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Tag: Vikrant Chowdhary

  • Clevertap brings in Honey Bajaj as SVP and global chief of consumer experience

    Clevertap brings in Honey Bajaj as SVP and global chief of consumer experience

    Mumbai: Clevertap has brought Honey Bajaj on board as senior vice president (SVP) and global chief of consumer experience. Bajaj is a design strategist, an innovation leader and a social entrepreneur with extensive work in India and the US.

    Before joining Clevertap, Honey built an innovation pipeline for several Fortune 500 companies, including Boston Consulting Group Digital Ventures, Disney, Microsoft Research, MIT Media Lab and Tata Group. At Tata Group, she developed detailed market segmentation frameworks based on purchase behaviour to orchestrate product launches and go-to-market strategies.

    She is also a dual degree holder with a master’s degree in engineering and management and a master’s in sustainability studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is currently pursuing her PhD in design and innovation methodologies in the digital world.

    “As we scale Clevertap into a global category creator for ‘retention cloud,’ we realise that our customers are eager to co-create experiences that will fuel growth and the future of their own digital businesses,” Clevertap chief growth officer Vikrant Chowdhary. “For this reason, we are expanding our leadership team with a new appointment that benefits the most important stakeholder: our customers’ customers.”

    He further added, “From fintech to ecommerce, and from on-demand super apps to media and streaming services, companies need the inspiration and tangible examples of the ‘art of possible’ to unleash human-centered design thinking, unlock new perspectives and drive powerful momentum and positive results for all stakeholders. “This outcome is inextricably linked with our customers’ abilities to realise and hyper-personalise omnichannel journeys for their customers.”

    “I have always focused on designing for impact and inventing for scale by contextualising tech for the consumers,” said Honey Bajaj. “The truth is, no matter what we think we’re doing, we are all in the customer-experience business. Before you can accomplish it, you need to envision it. The digital behaviour and expectations of customers is evolving faster than most industries are able to deliver. I am looking forward to my journey with Clevertap to embed human-centered principles and design thinking into a series of initiatives and programs,”

    She added, “These efforts will allow digital-first companies to co-create and simulate digital journeys that will fuel growth through superior customer experience and will enable Clevertap’s customers to realise their consumer journeys in a more seamless and contextual manner as the lines of the digital and omnichannel world are no longer separated.”

  • CleverTap appoints Sidharth Malik as global CEO

    CleverTap appoints Sidharth Malik as global CEO

    Mumbai: User engagement and retention cloud CleverTap has expanded its core leadership with the appointment of Sidharth Malik as global CEO. The announcement comes as CleverTap accelerates its international growth and builds new capabilities to help digital consumer brands increase its customer retention and foster lifetime value. 

    Malik comes with a track record of building and leading dynamic organisations in competitive markets. Formerly the chief revenue officer at Freshworks, a SaaS provider of customer experience solutions, he was instrumental in scaling its business from a single product to a multi-product platform with a global footprint.

    Malik’s appointment marks a new chapter in CleverTap’s journey. Under the leadership of co-founder and founding CEO Sunil Thomas, the company has penetrated new markets and achieved $45 million in annual recurring revenue in less than six years of monetisation, with a 235 per cent compounded average growth rate. 

    “Sidharth’s passion, insights and leadership skills, coupled with his experience in helping take a world-class SaaS startup from India to the world, make him the right leader at the right time for CleverTap. His appointment significantly strengthens CleverTap’s core foundation and leadership team, preparing the company to scale globally and chart to an IPO,” said Thomas. 

    To further realise the company’s strategic vision, Thomas will assume the role of executive chairman and focus on scaling innovation and strategic direction for CleverTap, while Malik will help provide leadership for organisation-building and day-to-day business execution, said the statement.

    CleverTap chief growth officer Vikrant Chowdhary stated, “It’s so heartening to have Sidharth come on board as CEO to partner with me as we scale the business for faster growth, while Sunil focuses on innovation and strategic initiatives with a founder’s mindset. We are extremely confident in our ability to execute our growth charter and expand global leadership in our category.”

    Uniquely positioning itself as a full-stack retention cloud, CleverTap has introduced an entirely new product category and expanded its capabilities. Earlier this month, the company further cemented its position with the acquisition of Patch, a technology designed to provide seamless, contextual and secure communications between companies and consumers.

