Market Research with AI: Flipkart’s Insights on Accelerating Discovery

MRMW: We are happy to have you with us. Without giving too much away – what is the core message of your talk at MRMW MENA and what would you like delegates to remember? 

Priyanka: I am extremely excited to be part of the MRMW MENA 2025 this year. AI is no longer just a tool in research, it is not another task, it is becoming the engine of discovery. It accelerates what humans can imagine, expands what we can explore, and democratizes who can contribute. The importance of  AI in research is not about replacing human curiosity but about amplifying it—turning questions into insights faster, deeper, and at a scale we’ve never seen before. 

• 68% of research professionals believe AI’s greatest impact within research lies in analysis and synthesis, underlining how central insight generation is becoming. 
• Over 60% of research practitioners primarily use general-purpose tools like ChatGPT or Claude — rather than specialized research tools—especially for ideation, survey creation, and  briefing; this underscores both accessibility and adaptability of AI 

There are three pillars of AI support to Research and Insights: 

1. Acceleration – AI reduces years of work into days (moderation, data analysis, simulations). We say AI accelerates insights. In my organisation, it accelerates the speed with which leadership asks for more insights. Insights delivered at the pace of business. 
2. Expansion – AI opens up questions too complex for traditional methods (synthetic sampling, AI-based marketing campaign testing and benchmarking). 
3. Democratization – AI makes cutting-edge research accessible to all parts of the organisation with minimal human intervention, ease of finding the right answer is what AI is enabling. 

When we speak during the event, I will focus on the following for a more effective articulation of AI  & Research: 

• Case-based learning: I’ll walk through real-world examples—from quick ideation and trend spotting to large-scale feedback synthesis and agentic action systems. 
• Balanced framing: Highlight AI’s strengths—efficiency, scale, predictive power—while always reinforcing the essential role of human judgment, creativity, and domain insight.
• Human-centered design: Stress that effective AI adoption begins with understanding people,  not processes. AI should support researcher workflows through reskilling and collaboration— leverage it and not be threatened by it. 
• Trust-first strategy: Emphasize the importance of explainable AI (XAI) and transparent design to cultivate trust, reduce algorithm aversion, and ensure effective adoption.

MRMW: How has this impacted your own work and your organisation? 

Priyanka:

• Speed & Scale: AI cuts through vast volumes of unstructured data—summarizing notes,  transcripts, open-text responses—allowing research professionals to leverage it for faster analysis and synthesis. 
• Quantitative Power: Automated statistical analysis surfaces trends, validates hypotheses, and finds outliers in large datasets; saving researchers hours of manual effort. 
• Predictive Insight: AI can anticipate user behaviour and spotlight emerging trends from past data, enabling proactive design strategies. 
• Cost-Effective Moderation: AI-moderated studies can scale participant size while reducing time and cost, offering asynchronous flexibility too – Both qual and quant. 
• Agentic AI for Responsiveness: Emerging “agentic” AI systems can act autonomously based on feedback—processing millions of reviews and enabling real-time, personalized responses,  especially in fast-moving digital feedback loops. We have started to initiate and are seeing some good responses in our industry.

MRMW: In your experience, what are the biggest barriers to embedding insights as a commercial partner across the business, and how have you overcome them in your organisation?

Priyanka: In my experience, the biggest barriers to embedding insights across the business have less to do with data and more to do with human behaviour and acceptance. It’s a bit like gym memberships — everyone says they want to use them, but only a few show up consistently. But over a period of time as the business leaders start seeing the goodness, the cultural shift begins and sustainably so.  • The ‘Last-Mile’ Problem 

Insights often get stuck in slide decks or research reports. They’re beautifully presented but rarely travel into the daily decision-making of product managers, marketers, or sales teams. • The ‘Lost in Translation’ Effect 

Researchers speak in nuance; business partners often want a clear ‘yes/no.’ That mismatch makes insights feel like poetry in a boardroom full of accountants. 

• The ‘Shiny Object Syndrome’ 

Sometimes businesses are so caught up chasing the next trend (AI, blockchain, the metaverse, among others) that grounded user insights look less glamorous, even if they’re more powerful. 

