‘India Is Our Data Science Hub’
Guillaume Bacuvier, chief executive officer (global), dunnhumby, the world’s largest customer science company, tells Ashish Sinha that the India office was a key enabler for its global business. Excerpts of the conversation:
Q: What is dunnhumby’s current role in India?
Our India team is a key enabler for a global dunnhumby. India is our data science hub with strong talent pipeline in data engineering, science and development coupled with innovation, agility and flexibility. The team is playing a vital role for numerous clients across the world at different stages of their journey. India is the only dunnhumby office that serves all our retail partners around the world.
Q: How do you see India as a business destination for analytics and data science?
The Indian analytics industry is slated to grow eight-fold by 2025. It will be hard to ignore such an offering for any global business. India is already a key business destination for analytics and data science and its importance is only going to grow in the coming years. We get more engineers, more mathematicians and more statisticians and their skill set in one place than we can in many other major markets in the world.
Q: dunnhumby will soon complete a decade in India. What are your strategic plans for India in the next five years?
dunnhumby India will continue to be a major asset and enabler for our global plans as we leverage the team’s incredible talent and foresight. The team will remain at the centre of how we do business and achieve our global targets. We expect to maintain the current growth trajectory for the India business in tandem with the global needs for big data, advanced analytics, data science and software development around the world.
Q: How can dunnhumby help optimise retail business in India?
Consumers have started to voice what they think is best for them and the retail businesses will need to keep their interests in mind before taking any major strides or decisions. That’s where dunnhumby comes in. dunnhumby is renowned for personalising the experience for shoppers, be it in-store or online.
Through our solutions, we help retailers tailor the range to suit customers’ needs, reduce spend on promotions that customers don’t respond to and drive pricing strategies that help retailers drive both sales as well as margin.
Q: How does leveraging data analytics help decipher customer behaviour?
We believe that putting ‘customer’s first’ help businesses succeed. Primarily, they respect customer preferences and tastes by truly understanding how to improve customer experience, in store and online.