Suggestions
Kushal Walia
Brand Manager | Branding Coach | Consumer Insights Professional | RateGain | Ex-Innovaccer, WRMS, TravelTriangle
Professional Background
Kushal Walia is a distinguished IDEApreneur and digital-first strategist, known for his dynamic approach to business and marketing management. With extensive experience spanning four different industries, Kushal has made significant contributions in travel & hospitality, Agri FinTech, HealthTech, and Hotel & Travel SaaS sectors. Throughout his career, he has displayed a solid commitment to innovation and excellence, which is encapsulated in his personal motto, #createwithpassion and #executewithexcellence.
Kushal began his career at TravelTriangle.com, an online travel startup, where he excelled in roles related to consumer insights, marketing alliances, online reputation management (ORM), content creation, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media. His journey at TravelTriangle was marked by impactful milestones that helped in redefining how consumers plan their holidays. This role not only honed his marketing skills but also equipped him with vital insights into consumer behavior and market trends.
After his successful stint at TravelTriangle, Kushal took on the responsibilities of Brand Manager at Weather Risk Management Services (WRMS). Here, he led brand communication and product initiatives, developing strategies that resonated well with target audiences. His ability to blend creativity with analytical insights played a key role in establishing WRMS as a formidable player in Agri FinTech.
Currently, Kushal serves as the Global Brand Manager at RateGain Technologies, where he leads brand positioning efforts from multiple perspectives, including creatives, social media, inbound content marketing, and global public relations (PR). His collaborative approach allows him to work seamlessly with global teams, fostering an environment of innovation and creativity across various functional areas.
Education and Achievements
Kushal's educational foundation is robust, having studied Professional Brand Management in the Digital Age at Kraftshala. His advanced training has equipped him with contemporary skills necessary for thriving in today’s digital landscape. He also holds a Bachelor of Engineering combined with an MBA from Panjab University, further solidifying his expertise in both technical and managerial domains. Early in his education, Kushal excelled in PCM with Computers and English at Montfort Senior Secondary School, which laid the groundwork for his analytical and creative pursuits.
Kushal's commitment to education is evident in his involvement with Kraftshala, where he served as a Coach for Brand Management and Content Marketing. His influence on aspiring marketers is marked by his guest speaking engagements at prominent industry events, including HelloMeets and the Indian Steel Association, where he shared his insights and expertise with budding professionals.
One of Kushal's most notable academic accomplishments was during his time in the Kraftshala certificate program, where he worked on a strategic communication brief and digital marketing plan for Sirona's Menstrual Cups and secured a position in the top 10% of all-time students. This exercise involved extensive category research, brand opportunity analysis, targeting insights, and audience engagement strategies, showcasing his comprehensive understanding of the market landscape.
Notable Achievements
- Led the brand and communication initiatives at WRMS, establishing a strong market presence in Agri FinTech.
- Served as the Global Brand Manager at RateGain, effectively managing diverse marketing strategies that utilize creative, social, and inbound content marketing.
- Recognized as a top performer in Kraftshala's Professional Brand Management in the Digital Age program, highlighting his strategic acumen and dedication to continuous learning.
- Contributed significantly to TravelTriangle’s customer engagement strategies, which transformed client approaches to holiday planning.
- Engaged with platforms such as HelloMeets and iLEAD Kolkata, sharing knowledge and abstracting insights related to brand management and marketing trends.
- Authored engaging content during his tenure as Senior Content Writer and Corporate Communications Manager at TravelTriangle, strengthening the company’s brand voice.
- Mentored aspiring professionals through various initiatives at UIET, enriching their educational experiences and facilitating their career development.
Conclusion
Kushal Walia is a well-accomplished marketing professional whose journey is characterized by a rich tapestry of experience across various sectors. His strategic thinking, combined with a passion for creativity, places him at the forefront of brand management in today's competitive landscape. With a wealth of experience ranging from digital marketing to corporate communications, Kushal demonstrates a unique ability to cultivate brand excellence and connectivity. As he continues to innovate and inspire, his contributions not only enhance
Highlights
Had an amazing time yesterday at Google's #KhushiyonKaTyohaar event in Gurgaon!
The session was packed with invaluable insights that are set to shape marketing strategies for the festive season in India. Here are some of the key insights that I recall:
➡𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐁𝐞𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐫 𝐓𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬: With digital payments skyrocketing, now reaching 100 million users, there's a clear opportunity to capture the growing digital audience. Tier 2 and 3 city consumers are spending more time online vs those in metro and Tier-1 cities, indicating a shift towards digital-first experiences due to limited offline options.
