Leena Basrur

Position: Managing Director
Company: Direxions Marketing Solutions Pvt Ltd
Separate brand for loyalty consulting and analytics : Cartesian Consulting
Website: www.direxions.co.in,  www.cartesianconsulting.com

Info on the speaker:

Post graduate degree in Statistics, University of Bombay, 1983.
Over 25 years of experience in Marketing, Research, Advertising, Media and Direct Marketing

Founded DataBasics Direct & Media Services Pvt Ltd in 1992, specializing in Direct Marketing solutions for the media and publishing industry, and response based contests and promotions; merged with DIREM  Marketing Services Pvt Ltd after 5 years of operation, overseeing the Loyalty Consultancy, Business Development, Analytics and Finance functions.

Took over as Managing Director of DIREM Marketing Services (Mumbai) Pvt Ltd in 2005, and oversaw its transition into Direxions Marketing Solutions in early 2007, creating a separate brand – Cartesian Consulting that focuses on Loyalty consultancy and analytics.
Founder member of Indian Confederation of Direct Marketers, heading the external affairs and postal committees, and member of the knowledge base committee.

Vice President of the InterDirect Network of Independent Direct Marketing Companies.

Also Founder Director in other group companies:
Red Box Rewards India Pvt Ltd
Identlogic Systems
Z CARD Pocket Media India Pvt Ltd

Many interests – from palying squash to reading historical fiction, to following the fortunes of Ferrari and Mclaren in Formula1 racing…

Info on the company:

Direxions Marketing Solutions Pvt Ltd (formerly DIREM Mumbai) is India’s leading relationship marketing company with offices in Mumbai, Delhi,  Kolkatta and Dallas, USA.
 
Direxions is the pioneer in loyalty programs in India, and have been associated with some of the largest international and Indian relationship brands eg. British Airways, Jet Airways (India’s leading domestic airline, the Taj Group of Hotels, Unilever, Colgate Palmolive, ICICI Bank, TATA AIG General Insurance and many more. Many programs that they have launched have been the first of their kind in that industry, and have formed the standard that the competition loved to replicate.

Direxions has conceptualized and developed one of India’s largest loyalty programs PetroBonus, with 2mn members, for one of India’s leading oil marketing companies - Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (formerly Burmah Shell). They also launched 2 variants – SmartFleet, for fleet operators and In&Out, for their convenience stores. Together, the 3 loyalty brands are worth Rs. 700 mn, and growing rapidly year on year.
Direxions has launched several channel programs for clients ranging from FMCG, to financial, to agri-products. These programs have been of strategic importance to the companies and have resulted in increased purchases and market shares.

Direxions has launched a separate brand Cartesian Consulting (www.cartesianconsulting.com)
Direxions is one of the few companies which manage all aspects of loyalty programs in-house – designing the program with strong strategic inputs, implementing the program which includes software development, launching the program and program management on an ongoing basis. These tasks involve program marketing, communication, help desks, data management, data analysis, campaign management, training etc.

Title of the presentation:
Presentation 1: Back to the Future of DM in Russia. Learnings from the International market
Presentation 2: Meaningful Analytics: Turning data back into people

The problems/challenges:
Presentation 1
The Russian DM market is in a relatively nascent stage as compared to the stable, western countries where DM has been thriving for many years. In the meantime, the internet has provided access to information and learnings as never before. This has resulted in much shorter learning curves, and sometimes even leapfrogging of certain stages.
This presentation will look at the learnings from evolution of the DM market globally, their relevance in today’s context, current developments and where the DM market in Russia could be headed.

Presentation 2
With increased sophistication in data and technology, marketers have access to terrabytes of data, and a huge overload of reports at regular frequencies. Often, the very essence of what those bits and bytes represent are lost, viz. your most valuable customers and what they are really want. Information from the data is either lost, or never used. In this presentation, Leena Basrur from Direxions Marketing Solutions, India, will present case studies on how data was analysed to identify segments and individuals and increase ROI for their clients across industry groups.