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India has built a strong reputation as a global technology and engineering center. However, the next opportunity lies in creating products and technologies that can compete in international markets. Advertising technology is one area where India could play a bigger role.
In this episode of Analytics Insight Podcast, host Priya Dialani speaks with Krishnakumar Govindarajan, Global Chief Technology Officer at MiQ Digital, about India's growing position in the global advertising technology industry.
Topics covered include how AI is disrupting digital marketing, India’s capability to develop products for the world and how companies need to step out of the traditional way of delivering technology products. Other topics discussed in this interview include MiQ's Sigma platform and its AI capabilities.
Here are the key excerpts:
India has the right conditions to build the next generation of advertising technology. Our digital market is growing quickly, and consumers use multiple apps, platforms and devices every day. This creates complex challenges around data, audience understanding and personalised advertising.
We also have strong engineering, data science and AI capabilities. Our talent is no longer limited to writing code. Teams here understand how to build platforms, products and customer experiences. At MiQ, we built our Sigma platform in Bengaluru. It shows how Indian teams can develop technology that serves businesses across international markets.
I believe India has everything needed to build advanced advertising technology. We have strong capabilities in data engineering, AI, machine learning and platform development. These skills are important in advertising, where systems must process information and make decisions within milliseconds.
At MiQ, our Bengaluru team handles more than 2.5 petabytes of data and manages over 600 different data feeds. We also connect 16 open and closed web platforms. These capabilities show the scale at which Indian engineering teams can operate. The next step is combining technical strength with deeper industry knowledge and product ownership.
AI should be used to solve problems in the business instead of becoming just another feature of an already existing product. While introducing a chatbot in a dashboard may make the information accessible, this alone does not constitute innovation.
However, when AI makes it possible for businesses to make decisions in a better way, there seems to be more value in its use. When it comes to the field of advertising, AI will assist businesses in planning campaigns, targeting the audience, and budgeting for the campaigns. Moreover, AI will help in optimizing the campaigns as they are underway. In MiQ, the integration of data and decision-making is done through Sigma.
I believe that the most significant problem is more organizational than technological. There are Indian teams working with products in which other nations make decisions. The requirements are sent to them, and they have to implement those. They do not have much scope to know about the customers and to influence the product strategy.
This needs to be changed. Indian teams must own up for the product decision making, interact directly with the clients and understand what problems they solve. In MiQ, our Indian teams have the responsibility of strategy and product development of the company. Sigma operates in 19 countries globally.
Yes, definitely. The use of AI will help companies experiment without incurring high costs, and allow advanced technologies to reach many more teams. It is an enormous chance for India. However, simply being able to access such technologies is not sufficient. Companies must be equipped with good data, domain expertise and the capacity to develop solutions.
It is important that we take ownership of the entire chain, starting from identifying the business problem to building the solution and reaching the global markets with it. India has the skill set and technological prowess. What needs to be done is to translate that into products and solutions that can be trusted and used by companies globally.