➡𝐌𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 & 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲: Leveraging YouTube, which now has over 60 million CTV users, and crafting Video Action Campaigns can significantly boost engagement. Combining YouTube Masthead ads with the first ad on Shorts is a powerful tactic to maximize reach. Creating authentic, regional, and multilingual content is crucial to engaging the 47% of novice digital users who prefer OTT originals in local languages.
➡𝐓𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬: Utilizing smart bidding strategies and broad match keywords can drive up to 35% higher RoAS compared to exact match keywords. Focus on consistent communication across online and offline channels to build trust and loyalty, especially among Gen Z, where 95% show interest in AR shopping and 40% rely more on influencers than friends for product recommendations.
𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐓𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬: ➡ Develop region-specific digital campaigns to tap into the growing online user base in Tier 2 and 3 cities. ➡Utilize a mix of YouTube Masthead ads and Video Action Campaigns to engage audiences across different platforms and devices. ➡Implement smart bidding strategies to optimize ad spend and increase RoAS by targeting users at the right moment in their buying journey.
Grateful for the chance to connect with industry experts and learn from the best. A big shoutout to Google and the team for hosting such a transformative event for making brands and advertisers #TaiyaarForTyohaar
Ruchita, Vishakha, Dhwani, Ananya
#GoogleAds #DigitalMarketing #FestiveMarketing #ConsumerInsights #YouTubeAds #MarketingStrategy #OmniChannelMarketing #GenZ #DigitalPayments #MarketingTrends #DataDrivenMarketing
9 𝐘𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐈𝐧, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐝
Last week marked a milestone – 9 years in the wonderful world of branding! Reflecting back, one question that constantly popped up during conversations, interviews, and even dates was: "𝑾𝒉𝒚 𝒅𝒐 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒅𝒐 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒅𝒐?"
The answer, like most things, has a layered history. Inspiration struck from many avenues – my family, my college, impactful 90s ads, and movies that ignited a passion for storytelling. One specific spark came flickering to life in the early 2000s while watching Mel Gibson, in "What Women Want," create a Nike ad campaign – "No Games. Just Sports."
This seemingly simple phrase resonated deeply and ignited my interest in advertising. Why? Because it perfectly captures the essence of what Nike, and many great brands, truly sell: inspiration.
𝐈𝐭'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐞. 𝐈𝐭'𝐬 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠.
When you look at the brand ladder, it typically consists of three main levels:
1️⃣ #ProductAttributes: What is it? This level focuses on the tangible, physical features of the product.
Example for Nike shoes: Lightweight materials, cushioning, traction, durability, style, color options.
2️⃣ #FunctionalBenefits: What does it do? This level highlights how the product solves a specific consumer need or problem.
Example for Nike shoes: Provides comfort during runs, enhances performance, prevents injuries, improves running speed.
3️⃣ #EmotionalBenefits: What does it mean? This level delves into the psychological and emotional rewards consumers derive from using the product.
Example for Nike shoes: Feeling confident, empowered, inspired
𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞'𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 "𝐍𝐨 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬. 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐬." 𝐜𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 𝐬𝐨 𝐰𝐞𝐥𝐥:
1️⃣ Emotional connection: It taps into the raw desire for self-improvement, the freedom of the open road, and the pure joy of pushing your limits. This emotional connection transcends the product itself.
2️⃣ Functional benefit: "No Games. Just Sports." speaks to the functional benefit of Nike shoes – enabling you to run whenever you want, further and faster. This, in turn, connects back to the emotional desire for empowerment. Focus on the outcome: The campaign doesn't dwell on technical features of the shoe. It focuses on the end result – the feeling of accomplishment and the pure joy of the sport.
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲? People don't buy products, they buy the feelings those products evoke. This understanding has been the guiding principle throughout my career in branding. It's about crafting stories that connect with people on an emotional level, inspiring them to achieve their best selves.
Here's to many more years of storytelling in the world of brands! #branding #inspiration #nike #advertising #careeradvice
P.S. Feel free to share any iconic ad campaigns that sparked your own passions in the comments!
Video Credits: Crea Comunicaciones Inc (https://lnkd.in/gRjVPZjQ)
People also viewed
Related People
Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.
People also viewed
Related People