion on personalization, artificial intelligence, sustainable growth, and the ethics of customer engagement in a mobile-first economy.
“Personalization has to feel normal and natural,” Jain said. “It cannot overstep into creepiness.” That single statement encapsulates CleverTap’s philosophy and its product roadmap: a fusion of technology, empathy, and data science.
Founded over a decade ago, CleverTap is now a globally recognized marketing automation platform used by consumer brands to personalize every interaction with their users. From apps to emails to push notifications, CleverTap helps companies speak directly to their audiences with precision.
“We help consumer brands personalize every single interaction with their consumers,” Jain explained. “Whether it’s the products they browse on an app, the notifications they receive, or the emails they’re sent—every touchpoint is made meaningful by understanding the lifecycle stage of the user.”
But personalization is just the visible layer. Underneath lies a robust engine fueled by behavioral data and predictive AI. Most large consumer brands today, Jain noted, are dealing with disconnected data systems. “The marketing team might be using one platform for emails, the product team another for analytics, and yet another group might be using Looker or Tableau for dashboards. This silo-ed approach fragments the customer journey,” he remarked.
CleverTap’s raison d’être is to bring these silos together. “We unify all the data across different departments of your company and make it useful for insights, predictions, and recommendations,” he said. From predicting churn to identifying power users, the platform enables real-time segmentation and targeted engagement at scale.
Jain credits India’s mobile-first environment as a major accelerator for the company’s growth. “There’s been a massive mobile boom over the last seven or eight years,” he said. “Data is cheap, devices are affordable, and smartphone usage has exploded—especially in tier-2 and tier-3 cities. This has been a huge opportunity for brands across sectors, from banking and retail to food delivery and gaming.”
This shift has also necessitated a rethinking of how brands approach user acquisition and retention. “What we’ve seen is a shift from brands spending blindly on customer acquisition to a focus on sustainable growth,” Jain emphasized. “You’re acquiring the same user over and over. They transact once, go away, and you end up paying again to bring them back.”
Instead, he advocates for focusing on customer lifetime value (CLTV). “You have to build long-term relationships, not just one-time transactions. If you engage right, users will keep coming back—just like you go back to your favorite clothing brand or your streaming app.”
That’s where the “segment of one” approach comes in. Jain explained: “Every user should feel like the message was crafted just for them. But behind the scenes, we use behavior, lifecycle stage, geography, and transaction propensity to segment at scale.”
Artificial Intelligence is a critical part of this personalization strategy—but not in a gimmicky way. “We don’t do AI just for the sake of AI,” Jain said. “We’ve built capabilities that actually deliver value.” One of them is Scribe, an emotion-based content generator. “It helps you reach out to users based on the emotion you want to convey,” he said. “Zomato might use tongue-in-cheek messaging, while a bank might aim to build trust. We help brands craft content that resonates emotionally.”
Another innovation is CleverTap’s recommendation engine, which surfaces the most relevant products for specific users. “You might want to show Product A to a certain group and Product B to another, based on their behavior or interest. That’s what our system does,” explains Jain.
Experimentation is equally embedded in the platform. With a feature called IntelliNode, CleverTap enables real-time A/B testing and traffic shaping using a multi-armed bandit algorithm. “You can test different messages or channels, and the system will start routing more users to the higher-performing path,” Jain explained.
And while AI and experimentation may sound like the preserve of tech-savvy marketers, Jain insists the platform is built to empower anyone with a data-driven mindset. “Our primary buyers are product teams. They’re the ones who want to consolidate data and generate actionable insights. But once the data is centralized, everyone from marketing to business intelligence teams can benefit.”
The conversation also touched on inclusivity and localization—especially relevant in a linguistically and culturally diverse market like India. Jain emphasized how CleverTap helps brands unify their customer experience stack across regions and languages. “You may acquire users through an Instagram campaign offering a seasonal product. We help you track that cohort, see if they followed through on buying, and measure what happens if you do or don’t message them. It’s extremely granular.”
On the ever-contentious issue of data privacy and ethics, Jain was unequivocal, saying, “From the beginning, CleverTap was built on principles of privacy, consent, and ethics. We are GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, and now DPDP Act compliant. We also have a strong consent management framework that lets brands ask users exactly what kinds of messages they’re willing to receive.”
He clarified the distinction between first-party and zero-party data. “First-party is what the brand collects passively, while zero-party is what the user actively provides—like preferred language or household size. We help brands use this responsibly to improve service, not to overstep.”
As the conversation drew to a close, Jain hinted at what’s next: agentic AI, where systems not only react to data but autonomously decide how to engage users based on changing behaviors.
“Our job is to make personalization smart, scalable, and respectful,” he concluded. “Because in the end, no matter how advanced the tech is, marketing is still about building relationships.”
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