The consumer is king

In this episode of Data Talks, Wolfgang speaks with Kirti Singh, Chief Insights Officer at Procter & Gamble, about what it truly means to be consumer-first in a company that serves more than 5.5 billion people worldwide.

Kirti reflects on her 30+ year global career spanning India, China and the United States, and how her very first day at P&G, spent inside a consumer’s home, shaped her philosophy on leadership and growth.

The conversation explores:

• How P&G drives market growth, not just market share
• The rise of emerging markets and generational change
• Why “Data Is Human” and what that means in the age of AI
• How Human + AI is reshaping the analytics profession

A powerful discussion on insight, global leadership and the future of consumer-driven strategy.

🔗 Learn more at worlddatalab.com
Data Talks is produced by World Data Lab, bringing global data to life through insights, conversations, and stories that matter.

Transcript

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0:00: Welcome everybody to Data Talks. 
 0:02: We have a new edition. 
 0:04: We have a new leader of the industry. 
 0:07: With me is the Chief Insights Officer of Procter and Gamble, one of the leading global FMCG companies in the world. 
 0:15: With me is Kurti Singh. 
 0:16: Welcome to the show, Kirti. 
 0:18: Thanks very much, Wolfgang. 
 0:19: Look forward to this. 
 0:21: Fantastic, Kerti. 
 0:23: Kerti, you are not just, if I may say so, a veteran in PNG. 
 0:26: I think you have a 30 year plus global career. 
 0:29: You're a veteran in the industry. 
 0:31: for all of the viewers who are younger than us and who may think of a career, tell us a bit, walk us through your career, your key moments, and what excited you about joining that industry and what excites you about your job today. 
 0:46: Awesome. 
 0:46: so I'll start at the very beginning, actually. 
 0:49: as you said that I've been with PNG for, just over 30 years. 
 0:54: but my day one at PNG was a very interesting one. 
 0:59: it did not start in a PNG office. 
 1:02: in fact, the evening before I was supposed to join PNG. 
 1:07: My TB manager called me and said, look, we are doing some consumer work in a city which was just outside of Mumbai, so if you are OK with that, we'd like you to join that. 
 1:17: So we hopped onto a train the next day morning, which was technically my first day at PNG, I was not in any office. 
 1:24: I was in consumer's home talking about one of our brands with the consumers, which was aerial detergent, which we were just launching, in India. 
 1:34: And that first day that I had PNG pretty much defined the balance of my my my times at PNG, my thinking, my philosophy, how I look at business and everything else that we do, because it really brought home how important our consumers are to PNG and how for us everything starts with the consumer. 
 2:00: So there are many things which have changed as you can imagine, over a period of 30 years I've had an opportunity of working in many different places, many of our businesses doing many different roles, but the red thread through it all, it has always been about the consumer and our ability to focus and delight the consumers we serve. 
 2:19: , wonderful, Kerti, and maybe just pick on that aspect because about the consumer, it's about insight, but it's also about your, your home country, that we quite write a lot about, especially the rise of India's middle class. 
 2:33: Tell us a bit more of that moment and, and how that resonated in, in India, that, that product, and just walk us through more of what came after that first day in the office. 
 2:45: Yeah, I mean, really, as I was telling you that the brand that we were talking about to our consumers was Ariel. 
 2:52: now, you know that PNG actually entered India through the acquisition of Richardson and Wix, that happened, in the late 19980s. 
 3:01: And then one of the first PNG portfolio brand that we launched in India was Ariel, and we were working on that and truly kind of, with. 
 3:11: The consumer's understanding as to how we can make her life or his life easier by giving them a product which was superior to anything that existed in the market from a product standpoint, but how do we make it alive? 
 3:25: It was different because it was a compact detergent. 
 3:28: Most of the detergents at that point in time in India were not compact. 
 3:32: They were, they were what we call fluffy powders, so they were a lot bigger size from. 
 3:38: Size standpoint, but this one was compact, so it required a habit change. 
 3:42: Many of our consumers at that point in time also used to a lot of it was hand washing, almost all of it actually at that point in time was hand washing, and many of them were used to using bars. 
