CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Abhilash Madabhushi, Founder, Consuma
How has the digital revolution changed the way brands approach consumer research?
The digital revolution has fundamentally transformed consumer research by providing brands access to an unprecedented volume of real-time data. Platforms like Consuma AI leverage this digital goldmine—social media, forums, reviews, and other digital touchpoints—to extract actionable insights in minutes, not weeks. Traditional methods that relied on surveys and focus groups are no longer sufficient to keep up with the pace of consumer behavior and competitor innovation.
Brands now demand faster and more accurate insights to remain competitive. AI-powered tools, such as Consuma AI’s platform, contextualize vast amounts of unstructured data, making it possible to generate highly relevant reports tailored to specific problems. This shift ensures brands can pivot quickly and make data-driven decisions in a rapidly evolving marketplace
What are the biggest challenges businesses face today in understanding rapidly changing consumer behaviors?
- Speed of Change: Consumer preferences evolve faster than ever due to the influence of social media, e-commerce, and D2C innovations. Traditional research methods, which take weeks to deliver insights, can’t keep up with this pace.
- Reaching Younger Generations: Engaging Gen Z consumers has become increasingly difficult as they are less responsive to surveys and focus groups. They expect brands to anticipate their needs based on their digital behavior, making traditional methods obsolete.
- Volume and Complexity of Data: The explosion of digital data has created both opportunities and challenges. While there’s a wealth of information available, sifting through it to find meaningful insights requires advanced AI capabilities.
- Cost and Efficiency: Traditional research methods are not only slow but also expensive. Many businesses, especially smaller ones, struggle to justify the costs. AI-powered research platforms solve this by significantly reducing both time and expense.
- Bias and Relevance: Ensuring the data collected is unbiased and contextual to the brand’s specific needs is another hurdle. Without the right tools, brands risk basing decisions on inaccurate or irrelevant data
What is the scenario of AI-based market research methods in India and why is it helpful for companies?
Market Research as an industry hasn’t been disrupted in decades. With a consumer base that’s rapidly shifting preferences, and brands facing unprecedented competition, the old ways of doing research—painfully slow and riddled with inefficiencies—simply don’t cut it anymore. AI-based methods are stepping in to bridge the gap, offering faster, deeper, and more actionable insights.
In a market where decisions need to be made in days, not weeks, by processing millions of data points across social media, reviews, and forums, these tools deliver reports tailored to specific business problems in under 30 minutes. For Indian companies operating in an environment that’s as chaotic as it is opportunistic, this speed and precision are game-changers.
AI doesn’t just save time and money—it creates opportunities. It helps brands tap into the pulse of their consumers, spot emerging trends before they explode, and pivot in real-time. And here’s the kicker: it’s not just for the big players. AI is leveling the playing field, making cutting-edge research accessible to startups and mid-sized businesses, D2C and Quick Commerce alike.
Why is traditional market research struggling to keep pace with the speed of modern business needs?
In addition to the points mentioned in Question 2,
Speed: Product launches, marketing campaigns, and consumer trends move at the speed of light. Trends that previously lasted months now change in days. Traditional methods—think surveys, focus groups, and endless report iterations—take weeks, sometimes months. By the time insights land, they’re outdated and irrelevant.
Digital Consumers: Gen Z and millennials live online, sharing their preferences and opinions 24/7. But good luck trying to get them to fill out a survey or sit through a focus group. Traditional methods weren’t built for the digital age, leaving brands disconnected from their most valuable audiences. Even if they do, sample size is typically low and consumers don’t express everything due to the fear of judgement, let alone the biases
Cost vs. Value: Traditional research is expensive and doesn’t always justify its price tag. Brands are paying for limited sample sizes and generic insights without any ROI attached to it, while you can use AI to get highly specific, real-time answers at a fraction of the cost.
Actionable Insights, Not Just Data: Today’s businesses need more than data—they need insights that drive action. Traditional research dumps raw numbers; AI-powered tools translate them into strategic next steps.
What are some of the most common challenges you see market research companies facing today, and how do you address them?
Overcoming Data Overload
The explosion of digital data presents both an opportunity and a challenge. Sifting through massive volumes of unstructured data to find meaningful insights can overwhelm even experienced teams.
Consuma’s Autonomous AI agents analyze anywhere between 50K to 10M datapoints and contextualize this data, transforming it into structured, actionable reports without manual effort.
High Costs: Market research has long been a resource-intensive process, making it inaccessible to smaller businesses or those needing frequent research.
