Exclusive Interview with Swagata Sarangi, Co-Founder, Smytten

How many times you have felt after buying a beauty product, that it is not meant for you and left counting how many bucks you wasted on buying the product. For sure it would have happened quite a number of times for the cosmetics and beauty industry brings in a lot many products every day to lure desperate buyers. Unlike clothing, beauty products hardly have a trial option, which many of us wish exist to be able to zero in on the most suitable product. Smytten, a premium product trial, and discovery outlet sensed this very genuine market requirement way back in 2015. Now it is a thriving business providing samples for around 500+ premium brands for diverse categories which include beauty, men's grooming, spas, saloon, etc. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Swagata Sarangi, Co-Founder of Smytten.

1. Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers.

Founded in 2015, Smytten is an innovative tech-enabled product discovery & trial platform which enables online shoppers to try products before they buy. Smytten has partnered with more than a thousand brands to create a very curated catalog based on user preferences to simplify the discovery process. Before making a purchase decision, Indian consumers can gain access to and experience both premium and affordable D2C brands in the comfort of their own homes at a very negligible cost. Smytten is disrupting consumer technology and enabling the growth of a potentially large D2C market poised to grow to $100B in the next 3-5 years. Through the use of AI, ML, and data analytics, the company is revolutionizing consumer adoption for D2C brands such as Mamaearth, Plum, mCaffeine, WOW Skin, The Man Company, Bodywise, Sirona, and many others. Smytten offers a host of solutions like concept testing, NPD, trend analysis, and consumer research to the brands along their growth journey. The solutions are completely technology-driven and are designed to meet the unique needs of the fast-paced and continuously evolving D2C ecosystem in India.

2. Brief us about the founders of the company and their contributions to the company and the industry.

Smytten was founded by Indian School of Business alumni Swagat Sarangi and Siddhartha Nangia.

Before starting Smytten, Swagat was heading business marketing at Google where he was deeply embedded into the Indian internet and digital ecosystem. During his stint with Google, he spearheaded large-scale ecosystem shaping initiatives like Great Online Shopping Festival, Get India Business Online, YouTube Fanfest, and Helping Women Get Online to name a few. Before that, he worked with McKinsey & Company and Unilever India. Swagat manages the product roadmap, marketing, and brand building for Smytten and under his supervision, Smytten has grown to be the largest consumer app for product discovery and trial in India. Smytten App has one of the best engagement rates in its industry segment with more than 100 minutes spent monthly on an average per user. The App hosts more than 10M users now and ranks in the top 20 shopping/playstore apps in Google Playstore and Apple App Store.

Siddhartha Nangia is an FMCG industry veteran and was a director at Unilever UK before taking the entrepreneurial plunge. Siddhartha after graduating from ISB Hyderabad joined Unilever where he spent about a decade in various roles and worked in cross-functional and multi-cultural teams in geographies such as Europe, the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia. Siddhartha manages the business operations, finance, and experience of partnering brands from onboarding to value delivery. He is known for his consistent record of successfully employing best business practices that improve efficiency and reduce operating costs whilst increasing performance, all on tight time scales and within budget. Under his supervision, Smytten now hosts more than 1000 D2C brands on its platform and ensures a high standard of seamless service delivery to both consumers and brands.

3. Tell us how your company is contributing to the AI/ML/Big Data Analytics/Cloud Computing industry of the nation and how the company is benefiting the clients.

AI, ML, and Big Data are at the core of most of Smytten's product offerings. We use these algorithms for everything, from generating a highly curated product recommendation feed for our customers to helping our partner brands to make sense of customer behavioral patterns within our apps.

On the user front, these technologies help them see products that they are genuinely interested in without going through the entire catalog. Recommendations and curation are provided based on a customer's order pattern and several other indicators we collect as part of their app journey. For the brands, these algorithms are used to process millions of product feedbacks, filter out noise, and derive actionable insights. The analytics provided to the brands help them plan and strategize their campaigns, optimize marketing spending and identify specific growth cohorts.

4. Kindly share your point of view on the current scenario of Big Data Analytics and its future.

Big Data has moved beyond just keywords; there is an immense demand for AI-based solutions across sectors. The use of data analytics by companies is increasing day by day. The primary focus of the companies is on the customers. This made data-science flourish in the area of B2C applications.  The state of big data technologies is better than it's ever been. Every tool that is a part of this vast ecosystem has strived towards simplicity and ease of use. From providing data solutions that are cloud-native to having a server-less/managed alternative to practically every problem out there, these products are making sure they are available and usable to companies of all stages. You no longer need an entire team of Backend, DevOps, and AI experts to get things started.

5. How is Machine Learning (ML) shaping the IT/Big Data industry today? How is it changing the role of CIOs and Leaders?

ML advancements in recent years have forced it to be taken far more seriously. These solutions are no longer nice to have in your product offerings but rather are part of the core requirements. It is undoubtedly necessary for engineering leaders to stay updated themselves and be open to adopting newer and better ways of building tech. One problem most engineering leaders often face is to choosing the right tools to solve these problems. It's especially challenging now with so many alternatives available and almost every solution trying to be the best at doing "everything". 

6. What is your take on the cookie-less future?

It is a necessary step toward users' privacy. However, we can debate whether the right tech giants like Google and Apple have indicated the terms in the matter while retaining all possible data they could from their users. In the cookie-less future, planning will rely on two types of data: authenticated and anonymous. First-party advertiser data (gathered with consumer consent) is one of the main sorts of authenticated data and is also the most powerful for planning because it helps us find audiences who are already affiliated with the brand.

7. What are your growth plans for the next 12 months?

Our vision is to build a global Omni channel platform to completely change the way brands and consumers interact, making it more immersive and experience-based. Smytten addresses a very fundamental gap in the pre-purchase journey of a consumer by giving them the opportunity to try a plethora of products across their lifestyle needs at a negligible cost. We have not only helped millions of consumers to make the right purchase decision but also have delivered huge efficiencies to our brand partners in terms of their customer acquisition cost and consumer engagement metrics through our platform. In the next 12 months, our focus is to penetrate the tier 2 and tier 3 cities in India through the right mix of physical and digital experiences to accelerate the adoption of D2C brands in these territories. Also in a few months, we are launching a very robust self-serve business solution platform driven by AI/ML for brands to drive consumer engagement, research, and trend mapping with a click of a button.