“You know what’s cooler than a million dollars? A billion connections,” Sean Parker once said, in the movie, The Social Network, he could not have been more correct. Achieving maximum return on investment (ROI) and getting bang for the buck is always important for businesses but what is more crucial is making genuine connections with consumers. Communication Platform as a Service (CpaaS) serves this purpose by facilitating two-way communication between brands and consumers. And it is here that through technology now, this is making communication between brands and consumers consensual and protected, thus paving the way for secure future.
Route Mobile’s revenue from operation increased 3.9% to Rs 1,024.3 crore in Q3, FY24 when compared with Rs 985.7 crore, during the same period in the preceding year. The company’s profit after tax (PAT) rose 11% to Rs 113.6 crore in Q3, FY24 from Rs 101 crore in Q3, FY23. In a conversation with BrandWagon Online, Milind Pathak, executive vice president- product and marketing talks about the company’s shift to multi-channel marketing, B2B lead generation, client acquisition strategy, and global expansion priorities among others. (Edited Excerpts)
What are the driving factors behind the revenue and profit growth? Is this growth momentum expected to continue?
While we did anticipate a more robust quarter, it turned out to be slightly muted due to some factors related to delayed implementation and inactive client integrations, which impacted our revenue generation. However, despite these headwinds, our growth trajectory has been consistent over the past few years since our listing. We have maintained quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth, putting us in a healthy stage of growth overall.
Our organisation has evolved significantly over the years, starting as a pure-play messaging platform nearly two decades ago. While our roots were in SMS messaging, we’ve diversified our offerings with the emergence of various communication channels such as WhatsApp and RCS, along with developing our own chatbot and omni-channel platforms. Additionally, we’ve expanded our product portfolio to include authentication and voice solutions, broadening our appeal to customers beyond traditional SMS services.
This diversification of our product offerings has been a primary driver of our growth and adoption. Furthermore, we’ve strategically focused on geographical expansion, particularly in the Middle East, Africa, and our strong markets in Asia. This geographical diversity has positioned us as an emerging market champion, allowing us to mitigate risks associated with challenges in specific regions or countries through our multi-country, multi-dimensional approach.
Overall, our ability to offer a diverse range of products and services across various regions has fueled our growth and resilience, ensuring that we continue to thrive even in the face of challenges.
How has the company’s marketing approach evolved over the past few years, and what adjustments do you anticipate to make to optimise reach and impact in key regions?
Route Mobile’s marketing strategy encompasses several distinct approaches. Firstly, we heavily invest in Account Based Marketing to target specific clients and industries. Secondly, we prioritise customised participation in partner events and workshops to engage with key stakeholders. Thirdly, we benefit from a strong organic traffic flow, partly due to our longstanding presence in the industry, which positions us as a top-of-mind solution provider for communication needs. This approach has established us as a preferred partner for tier-one banks, leading e-commerce companies, and global OTT (over-the-top) players.
Which messaging platform, in your experience, has proven to be the most effective and favourable for businesses, considering Route Mobile’s diverse offerings such as WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, RCS, Google, and Facebook Messenger?
The effectiveness of messaging platforms varies depending on the specific needs and markets of businesses. Generally, I categorise channels into four buckets: SMS, email, voice, and OTT (Over-the-Top) platforms like WhatsApp, RCS, Viber, Line, among others. SMS and email are universal and widely used across industries. When it comes to OTT platforms, the preference varies by market. For instance, WhatsApp dominates in India, Line in Asia, Business Chat in the US, and KakaoTalk in Korea.
Currently, WhatsApp holds the top spot globally in the OTT space due to its widespread consumer adoption. As for RCS, it shows promise and is organising well for future growth. However, our approach at Route Mobile is channel-agnostic. We aim to facilitate communication between enterprises and consumers through the most preferred channels. Our focus is on helping businesses effectively reach their target audience wherever they are most active.
Which messaging platforms offer the highest return-on-investment (ROI) or the greatest level of customer engagement?
In my perspective, the performance of messaging platforms across markets tends to be quite similar, with minor differences in engagement rates. However, if we consider cost per contact, email generally emerges as the most cost-effective option due to its low cost. While SMS remains a staple, OTT platforms are gaining traction due to their richer features, such as the ability to send images, videos, PDFs, carousels, catalogues, and more. This richness enhances customer interaction and response rates, making OTT platforms preferable to SMS in terms of efficacy for many brands.
With RCS also, communication is evolving to offer features that SMS cannot. For instance, if you examine some of our use cases, particularly in banking, consumers have noticed the convenience of completing purchases through WhatsApp. As a leading provider on WhatsApp, we were early adopters of WhatsApp Pay within our ecosystem and have achieved significant integration and adoption.
