Fortune at the Bottom of the Data Pyramid
No doubt data is the new w oil and the new gold. Numerous companies have grown big and rich by leveraging and d exploiting data. Data has been added to a variety y of inputs such as minerals, forest products, machines and even technologies as enablers of f wealth. But what about customers? Those customers who have published/revealed a lot of data about themselves have helped elped thousands of such companies nies reach out to them with offers. s. Many of these are attractive offers for gadgets, education, travel, fitness, etc. The smart customers have taken advantage of these offers and the competition among the data savvy companies. The not-so-smart ones have had some unpleasant experiences.
That leaves the question as to what about those people who have not enriched cyberspace with their data – people about whom companies do not have much data. This paucity has made it is very difficult for companies to make meaningful offers to these customers. No doubt these customers are prospects for a wide variety of products and services. But the lack of data implies that it would cost companies much more to reach out to such customers. I would like to call these as the invisible customers.
There are of course a huge number of such invisible customers in India. They are comfortable with physical over digital – such as reading newspapers, buying in stores, speaking with companies over phone rather than digital communications, preferring feature phones over smart phones, hailing a taxi on the street rather than using an app, sending servants for shopping, and so on. Their consumption of digital offerings such as fitness trackers, online diets, search engines, etc, is very low.
However, just as corporates ignored and later realized the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, likewise there is an untapped fortune at the bottom of the data pyramid. Companies that engage such customers in different ways – perhaps using visual communications, perhaps speaking in local languages, perhaps engaging them culturally – stand to gain a fortune. By virtue of its nature, the financial sector has the opportunity to quickly engage with these invisible customers. Many companies are doing this and I see many more jump onto the bandwagon and grab the fortune at the bottom of the data pyramid.