Our cybersecurity posture involves perimeter & bot protection, encryption and MFA: Titan's CDIO

Titan Company Limited, commonly known as Titan, is one of India’s leading lifestyle companies, best known for its watches, jewelry, and eyewear. A part of the Tata Group, Titan was founded in 1984 and has since grown into a diversified conglomerate with brands like Tanishq, Fastrack, Titan Eye+ under its banner. The company has focused on customer engagement strategies and advanced use of technology to cater to its growing and rapidly evolving customer base, Krishnan Venkateswaran the Chief Digital and Information Officer told TechCircle in an interaction.  Notably, Titan's CaratLane acquisition in 2016 (all-out acquisition completed in 2023) further provided it with a digital-first brand and boosted its omnichannel presence. Edited excerpts:

How has Titan’s digital transformation journey evolved over time?

Titan celebrates 40 years of existence. Of that, over the past three decades, our company has leveraged information technology, automating key functions such as supply chain, finance, retail operations, and human resources. In 2017, we embarked on the next phase of our digital transformation, focusing on customer-facing solutions. This was driven by the rise of smartphones, e-commerce, and the growing demand for personalised experiences. We continue to harness the power of data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intellignece (AI) to deliver increasingly customised, timely, and relevant interactions to over 35 million of customers who engage with us. This digital transformation journey is ongoing, enhancing our enterprise and customer experience at every level.

We have hybrid engineering team with a talent base of 300 people. More recently, our acquisition of jewelry brand CaratLane has also lent us additional technology capability and innovation.

Many retail organisations are turning focus to omnichannel strategy. What does this segment mean for Titan?

Today, most customers begin their shopping journey digitally, even if they complete their purchases in-store. Whether it's jewelry, watches, or other products, they often check online via smartphones before visiting. To meet this demand, we engage customers through multiple channels — our website, app, WhatsApp, and more. However, we avoid pushing for online sales immediately. Instead, we guide customers toward visiting a nearby store, where they can have a hands-on experience, especially with high-value products that are better appreciated in person.

Our website includes store locators and prompts to encourage visits, making it seamless for customers to find us. We personalise communications through email, SMS, and WhatsApp, based on customer preferences and locations, offering a smooth transition from digital to in-store.

With a database of millions of our customers, our CRM activities are tightly integrated, providing store staff with cues to cross-sell and follow up post-visit. Our analytics are deeply rooted in understanding customer behavior, driving personalised outreach, and ensuring business relevance.

How do you customise and enhance customer experience?

We have multiple streams of data, from enterprise ERP systems supporting supply chain and store sales systems to our loyalty database. The first step is to unify this data into enterprise data warehouses in the cloud. Once all the information is consolidated, we use machine learning and analytics to identify patterns, such as customer profiles, segmentation, and forecasting.

All interactions, including customer care queries and feedback, are fed back into the system, updating customer profiles. This ensures secure, efficient data management and real-time response to customer needs.

You capture a lot of data across brands under the Titan banner. How do you make sure data privacy and integrity is maintained?

Every touchpoint is a potential service point due to data integration. Today, data comes in many forms — text, images, videos — and our ability to process this variety is constantly improving. We extract insights from video and automatically analyse customer reviews across public media to gauge sentiment. Each store receives its own feedback summary, and our soon to be launched AI-generated summaries will further help store teams quickly understand customer sentiment and suggest actionable steps.

Data collection is always handled with respect for consent and regional regulations. We use a third-party system to track customer consent at every stage. Data is encrypted, and for analysis, only anonymised data is used to protect customer identity.

How do you ensure a healthy cybersecurity posture of the company?

Five years ago, alongside our phase 2 digital transformation, we launched a multi-year program to secure our infrastructure. This involved deploying a range of technologies, including perimeter protection, encryption, multifactor authentication, and bot protection. 

We partnered with leading security providers to monitor system logs, detect patterns, and automate internal processes like onboarding and role changes. Continuous testing, including penetration testing and Red Team simulations, helps identify and address vulnerabilities. Additionally, we use a top-tier monitoring system that provides a security score recognised by cyber insurance companies.