India, fastest-growing major economy, a key global voice on climate, digital innovation: PM Modi
New Delhi [India], June 9 (ANI): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday highlighted India's rapid transformation across sectors, driven by the NDA Government's focus on good governance and inclusive growth.
PM Modi credited the progress to the collective participation of 140 crore Indians and emphasised India's rise as the fastest-growing major economy and a global leader in climate action and digital innovation.
In a post on X, PM Modi emphasised the NDA Government's clear focus on good governance and transformation.
'A clear focus on good governance and transformation! Powered by the blessings and collective participation of 140 crore Indians, India has witnessed rapid transformations across diverse sectors. Guided by the principle of 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas, Sabka Prayas', the NDA Government has delivered speed, scale and sensitivity pathbreaking changes. From economic growth to social upliftment, the focus has been on people-centric, inclusive and all-around progress,' PM said on X.
PM Modi said India is the fastest-growing major economy and a key player in global climate action and digital innovation.
The post added, 'India today is not just the fastest-growing major economy, but also a key global voice on pressing issues like climate action and digital innovation. We are proud of our collective success but at the same time, we look ahead with hope, confidence and a renewed resolve to build a Viksit Bharat!.'
Recently, the Union government released an e-book highlighting its achievements across various sectors over the last 11 years. The year 2025 marks 11 years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government. The book said that these 11 years have been dedicated to bringing about development that is inclusive, progressive, and sustainable.
'The government under Prime Minister Modi has been steadfast in its commitment to creating equity and opportunity for all citizens,' it added.'PM Modi has brought the politics of development - Vikasvaad - into the mainstream, making it the focal point around which political discourse and policy action now revolve,' it reads.
The book said that since assuming office in 2014, PM Modi has remained firm in his resolve to keep 'India First' in every policy formulation and action. It added that the resolve is evident in the government's handling of both external and internal security, economic management, empowerment schemes for marginalised groups, efforts at cultural conservation and so on.
Earlier, it was reported that in a matter of just less than three years, India has taken another stride, pipping Japan to become the fourth-largest economic powerhouse. In September 2022, India had surpassed the UK to become the fifth-largest economy.
Addressing a press conference of the 10th NITI Aayog Governing Council Meeting on 'Viksit Rajya for Viksit Bharat 2047', NITI Aayog Chief Executive Officer (CEO) BVR Subrahmanyam said that India has overtaken Japan to become the world's fourth-largest economy. This is a proud moment for the country and India's position would strengthen further in the coming years, on the back of prospects of higher economic growth.
Citing data from the International Monetary Fund, the CEO of India's apex think tank stated that India's economy has reached the USD 4 trillion mark.' We are the fourth largest economy as I speak. We are a USD 4 trillion economy, and this is not my data; this is IMF data. India today is larger than Japan. It's only the United States, China, and Germany which are larger, and if we stick to, you know, what is being planned, what is being thought through, it's a matter of another 2.0-2.5 to 3 years; we would become the third largest economy,' said BVR Subrahmanyam.
According to the IMF's April edition of the World Economic Outlook report, India's nominal GDP for fiscal 2026 is expected to reach around USD 4.187 trillion. This is marginally more than Japan's likely GDP, which is estimated at USD 4.186 billion.
The international financial institution projects that India will remain the fastest-growing major economy over the next two years. India's economy is expected to grow by 6.2 per cent in 2025 and 6.3 per cent in 2026, maintaining a solid lead over global and regional peers, the April 2025 edition of the IMF's World Economic Outlook had said.