How well placed are you to navigate through in the first-party data world?
We’re a company operating entirely within a non-cookie world, focusing on email and mobile numbers within the service industry. We’re dedicated to first-party data, ensuring that consumer consent is paramount before any communication takes place. Unlike the intrusive feeling in the cookie world where it often feels like someone is constantly watching, in our domain of CpaaS, communication only occurs if consumers have willingly provided their mobile number or email ID.
Our position lies between CpaaS and martech, gradually shifting towards martech as communication becomes more central. We’ve always operated in a cookieless environment, emphasising consumer consent from the start. With Google transitioning to a cookieless environment, we anticipate a continued trend towards device-based identification, likely integrating device IDs with mobile numbers or email addresses as the default approach.
The power of brands will always reside in Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Ethical data provisioning is crucial to ensure data security, compliance with GDPR, and other norms. With the introduction of DPDP, brands will bear greater fiduciary responsibilities, emphasising a consumer-centric, privacy-inclusive environment.
What marketing initiatives are you implementing to drive maximum ROI and optimise your spending? To what extent AI is facilitating your company’s marketing strategies?
About four or five months ago, we launched our inaugural Enterprise Conversations event with a TV channel, drawing 500 to 600 executives from various sectors like E-commerce, finance, FinTech, and automotive. Held in Mumbai, the event lasted three to four hours, focusing on communication challenges in the data-driven landscape. This marked our entry into large-scale proprietary projects, with plans for smaller gatherings. These face-to-face interactions are highly effective in our B2B outreach, catering to CIOs, CTOs, and CMOs.
Another key focus for us is enhancing account-based marketing strategies to deepen engagement with our top accounts, thereby augmenting our product propensity. This involves leveraging our existing customer base to upsell and cross-sell our suite of communication products, including SMS, WhatsApp, and RCS, to address evolving brand needs.
In terms of marketing approach, we prioritise high-touch, high-frequency initiatives tailored to our B2B clientele. Unlike traditional ATL/BTL campaigns, our strategies are more offline-oriented and unconventional, resonating better with our target audience.
Additionally, we allocate significant efforts towards paid and organic media, meticulously curating leads to fuel our demand generation engines and ensuring a seamless transition from marketing qualified leads to sales conversions. This comprehensive approach encompasses our key areas of focus in the B2B space.
In Route Mobile’s client acquisition strategy, which sectors or industries are being prioritised?
We are essentially present in every sector that involves high consumer interaction. What I mean by this is the financial sector, FinTech, BFSI, income, and auto insurance. Within the realm of e-commerce, I’m referring more to Internet-based businesses, such as auto and insurance aggregators, pure e-commerce companies, or even housing tech firms. These are all examples of digital-first companies.
Hospitality is another significant sector for us, as is health, which is an emerging area of focus. Additionally, we are seeing an interesting trend in government-related projects, particularly those involving citizen interactivity. For instance, we collaborate with corporations to enable processes like birth and death certificate issuance, water tax returns, and grievance redressal between consumers and the government or enterprises.
These projects typically involve high-frequency contact between consumers and enterprises, or between government bodies and enterprises.
What are Route Mobile’s plans and strategies in the martech industry, particularly regarding its efforts to compete in the international market?
From an international market perspective, internally within India, we often hold the viewpoint that our initial origins or the first champion customers are all international clients. In India, we entered the CpaaS sector as one of the last entrants.
So, from a geographical perspective, our growth focus spans across India, Southeast Asia, Asia in general, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. These regions represent emerging markets where we are directing our efforts. Specifically in Latin America, we have established offices in Colombia, Peru, and Mexico, indicating our commitment to the region. Additionally, we maintain a presence in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Kuwait, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, among others, underscoring our active engagement in these markets as priority areas for expansion.
We’ve launched a product called OCEAN, where customers can choose their preferred communication channel. With OCEAN, users can log in and select from various options such as chatbots, SMS, email, WhatsApp, and RCS. This platform serves as a unified campaign manager, bot builder, and platform for data analytics and source code management. While OCEAN falls within the realm of martech, it leans more towards marketing automation due to its focus on paid channels. Most of our work revolves around third-party paid channels, making OCEAN a unified platform for customers to access and manage all their channels and analytics in one place. We’ve observed a growing demand for interactive communication from both consumers and enterprises, and OCEAN addresses this need effectively. As we progress, we anticipate further enhancements to our platform, including the addition of more channels and improved data analytics.