OCBC hires Coca-Cola talent to ramp up digital marketing and martech

OCBC Bank Singapore has appointed Harish Kundargi (pictured) as head of digital marketing and martech. Kundargi said in a LinkedIn post that it is an incredible opportunity to "play a part in the massive digital transformation journey". He will report to Wyson Lim, CMO at OCBC. 

Kundargi told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE that, in his new role, he will be looking to revamp the digital marketing, martech stack and media spends to drive holistic consumer journey analysis and contribute to growth across several product lines. "It's an exciting opportunity to contribute towards the next phase of growth for the Bank as it transforms itself to lead in the digital world," he said.

Kundargi was formerly with The Coca-Cola Company for over three years, most recently helming the position of head of digital platforms - ASEAN and South Pacific operating unit, according to his LinkedIn. During his time there, he drove the set up of APAC consumer data platform to act as the unifying touch point for all data attributes and consumer engagement platform for driving reusability for consumer promotion set up, Kundargi said. He also contributed to growing the brand's eCommerce business across Southeast Asia when COVID-19 hit to drive online sales growth.

Prior to that, he worked at John Wiley and Sons as senior business analyst for marketing operations and process improvement, digital transformation and CX for three and a half years. According to his LinkedIn, he managed the execution of global marketing campaigns with in-house and outsourced partners across APAC, NA, EMEA and shared best practices for orchestrating multi-channel campaigns.

Kundargi was later appointed as associate director - global marketing for technology, data and analytics and digital transformation in the company. Some of his responsibilities included building and managing the global digital marketing technology team to define strategic direction and identify key revenue, customer experience drivers, streamline usage of toolsets and optimise operational costs, as well as conceptualised and developing a martech architecture blueprint to depict various customer touchpoints in correlation to marketing engagements and the underlying martech that drives them. Kundargi was also previously lead business analyst - digital banking product management at Citi where he was lead product business analyst for online payments, alerts management, dashboard and core digital banking functions. 

According to Kundargi's LinkedIn, he has also held business analyst positions in media and publishing and banking services back when he was in India working in companies such as Wipro Technologies and Mahinda Satyam.

OCBC has declined to comment.

Recently, OCBC has come under intense scrutiny following a surge in SMS phishing scams posing as the bank. OCBC has since begun making goodwill payouts to customers who fell prey to the scams. The payouts, which started on 8 January 2022, are given to affected customers after thorough verification, taking into account the circumstances of each case, OCBC said in a statement. Affected customers will be contacted as soon as the review and validation of their case is complete. Over 30 customers have received the payouts, as of 20 January 2022.

Customers were subjected to a "particularly aggressive and highly coordinated" phishing scam since 3 December last year. The scam involved sending customers messages with "too good to be true" deals. OCBC's investigations had confirmed that victims who had fallen prey had provided their online banking log-in credentials to phishing websites.

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