 3:52: And with the quality that we had on Ariel, you know, you did not need to do all of that. 
 3:56: It would give you the clean that you wanted just by the compact aerial powder by itself, so it was really very. 
 4:04: Fascinating and very interesting. 
 4:06: We were very clear about, you know, the superiority of the product that we had, but we knew that there are certain habit changes that we needed to drive. 
 4:15: That's where the power of communication and retail and what we could do in that and of course offer consumers value and communicate the value because when you get into compaction, it looks on the shelf a little smaller than some of the fluffy powders which were there in the market at that point in time. 
 4:32: Wow. 
 4:32: Super, super cool that you remember that first day so vividly. 
 4:36: I, I do also, but it's not in that intensity, so it must have really shaped you. 
 4:40: I wanna come back to that example because it links to the PNG history. 
 4:44: Before I do that, Kitty, you have also had a true global Career, you started in India, you lived in China, now you're in the US, and in the different stages of, of time and it's different stages of these countries' developments, just share a bit also for some of the younger audience who think of global careers, what you take home from your experience. 
 5:03: Yeah, and that's a great question, Wolfgang, and to me, it, of course, when you have had the opportunity to do that, it shapes both your career but also who you are, as an individual, right? 
 5:18: So for me it has been very clear, I wouldn't be who I am had it not been for the experiences that in my case, PNG has offered me, which have been absolutely been amazing. 
 5:31: So, you know, I started in India, but I worked in the India Organization for just about a couple of years. 
 5:37: you know, this was in the early 90s. 
 5:40: In 1995, I actually moved to China. 
 5:44: In China, as you can imagine, at that point in time, was just opening up, so it was just getting started, so we had quite a few of us in particular because PNG is a promote from within companies, so we had quite a few of us who landed up in China at about the same time, starting from scratch. 
 6:02: I tell people it was like working for a startup. 
 6:04: Because you literally were starting there, you were building an organization, you were starting a business, and it was just unbelievably fascinating. 
 6:13: You know, one of the travel guides, which I'm not sure whether it's popular in Germany or not, it's called Lonely Planets. 
 6:18: I think it's from Australia originally, and I actually still remember the first line that Lonely Planets had, which basically said that the moment you land up in China, the first thing that you will experience is instant illiteracy. 
 6:32: Because everything was, of course, in Chinese script and Mandarin or Cantonese if you're in, in Guangzhou, so yes, you do need to experience that, but that's what then forces you to truly immerse where you are, learn the culture, learn the language at least to a certain degree that you can. 
 6:52: You know, get by and, and really kind of be very, in some ways it helped me be very objective and neutral when I was observing the consumers and really trying to see as to how we can serve them better. 
 7:04: But, you know, I was in China for about 5 years. 
 7:08: Those were early days for PNG, to get started in China. 
 7:13: 1995 to 2000 and then I moved to US, you know, in 2000 and again a big change, a lot of our businesses, you know, I spent more time in China than in India and a lot of our businesses in China were more beauty related. 
 7:27: I moved to, US and of course US, being PNG's. 
 7:34: Head office and as well as where PNG started from, you know, we had a very huge portfolio and we have today a very huge portfolio of the verticals that we play in the brands that we have. 
 7:45: So it was absolutely very fascinating and amazing. 
 7:48: And again, from a consumer standpoint, from a culture standpoint, very different from in India or China. 
 7:56: So again, I had another opportunity after a few years to immerse. 
 7:58: Myself into a new culture, learn from that, become part of that work with consumers, spend time with consumers, which is the beauty of our jobs, right? 
 8:08: In many jobs, if you're in office, you only get that much experience about a country or a place, but in our work, in my work, I get to meet consumers everywhere, so it truly allows me to immerse in that and let that become part of me. 
 8:24: We have something in common, Katy. 
 8:26: I didn't know because I also left my country in 2000 to move to the US. 
 8:30: I then left since then, but I can very much relate to that time. 
 8:34: , do you still have time to to talk to, to your senior level to talk to consumers, as often? 
 8:41: Absolutely. 