India is among the fastest-growing major economies and is projected to remain so over the next few years, as many global agencies have anticipated. Even as India has overtaken Japan in terms of the size of the economy, the per capita income in India remains very low. (ANI)
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Time of India
41 minutes ago
- Time of India
Retargeting needs a creative reboot
For every customer who visits a brand's website but leaves without making a purchase, retargeting ads have long been the go-to strategy for marketers aiming to convert them. However, once the go-to for converting warm leads, retargeting is slowly losing its edge. As it reaches a plateau, marketers must reconsider where their approach may be falling short. But before we dive into the cracks in the system, let's take a moment to understand what retargeting involves. Unlike typical banner ads, retargeting ads are a form of online advertising served to people who have already visited a brand's website or are in contact with the brand. According to Criteo, only 4% of site visitors end up making a purchase. This leaves marketers with a pressing question: How do you convert the 96% who left without buying? Retargeting. However, as the saying goes, 'Retargeting works, until it doesn't.' While the concept seems foolproof on paper, real-world execution is fraught with challenges. Let's break them down one by one. Dynamic Landing Pages As an increasing number of Indians join social media to connect with their friends and family, Meta and Google have become the top advertising platforms for retargeting customers. They dominate retargeting by leveraging vast user data to serve ads based on browsing behaviour, past purchases and search history. Every time a customer clicks on a retargeting ad, they are directed to a landing page (web page designed to receive traffic from that specific ad. These platforms use static ads (fixed content pieces that remain the same regardless of context) that work well for categories like e-commerce and retail, but have limited applicability for more complex categories like insurance, where dynamic, personalised content is essential to engage users and drive conversions. Rohitesh Sahu, associate vice president - digital marketing , PolicyBazaar, pointed out this mismatch and said, 'Imagine visiting an e-commerce app to view a pair of shoes. That product page looks the same for everyone and no personal inputs are needed to see the price. In contrast to e-commerce, customer journeys in insurance are highly personalised. Quotations and policy details depend on individual data, such as age, health status, smoking habits and more.' Conventional retargeting ads offered by Meta and Google rely on audience pools, where customers are segmented based on predefined triggers like site visits or cart abandonment. These ads are usually templated and automated, directing customers to static landing pages (look the same for everyone). Serving a dynamic landing page on these platforms is not a straightforward task as insurance products often involve a longer and more complex decision-making process. Consumers typically go through several steps, reading about plans, comparing quotes and sometimes speaking with agents, before making a purchase. Because of this fragmented journey, showing a perfectly tailored landing page based on just one ad click becomes challenging, as it's hard to pinpoint exactly where the user is in the buying process. Moreover, platforms like Meta and Google have limited the use of PII (Personally Identifiable Information) due to privacy concerns. Dynamic landing pages often rely on personal customer data to tailor content. For insurance products, tailoring based on age, health conditions, or income could raise compliance flags or breach privacy norms. The challenges of serving dynamic landing pages make it significantly harder for categories like insurance to run effective retargeting ads. Diminishing Returns When a customer browses a shirt on an e-commerce site but doesn't purchase, they're often overwhelmed with static retargeting ads, nudging them to buy. These ads typically showcase the shirt, its price and discounts, but their static nature can feel repetitive and saturating. This lack of dynamism risks being ignored by customers. Dynamic ads offer a solution, but the challenge remains: are there truly 50 unique ways to advertise a single shirt? Likely not, and this is where marketers face a dilemma. Manan Bajoria, group VP - growth marketing, Ixigo, elaborated on the challenge and said, 'There's little room for creativity in retargeting ads. Even with videos or GIFs, the core message stays the same: the shirt and its price. This repetition is what makes retargeting ads feel monotonous.' When creatives remain largely unchanged, the customer experience becomes monotonous and intrusive. For instance, a user might search for a product, see related ads, return later to make a booking and then search again, only to be shown the same ads all over again. This repetitive cycle continues because the creative content doesn't evolve meaningfully over time, making the retargeting feel stale and overbearing. What remains to be seen is how technologies like agentic AI can