Hari Subramanian

AI Shopping Assistants Become Table Stakes for Gen Z

I've been watching D2C brands scramble to keep up with Gen Z's shopping expectations for the past three years. Here's what actually drives the shift: it's not about being "cool" with AI anymore. It's about survival in a

Real P0 Retention: Fast-Track Playbook for Founders

I've watched hundreds of founders treat retention like a nice-to-have. They build gorgeous acquisition funnels, optimize ad spend to the penny, then wonder why their CAC keeps climbing while LTV stays flat. Here's what I've learned: Retention isn't a feature. It'

Women-First Personal Finance: From UPI Payments to Investing (AI-Powered Journeys)

I've been watching something fascinating happen in Indian fintech over the past two years. Women who started with basic UPI transactions for groceries and bill payments are now confidently building investment portfolios worth lakhs. This isn't just adoption: it's financial transformation at unprecedented speed.

Outsmarting the Calendar: Time-of-Day Offer Testing With AI

I've been watching D2C brands burn through marketing budgets for three years now, and there's one pattern that keeps showing up: they obsess over what to say but completely ignore when to say it. Most retention teams fire campaigns like clockwork: 10 AM Tuesday for email,

Why Copilot AI Beats Marketing Automation: MoEngage vs Semantic AI

I've been watching e-commerce brands burn through marketing budgets for three years now. The pattern is always the same: they implement MoEngage or Klaviyo, set up their cart abandonment flows, segment customers into basic buckets, and wonder why their retention campaigns feel like throwing darts in the dark.

What Founders Want: The Real Retention Tech Buying Journey

I've been watching D2C founders navigate retention tech decisions for three years now. Here's what actually drives their choices: and it's not what most vendors think. Last month, I sat with the founder of an early-stage beauty brand. Let's call her Sarah.

MECE Segmentation in AI Marketing: Overcoming Over-Messaging

I've been watching marketing teams burn through budgets for three years now, and here's what actually drives the waste: they're not messaging too little : they're messaging too much to the wrong people at the wrong frequency. Last month, I sat across from

Building Data-First Growth: Connecting Ads, Shopify & CRM

I've been watching brands burn millions on growth while sitting on goldmines of disconnected data. Here's what I learned from two recent conversations that changed how I think about data-first growth. The $40K Lesson: When Smart Brands Hit the Wall Last month, I sat with the

The AI Retention Advantage: Why Smart Brands Are Ditching One-Size-Fits-All Customer Strategies

Picture this: You're sending the same promotional email to your entire customer base, hoping it'll magically work for everyone. Meanwhile, your competitor is using AI to deliver jaw-dropping personalized experiences that make customers feel like VIPs. Guess who's winning the retention game? Here'

Boost Your ROAS Instantly with These 5 Dynamic Segmentation Tricks

Picture this: You're spending thousands on ads, but your ROAS is flatlining faster than a bad sitcom. Sound familiar? Here's the deal, static customer segments are so last decade. It's time to turbocharge your marketing with dynamic segmentation AI that adapts faster than you

Acquisition Costs vs. Retention ROI: The Agentic AI Advantage

Ready to buckle up for the most jaw-dropping shift in business strategy since the internet swooped in? Picture this: while your competitors are burning cash on acquisition like it's going out of style, you're about to discover the secret weapon that's turbocharging retention and

How Agentic AI Is Powering the Next Wave of Retention-First Growth (Niti AI Perspective)

Here's the reality that's hitting D2C brands like a freight train: customer acquisition costs have exploded by 40% since 2023, while everyone's still playing the same old acquisition game. But here's where it gets exciting, the smartest companies aren't just

Integrated, Margin-Aware Retention vs. Just Another Omnichannel Tool: Your Niti AI FAQ & Guide

You're drowning in retention tools that promise the world but deliver campaigns that eat your margins alive. Sound familiar? Here's the deal: most "omnichannel" platforms are basically fancy message schedulers dressed up as retention powerhouses. They'll blast your customers with discounts faster

