An expert in Go-to-Market strategies for e-commerce, business growth, customer experience, retail, and business consulting, Neha Pathak Vats, CGO, Plotch.ai is an adept leader in the digital marketing industry. In the last 18 years of her career, she has worked in large enterprises as well as in startups and both of the experiences have brought her immense learnings. Neha’s work gradually grew into her passion as she dwelled in the exciting triangle of e-commerce, retail & growth. She has unmatched experience in establishing her venture and leading it successfully for five years. Neha is an excellent team player who is empathetic towards her team and takes ownership of making her team members achieve their goals. Being a leader herself, she admires every woman entrepreneur in this world as she believes they have the strength of a Hercules, the mind of an Einstein, and the ability to face adversity at the same time maintain a positive attitude towards their goals. Neha’s role as the CGO of Plotch.ai revolves around bringing transformational growth to companies, especially with digital launching and sales & marketing strategies. Under her leadership, the company has been growing substantially among its competitors and making major benchmarks in the global market. Let’s hear it from her.

Tell us about the various responsibilities you shoulder as the CGO of Plotch. What are your current focus areas?

As a CGO, I am responsible for overseeing the expansion of my organization. I play a key role in refining our products & services, identifying new markets to enter, acquiring new clients, helping our clients get digitally established, and creating strategies to achieve these goals. While the main focus is on the development of strategies for user acquisition and revenue generation for our SAAS platform, there is also an important role in bringing inputs for product development and refining it. Plotch.ai gives us a diverse experience of dealing with multiple industries and their brands which brings immense learnings. Moreover, we are closely working with ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) in bringing large firms and small sellers together on a single network. ONDC is being considered as the next UPI since the government hopes it will democratize e-commerce and give small sellers access to systems and technology that currently only giants like Flipkart and Amazon enjoy.

What are some of the most pressing challenges that you encounter in your current role? How do you successfully mitigate them?

Due to a lack of awareness people still feel wary of e-commerce. This leads to our first challenge which is high client acquisition costs. We use various lead management tools in Plotch.ai to keep a check on our client acquisition costs. We also work on various strategies to nurture non-converted leads. The second challenge that we face is high involvement from our end as ours is not just a SAAS platform but we also help in GTM strategy & online sales. It requires a good amount of investment from the client side for online marketing due to mounting challenges. This includes the inability to track activity across IOS platforms and rising shipping costs. As per a recent study by Mckinsey, brands have a huge opportunity to influence consumers’ decisions during the search process. We try to leverage this in many ways. Having a great team who are client focused is the only way to perform in this highly competitive environment. We also need to keep a close track of the new developments and trends.

"Aspire to be a better version of yourself every day and don't let your motherhood/ married life be a blocker in your career; draw positive energy from it to do even better"

How do you keep yourself well aligned with industry and technology trends?

My day starts at 5:30 am. I have created a cozy corner at my place for meditation. After about 30 minutes of meditation and some Yoga, I spend time reading books & blogs on subjects of my interest. My role pushes me to stay abreast with digital trends and developments.

What are some of the most significant milestones that you have achieved throughout your professional journey?

It brings me great joy to see how in 2011, after the launch of my company, I had set a goal to bring my women’s wear label to 500 online & offline stores and by 2014 this milestone was achieved. We were present in stores like Tata Trent, Reliance Retail, Aditya Birla Retail, Chennai Silks, Kalanikethan, Amazon, Flipkart and so on. The second milestone was the achievement of a very significant month-on-month growth in Plotch.ai in this financial year. The credit goes to the passionate & customer-focused team. As a Head of Growth, this has been very satisfying and has motivated us to become the leaders in this space of digital transformation.

What would your advice be to young women and girls who also aspire to become business leaders and entrepreneurs in the future?

For every aspiring leader, it is important to set the right goals and then work towards achieving them with integrity & dedication. That is the only way to propel a career. Aspire to be a better version of yourself every day and don't let your motherhood/married life be a blocker in your career; draw positive energy from it to do even better.

Neha Pathak Vats, CGO, Plotch.Ai

Having a Post Graduation degree in Management from Symbiosis Institute of Business Management in Pune and Graduation degree in commerce from the University of Lucknow, Neha has 18+ years of professional experience working across diverse organizations which have helped her hone her digital marketing skills and learn the nuts & bolts of e-commerce in India.