enable brands to present a shirt in 50 unique ways during retargeting. Frequency Caps Have you ever felt annoyed scrolling through social media, seeing the same ad from a brand over and over again? Repeated exposure can lead to ad fatigue or worse, push your brand into the customer's blind spot, where they become indifferent to your messaging. To prevent overexposure, marketers use frequency caps to limit ad displays. These caps ensure brands don't overwhelm customers. Sounds simple to implement? It's not. As per Vishal Agrahari, VP - digital paid media, Bcwebwise brands typically allocate 5% to 10% of their campaign budgets to retargeting, yet often fail to achieve the desired results. A key reason, he explains, is that marketers tend to overexpose customers to retargeting ads. They repeatedly bombard users with the same creatives, failing to implement proper frequency caps—believing that more impressions equate to better recall, without realising this can lead to negative brand perception. Sharing an example of a failed retargeting campaign by a D2C brand, he said, 'A D2C apparel brand in the last quarter of 2024 had executed an aggressive retargeting campaign on Meta and Google. The campaign budget was INR 15–20 lakh per quarter allocated for retargeting, as the audience pool for remarketing was around 4 lakh users. Since they were offering discounts on products, they wanted to reach out to everyone who visited their website. But the retargeting campaign failed miserably. ROAS dropped from 3.6 to 1.4. Conversion rate went below 1%. Where they went wrong was, the audience saw the same creatives over 10 times without any frequency caps.' But why is implementing frequency caps so difficult? Here are two reasons: 'Different teams manage different channels: someone runs paid ads, another handles CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and WhatsApp, and a different team manages the call centre. It is challenging to tie one customer across these platforms and track all communications from each channel while implementing the frequency caps,' Sahu (PolicyBazaar) articulated. Highlighting the fragmented nature of digital marketing, Kedar Ravangave, EVP - marketing, Kotak Mahindra Bank, said, 'Digital marketing operates in a fragmented ecosystem, where consumers encounter ads across independent platforms like Instagram, YouTube, or news websites. This disintegration complicates tracking a user's cumulative ad exposure, as some of these platforms operate in isolation, making it difficult to manage frequency effectively. A user might encounter the same ad across Instagram, YouTube and Facebook, with no unified system tracking these repeated exposures.' Incrementality When evaluating retargeting, it is important to take into account the incremental cost—the additional expense required to achieve results that wouldn't have occurred otherwise. While retargeting may appear to be a fraction of the cost of new user acquisition, it can sometimes be up to 'ten times' more expensive when factoring in these hidden incremental costs. To demonstrate how retargeting often ends up being more expensive than new user acquisition, Bajoria conducted an experiment at Ixigo five years ago. Explaining the experiment, he said, 'When I joined the company, we were investing heavily in retargeting campaigns, spending significant budgets to re-engage users who dropped off in the funnel. To evaluate the impact of retargeting, we ran an incrementality test, dividing our audience into a target group and a control group. The test withheld ads from 20% of users while showing them to the remaining 80%, running the campaign for two weeks to compare conversion rates between the two groups. The control group, which didn't see the ads, had a 5% conversion rate, while the group exposed to ads converted at 5.5%. This meant that only 0.5% of conversions were incremental, with the remaining 5% occurring naturally, regardless of the ads. Despite Meta attributing the full 5.5% to our campaign, making the cost per booking appear favourable, the actual cost per booking was 10 times higher, revealing the inefficiency of our retargeting efforts.' To put this into perspective, imagine you run a travel website and show retargeting ads to 100 people who visited but didn't complete a booking. You spend INR 300 per booking, which seems like a bargain compared to the INR 1,000 it typically costs to acquire a new customer. However, if only 10 of those 100 bookings actually happened because of the ads and the remaining 90 either would have booked later as they were still planning their travel or didn't book at all—your real cost per incremental booking is actually INR 3,000. That's three times the cost of acquiring a new customer, not one-third as it initially appeared. Armed with these insights, Ixigo decided to halt all retargeting campaigns on Meta and Google. Now the question arises: if the actual cost of retargeting is so high, why do marketers continue to ignore the incremental cost of retargeting? 