Data & GenAI Must For D2C Brands To Stay Ahead Of Curve: Google's Satya Raghavan

As rising disposable incomes push India’s consumer market to become a $4.3 Tn opportunity by 2030, the country’s top marketing brains are reworking their playbooks to maximise return on investment (RoI) and stay ahead of the shifting consumer behaviour.

Talking about this shift during a fireside chat at Inc42’s ‘The D2C & Retail Summit 2025’, Satya Raghavan, director, marketing partners at Google, said D2C brands need to integrate first-party data and generative AI (GenAI) in their marketing campaigns to stay ahead of the curve and competitors.

Sharing his thoughts on the session’s theme of “The Marketing Stack For A New Consumer Reality”, Raghavan said, “If first-party data and GenAI aren’t part of your marketing strategy yet, you’re leaving money on the table. Someone else, another brand, is already doing this faster – using AI to find quicker, smarter solutions. They’re not stuck in the old loop of writing a brief, iterating on messaging, creating one creative and pushing it everywhere. They’ve moved on.”

He added that new-age D2C retail brands should first prioritise understanding their own customer data and then build a strong plan to attract new customers. He noted that the time is now ripe for retail brands to leverage GenAI to craft the right creatives for the right person, at the right time and at the right moment.

“Use AI to generate creatives that can dynamically speak to different customer personas. That’s how you (D2C brands) can stay ahead and truly lead when it comes to using AI in marketing,” Raghavan said.

Notably, The D2C & Retail Summit 2025, held on July 25 at The Oberoi in Gurugram, brought together over 300 carefully selected industry leaders, investors and ecosystem stakeholders to discuss and shape the next phase of India’s new commerce landscape.

RIP Traditional Marketing Funnel

Going deeper into marketing strategies, the Google director said that the old-school marketing funnel of awareness, consideration, intent and conversation no longer reflects how consumers behave.

“What we’ve learnt is that the traditional funnel is broken. It’s probably dead. RIP (rest in peace),” he said.

Raghavan said that Google is witnessing consumers move fluidly between multiple behaviours at once, prompting a rethink of how brands plan and execute campaigns.

“We’re seeing that consumers are streaming, scrolling, searching and shopping but not in any particular sequence,” he said, citing insights drawn from YouTube and Google Search data.

As such, he called for replacing the traditional marketing funnel with what he dubbed as the “4S framework” – encompassing streaming, scrolling, searching and shopping – to reflect a more fluid view of the consumer journey.

“They’re (consumers) doing all of this (4S behaviours) at the same time. So your ability to show up across all these touchpoints, at the right moment, is what could make or break you in this new era of marketing,” added Raghavan.

Apart from this, the Google executive also talked about changing consumer behaviour, reducing attention spans, interconnectedness of marketing channels, consumer intent and the brands excelling in cross-channel marketing.

Besides Raghavan, Inc42’s flagship The D2C & Retail Summit saw participation from D2C and retail leaders, including Veeba’s Viraj Bahl, Drools’ Dr Shashank Sinha, The Moms Co’s Malika Datt Sadani, Atomberg’s Sibabrata Das, among others.

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