In conversation with Suvankar Sen, CEO, Senco Gold and Diamonds to know the insights of the business
If you had to pen down your top 3 learnings from 2021 then what would that be?
- Being Agile
- Innovative
- Connected
From your brand’s perspective, what changes did you bring in internally to build a ‘road to recovery last year?
In any organisation, employees are its backbone. For a national retail chain like Senco Gold and Diamonds with 100 + stores, our employees at the showrooms are the face of the brand who interact with customers daily. In uncertain times, it was important for me as to inspire confidence and keep them motivated. We not only empowered the teams to respond to ground level changes and take independent decisions but also ensured close collaboration across different departments, all the while keeping sharp focus on efficiencies and productivity.
What is your vision for 2022 for your brand?
In 2022 our focus is to keep a finger on our consumers’ pulse and be the preferred jewellery brand across all customer groups nationally, at the same time integrating technology and human-touch.
How are you laying the bricks for growth and success in the New Year? Is it going to be an omni channel journey or putting action to digital transformation or accelerating processes with technology or something else? Tell us your thoughts.
We plan to continue with our two-pronged strategy to invest in both offline and online infrastructure. We plan to invest in technological aspects like omnichannel presence, digital transformation at various departments and also continuing with our existing customer initiatives like Jewellery shopping through video calling, revamped e-commerce channel, E- catalogues. We are also focusing on offline expansion because we are optimistic that post the third wave, the pent – up demand will see higher footfalls at stores. We recently opened a new 5000 sq. ft store in Bhubaneshwar, Odisha and in the coming months we are planning to expand our presence by opening more stores. With technology we also aim to improve efficiency in our operations which will help us prepare for growth of tomorrow.
Elaborate on the initiatives (marketing and digital) which were a success in this period?
At a time when the retail industry was witnessing optimizing of store count and the costs, we adopted an innovation-first strategy as part of the new normal and embraced various technology led initiatives to connect with our customers. Jewellery shopping through video calling facility, Use of technology with a revamped e-commerce channel for smoother customer experience, online payment systems, Facebook Live, introduction of e-catalogues and virtual trial rooms were some of the innovations we brought in. We also forayed into the Digital Gold business with the launch of our own digital gold transaction platform named DG Gold. We also opened a new 7000 sq. ft store at Bowbazar area which is one of the biggest stores of company and also had Kiara Advani as the fresh new face of the brand to target the young millennial customer base.