  • CleverTap acquires Patch to empower in-app calling for mobile-first businesses

    CleverTap acquires Patch to empower in-app calling for mobile-first businesses

    Mumbai: User engagement and retention cloud CleverTap has completed the acquisition of Patch, a technology that enables businesses to brand and embed communication channels — including in-app voice, chat, and push notifications — directly into consumer apps. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

    Patch is designed to provide seamless, contextual, and secure communications between companies and consumers. Its in-app calling makes two-way communication privacy-compliant as there is no need to disclose caller or receiver telephone numbers or personal data.

    “The acquisition is the first in CleverTap’s eight-year history and marks an important milestone in its ongoing innovation journey of expanding its capabilities. It will elevate the end-customer experience and empower brands and businesses globally to communicate with millions of their customers seamlessly,” stated CleverTap’s chief growth officer Vikrant Chowdhary.

    “Patch acquisition is strategic and significant because it positions CleverTap as the first and only marketing and retention platform to offer in-app telephony capabilities,” he added.

    Currently, all companies that offer apps are forced to use unverified phone numbers to communicate with their customers and update them on urgent information such as delivery status or recent credit card charges. Predictably, these phone calls, which are delivered outside of the app experience, neither carry transactional context nor recognisable phone numbers or caller ID and often fuel customer anxiety and mistrust. Often dismissed as spam by consumers, the calls regularly go unanswered.

    The outcome is a poor customer experience for the consumer and a loss of revenue for brands and businesses that are unable to connect with them at critical stages in the journey.  “For consumers, knowing who is calling and understanding the context from within the app increases trust and drives digital interactions and transactions,” noted Chowdhary. “As customers engage more frequently or deeply, brands and businesses also benefit because they reduce friction and increase the opportunities to generate revenues.”

    It’s also the first time these capabilities are being offered to mobile-first brands and businesses across the globe. “Having in-app voice capabilities as a part of the CleverTap Retention Cloud is a game-changer for digital brands. It enables a trusted, two-way conversation between companies and their customers with context, security, and speedy resolution or assistance,” said CleverTap co-founder and chief product officer Anand Jain. 

    Commenting on the benefits to stakeholders, Jain added, “This is a new and critical addition to the engagement toolkit of email, push notifications, SMS, and WhatsApp that growth marketers and businesses must harness to improve communications and drive results. It’s all about evolving the in-app experience to increase customer satisfaction, reduce friction, and ultimately help our customers grow customer retention and LTV.”

  • Vikrant Chowdhary joins CleverTap as chief growth officer

    Vikrant Chowdhary joins CleverTap as chief growth officer

    Mumbai: Global user engagement and retention platform CleverTap on Tuesday added a new dimension to its core leadership team with the appointment of Vikrant Chowdhary as chief growth officer.

    In this role, Chowdhary will lead CleverTap’s integrated go-to-market (GTM) strategy globally across all commercial and enterprise segments.

    Increasingly, business leaders with disruptive mindsets and an eagerness to evolve are imperative for companies to succeed. Chowdhary brings this forward-thinking to CleverTap through 25 years of experience and expertise leading hypergrowth teams, said the company in a statement.

    “We are thrilled to have Vikrant join us as our partner for growth as we scale our business in key global markets and sectors and steer CleverTap to become a global leader in the user retention space for mobile-first digital businesses,” said CleverTap co-founder and CEO Sunil Thomas. “For the first time, we will integrate all of our customer-facing functions — across sales, marketing, solution engineering, and partnerships — to make one CleverTap Growth team under Vikrant’s leadership.”

    Before CleverTap, Chowdhary worked with Salesforce, a CRM company, where he directed India’s finserv vertical and enterprise business units. Previously, he held country leadership roles with SAP— where he powered the growth of the BFSI and telecom business unit, which became one of the best-performing teams in the country—as well as Teradata, IBM, and select startups. 

    “CleverTap has created a unique platform to help growth managers monetize behavioral economics for their real-time digital businesses, and I am truly excited and humbled to become an integral part of the company,” said Chowdhary.  “I am also excited to draw on my experience building growth units in vertical sectors powered by high-performance teams and have the opportunity to bring this capability to CleverTap.”