 8:42: At PNG there is, no level at which you do not talk to the consumers, like, right up to our CEO. 
 8:50: So we truly believe in it, and it is so fundamental to who we are and what we do, that the starting point. 
 8:57: For us always becomes the consumer. 
 9:00: we are, a very consumer centric company. 
 9:03: We always have been, in fact, as you might know, we actually starting from Jan one have a new CEO, Shelley Jajerikar, who's, who's taken on and one of his, the first emails that he sent out, you know, the words that he used in that was consumer first. 
 9:21: You know, so that is truly so embedded into the DNA of PNG, and it does not matter what level you are in, you always are looking forward to interacting with the consumers, observing them, listening to them, and making that part intuitively of the decisions that we make. 
 9:40: This is a very nice transition to the company, Keti, it still happens in our generation that people really stay long with one employer, but it's not normal and it's not normal in younger. 
 9:51: Now you had many options to go elsewhere and I think at this stage of, of our careers I can say this. 
 9:57: Why did you stay in PNG? 
 9:58: What was special about the place? 
 10:01: Yeah, yeah. 
 10:03: That's, it's a, it's a great question, and obviously, as you said that you think about it at different times in your careers and you make a choice about what you want to do, but to me, fundamentally, you know, as I said, and it started with my day one, which I was talking about earlier, the opportunity to do what I love. 
 10:25: And to truly look at myself every day in the mirror, in the eye, and say I'm working for a company that is focused on and truly dedicated to serving our consumers was continues to even till this day an inspiration for me. 
 10:44: , I can say that with zero hesitation and with complete conviction. 
 10:50: So that was definitely, it has been so close to how my, what my thinking is, how I think about, you know, consumer centric business models, and PNG has been, at least for me, a perfect place. 
 11:02: But the other thing which is there is that at least in a company like PNG, you're not doing the same thing every day. 
 11:08: , so I've had an opportunity to work on a variety. 
 11:13: We, we talked about the geographic spread that I've kind of had a, had a chance to work. 
 11:17: But if I kind of think about it, you know, I was mentioning that in China, I call it that, that was my startup that I was working on, which is a kind of, you know, we did an acquisition of Gillett in 2006, and I moved from Cincinnati to Boston to work on Gillette, which was, you know, as you can imagine, The, it was the biggest acquisition that PNG has made, so that gave me a completely different experience, to work on as to again a very successful company, a company with a lot of history. 
 11:49: in fact, I was working in, in what we call a Femcare business at that point in time, and we used to kind of say that Femcare has one of the highest shares globally in PNG, which was in the mid-30s, but you look at Gillette when we did the acquisition and their shares were north of 70, so. 
 12:05: Very successful company and just the opportunity to learn that a different business model, what made them successful, how do we bring the best of what Gillette had to offer and what PNG had to offer and, and make it one, right? 
 12:19: So the opportunity to work through an acquisition also had an opportunity to work for divestures, you know, I used to, I came back to US, I've gone back in between to Asia, came back to US and started working on our pet care businesses which we, which we divested. 
 12:33: So it's just that that even though yes, it is one company, just about any vector or anything that wants you to work for something different, I actually got all those opportunities within PNG whether it was working on a different business, whether it was working for a different market, whether it was working in different business environments of startups, acquisitions, divestures, but it happened for me all within PNG. 
 12:57: It's not been the same day or the same year ever. 
 13:02: Wow, fascinating, Kerti. 
 13:04: I wanna come back to your first day in PNG and your, I would say current job, you're overseeing all the analytics in PNG and the consumer-centric organization as you emphasized, and I think that focus predates you and us. 
 13:19: Because there's, I think the famous, Doc Smeltzer, question with the ivory soap. 
 13:25: So, what, so walk us through, you know, how over your career, the analytics function has changed, but also what you as the Chief Analytics Officer put most focus on. 
 13:38: Yeah, I know that it's a great point, Wolfgan and for those who are, not that familiar, you know, now, actually 102 years ago, it had happened that we had PNG had a gentleman by the name of Doc Smelser. 
 13:54: , and market research as a field did not really exist. 