Our AI technology eliminates the overhead of traditional research methods, offering high-quality insights at a fraction of the cost. This democratizes access to advanced research tools for businesses of all sizes.
How do you see AI shaping the future of market research over the next 5–10 years?
- Real-Time Insights as the Standard
Over the next decade, the expectation for market research will shift from periodic reports to continuous, real-time insights. AI will enable brands to monitor consumer sentiment, competitor strategies, and market trends 24/7, allowing them to adapt instantly to changes. - Hyper-Personalization of Insights
AI will create highly tailored insights based on individual brand needs. By integrating with CRM systems, sales data, and consumer feedback, AI will deliver recommendations that are not only relevant but also actionable for specific campaigns, geographies, or products. - Automation of Routine Tasks
AI will take over manual, repetitive tasks like data collection, cleaning, and basic analysis. This will free up human researchers to focus on strategy, creativity, and intuition—areas where machines still fall short. - Broader Adoption Across Businesses
With falling costs and easier access to AI tools, small and medium-sized businesses, D2C and Quick Commerce will leverage advanced market research methods that were previously exclusive to large enterprises. This democratization of AI-powered research will level the competitive playing field.
Are there specific industries or sectors where AI-powered market research has become indispensable? Share some examples.
FMCG and CPG have seen the highest adoption so far – AI can analyze social media conversations, Market place reviews and metadata to identify emerging food or beauty trends, enabling brands to create products that align with consumer demands.
With consumer privacy becoming a global concern, how can AI-powered research balance deep insights with ethical data practices?
While this is a valid concern, we need to realize that the data used in consumer research, especially publicly-available digital data, is far less sensitive than other types of data collected and stored today (healthcare, telecom, kyc, banking). Global laws like GDPR and Indian laws like DPDP have done a good job of protecting consumer privacy in those more-sensitive use-cases so I see no reason why they wouldn’t suffice in research. As long as PII (personally-identifiable information) of consumers is protected and analysis is performed on an aggregated basis, consumer privacy will be well-protected.
Research also fundamentally operates on the principle of larger sample sizes, so this works well in the favour of protecting individual PII, and promoting the analysis of grouped/aggregated data – which further enhances protection.
Tech-based tools, especially AI tools, need extra work to ensure their models do not retrain/learn from such PII. Tools like ours at Consuma have been engineered to sufficiently protect consumer privacy interests and adhere to global laws and standards, both in training and operation.
What is Consuma AI, and how is it helping brands make faster, data-driven decisions?
We at Consuma spent the last 3 years building a tool/ Rapid Research Platform that is changing how brands do research through AI.
One of Consuma’s biggest USPs lies in how we scrape and analyse data. We can go research briefs into detailed reports in under 30 minutes, dramatically faster than traditional market research methods that typically take weeks or months.
- Speed and Efficiency
Consuma AI revolutionizes the speed of market research by reducing timelines from weeks or months to just 30 minutes. The platform processes between 1–5 million data points, a dramatic leap compared to the traditional sample size of 5,000–10,000. This enables brands to gain insights with unparalleled depth and scale while achieving a 91% reduction in analyst hours for client projects. - Advanced Technology Stack
Consuma AI’s ability to deliver insights at scale is powered by its cutting-edge technology stack:
- Fine-Tuned Generative AI Models: Trained on millions of campaigns and case studies, these models generate precise, actionable insights tailored to specific business needs.
- Smart Scrapers: These tools collect and filter web data, identifying user demographics and behavior to provide highly relevant insights.
- Autonomous AI Agents: These agents replicate the functions of human researchers but operate with 10x the precision and 100x the speed, ensuring efficiency and accuracy.
- Quality and Accuracy
Consuma AI doesn’t just focus on speed—it ensures insights are highly reliable. With an accuracy rate of 87–94% compared to ground surveys, the platform eliminates human biases while delivering deeper, more actionable insights. Its effectiveness has been validated through results like a 30% improvement in Click-Through Rates (CTR) on brand campaigns. - Cost-Effectiveness
Market research with Consuma AI is significantly more affordable than traditional methods, which can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $100,000. Despite the lower costs, the platform provides richer, more comprehensive data analysis, making it an invaluable tool for businesses of all sizes. - Real-World Application
Consuma AI is built to tackle even the most complex research tasks, including: - Usage and attitude studies
- Consumer behavior analysis
- Brand performance evaluation
- Market trend analysis
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