From AI to ROAS: DS Group’s Rajeev Jain on digital marketing’s next frontier
Adgully Bureau
| 19 minutes ago
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Dharampal Satyapal Group (DS Group), a leading FMCG conglomerate and multi-business corporation, in collaboration with WPP Media and MICA (Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad), recently launched DCODE 2.0 – The Guide to Digital Marketing, an evolved and expanded edition of its comprehensive digital marketing playbook.
Building on the foundation of its first edition, DCODE 2.0 reflects the rapidly changing digital marketing landscape, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) integrated across the entire spectrum of digital marketing. Rather than treating AI as a standalone subject, the playbook explores its application across disciplines including Search, Paid Media, Performance Marketing, Content & Creative and other key areas, reflecting its growing role as an integral part of the modern marketer’s toolkit.
In conversation with Adgully,Rajeev Jain, Senior Vice President, Corporate Marketing, DS Group, shares some key insights on DCODE 2.0 and the larger shifts redefining digital marketing in India.
What were the core gaps or friction points in India’s current digital landscape that made updating this playbook an absolute necessity?
To understand the necessity of this update, it helps to look at the background of Decode and why we initially launched Decode 1.0 before moving to 2.0. The digital landscape involves an immense variety of activities and significant complexities. Following a proper system, analytical mindset, and data-driven approach is essential to bring efficiency to digital execution, whether in paid media, performance marketing, e-commerce, social media, influencer marketing, SEO, or ORM. Digital offers extensive options for targeting and profiling consumers based on intent, in-market signals, and affinity; however, knowledge across the industry remains highly fragmented as everyone continuously learns and adapts to emerging trends.
When we created Decode 1.0, our goal was to consolidate this fragmented knowledge into a single practitioner guide, initially developed for our in-house teams at DS Group. When our digital agency partner, WPP, saw the manual, they recognized its value, validated the content, and contributed their own expertise and refinements. Because digital practices evolve rapidly, what works today may no longer hold valid tomorrow as new tools and technologies emerge. Decode 1.0 did not cover AI, but with AI reaching a user base of nearly 35 to 40 crore (350–400 million) in India, it has quickly entered the mainstream and now intervenes heavily in digital execution.
In Decode 2.0, we fully integrated AI alongside updated strategies for channels that have evolved over the past year. Furthermore, we expanded our client-agency collaboration with DS Group and WPP by bringing in academic rigor from MICA, a premier institute for media and advertising. Their research and studies add immense depth, making Decode 2.0 a comprehensive guide that we plan to update annually as digital practices continue to evolve.
How is AI fundamentally altering core marketing decisions, like audience segmentation, media planning, and consumer lifetime value predictions for you?
We are leveraging AI across several core operational areas, starting with search and discovery. Consumers no longer use search platforms merely for basic queries; they now use AI-driven platforms for product discovery, evaluation, and direct shopping, which has fundamentally restructured the traditional sales funnel. Brands previously competed primarily for consumer attention, but today we are competing for algorithmic recommendation. At DS Group, we focus heavily on AI-driven search to ensure our brands enter the consideration and recommendation stages during category searches, after which product quality and reliability drive repeat purchases and advocacy.
When it comes to content, traditional high-budget commercial shoots remain vital for building emotional connections and long-term brand love, as actual humans often forge better emotional bonds than AI-generated imagery. However, AI is invaluable for speed and scale in tactical executions, such as festival campaigns, promotional offers, moment marketing, local language adaptations, and creative resizing across various digital aspect ratios. In performance marketing, where audiences are fragmented, platform-native AI tools like Performance Max and Advantage+ help us target high-intent consumers, minimize impression waste, and improve Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). AI also enhances predictive modeling, allowing us to evaluate an influencer’s past behavior and engagement trends to forecast campaign conversion quality rather than relying solely on follower counts. Finally, AI sentiment analysis tools scan real-time, organic social media interactions to give us authentic, unprompted insights into consumer motivations and purchase barriers.
Vanity metrics like impressions and clicks are losing relevance among boardrooms. What specific frameworks are introduced in DCODE 2.0 to help marketers tie digital investments directly to business outcomes?
In Decode 2.0, we structure digital strategy around the Paid, Owned, and Earned (POE) Media Framework. Paid media allows us to scale reach and awareness across performance and e-commerce channels aligned with specific budgets and targets. Owned media encompasses total brand-controlled assets, including websites, mobile apps, email, chatbots, messaging, and search environments. Earned media covers organic visibility generated through PR, content sharing, influencer executions, and social media interactions. Within this framework, social media interactions and sentiment analysis serve as meaningful indicators of consumer engagement and brand recall rather than superficial numbers. Impressions merely represent campaign outputs, whereas our focus is on generating actual business outcomes through a coordinated presence across every consumer touchpoint.
What unique perspectives did bringing together DS Group, MICA, and WPP Media bring to this framework, and how does this tripartite model benefit the wider marketing fraternity?
Spanning roughly 850 to 860 pages,Decode 2.0pools collective industry wisdom into a single end-to-end resource guide. Digital execution involves significant operational friction, and many practitioners struggle with targeting nuances, consumer profiling, objective setting, mid-campaign optimization, and post-campaign analysis. To address these challenges, the guide provides detailed process flowcharts, standardized templates, and real-world practitioner frameworks. By unifying client perspectives from DS Group, agency execution experience from WPP, and academic research from MICA, the publication serves as a practical knowledge bank for experienced marketers, industry practitioners, and students alike.
A new playbook is only as effective as the teams implementing it. How are you restructuring its internal marketing capabilities and upskilling talent to execute DCODE 2.0’s AI-driven and integrated approach?
Decode was originally created as an internal training manual to upskill our own teams and ensure everyone was well-versed in digital best practices. Once WPP validated its quality for the broader market, we decided to make it an open-source resource. Internally, we continue to use Decode as our primary training manual across all marketing divisions, updating our team every year on emerging practices, AI integration, operational efficiency, and cost optimization. We strongly believe that knowledge should be shared, and bringing MICA into the fold ensures the playbook also serves the student community and elevates the entire marketing fraternity.
With the rapid rise of quick commerce, regional internet users, and changing consumer discovery journeys, what does the next phase of India’s digital ecosystem look like, and how should FMCG and consumer brand strategies evolve to match it?
The digital landscape is being reshaped by a rising demand for hyper-customization, as well as the influx of regional and digital-first competitors in the e-commerce and quick-commerce spaces. This environment requires national brands to compete with agile regional players, but it also opens up immense opportunities by expanding the digital shelf. For instance, a physical retail store may only stock fast-moving SKUs from ourCatch Spicesrange, which consists of over 300 SKUs. On e-commerce and quick-commerce platforms, consumers can discover our full product range, bringing niche variants into their consideration set. Research indicates that nearly 20% of e-commerce sales last year were non-essential impulse purchases triggered when consumers discovered products online.
As a result, marketing budgets are shifting heavily toward e-commerce and quick commerce, though the strategy varies by category. While cooking spices see high quick-commerce conversion, impulse confectionery items like Pulse Candy continue to sell predominantly in physical retail, unless packaged in specialized bulk or gift sets for online platforms. Ultimately, we are seeing a convergence of physical and digital retail, where consumers frequently discover products offline and purchase online, or vice versa. Marketers must continuously study and adapt to this complex, hybrid customer journey.
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exclusives21-Oct-2026DS GroupCorporate MarketingSenior Vice PresidentRajeev Jain
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