 13:59: It did not exist in, any of the companies at that point in time, so he was not working on market research at PNG. 
 14:06: Doc Smeltzer was actually a commodity pricing forecaster, and his background was a PhD in economics, but he was a very curious mind, and he asked what you were quoting was one of the questions in, on our ivory brand. 
 14:21: , which was the do we know how many women use ivory to do their dishes versus hands and face. 
 14:31: And the truth was we did not know the answer. 
 14:34: And that was the start of research and consumer understanding at PNG because Mr. 
 14:39: Proctor, who was the grandson of our original founder, he looked at him and said, OK, you've asked the question, go figure it out. 
 14:47: You know, and that was really the start. 
 14:49: But what it does put to you is that it, one puts a lot of onus on you to carry forward what started in this very company. 
 15:00: It gives you roots, you know, and that story itself shaped how, what B&G's culture is. 
 15:07: , which is again to go back and keep going back and get our inspirations and get our answers from the consumers and base our brand strategies, our business strategies on truly starting from the consumer, so the consumer kind of comes first and that part of our thinking of our culture, on our belief has not changed over these 100 years. 
 15:32: Now what of course has changed and continues to change and it is changing as we speak is how we go about doing the work. 
 15:39: , And we have an internal, you know, fun slide, which, which is titled The Unofficial History of Market Research. 
 15:49: And it kind of goes over that 100 year period that we are talking about and it really kind of links in some of the external changes which were happening and how it was impacting how we do our research, you know, so the widespread use of telephones and telephone interviews at a at a point in time, you know, the widespread then coming off the internet, and how that made some of the work that we do online. 
 16:19: , right, and all of those things and of course in today's age AI, but how we go about doing the work has changed dramatically. 
 16:28: But the focus and the dedication of starting with the consumer, observing, listening, getting the insights from the consumer and bring it, bringing it alive to what the choices that we make on our brands and businesses, that continues to be the same. 
 16:44: , Kitty, I want to shift to emerging markets which again your, your biography is connected to, and what's called the addressable target. 
 16:53: We see at least at World Data Lab, a rapid rise of the middle class actually against what people sometimes believe in Europe and the US. 
 17:01: But also I, I, we know, and it's, I think public knowledge that PNG makes choices in terms of entering or exiting market in part of South Asia, Nigeria, I think Argentina among the list. 
 17:11: Walk us a bit through how you think about emerging markets today and how you make these choices. 
 17:16: Yeah, great question. 
 17:19: And, first of all, just to kind of, Ground us all and and you'll correct me, so the latest population on the planet is what, 7.5 billion, or are we getting close to 8 now? 
 17:33: Already above 8.15, yeah, yeah, so over 8 billion. 
 17:38: we serve more than 5.5 billion out of that. 
 17:43: So PNGs, if you kind of look at it, you step back because, you know, yes, we can think about it in terms of markets and because our thinking is grounded in consumers, we think in terms of the consumers. 
 17:55: So if you look at PNG's footprint. 
 17:57: , it is over 5.5 billion consumers, that we serve, which is a very big footprint for any company to have. 
 18:08: And, and there's a reason why, because the basic portfolio of brands that we have are brands that people use every day. 
 18:17: And the choice that we make on deciding our portfolio is that they are everyday use brands, but the consumer is able to discriminate performance on them, you know, that's because fundamentally our belief is that we give them superior experiences and we need the consumer to be able to make that out. 
 18:36: So at a very broad level, that's who we serve. 
 18:40: Now, if you kind of think about it from a, a market standpoint, of course, you know, China, we, we've already talked enough about, right? 
 18:48: It is one of the most important markets for PNG from a, a growth standpoint. 
 18:53: We continue to be, we have a very wide Footprint in China personally spent quite a bit of time in in in the country and so is true for India or Brazil or Mexico. 
 19:04: So if you kind of think about any of the major markets, Turkey, right, we can go on PNG is present in all of them. 
 19:11: our basic that thing kind of really becomes the choice that we kind of make is are we. 
 19:16: Best set up to serve those consumers, you know, that drives one element of our decision making and of course can we make a business model work for us in that market. 
