Shravan Shetty, Career Coach Interviews Anoop Kudva. Anup Kudva A versatile and decisive marketing professional with 15 years of experience in diverse aspects of marketing with proven track record of marketing strategy, integrated marketing campaigns, public relations and lead generation. This interview was done in early 2020 when Anoop was with Merit Trac

1. Anoop Kudva,
Manager – Strategic Marketing
Shravan Shetty
( Career Coach)
The Career Interview

2. Lets Explore Careers
Anoop Kudva is a versatile and decisive marketing
professional with 15 years of experience in diverse
aspects of marketing with proven track record of
marketing strategy, integrated marketing campaigns,
public relations and lead generation.
Marketing Strategy| Performance Marketing | Public
Relations |Brand Management | Business Storytelling |
Competitive Analysis | Team Management |
Stakeholder Management
At the time of the interview he was Manager –
Strategic Marketing with Merit Trac Services

3. Current designation---------0
Manager – Strategic Marketing

4. What are your main responsibilities as a Marketing
Manager ?
Typically, marketing is responsible for taking the
product and services into the markets. The key lies in
promoting and positioning the product / services and
the value preposition that motivates your buyer. A
marketing manager’s role is always diverse and
interesting – and can depend on several factors – size
of the organisation, the breadth of the business, nature
of the business, to name a few. While marketing roles
can be extremely broad, it primarily revolves around
website management, social media management,
content management, data analysis, PR / Corporate
communications, besides driving leads for the business.

5. What is a typical day (or week) like for you?
Typically, my day starts with looking at the lead
reports and ensuring that every business lead that
has been generated is assigned to the respective
salesperson responsible for the region / vertical /
business. Evaluating the quality, disposition and the
marketing contribution to the revenue is a key
performance metric for not only the business, but
also the marketing team. A good amount of time is
also spent on planning, execution and measurement
of campaigns – online, offline, events, PR and
market reports; not to mention the frequent reviews –
of the business, of strategies, with the teams
(functional and cross functional) and the bosses!

6. What do you like most about your work?
I’m excited about how varied the role is – always looking
out for new opportunities, tracking competition and
driving the business strategies across the markets in
which the company operates, always keeps me
motivated.

7. What do you like least about your work?
What do you like least about your work?
Honestly, nothing that I can really think of at the top of
my mind. Almost a decade into a marketing career, each
day has brought in new learnings and making you better
every single day! Why would you not like anything about
one such job?

8. What kinds of problems do you deal with?
If I were to keep it simple, “Dynamics of the world” is
what every marketing professional deals with, every
day. With evolving business models and rapid changes
in the way we do businesses, it can be challenging and
at the same time extremely interesting to cope with.

9. What kinds of decisions do you make?
I’m primarily responsible for all the marketing related
decisions for my organisations. The more important
ones are – The kind of campaigns that should run, the
annual marketing plan and strategies that roll up to it,
utilisation of budgets, to name a few, as they are most
closely aligned to the business objectives. Other
decisions could involve evaluations and data driven
decision making that involves – the kind of agencies
to work with, the allocation of leads, and so on.

10. How does your position fit within the
organization/career field/industry?
Marketing, in close conjunction with sales, is a business
driving function – the only difference being – sales
activities have a direct impact on the revenue and
marketing efforts yield over a period of time. However
this can change from business to business keeping in
mind the product/service offerings and the target
audiences. In B2C orgranisations, Marketing plays a vital
role, as it has a lot to do with addressing the masses. On
the other hand, B2B organisations would be far more
focussed and the marketing teams work closely on
certain short term objectives.

11. How does your job affect your general lifestyle?
“Affect? Did I hear it right?”
Well, every role has its fair share of challenges and I
would say that it would be organisation specific. If you
are to connect this with “work-life balance”, the larger
organisations – specifically the MNC’s offer a higher
worklife balance in contrast to other – rather the
smaller organisations. This is primarily due to the way
such organisations operate. Larger organisations have
clearly drafted policies and processes, which aid you
phenomenally in your work. Mid-sized organisations
would usually have its employees don multiple hats
thereby widening your scope of work. While they give
you high amount of exposure and learning experiences,
it could mean a busy day at work!

12. What current issues and trends in the field should I
know about/be aware of?
Back in the times, Marketing and Sales would be
interpreted as the same. However, they are different.
Marketing is more responsible for generating awareness
and driving thought leadership in the industry, while
Sales is the arm that monetises the products and
services. Simply put – “Marketing propagates, and sales
executes”
It is extremely important for a marketing professional to
know the industry trends, competitor analysis and try to
stay ahead of the game. However, marketing cannot do
this on its own, unless there is a high degree of cohesion
from product teams.

13. What are some common career paths in this field?
There are 2 ways to look at a career path – not just
marketing but in any field that you choose to be. I’d call
it width and depth. By depth, I’d mean that you start
with being an individual contributor and then go on to
lead teams and sub teams. This path is suited for those
who would have good management styles and lead
teams. By depth, one continues to be an individual
contributor, not having to manage teams and develops
an in-depth mastery over many aspects of the role.
Remember the old saying – “He/She is a great person
but a bad manager”?

