Convenience and experience are the key drivers of consumption

B S Rao, VP - Marketing, CtrlS Datacenters “Unlike in 1900’s when the world was disconnected, today nearly fifty percent of global citizens are connected through internet. Access to internet has transcended barriers moving away from desktops, laptops to smartphones. Specific to India, we have grown from zero online buyers in 1996 to 25 million online buyers with a total base of 231 million online citizens. Today, the way business interact with customers (moving away from offline medium to online leading) has led to Digital transformation - a new way of showcasing products, they interact with future and current customers including partners, vendors etc. Digitization is leading to improved customer interactions, increased loyalty and enhanced analytics to engage customers leading to business process efficiency and optimization. Cloud (SaaS as an example), analytics and IOT are revolutionizing the way humans connect with devices and conduct business transactions. Today buying from PCs/Laptops, Tablets is a new norm.

Technologies such as In-memory computing when combined with business intelligence tools provide actionable business insights helping achieve cost optimization, service excellence, quick business responsiveness, eliminate uncertainty, enhanced business efficiency, optimized inventory management and customer delight. Surely, we have come a long way from the Stone age.

Convenience and experience are the key drivers of consumption. India is witnessing rapid growth in smartphone base (220 million), internet user base (231 million) clubbed with ecommerce. The country’s ecommerce revenues have grown from $2.9 billion in 2012 to $16 billion in 2016 indicating that Indian consumers (especially B2C) have taken to online buying like fish to water. The youth are primary drivers of online consumption.

Customer Delight has been one of our major focus area – At CtrlS it is our belief that more than selling, ensuring delivering services to the satisfaction of customers is absolutely paramount. Our customer engagement initiative through various offline such as Centers of Excellence (CoE), innovative service delivery processes and online medium has resulted in very high customer satisfaction (CSAT) of 4.6+ which is certainly industry best. This has translated to an year on year growth of over 40%, while our customer retention stands above 90%. Care for people (employees), delight customers, innovation, passion for growth have been our ‘Success Mantras’. Major achievements include the launch of Cloud4C - World’s 1stTier4 Public Cloud (A Made in India Cloud), Community Clouds for Banks, Insurance, Manufacturing alongside SAP Practice; this part we achieved a record EBITDA (twice the industry standard) with an enviable D/E ratio of 0.7. We have made rapid strides beyond India with expansion in Middle East, South East Asia. By March 2016, our services would be offered across 17 countries.”