'Many marketers either aren't familiar with incrementality or know the term but don't fully understand how to measure it. They may not go the extra mile to decode its real value or simply lack the tools to do so. Often, performance metrics focus on user acquisition at low costs, making retargeting appear efficient. Without the intent or capability to dig deeper, most marketers do not want to take the bold call of just shutting down a channel,' Bajoria resolved. By allocating the money spent on retargeting to new user acquisition and targeting customers via email and WhatsApp, Ixigo's retargeting budgets have decreased by 90% compared to their previous levels, thanks to the shift to CRM channels such as email, SMS and push notifications. Vague Intent While retargeting is already a complex challenge for D2C brands, requiring a deep understanding of customer behaviour, it becomes even more challenging in the B2B space, primarily due to the lack of clear buyer intent signals. Describing this challenge, a source told ETBrandEquity, 'A major hurdle in B2B marketing is the absence of clear intent signals. Marketers often rely on vague indicators or market whispers that suggest a potential customer might need their solution, but where do you find these signals? They're rarely available in a real-time or easily accessible format. If you're trying to sell to a B2B customer, how would you even know which product they are actively exploring? Without behavioural or contextual signals, retargeting becomes a shot in the dark.' Closing The Loop Another challenge that adds to the fatigue of customers is when these static ads pop up even after the product has already been purchased. But why do customers keep receiving these ads after purchasing? Explaining, Sahu said, 'When campaigns are created, they typically involve both a targeting list and an exclusion list. For instance, if a user visits your website, brands may choose to target them with ads for the next seven days. However, it's critical that after those seven days, the user is automatically removed from the targeting list. Marketers sometimes fail to establish clear rules for exclusion lists and overlook the importance of excluding users who have already reached a key milestone in the customer journey. Without a defined and automated exclusion process, these users continue to receive ads, leading to wasted ad spend or worse, pushing the brand into the consumer's blind spot.' To manage this, PolicyBazaar structures campaigns around the customer's buying cycle. For example, in the case of car insurance, the brand knows that most purchases occur about a week before the due date. Therefore, it aligns its campaigns accordingly and avoids targeting beyond this window. A Tech Challenge Marketing professionals highlight a key gap in the current retargeting infrastructure: 'If I need to track specific customers, analyse historical data and estimate the potential dollar value from retargeting them, there's no solution that consolidates all campaigns, target bases and expected outcomes for me in one place,' says one of them, who prefers to stay anonymous. He stressed the need for a smarter, goal-oriented system. 'When I input a desired conversion rate or KPI, the system should interpret that goal and recommend the exact set of actions required to achieve it. Today, this entire process is manual,' the anonymous source added. He also pointed out the limitations in operational efficiency in retail, where a team member typically reviews past data and plans actions for the following week. If that person is on leave, the entire process can fall apart. Asking for a more intelligent, automated solution, he said, 'We need a customised tool that predicts potential revenue from retargeting specific cohorts—and suggests the right campaigns to execute.' Ad Fraud Retargeting is already a capital-intensive marketing exercise—now imagine the frustration of being taken advantage of in the process. Retargeting frauds exploit advertisers' efforts to reach users who've previously visited their website. Bots are programmed to mimic human behaviour, such as browsing product pages or adding items to a shopping cart. The advertiser's retargeting mechanisms then prompt the ad server to serve more ads to these fake 'leads,' ultimately draining budgets and wasting valuable impressions. Recalling an experience of retargeting fraud, Ravangave shared: 'This was a case from my past marketing experience during a large-scale retargeting campaign we were running with a major publisher. The goal was to deliver a high volume of clicks through specific messaging. As soon as the campaign went live, the publisher started reporting a significant number of clicks. But none of this traffic was reflected on our site. Had the team not set up hourly monitoring, we would have ended up wasting the entire campaign budget in just a week because it was a short-duration sale campaign. We quickly flagged the issue and reached out to the publisher. That's when we discovered the numbers were being manipulated by bots. What was reported as a million clicks was, in reality, just around a thousand.' Ravangave emphasises that ad fraud will continue to evolve, but the most effective countermeasure is building a solid, in-house measurement framework. After reviewing the challenges, let us now explore the solutions. Sequential Storytelling Retargeting efforts plateau beyond a point due to ad fatigue, audience saturation (a customer may fall in the