In an exclusive conversation with BW Businessworld at the AI Impact Summit, Rajat Abbi, Vice President of Marketing for Greater India at Schneider Electric unpacks how the company is harnessing AI not just as a marketing accelerator, but as a transformative force embedded across its products, platforms, and people - all while navigating the complexities of data privacy, cybersecurity, and responsible adoption. From hyper-personalised campaigns spanning dozens of languages to AI-powered predictive maintenance on critical electrical infrastructure, Abbi offers a candid look at what it means to be a marketer and a global technology company in the age of intelligent infrastructure.
Excerpts:
How is AI enabling Schneider Electric to transition from product-led communication to predictive, insight-driven engagement across both B2B and consumer audiences?
We are an energy technology company, and we are leveraging AI in various ways. One, we are using AI in our products and solutions to make our customers more efficient. Our products and solutions cater to various end markets, from data centres, industries, infrastructure and grids to buildings and homes and so on. When customers buy these solutions, they are AI-powered. What these AI-powered solutions enable is predictive capability. Even before a fault is about to occur, can you predict its occurrence? That is predictive maintenance in a sense.
We are talking about electrical infrastructure, which is a very critical backbone for industries, buildings, healthcare etc. Using our EcoStruxure stack, which is an AI-powered, IoT-enabled platform, we ensure that our customers are able to predict any issues in their facilities on time.
We are also helping them become more efficient and more energy-efficient. AI is going to lead to a huge increase in demand for energy, but energy therefore has to be used more efficiently. Our solutions help customers ensure that the energy they consume is used in a more optimal and efficient way. If you use energy more optimally and efficiently, you reduce energy consumption. And if you reduce energy consumption, you become more sustainable.
We are also using AI in marketing in a big way. For example, using AI tools to buy media, develop content, create creatives and enable sharper targeting. However, because we are a responsible company and comply with privacy regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation, data privacy is number one for us.
We are not in a hurry to replicate. We first understand and learn, then evaluate whether those tools comply with privacy laws. Depending on the functionality of the tool, whether in marketing, sales, marketing automation, or any other product or solution we offer, we then decide to embrace those tools.
How is AI strengthening Schneider Electric’s dual brand architecture by enabling sharper targeting, deeper personalisation and more contextual storytelling across both enterprise and regional audiences?
India is a country of many countries because every few kilometres the audience profile changes. The expectations of consumers and customers change. Therefore, personalisation needs to be hyper-personalised.
Now, what AI helps us do is ensure that we are targeting the right people with the right messaging at the right time in a hyper-personalised way. In the older traditional way, when AI was not this active, it used to take many days or sometimes even months to create personalised messages. For example, if I had to run a campaign in maybe 50 languages, it would take a lot of time to develop that content, review the content and then release it. Now, using AI tools, we can do that in a much more optimal way.
This means I am able to reach the right target audience faster. I am also able to reach this target audience with more optimised content. At the same time, I am able to do a lot of experimentation.
For a technology company like Schneider Electric, we target multiple customer segments. We target CEOs, CXOs, architects, panel builders, distributors, end consumers, electricians and so on. Therefore, it becomes critical that we use the right tools to understand what type of content will resonate with each target audience so that the effectiveness of our communication improves.
A one-size-fits-all approach will not work because it is critical to understand what that particular target audience is looking for. Then you look at the features in your products and solutions and connect these two dots. You first understand the expectation, and then you use your core strengths and differentiation to deliver that message using cutting-edge AI tools at the right time and in the right way.
How is Schneider Electric leveraging agentic AI today, and how do you see its role evolving in the near future, especially as it differs from generative AI and fits within the broader sovereign AI conversation?
The world of AI is continuously evolving. For example, we use AI bots. If somebody comes to our website, we use an AI bot to help our consumers and different personas navigate and access the right content. We also use AI bots within our organisation to help employees find the right information. For instance, if I am looking for a policy, I don’t have to search through multiple documents. The bot helps me find the right document and the right information.
So there are many use cases where we are already using AI. You are right — whether it is generative AI or agentic AI, the landscape is evolving continuously. There are hundreds of AI tools coming up every day. As a company, what becomes critical for us is evaluating these tools carefully.
The number one criterion for us is: is the tool cyber-compliant? Cybersecurity is critical for us. Second, is the tool compliant with all data privacy laws? We do not want to use a tool in marketing and then later realise that we did not have the rights, IP, or trademarks to use that tool.
Therefore, we are cautious in evaluating new tools, understanding their data ownership, compliance, and how they fit into the overall ecosystem. We look at AI end-to-end. We are not looking at AI in silos. We look at how AI can help us make our customers better, how it can help our employees perform better, how it can enhance customer targeting, and how it can make us more efficient and optimal.
Eventually, as a marketer, I feel that AI is enabling marketers to become more efficient and productive. Operational and routine tasks can be handled by AI, allowing marketers to spend more time on strategic and creative thinking.
Since AI is transforming marketing, how do you see the role of a marketer evolving over the next few years, especially as AI advances rapidly and reshapes required skills and job security?
The role of a marketer will become even more important in the years to come because storytelling is going to be extremely critical and authenticity will matter a lot. If everyone is using the same tool, giving the same prompts, and getting similar outputs, then what will truly stand out is authenticity, freshness, and original thought.
AI generates output based on the prompt it receives. So what will differentiate brands is how original and thoughtful that input is. I see the role of marketing and marketers becoming even more significant because when everything starts looking similar, the organisations that stand out will be the ones driven by original thinking.
The best marketers and the best companies will be those who use AI as a catalyst for original thought. AI is not going to replace marketing. It will become a best friend to marketers, helping make content sharper, more creative, and more personalised.
I am a strong user of AI myself. I use a lot of AI tools, and they have helped me especially with operational tasks that earlier used to take a lot of time using traditional methods. Now those tasks are handled by AI tools. As a marketer, this gives me more time to think originally and challenge myself on what differentiation I can bring to the brand and the organisation in front of our target audience, so that we truly stand out.
In the age of intelligent infrastructure, how is the role of marketing evolving to ensure transparency, promote cybersecurity awareness, and advocate responsible AI adoption across mission-critical sectors like power, data centres, and buildings?
AI is going to lead to huge demand and consumption of energy. One of the most critical sectors that is going to see a boom is the data centre sector. More and more data centres are going to be constructed in India and across the globe. When more data centres are constructed, it means the energy demand will be massive.
We, at the India Impact Summit, what we are focusing on is the entire lifecycle of an AI-powered data centre. How do you design an AI-powered data centre? How do you build it? How do you operate it? And how do you maintain it?
Now, what is the role of marketing in all of this? First, the role of marketing is to embrace AI tools within the organisation and within the function. We need to understand what a tool can do and whether it is viable in the long term, because you cannot keep changing tools every month or every three months and keep experimenting endlessly. Experimentation is good, but too much experimentation is not good. So that is one aspect, how marketers embrace AI tools to make marketing more efficient, so they get more time for original thinking.
The second role of marketing from an AI perspective is to help the organisation understand what is happening in the AI world. Marketing sits at the heart of the organisation, so marketers are often aware of what is evolving externally. Therefore, the role of marketing is to ensure that the organisation is informed about developments in AI.
I think marketing will play a very important role in the overall scheme of things by ensuring that the organisation understands what is happening and how it is relevant. And AI, by the way, is not meant for just one department. Whether you are in digital, sales, marketing, finance, HR, or supply chain, every function is using and embracing AI in its own way. |
