An Interview with Raj Shah, CEO of Coherent Market Insights Pvt. Ltd. ‘We Analyse the Industry from a 360 Degree Perspective That Enables Us to Provide Granular Details of the Entire Ecosystem’

“We meticulously study emerging trends across various industries at both the global and regional levels to identify new business opportunities for our clientele.”

The operating environment for global organizations is increasingly getting complex. This has left organizations playing catch-up with constantly emerging new business strategies. There is a growing demand for inclusion of best-consulting services in sync with the organization’s business strategy. Transformation of functional areas can and should be integrated into every industry.

In light of the foregoing, we’re thrilled to present Coherent Market Insights (CMI).

CMI is a global market intelligence and consulting organization focused on assisting its plethora of clients to achieve transformational growth by helping them make critical business decisions. Its client base includes players from across various business verticals in over 100 countries worldwide.

CMI is uniquely positioned to help businesses around the globe deliver practical and lasting results through various recommendations on operational improvements, strategic raodmap, emerging market trends, and untapped revenue opportunities. The company offers both customized and syndicated market research reports, and strategy consulting services, that help its clients create visionary growth plans for their business.

CMI is headquartered in India and has an additional office location at Global Financial Capital in the United States.

Raj Shah, Coherent Market Insights CEO, spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review. Below is an excerpt.

Q. Why was the company set up? How did you stand unique, and diversified on the global platform?

As a strategy consultant spending a lot of years in the industry, there was absolute need of meeting the gap that prevailed between business objectives of the potential clients, and the existing offerings of the management consulting players. To bridge this gap, CMI was established. Our close interactions with clients enabled us to provide definite market intelligence and consulting services to help them take critical strategic decisions.

CMI takes pride in constantly striving to have in-depth understanding of the market by closely monitoring and analyzing markets, trends, and emerging best practices, across ecosystem of various industry verticals. This enables us to equip our valued clientele with key decisive inputs to capitalize on lucrative growth opportunities in the market and to firmly position themselves on a high growth path in the future.

The organization, in the recent years, has grown leaps and bounds and takes pride in catering to clients across the length and width of the horizon, from Fortune 500 enlisted companies to startups which are seeking to establish a foothold in the market.

Q. What is the USP of the organization? What do you feel are the reasons for the popularity of your organization?

Our Unique Selling Proposition is our research methodology adopted for the projects. The company analyses the industry from a 360 Degree Perspective i.e. from the supply side and demand side which enables us to provide granular details of the entire ecosystem. The data analytics techniques, used after the data collection process, enables us to provides the most accurate and actionable insights to our clients.

The company uses various emerging research techniques including micro surveys, text analytics, mobile ethnography, predictive analytics, and big data analytics. As a part of these techniques, we use several statistical methods such as multiple regression, discriminant analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, conjoint analysis, which further refines our estimates, analysis, and insights provided to our clients.

In addition to the research methodology, we are known for our value proposition of ‘Customer First’, which in turn helps us retain clients for future businesses. This approach followed by us has been bought by the Big four consulting firms and we are their preferred outsourcing partner as well.

“We, not just advise, but also operationalize in our retainer service model”.

Q. What kind of assignments does CMI undertake, or what kind of services have you been offering globally?

CMI has been helping clients by providing them consulting services through feasibility studies, designing go-to-market strategy, potential absolute dollar opportunity analysis, ecosystem analysis (to optimize clients’ operations), future outlook (forecast), competitive assessment, risk assessment, product positioning, procurement analysis, identification of potential customers, and due diligence consulting assignments.

Q. What are the industry verticals you serve?

We serve a range of industry verticals such as Medical Devices, Biotechnology, Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare IT, Chemicals and Materials, Packaging, Consumer Goods, Consumer Electronics, Food and Beverage, Semiconductors and Automation, Industrial Electronics, Software and Services, Telecom, and Automotive sector.

Q. Would you like to share any of your projects that generated a huge impact on their business?

Project 1:

Client: U.S.-based conglomerate in specialty chemical and bulk chemicals

Client Objective: The client wanted to acquire a particular specialty chemical based business segment of a competitive firm. He wanted to understand the market size and growth of the industry in the United States over the course of five years. The client also wanted to understand industry dynamics, competitive landscape, and risks and mitigations associated with the industry.

Our Solution: CMI had tailor-made its offerings to best fit the client’s objective by offering customized and solution-oriented report on this industry. Our report proved useful to the client with real-time insights and demand-supply details for a host of target markets. In addition to that, we helped the client with competitive intelligence, by elucidating the revenues that the competitors’ specialty chemical based business segment was contributing, and the absolute dollar opportunity that competitor’s business segment will generate, if acquired by our client. CMI helped the client in understanding his position in the specialty chemical industry and anticipated the change that it would experience (in terms of its market share) if went ahead with the deal. The actionable insights from our end helped the client with the end-use demand of products including surfactants, polymers, and esters, and in turn, aided the client in taking a strategic decision on acquiring the business segment.

Conclusion: The client later acquired the business segment.

Q. How big is your organization today? Briefly explain the organizational structure?

We have more than 150 consultants (in-house) working with us across a range of the industry verticals (mentioned above), having 80+ cumulative industry experience. Apart from that, we have contract consultants working with us in more than 24 countries which help us to get regional insights. As a part of the research process, we tend to conduct primary research through interviews with the industry veterans and independent consultant. We have more than 22,000 veterans associated with us (across various industries), as a part of a reward program.

Q. ‘It is difficult to start a venture. But far more difficult to maintain it’. How would you and your team interpret this saying?

We agree with this statement as the challenges associated with each stage of the business life cycle changes, as we move up in the ladder. The early stage is more focused on building new clientele, but as we grow, and establish as a brand, it is imperative to focus on the sustainable business model, and advance in technological and operational capabilities, to create an effective path for future growth.

Q. Where do you see your company a couple of years from now?

We would continue building long-term and mutually beneficial strategic partnerships with our clients by providing end-to-end customized consulting services for all their unique research needs. We aim to cater to 80 percent of fortune 2000 companies across all verticals globally in the span of the next five years and act as a sole strategic market intelligence service provider for them.

Raj Shah: A Formidable Leader

Raj Shah is a seasoned strategy professional and business accelerator with global experience, from strategy to on-the-ground operational improvements. He is also acting as a strategy consultant for one of the leading online hyperlocal service providers in India, helping them critical strategic decisions. Mr. Shah focuses on automation, consumer electronics, telecom, and especially digital aspects/consumer-internet.

Raj usually spends his free time in talking to passionate entrepreneurs who are levering technology, and trying to make a difference to the society.

"We aim to cater to 80 percent of fortune 2000 companies globally in the span of the next five years, and act as a single strategic market intelligence service provider for them.”