 19:28: So those are the things that we kind of take into consideration and the choices we make at a given period of time given. 
 19:36: Some of the internal things as to what we can do and the external environment that our businesses need to operate, but fundamentally, you know, if you're kind of look at it from a consumer standpoint, PNG has one of the widest footprints. 
 19:50: So if you think on a more strategic company level KRT for the next 10 years, if you had to, on a high level summarize the balance between. 
 19:59: , advanced markets, OECD countries and emerging markets, where do you see the emphasis of the company? 
 20:06: , a, a very balanced approach to those, and, I can tell you that, you know, even when I think about, you know, if you think about the US, which is where we are based, I see just so much runway and so much growth opportunity. 
 20:20: For us in US itself, so that will continue to be a focus for us. 
 20:25: So what we really are looking for is where is it that we can serve consumers better and where is it that we can grow and we see opportunities everywhere, you know, we can, as you know that we play in many different verticals. 
 20:37: We've got a construct that we use which is called category. 
 20:40: Development, you know, which is basically a function of how much consumers are consuming a category in the population that is there so it's an index that's created from that standpoint and and in some of the cases actually US does not have the highest category development so we see opportunities and sometimes those benchmarks, you know, even. 
 21:02: Even the construct I feel of developed and emerging markets, the way we, you know, make sweeping generalization may or may not be as relevant in, in our context because in some of those things, you know, you could actually say that they are emerging, what are classified as emerging markets, which have got higher category development than even some of the. 
 21:22: Developed markets we actually see some of those ideas coming in from those emerging markets into developed markets and giving us a business growth opportunity. 
 21:30: So what we're really focused on is where is the growth opportunity and we see PNG having continuing to have a very balanced portfolio in that with a lot of runway for us to grow even in markets like US. 
 21:42: , very much, and I think we would sometimes publish on this and see it also both ways. 
 21:48: It's sometimes different strategies within countries and maybe to pick this up, on what you said, if you take the US now, we also spend a good amount of time. 
 21:57: If you take cut it in three, right? 
 21:59: One is gaining market share, another one is adding more consumers, and the third is premiumization. 
 22:05: Is it also a mix? 
 22:06: Among those three, or is the US in that sense tilted towards one of those three strategies, a great question. 
 22:14: And from our strategy standpoint, and which is maybe slightly different from, some of the other companies as to how they approach, what we are looking for with our focus on the consumers is how we can grow the market. 
 22:29: So how do you make the pie grow bigger, you know, so and we still see opportunities, of, of doing that, it leads us to again thinking about what are the consumer jobs to be done. 
 22:45: What are the ones that are being done well today and where does the opportunity lie and when you think about jobs we of course think about it, you know, it does start with a functional job, but then you can ladder it up to emotion, emotional jobs and social jobs but looking at it very in a very holistic manner but the thinking of really driving market growth and what does it take to make that happen, part of it, the insight comes from. 
 23:13: Thinking about the consumer jobs to be done, market share becomes a very important measure of our ability to do that if you're, because typically the strategies which enable you to drive market growth also enable you to grow share, but if you focus on driving market growth, you will get that if you just focus on driving market share, it sometimes takes you to actions which may not be value accreting from an overall industrial standpoint. 
 23:41: So well put. 
 23:42: Thanks so much, Kerti. 
 23:43: I have one more broader question before we wrap up. 
 23:47: the obviously the digital transformation is all upon us. 
 23:51: Also it disrupts your industry. 
 23:54: give us your perspective on, on what's, how the analytics profession is changing and how, what role AI changes, how AII changes that, but also, I think recently you gave a talk and it was called Data Is Human. 
 24:07: So put it also in that context. 
 24:09: , yes, I mean, I, I'll start with data as human because even for us, you know, everything does start with the consumer, you know, so the, the, the data that matters most to us and what we never want to forget is, is consumer data. 
 24:25: So it comes from the consumer, which actually has got a big meaning for, for us and for me, because if it comes from the consumer, you treat it with respect, you treat it with the, with the diligence that it deserves. 
 24:40: Because it's not just, you know, a number, it is something which is truly a behavior or a capture of a particular consumer. 
