India’s online retail scene has long been stitched up by two giants. Amazon and Flipkart split most of the spoils while cash-rich conglomerates fired up “super-apps” that simply moved catalogues to a screen—and fizzled. Then, in 2021, two Stanford dropouts noticed something obvious yet overlooked: city folk—especially Gen Z—were still hunting the web for “grocery delivery near me” at 11 p.m.
Their thought was disarmingly simple: Why not bring the kirana dash to customers—milk at the door in ten minutes? That spark lit Zepto, now valued in the billions and woven into nightly routines. The pattern is familiar. The world’s most valuable firms start with a pain their founders feel, stay elbows-deep in the fix, and treat technology as a lever, not the headline.
Zerodha followed the same script. Nithin Kamath loathed brokerage fees and clunky screens, so he built a flat-fee, clean interface that turned his gripe into India’s largest brokerage. Contrast that with the super-apps that bundled payments, travel and groceries for “synergy.” Users yawned—nothing hurt was healed.
The cue for marketers? Pick your heading before pressing the accelerator. Artificial intelligence amplifies whatever path you’re on; a blurry aim just gets you to nowhere faster.
The AI Inversion: Cheap Tools, Costly Insight
Today anyone can rent a large language model. Real leverage lies in asking sharper questions, hunting for the splinters that truly matter, and seasoning models with data only you own. That, in a nutshell, is the thesis behind my book Make Them Love It!
Farewell to One-Shot Blasts
When algorithms listen all day, campaign calendars feel Victorian. Take Swiggy: its 60,000-item menu rearranges every hour as machines guess what Bengaluru will crave once the rain starts. Brands still firing quarterly TVCs will be outrun by outfits running “war rooms” that absorb chats, reviews and voice notes, refreshing copy before the next push alert lands.
From Demographics to Data Whispering
Forget “Priya, 28, urban professional.” Nike’s SNKRS lets fans vote on colourways, piping those signals into design sprints, while Netflix tests thousands of thumbnails so each viewer sees a poster tailored to their taste. Volunteered preferences create a privacy-safe goldmine, a blessing as cookies crumble and watchdogs sharpen their teeth.
Outcome or Out
Clicks look quaint beside hard rupees. Walmart Connect doesn’t brag about CPMs; it shows how each ad lifted aisle sales. Teams that train models on offline revenue, repeat purchase and lifetime value keep budgets; those leaning on vanity metrics watch theirs vanish.
The Creative Ironman Suit
Generative AI flipped production economics. Coca-Cola’s “Create Real Magic” churned out 120,000 fan-made ads in two weeks; human curators simply picked the few that felt unmistakably Coke. That’s the playbook: machines draft at warp speed, brand guardians polish. No wonder 86 percent of marketers plan AI-made video, and analysts say two out of five ads may be machine-built by 2026.
Trust, the Killer Feature
Three out of four shoppers drop brands with shady data habits. Starbucks’ Deep Brew tailors offers and explains why you got that extra-shot coupon—transparency as user experience. Marketers must bake tone, inclusivity and bias checks into every workflow, then flaunt them like jewelers show vault doors. Credibility now outshines reach.
Prompt or Perish
Almost nine in ten marketers touch AI daily, yet seven in ten have never been trained. Jobs won’t disappear to robots but to colleagues who can steer them. Build a creative-ops pod— prompt engineer, brand writer, data scientist—run micro-tests each week, and hold quarterly “signal reviews” with product and supply-chain leads. The next Zepto-scale leap may hide in a support ticket.
The New Charter
Super-apps bought cricket slots and celebrity faces yet skidded for lack of a compass. Zepto and Zerodha picked a hill worth taking, then stomped on the throttle. In an AI-saturated world, triumph belongs to teams that fuse machine velocity with human insight.
Shadow customers, not dashboards. Offer clear value for every byte of data you request. Swap vanity metrics for sales, retention and love. When everyone can rent the same model, the scarce asset is the knack for spotting real problems and crafting solutions people adore.
Pick the right direction—then let AI supply the speed.