14. What related fields should one consider looking
into?
Well, I love my job and would like to stick to Marketing
with whatever that is left out of me. However, should I
look at other fields, the closest would be “Product
Management” as it is closely aligned with Marketing.

15. How did you become interested in this field?
Marketing and sales was always a field that I was
interested in. Honestly, everyone does some amount of
marketing and sales in their life – It could be at the
interview table where one has to sell himself to the
recruiter or it could be as simple as having to convince
another person. While I started my career as a reporting
analyst, I would see how marketing teams would take
decisions basis the reports that I generated for them.
This really intrigued me further to go beyond my role to
understand what the marketing teams do for the
business, and that’s when the journey started.

16. How did you begin your career?
Coming from a family of retailers that was the only thing I
understood well back then. The first few years of my career took me
to the the retail industry – a leading soft drinks brand and largest
retailers in UK and US. Here, my roles span across – reporting
analyst, campaign management and shelf-space merchandising –
that helped me build a strong background to the various aspects of
marketing operations.
I then went on to join a FORTUNE 50 IT-organisation with an
industry marketing role and that’s when my career in core
marketing, really began. I spent 5 years there in various roles and
then moved to an Indian bigwig- a leading IT services solutions
company, where I had a short stint. I further went on to head
Marketing for a Norway based MNC that set foot into India, and was
into the licensing business. Having been in IT for a while, I sought to
change sector to lead marketing efforts for India’s largest
assessment company: where I had multiple business verticals – they
span across the Corporate, Education and Government business
verticals.

17. How do most people get into this field? What are
common entry-level jobs?
In today’s world, entry points can be many, and
largely depends on the strength of the individual.
One who is strong with content can start right there,
or one who has passion to design creatives can take
a creative route. With the advent of digitisation,
digital marketing can also be a good entry point into
marketing. While these are slightly specialised with
the changing trends today, one can merely onboard
a marketing team to wade his way through the
marketing operations and climb the way up to
meatier marketing roles.

18. How relevant to your work is your undergraduate
major?
Great Question! I’m a computer applications graduate
and a post graduate in marketing. While at one point it
seems irrelevant, technology touches us every day in
our life today, bringing in a fair bit of relevance. It
helps me manage our digital assets and the
technology that drives it – websites, social media
marketing, SEO/SEM, to call out a few important
ones.

19. What steps would you recommend I take to prepare
to enter this field?
While there are the academic credentials, a strong sense
of logic, backed with a passion to be on their toes, and
thinking out of the box – Is my judgement of someone
who can flourish on this role.

20. What kind of education, training, or background
does your job require?
Quite honestly, anyone could look at a marketing career.
However, considering the traditions under which we are
bound with, ideally someone with a commerce or
management degree can make the cut to entry level
roles. For roles that involve junior management, a
master’s degree in commerce or management, would be
appropriate.

21. What skills, abilities, and personal attributes are
essential to success in your job/this field?
Multitasking, logical reasoning and interpersonal
capabilities would be the key personal attributes that
should be inherent with a marketing professional. And
then, there can be acquired skills around campaign
management, digital marketing, content marketing,
marketing operations, and a lot more..

22. What is the profile of the person most recently hired at my
level?
The requisites can vary from organisation to organisation and it is
the result of a lot of dependant factors. To head marketing, one
should have atleast about 12+ years’ experience in marketing or a
related function. While it is desirable to have a management post
graduate, some of them even get there by virtue of their experience.
We recently hired someone on our team to lead the PR efforts who
had about 16 years of experience primarily in internal and external
communications, and educational qualifications in communication.
We also have hired someone to lead one of our IT academy
business, who has about 10 years of post-qualification work
experience and has a management degree from a teir -1 college. So,
Ideally it depends on the criticality of the role and the business
expectations from that role that decides the kind of candidate who
would be apt for a roles.

23. What are the most effective strategies for seeking a
position in this field?
For a fresher, it would be ideal to get into an internship
in the marketing vertical to assess and understand the
fitment to the role. Should there be opportunities in
marketing related fields, one can start with positions
like: Management Trainee, Marketing Executive,
Marketing Operations specialist, etc and work his way
up to a core marketing role. It isn’t that tough to find an
entry level marketing role, provided one is focussed and
keen to take one such role.

24. Can you recommend trade journals, magazines or
professional associations which would be helpful for
my professional development?
The business pages on any national newspaper is a good
start, as it gives one a perspective of a larger business
environment. Economic Times could be the best among
the lot. Other journals one could refer to are –
Advertisement Age, Forbes, Marketing Week. The many
publications from Harvard Business Review can also be
of tremendous help.

25. I’ve read that the entry-level salary range for this
field is usually in the range of ______?
Salaries are usually determined by various factors – size
of the organization, nature of business, experience, skills
and sometimes the pedigree of the B-school. A moderate
salary for a management post graduate would start
around 4 lakhs per annum and can go upwards.

26. What advice would you give someone who is
considering this type of job (or field)?
Be passionate about what you do!

27. https://www.linkedin.com/in/anoopkudva

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29. Thank You