December Unwrapped: We're Building Workers, Not Tools | Niti AI Manifesto, Dec 2025

Niti AI | Dec 2025 Our Manifesto Hey there! 👋 December was our most transformative month yet. We didn't just ship features: we fundamentally reimagined how AI agents work for B2C growth teams. We rebuilt our entire architecture around real marketing roles, codified our product philosophy into the 3Cs framework,

Anatomy of a Product-Led Win: From Value Moment to Raving Fan (A Disguised Case Study)

I'll be honest , I would've been the marketing director who rolled their eyes at "AI-powered retention." After three years of watching vendors demo their "revolutionary dashboards" that basically showed me what I already knew (churn is bad, retention is good), I'

Beyond Pretty Dashboards: Does Your AI Actually Do the Work?

I've been watching D2C brands obsess over AI dashboards for two years now. Colorful charts showing "70% AI adoption rates." Graphs tracking prompt counts and user engagement. Executive presentations full of pretty visualizations about their "AI transformation." Then you ask the hard question: "

The Complete Growth Stack in 2026: From Data Infrastructure to Strategic Intelligence

The modern growth stack is changing. For the past decade, marketing technology evolved through three distinct layers: data collection, data unification, and execution automation. Companies invested billions building better pipes—faster data syncs, cleaner profiles, more integrations. But in 2024, a fourth layer emerged: Strategic Intelligence. This isn't

Segment vs Niti AI: When Infrastructure Meets Intelligence

Five years ago, Segment solved marketing's hardest infrastructure problem. They got customer data out of silos. They created a single source of truth. They made it possible to collect once, send everywhere—across 450+ destinations, in real-time, with perfect reliability. Today, 25,000+ companies use Segment. The pipes

Retention Stats D2C Teams Need On Their Fridge for 2025

I've been watching D2C teams obsess over acquisition metrics while their retention numbers collect dust in spreadsheets. Here's the thing: the brands winning market share right now have their retention stats memorized. Not buried in dashboards. Not in monthly reports. On their fridge. Where they see

Universal Commerce Protocol: Will Agentic E-Commerce Finally Take Off?

I've watched commerce protocols promise to "revolutionize shopping" for the better part of a decade. Most die quiet deaths in GitHub repositories, abandoned by the same companies that announced them with fanfare. So when Google unveiled the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) at the National Retail Federation

AI Shopping Assistants Become Table Stakes for Gen Z

I've been watching D2C brands scramble to keep up with Gen Z's shopping expectations for the past three years. Here's what actually drives the shift: it's not about being "cool" with AI anymore. It's about survival in a

The 3Cs Framework: Why 'Credible' AI Beats 'Cool' AI (No More Theater: Just Results)

I've been watching e-commerce brands get burned by AI theater for two years now. They deploy dashboards that look like mission control but can't tell you why conversion dropped 12% last Tuesday. They integrate GPT wrappers that generate endless content but miss the one insight that

Hightouch vs Niti AI: When Tools Meet Workers

Your marketing team is three people doing the work of ten. They're analysing customer data in spreadsheets. Building segments manually. Guessing at campaign strategies. Testing offers one at a time. Hoping something works before the next board meeting. You've looked at solutions. Hightouch can optimize your

Agentic Retention AI vs. Legacy SaaS: What Actually Delivers Results? (Comparison Guide)

Picture this: you're bleeding customers faster than you can acquire them, your retention campaigns feel like throwing darts blindfolded, and your "sophisticated" CRM is about as smart as a brick. Sound familiar? Here's the deal – we're living through the biggest shift in

AI

Why Agentic AI Platforms Are Overtaking Legacy Brands in Retention Strategy: 2025 Edition

Picture this: It's 2025, and your customer retention strategy is still running on legacy SaaS tools from 2020. You're basically bringing a butter knife to a laser gun fight! While you're manually segmenting customers and sending batch emails, agentic AI platforms are swooping in