retargeting pool of multiple brands in the same category) and privacy limitations. To overcome this challenge, Pragya Bijalwann, head of marketing, Voltas, suggests marketers explore strategies such as sequential storytelling and creative experimentation. These approaches help sustain engagement, expand reach to new audiences and drive conversions without relying solely on personalisation. Sequential storytelling is the practice of developing modular creatives that evolve with the consumer's journey, where each ad feels like a natural continuation rather than a repetitive nudge, creating an experience that resonates with consumers. Kotak Mahindra Bank utilises its in-house photo studio to create diverse, tailored campaign messages for every stage of the customer journey. Explaining this practice, Ravangave said, 'Our product stories have evolved from broad thematic narratives to focused messaging that highlights how a product solves problems or enhances a consumer's life. From there, we integrate bottom-funnel elements like creator endorsements, targeted offers and location-based nudges. We use signal-based sequencing (using browsing behaviour, purchase history and engagement patterns) to deliver relevant messaging tailored to each stage of the customer journey. This approach increased conversion by three to six times for customers exposed to a full-funnel strategy compared to traditional retargeting methods.' Sharing an alternate strategy to prevent retargeting from reaching a plateau, Amit Chaudhary, digital marketing head, Orient Electric, said, 'We continuously refresh our audience pools and watch for buying signals across categories. For instance, a bulk lighting buyer often signals home renovation—we can then remarket fans or geysers to such users. And this would work even better if we could tell the user our brand story. The conversion likelihood in retargeting is higher when brand trust has already been built through an intense narrative exposure. We have seen that when users are exposed to a strong brand narrative, our overall performance marketing, including retargeting, performs significantly better, as it's no longer just a push, it's part of a bigger story.' A MadTech Approach If marketing teams could openly complain about one aspect of retargeting, it would be the diminishing reach of various channels. Bajoria also noted a significant decline in the reach of CRM channels. For example, push notifications now reach only about 50% of users, as more customers choose to opt out of receiving them. 'SMS has been overused to the point where people rarely read them unless it is an OTP or a bank alert,' Bajoria added. 'WhatsApp remains a viable option, but it comes at a cost—approximately 80 paise per message. Moreover, WhatsApp imposes limits on the number of marketing messages a user can receive each week. Once this threshold is met, additional messages are simply not delivered,' Bajoria added further. The saturation of traditional CRM channels has led many marketers to see Meta and Google as more appealing options for retargeting. However, the high cost of retargeting on these platforms has created a dilemma: should marketers continue investing in Meta and Google at a premium, or shift focus to the more cost-effective CRM channels for their retargeting efforts? Bajoria believes that CRM channels such as emails, push notifications and SMS remain a better bet for retargeting due to their lower cost, and the dollars saved on retargeting on Meta and Google can be put to new customer acquisition. As a result, marketers are increasingly exploring new ways to retarget customers. One emerging approach involves retargeting the followers of micro and nano-influencers after running influencer campaigns with them—an audience known for significantly higher engagement rates. 'This strategy has proven highly effective because micro and nano-influencers have a strong presence within their communities and tend to drive much higher engagement. You're far more likely to trust a mother from your neighborhood promoting homemade pickles than a celebrity,' an anonymous source revealed. Dynamic Creative Optimisation The challenge of little to no variations in retargeting creatives causes fatigue, so what can brands do? PolicyBazaar is currently in the process of leveraging agentic AI and generative AI for personalised marketing communication, especially in banner and video formats. They are iterating and testing it on a small scale. 'While we believe it will not necessarily lead to dramatically different outcomes in terms of performance uplift, it should provide incremental benefits. Such as improving creative variety, reducing manual workload and enhancing operational efficiencies,' Sahu noted. The question of whether to retarget or not lacks a straightforward answer. It depends on factors like the brand's category, the length of the consideration period, and whether static ads effectively serve your audience or risk annoying them. Before launching campaigns, marketers must prioritise KYC—Know Your Customer—to build detailed customer profiles for strategic retargeting. Nevertheless, retargeting strategies must be re-evaluated with customer fatigue in mind to ensure better ROI (Return on Investment).