 24:50: So if you kind of think about all the implications from a privacy and all standpoint, you know, our mindset really kind of becomes that this is consumer data. 
 25:00: It is human and we treat it like we would like a human to be treated. 
 25:04: So that's kind of, you know, a little bit of the thinking behind that. 
 25:07: But what an exciting time to be in this space. 
 25:10: Right, I mean this is we, we talk about that there've been different S curves of the industry which have happened with the advancements in technology. 
 25:18: I mean the last one was, before the AI one, the big one was of course the start of the Internet because I actually remember a time when we used to have paper and pencil to ask questions to consumers. 
 25:28: So of course a big change from, from that standpoint as internet happened, but I think AI has got even bigger potential to drive change. 
 25:38: , I think in the piece a little bit of my kind of thinking is that in the short term, particularly a year ago as to where we were, we were overestimating the impact that AI will have immediately and in the long term I think we are underestimating the impact that it is likely to have. 
 25:59: So it has got a lot of potential, but it also has got a lot of way to go. 
 26:04: And right now the best insights and the best applications that we are driving is our ability to leverage the best of human and AI put together. 
 26:15: The human plus AI is where we are kind of, so it is not as independent as in future it may have potential, to be, but it definitely takes away some of the least interesting part. 
 26:28: our jobs, you know, kind of a thing, and that's a, that's a relief from my standpoint, you know, so the very basic, highly codifiable things, it can do it much faster, much more simply, and it doesn't get bored like we do. 
 26:41: So I think that's actually almost a relief. 
 26:43: It's a great that thing, and we can kind of do the things which we really need to do, which is really make choices on really what the benchmarks are, what are our success criteria are, what are our standards. 
 26:53: Standards are and how do we leverage everything that we're getting out of it to really make choices on our brands, so the way that we are working on is really it's human plus AI is how I see at this point in time it coming together, but the benefits of what it has driven to us in terms of times, in terms of productivity, and in terms of growth ideas it just shows the potential that AI has for the future future. 
 27:18: I, I like that line, Kirti, that I hate, AI doesn't get bored as we do. 
 27:21: That's actually a very good line. 
 27:24: Kirti, we end this podcast always with the same question. 
 27:28: even if you're not prepared, it doesn't matter cause you'll do this spontaneously, which is, what is your favorite number? 
 27:34: Do you have a number that relates to you and do you have a story around a favorite number? 
 27:39: Well, I'm a in some ways a numbers guy, so I like all numbers, but if I was to pick one, I would actually pick one. 
 27:48: , and the reason why I picked one is one, that it's very simple, right? 
 27:54: It's a, it's a, it's a simple number, and you, you know, when you, anybody who's, into mathematics, you know, the simplest multiplications and divisions that you can do is the ones that involve one. 
 28:08: So it's a very simple number to kind of have it. 
 28:10: Everybody wants to be one. 
 28:13: We want our brands to be number one in the categories that they play. 
 28:18: We want PNG to be number one. 
 28:20: I'm sure you want your podcast to be the number one podcast on data, so everybody wants to be number one, but perhaps to me the most inspiring thing is where we started. 
 28:31: You know, because one represents the start of something, and that feeling is always full of curiosity, full of anticipation, full of excitement, you know, we actually have a concept at PNG. 
 28:44: I was talking about my first day at PNG, which was a long, long time back, but we now have a concept at PNG and we. 
 28:50: Call it day one at PNG and we have many of our people giving stories about what they did on their day one of PNG, which is just, you know, the first day of joining a company, the first day in college, the first day in school. 
 29:04: I just think one brings a lot of positive emotion to it. 
 29:10: What a wonderful story, Kerty. 
 29:11: You are also the first one in the podcast who uses one in such an inspiring way. 
 29:16: So well, well done on this. 
 29:18: thank you so much, Kerty, a man of great experience, a man of great passion, and a man of great memory, I must say, but you still remember from the Lonely Planet and on your day one, it's just amazing. 
 29:28: Really, thank you so much for being on the show. 
 29:30: Thanks so much. 
 29:31: Have a good one.