Ramya Parashar: A Woman in Tech driving the space with Passion, Perseverance, and Panache

The woman of the hour, Ramya Parashar is the Chief Operating Officer and Exec Board Member at MiQ. She is a graduate in Electronics and a certified Digital Business Strategist and Organizational performance expert from IIM Bangalore.

She has successfully steered the technology, operations, and business applications divisions at many global organizations such as JCPenney and FireEye. Apart from that, she has also held various leadership roles in the technology industries, leading Talent and Operations functions in companies like Unisys and Monsanto.

For her excellent performance and dedicated work ethic, Ramya has received noteworthy recognitions, Top Best Women COO -2022, Leader 2.0 under 40 Awardee, Iconic Women of Excellence-Fortune India, The Most Admired Global Indians, and The Inc Most Inspiring Women.

About MiQ

Founded in 2010, MiQ Digital is a leader in Tech, Data Science, Analytics, and Programmatic Trading and serves as a programmatic media partner for marketers and agencies. It is designed to connect data from multiple sources to unlock interesting insights and ensure its clients are always making the right media investments.

Pivotal to its services are connecting the right people, industry partnerships, and technology in a complete programmatic stack to solve its client’s business challenges. The organization uses its connected solutions to identify the right data sources, connect them, and unearth insights for more effective targeting. This is what it calls ‘Connected Marketing’ where it brings the expertise of having the right partners, the right technology, and the right people.

It believes in bringing the vision of its co-founders G & Lee to life by creating an environment and culture where people do the best work of their careers, learn from the best minds, earn the best, and make the best relationships at work.

Meet the Future of Digital Marketing

MiQ Bangalore is the Programmatic CoE for Technology Analytics and Data Science Hub that powers its Global business!

The organization’s Bangalore team powers product development, local customization, and solutions which in turn enables them to deliver for their clients.

Its data model is agnostic, so it can work with whatever Data, DSP, publisher, or exchange is going to drive the best results for its customers. The technology model enabled them to access an industry of programmatic capabilities all in one place with its layer of technology connecting various data, platforms, and inventory.

The organization has also built a system of connected programmatic tech that lets them access the right data, unearth the smartest insights, then activate them across all the platforms and channels customers need through its three solution offerings:

• Connect – Analytics Studio – Access unlimited data connections.
• Discover – Intelligence Hub – Discover insights across all the screens our customers see.
• Activate – Trading Lab – Activate campaigns across multiple platforms

Through these Data sets and Technology, it provides the right mix of programmatic media solutions through:

1.  Advanced TV – Extend the TV campaign by combining linear and connected TV data, access powerful OTT inventory, and measure beyond awareness to include things like online performance and incremental footfall.
2. Performance – Target powerful customer segments and use predictive retargeting to influence your highest-value audiences and use incrementality measurement to optimize campaigns towards the outcomes our customers wish to achieve.
3. Time & Place – Use location and real-world moments data to better understand how to target and reach your audiences on the move, during moments that matter.
4. High-impact Branding – Elevate your brand by delivering innovative and engaging creative in high-impact video and OTT environments targeted towards the audiences you want to reach.

To summon it up, it drives outcomes that matter!

The Motivating Forces

Ramya’s motivation to join MiQ was multi-fold:

• Co-founders – The simple vision of MiQ’s Co-founders, Gurman and Lee to build a people-centric culture, a business with heart is what truly stood out. A conversation that was simple, enlightening, genuine, and filled with passion for the business!
• Unique and People-centric Interview Process – A process where transparency existed throughout the entire hiring process. Discussing realistic expectations of the role, talking about the amazingness and the shortcomings of the company, and what areas could potentially be an opportunity. Being transparent showed that they care about Ramya’s interests as well as the company’s and builds trust.
• Programmatic as a Domain – The opportunity to be part of the future of advertising was a no-brainer. An efficient, targeted, and scalable campaign design, provides transparency in media spending and also an algorithm that will determine where the ad money is best spent. This piqued her interest in MiQ!

Fiercely leading the Male Counterparts

One of the roadblocks Ramya faced was sensitizing the larger male population – Women are often judged as being too hard, too soft, and never just right. Moving into the role of leadership meant that she spend part of everyday repeatedly proving that she too can lead.

This needed effort to work twice as hard as her counterparts and not have an advocate. Becoming more aware of one’s strength primarily emanates from the choices women are likely to make at different stages of the life cycle. Men and women think differently, and obviously, have varying perspectives. However, getting rid of wrong notions and perceptions, and learning to interact from the place of support and not from the place of threat drives better business results.

There is no ‘Perfect’ Work-Life Balance

Ramya states that an ideal work-life balance doesn’t exist. Everyone has to work their way out to maintain a balance. There will be sacrifices every individual has to make on their way up the ladder and choosing wisely becomes so important. Be it work deliverables, meetings, managing kids, taking care of household chores, and many more.

Finding a balance between our personal and professional lives is not as easy as it sounds but it is crucial. She is a big believer in planning the day and making a schedule. Cutting ties with the outside world from time to time allows us to recover from weekly stress and gives us space for other thoughts and ideas to emerge. Work-life balance will mean different things to different people because, after all, we all have different life commitments. In our always-on world, balance is a very personal thing, and only you can decide the lifestyle that suits you best.

Growing with Leaps and Bounds

MiQ aims to be the leading programmatic media partner for agencies and advertisers. The more unpredictable the environment, the greater the opportunity—if we have the leadership skills to capitalize on it.

The organization defined vectors of growth building on a strong track record consisting of organic and in-organic streams:

• Sustained diverse commercial strategy – driving growth across all geographies, sales channels, and programmatic products.
• Accelerated growth drivers – for continued above-market growth throughout the plan.
• Leveraging our global delivery platform – deploy backbone of tech, partnerships, data, and people assets globally.
• Mergers and Acquisitions.

MiQ believes in finding that direction requires a culture shift, where employees get the freedom to experiment, explore, adopt or discard a multitude of opportunities.

Mobility does not mean progress, it takes the right culture, mindset, and processes to make an organization Future Ready and we believe we are breaking those barriers and creating headway!

A Solid Advice for Businesses and Entrepreneurs

Build a business that becomes the go-to industry leader! Any business can have spouts of revenue from a marketing campaign, but your goal should be to build a business that can survive the test of time. Statistics show that 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. Only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more. Being in a state of constant learning and adapting is crucial!