• And, Lack of speed 

How we’ve overcome this: 

At my organisation, we’ve flipped the script: 

• Always stress on culture shift and transformation on Customer Centricity and understand the business problems top down and work bottom up – Customer centricity should not be a chore, rather it’s a core value and should be well integrated in our ways of working. 
• Set up a regular cadence to understand the customer sentiment and democratise access. • Leveraging Tech and AI to democratise these insights. 
• Create win-win – institutionalise customer centricity projects that add value to the stakeholders and not just good to know information. 
• Turned insights into bite-sized, snackable formats (think WhatsApp-length nuggets,  interactive dashboards, or quick AI-summarized pulses, regular insights catch-ups – Proactive and reactive) so there are easy to use and consume. 
• Created insight rituals — embedding insights into regular stand-ups, sprint planning, and leadership reviews, so they aren’t a one-time report but a living input.
• Used AI copilots to personalize insights for different teams — for example, the same dataset tells the product team where to cut friction, while the marketing team sees it as a narrative on user motivations. 
• Launched KYC programs – to democratise insights and enable easy access. • We co-partner and co-create to show the impact – We own failure with as much elan as success and everything in between. 
• We have become a single source of truth that’s unbiased – we also consider the narratives of analytics and outside-in experts and create a story that’s unbiased and actionable. 

And when we started sending “Insight Memes” internally — yes, research findings framed humorously  — engagement on insights shot up by over 40%. Turns out, people remember jokes better than Jargon.

MRMW: As with any region, what would you say are two opportunities to seize, and two challenges to overcome, that are particularly relevant in the MENA region? 

Priyanka: The MENA region has one of the youngest populations globally — over 60% under the age of 30. That means your “average user” is not an average user at all — they’re digitally native, culturally diverse,  and impatient with anything clunky. If we can solve for them, we’ll likely solve for the world. 

Two Opportunities to Seize: 

1. Digital Leapfrogging: Unlike more mature markets, MENA has vast populations that are skipping desktop and going straight to mobile-first, app-first behaviors. This means a treasure trove of fresh research opportunities to design AI-driven experiences that are intuitive for first-time digital users. 
2. AI + Multilingual research: With Arabic, English, French, Urdu, and more in play, there’s a huge opportunity to use AI for multilingual personalization — creating products that feel culturally and linguistically tailored, not just translated. 
3. Real-time passive intelligence tracking is key, along with primary research. 

Two Challenges to Overcome: 

1. Data Sensitivity & Trust: MENA users often express higher concerns about data privacy and algorithmic fairness. Overcoming “algorithm aversion” and building explainable AI (XAI) into research outputs will be essential. 
2. Infrastructure Gaps: While urban hubs like Dubai or Riyadh are world-class, rural and tier-2 areas still face patchy connectivity. Designing research workflows (and AI-powered tools) that work low-bandwidth-first is a real challenge — but also a design superpower if cracked. 

MRMW: If you could put out a call to external partners – agencies, technology, tools and/or tech stack providers – what can they do to support you better? 

The perfect partner is like good Wi-Fi—unnoticed when it works, painfully obvious when it doesn’t. If  I could put out a call to external partners, I’d say: 

• Less features, more fit. Don’t sell us the Swiss-army knife of research platforms; help us with tools that integrate smoothly into our existing ecosystem (Slack, Jira, Miro, Tableau…). The best partner isn’t the flashiest—it’s the one that reduces friction for my team. Keep it simple,  insightful and actionable and quick, not to forget. 
• Agencies as storytellers. Data, data everywhere and not a drop to drink. Data is abundant;  what we need are partners who can turn insights into narratives that land with leadership,  work with us, and we will help you with industry and category understanding while you layer on the customer insights to make it meaningful. “What” is always known, it’s the why we want? The difference between “here are the numbers” and “here’s the movie trailer of your customer’s life.

• Co-create, don’t just supply. The best external partners don’t just deliver a shiny deck—they embed with us, challenge our biases, and help us shape the next experiment. 

MRMW: Outside of work, what should delegates talk to you about at MRMW MENA? 

Priyanka: My personal views on Geo Politics, Tennis and Badminton, Dance and Reading & travelling. And tricks to learn the French language.

MRMW: Thank you so much, Priyanka! We look forward to hearing more from you at MRMW MENA.

🚀Driving CX Insights and Market Research in the Middle East

Merlien Institute is proud to bring its global MRMW conference series to Dubai in 2025! We are excited to host the 2nd MRMW in the MENA region, following strong demand from our community.

💡Join us on 26–27 November 2025 to explore the latest market research and CX strategies from senior leaders at global and regional brands. Hear from Priyanka Bhargav, Group Insights Head, Consumer Research & Senior Director at Flipkart, as well as:

• Sayantan Sarkar – Head of Insight & Analytics, MENAP, Mondelez International
• Amanda Cano – VP, Head of UX and Design, Mashreq Bank
• Ankesh Agarwal – Director, Group Customer Experience, Majid Al Futtaim

… and many more!

Gain actionable insights into local trends, benchmark against global best practices, and learn from leading experts shaping the future of CX and market research. Register today to secure your place!