PAYBACK India to get players in untapped segments on board

It has been a little more than a month since Rahul Rana was elevated to the post of CEO at loyalty company PAYBACK India. Though Rana, who has been with the company since 2010 as the Chief Operating Officer, feels there is no substantial competition for his company, he intends to focus on areas such as growth in capabilities, understanding partners, and providing value to its users. He also plans to bring on board players in segments that are currently not represented in the coalition.

His mandate as the CEO: While growing the company and improving efficiencies continue to be the mandate, our focus will be on creating value for our clients and customers. This can only be achieved by growing our coalition and creating opportunities as well as touch points to understand our customers better. We will also work towards newer, smarter ways to identify customer segments and ensure we reach out to them to help them get the best out of our services.

His primary focus: There are three broad areas of focus for now:

- Improving capabilities: In a rapidly evolving environment, we need to constantly improvise. For us, this means greater agility, smarter decision making and engagement processes, and a rapid creation of internal as well as external capabilities, especially at customer touch points.

- Understanding partners better: We need to constantly refresh our commitments with our partners to ensure that we completely understand their evolving business requirements so that we can tailor solutions to continue to meet their business objectives.

- Creating rewarding experiences for customers: This is a key factor of all the initiatives and partnerships at PAYBACK. With the customer insights we have in hand, we consistently use them to be relevant in our engagement with our customers, driving rewarding experiences and creating value for our partners.

His first strategic step as the CEO: We are in a unique position today. We are the largest coalition program and we have no existing competitors who operate in the same space. One of my first strategic steps as the CEO is to look at segments that are currently not represented in the coalition and work towards getting players in these untapped segments on board. I believe this will help us take a giant leap forward.

Clear plan or way ahead for the company: We are operating in a constantly evolving environment; the Indian industry is warming to the idea of using the concept of external loyalty players. While segments such as ecommerce are experiencing high growth, industries like telecom have different challenges and are making an effort to retain customers. PAYBACK continues to be ahead of the changing requirements of the industries our partners operate in, and understand our partners really well. Our plan is to continue along this path, be sharper in our definition of services. We definitely have a clear plan on how we need to work. We know where we need to get to and have set out a clear direction for the company for the next few years.

Plans of changes in the company: Change in the business will have to keep happening to suit the evolving requirements of our partners. I believe that we have done a great job so far. Technology is a sector that we will be majorly focusing on and we shall continue to evolve our capabilities to be faster and more rewarding.

Challenges ahead for the company: I feel that for us there are more opportunities than challenges. I could say that our biggest challenge is to execute against strategic vision of the company. This is more of an internal challenge than an external one. We are a fast growing company and a lot of layers across industries are gravitating towards us. As a coalition, we have evolved over time to deliver greater value to our customers. We have added partners across cities, categories and still have a lot of room for growth Our main challenge will be to execute against the fantastic set of opportunities we have in front of us.

Differentiation in a competitive landscape: In the space that we operate, we do not have any direct competitors. By saying so I don't say no one else provides loyalty management services. But in the multi-brand loyalty segment, our offerings make us quite unique. I think this is the best way for us to differentiate ourselves. We provide a high degree of confidence to our customers and partners about every penny they spend with us. We are able to provide strong feedback and monitoring around how their investment creates value for their company. The value of joining a loyalty coalition comes over time. Nearly all our clients have renewed their commitment with us, since we were able to demonstrate clear value.