Introduction

In a marketing landscape obsessed with clicks, conversions, and performance metrics, it is refreshing to meet a leader who still believes that the most valuable insights are often found not on a screen, but inside a consumer’s home.

For Mr Puneet Kusumbia, Vice President Marketing at Heritage Foods Ltd., marketing has never been just about selling products. It has always been about understanding people.

Reflecting on the early years of his career, he recalls how his journey began in consumer insights, where he gained a front-row seat to the process of building and scaling brands. Those formative experiences taught him a lesson that continues to shape his leadership philosophy today: consumers rarely tell you the entire story upfront.

“The real truth emerges when you spend time with people, understand their context and converse with them empathetically,” he shares.

Understanding Change Before It Becomes a Trend

One of the most fascinating parts of our conversation was Puneet’s perspective on how consumer behaviour is evolving in India.

According to him, consumer shifts happen in two ways. Some changes are gradual, like rising incomes, changing lifestyles and evolving life stages. Others are transformative and arrive at a societal level, fundamentally altering behaviours.

Over the last few years, he believes two forces have stood out in particular: the widespread adoption of UPI and the growing sense of national pride among Indian consumers.

While marketers have always anticipated change, what continues to surprise them is the speed at which it now unfolds.

“The pace of change today is far greater than what we were used to earlier,” he observes.

For brands, this means constantly adapting while staying rooted in what they stand for.

What Separates Great Brands from Good Ones?

In highly competitive categories, products can often look similar. So what makes certain brands endure while others fade away?

For Puneet, the answer is simple: relevance and trust.

Great brands move beyond functionality and become part of people’s lives. They create emotional meaning, build trust over time, and evolve alongside changing consumer needs without losing sight of their core promise.

While technology, media platforms, and consumer habits may change, the strongest brands continue to stand for something meaningful.

That consistency, he believes, is one of the most underrated aspects of brand building today. 

The Balance Between Brand Building and Performance

As marketing conversations increasingly revolve around performance metrics, Puneet offers a balanced perspective.

He does not see brand building and performance marketing as competing priorities. Instead, he sees them as complementary forces.

Brand investments create long-term equity, trust, and consumer affinity. Performance marketing, meanwhile, ensures visibility and conversion in an increasingly digital marketplace.

“Both are two sides of the same coin,” he explains.

The challenge for marketers is not choosing one over the other, but understanding how they work together in unison and in the same direction  to drive sustainable growth. Creativity is 10% of what a marketer does, 90% is about putting the hard yard for business growth – strategy to execution.

Innovation Begins with Listening

When discussing innovation, Puneet is clear that successful product development is never an isolated exercise.

Every meaningful innovation, he says, starts with a broader business objective and is grounded in a deep understanding of consumers, market realities, and competitive learning. At Heritage Foods, this approach is reflected in the brand’s continuous effort to evolve with consumer needs while staying rooted in its commitment to quality and trust.

But innovation should never come at the cost of authenticity.

Brands must continue to innovate while remaining anchored to the promise consumers already trust them for. For Puneet, that balance between evolution and consistency is what makes innovation meaningful and sustainable. It should bring incrementality for the business, at the least and disruption at a category level, every now and then.

Leadership Beyond Titles

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Puneet’s leadership philosophy is his emphasis on collaboration.

In an era that often celebrates individual achievement, he believes marketing remains a team sport.

Whether it is sales, supply chain, product teams, agencies, or consumer insights specialists, successful brand building happens when diverse teams align behind a common goal.

His approach is guided by two principles: putting the business first and trusting collective intelligence over individual brilliance.

“All of us together are always better than the best one amongst us,” he says.

It is a philosophy that feels particularly relevant in today’s interconnected business environment.

The Future Belongs to Faster, Bolder Marketing

Looking ahead, Puneet sees artificial intelligence reshaping the marketing function in 3-4 years time.

Campaign development timelines that currently take months could soon be compressed into days. As efficiency increases, marketers will have more freedom to experiment, take creative risks and test new ideas.

He predicts a future where marketing becomes faster, more dynamic and far more experimental than it is today across categories and not just limited to digital first brands.

Yet despite all the technological advancements on the horizon, one belief remains unchanged.

The future may be powered by AI, but enduring brands will still be built on human understanding.

And perhaps that is Puneet Kusumbia’s most important lesson of all: while tools and platforms evolve, meaningful brand building will always begin with empathy, consistency, and a genuine understanding of people as consumers and as team members.

-By Muskan Dengra