On 24 September, marketing, product and technology leaders will gather at The Leela Ambience in Gurugram for ETBrandEquity.com’s MarTech+ Summit & Awards 2026. The theme, “Breaking Silos, Accelerating Growth”, puts a familiar problem at the centre: customer interactions are spread across teams and systems, but customers experience a single relationship.
Why the silo problem matters
A customer may discover a brand through an ad, make a purchase through an app and seek help through a service centre. Internally, those moments can sit across different teams, systems and measures of success. Connecting them has become a central challenge for leaders trying to improve customer engagement.
For CMOs, the pressure is financial as well as operational. Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey shows that CMOs allocate 22.4% of their budgets to marketing technology. Gartner’s 2025 research found that average martech stack utilisation rose from 33% in 2023 to 49% in 2025. That is progress, but it still leaves more than half of the stack’s potential unused.
Three questions on the agenda
The summit will be shaped by the decisions enterprises are making now:
- How can enterprises simplify complex martech ecosystems?
- Where can AI improve decision-making along the customer journey?
- How can teams share context and act on customer signals rather than treating each interaction in isolation?
Who will take the stage
The speaker line-up brings together Vitesh Barar, Director Marketing, BMW Group India; Udit Malhotra, Head of Marketing, JSW MG Motor India; Rrahul Adaniya, Head of Marketing, Shriram Life Insurance; and Somesh Surana, Joint President, Digital Business Group and Marketing, HDFC Ergo General Insurance. Other speakers include Shruti Bopaiah, Group Head, Customer Obsession | Sparsh, Axis Bank; Sughosh Nagendra, Chief Information and Technology Officer, Agilus Diagnostics; Nimish Chaudhary, Chief Product and Technology Officer, Wow! Momo; Deepesh Dhakad, Chief Technology and Product Officer, upGrad; and Deepak Oram, SVP, Growth Marketing and MarTech, HDFC Bank.
What leaders should take away
For marketing leaders, the practical takeaway is to use customer signals and existing martech investments more effectively. Product and technology leaders can benchmark how peers are building connected systems and putting AI into practice. Experience leaders can focus on narrowing the gap between the journeys organisations design and the service customers actually receive.
What to do next
Teams planning for the months ahead can start with a martech utilisation audit before adding new tools, map the customer journey across internal handoffs, and identify where AI can connect signals for faster decisions. The summit’s partner ecosystem—including co-presenting partner Monotype, customer engagement partner CleverTap, agentic AI partner Salesforce, and partners such as MoEngage, Publicis Sapient and WebEngage—signals how broad the connected-stack conversation has become.
Source: ETBrandEquity.com