Time of India
41 minutes ago
- Time of India
Sanchi brand 'decline' after NDDB merger: Jitu Patwari
HighlightsCongress state unit chief Jitu Patwari has raised concerns about the decline of Madhya Pradesh's flagship dairy brand 'Sanchi' following its merger with the National Dairy Development Board. Patwari reported a drop in milk collection by the Madhya Pradesh State Cooperative Dairy Federation, stating that total milk collection from Indore decreased from 94,496 kilograms in 2023-24 to 85,438 kilograms in 2024-25. He urged Union Home and Cooperative Minister Amit Shah to take action to revitalize the 'Sanchi' brand and improve the conditions for milk-producing farmers affected by government neglect. Congress state unit chief Jitu Patwari has written to Union home and cooperative minister Amit Shah, raising alarm over what he termed the rapid decline of the state's flagship dairy brand 'Sanchi' following its merger with the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB). In a letter to Shah, he said the merger has neither benefited consumers of Sanchi products nor the farmers supplying milk to the MP State Cooperative Dairy Federation. He accused the state govt of neglecting the brand. Patwari wrote at the time of merger, CM Mohan Yadav had announced that the share of MP in overall milk production of the country would be raised from 9 per cent to 20 per cent and "you, too, had given direction to the MP govt to take the target seriously". The Congress leader, however, regretted that it has turned out to be an 'airy' target while the situation on the ground is just the opposite. Patwari claimed that the milk collection by the federation has in fact declined. While the total milk collection from Indore was 94,496 Kg in 2023-24, it reduced to 85,438 Kg in 2024-25. Similarly, the sale of milk has also dipped from 1.56 lakh litre to 1.51 litre. The committees of milk producing farmers also reduced from 385 to 362. The 'Sanchi Parlour' scheme, too, was in a bad shape as 257 applications for setting up a parlour are pending in Indore division itself. Only 57 of them have been accepted and only 31 have opened. In Indore city , 74 applications are pending and only 1 has been accepted. The 'neglect' of Sanchi brand by the govt has "obliquely promoted the private milk brands and they have launched milk and several milk products in the market. It's not only damaging the brand value of 'Sanchi' but also leading to 'exploitation' of milk-producing farmers", he said. Patwari alleged that the milk-producing farmers in place of getting remunerative prices for the milk and becoming economically self-sufficient are being driven into economic crisis due to neglect by the state government and bureaucracy. While stating that as cooperative minister, Shah was supposed to strengthen the cooperative bodies all over the country, Patwari said he should not "mutely see a historic cooperative movement like 'Sanchi' go to ruins". He also suggested steps to the union cooperative minister to improve the 'Sanchi brand including formation of an independent panel to examine the actual state of affairs at MP Milk Federation, disposal of application for setting up of 'Sanchi' parlour all over the state in a time-bound manner, review the role of NDDB in collection of milk, its price determination and its distribution network and make the entire process transparent. Besides, the government should be asked to explain why the milk production is not increasing despite announcement of the chief minister, Patwari said. He urged the union cooperative minister to "save" Sanchi brand from decline in the overall interest of the country's cooperative movement.
NDTV
an hour ago
- NDTV
'Derogatory' Remarks Against Amaravati: Journalist Who Hosted Show Arrested
Amaravati: Senior Telugu journalist Kommineni Srinivas Rao was arrested in Hyderabad on Monday for hosting a programme on a vernacular channel where a scribe allegedly made derogatory remarks against the greenfield capital city Amaravati, said a police official. Guntur district Superintendent of Police S Satish confirmed that Thullur police from Amaravati have arrested the journalist. "Thullur police have arrested Kommineni Srinivas Rao from Hyderabad over the derogatory remarks against Amaravati," Satish told PTI, adding that the journalist is being brought to Andhra Pradesh from Telangana. VVR Krishna Raju, the journalist, who was also part of the programme, was accused of spewing venom against Amaravati and its women. According to information shared by a source close to the TDP-led NDA government, the duo were booked under BNS Sections 79, 196 (1), 353 (2), 299, 356 (2) and 61 (1) and Section 67 of the IT Act, including Section (1) of the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. Meanwhile, YSRCP said that an FIR was registered against Rao four days ago in Thullur police station, accusing him of "failing to intervene during the broadcast", which featured those alleged vitriolic remarks. "Immediately after his arrest, Rao was transferred to Vijayawada. Rao, a senior citizen, questioned the legality of the arrest without explanation," said a note from the YSRCP. Condemning the arrest, YSRCP chief Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, called it a "political vendetta". "In any discussion, diverse opinions are natural. Punishing an anchor for guests' statements is not only unjust, it's dangerous," Reddy said in a post on 'X'. The former chief minister questioned the rationale behind punishing a moderator for remarks made by panelists during a televised debate, warning such actions endanger democratic discourse and press freedom. He accused the TDP-led NDA government of suppressing dissent, using fear and intimidation tactics to silence intellectuals, journalists, and opposition voices across the southern state. He alleged that Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu was "weaponising the state apparatus" to divert public attention from failures, corruption, and broken electoral promises. "You (Naidu) were given five years-one has already passed. The day will come when the people will demand answers for your abuses and injustices," Reddy warned.
