Indosat's new growth play: Breaking the CMO mould for an AI-native future

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For decades, the chief marketing officer has been the custodian of brand, communications and customer engagement. But as artificial intelligence reshapes how businesses acquire, retain and monetise customers, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison believes that model no longer goes far enough.

The Indonesian telco's decision to replace a traditional CMO structure with a newly created chief growth officer (CGO) role is less about changing job titles than rethinking how growth itself is organised.

Rather than treating brand, product, pricing and commercial execution as separate disciplines, the company has consolidated them under a single leadership function tasked with orchestrating the entire customer lifecycle.

Don't miss: Indosat consolidates marketing and commercial strategy under new chief growth officer

For Apoorva Mehrotra (pictured), who recently assumed the newly expanded position after more than 25 years in telecommunications across Asia and Africa, the shift reflects the demands of building what Indosat calls an AI-native telco.

"We want to become an AI native telco, and to become an AI native telco, which is both agile and customer centric, it is important that we embed AI into our core activities," Mehrotra told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE.

"When you look at CMO role, typically they have emerged from product companies... By integrating product, pricing, segments, brand communication and customer growth, it is ensuring that all these sub-verticals pull in the right direction, and it ends up delivering the ambition that Indosat has."

Breaking organisational silos

The appointment follows a strong start to 2026 for Indosat. The company posted record first-quarter revenue of IDR 15.2 trillion (US$846 million), with EBITDA and net profit also climbing as AI-driven hyper-personalisation contributed to stronger customer engagement and higher average revenue per user.

While those financial results demonstrate that its AI strategy is beginning to deliver commercially, Mehrotra argues the organisational structure behind that strategy matters just as much.

Instead of limiting marketing leadership to communications and brand management, the CGO role integrates the traditionally separate functions, allowing customer decisions to be made holistically rather than through departmental silos.

"What it does is it helps break down these walls that you might have between the traditional CMO sub-functions," he said.

The restructuring also reflects a broader shift taking place across service businesses, where customer experience increasingly depends on technology infrastructure as much as advertising.

Consumers today interact across multiple channels, expect personalised offers, seamless digital journeys and instant service. Delivering that requires marketing leaders to work closely with engineering, network, IT and data teams rather than operating independently.

"If you want to serve customers well across channels, leverage AI, deliver differentiated experience, stand out in the market, it is important that you break these silos," Mehrotra said.

Growth measured beyond subscribers

Although the role carries commercial accountability, Mehrotra rejects the notion that growth should be measured primarily through subscriber additions or quarterly revenue. Instead, he defines growth as increasing customer lifetime value.

Growth is about creating long-term value for our customers.

"In any service and subscription business, revenue comes in when the customer remains with you for a long period of time," he added.

That philosophy broadens the scope of growth leadership beyond sales targets to include customer engagement, AI adoption, ecosystem participation and operational collaboration.

Internally, it also means working far more closely with network and technology teams than marketing departments traditionally have.

"This is critical not only to deliver service to existing customers, but also to help finalise where to invest next, which areas to go into, and where to add capacity," Mehrotra explained.

AI becomes marketing infrastructure

While many brands describe AI as another marketing tool, Indosat increasingly views it as the infrastructure underpinning almost every customer interaction.

The company's AI investments already extend beyond customer communications into hyper-personalisation, cloud infrastructure, the Sahabat-AI large language model, NeoCloud and wider digital ecosystem initiatives.

For Mehrotra, the next phase is making AI pervasive across every commercial decision.

"We are already a leader in the adoption of AI, leveraging it at scale to deliver a seamless digital experience for our customers. The key task will be to accelerate that and ensure AI becomes all-encompassing and embedded in every aspect of our service delivery," he said.

His priorities over the coming months centre on four areas: creating a clearer growth blueprint, accelerating AI-powered personalisation, communicating Indosat's AI ambitions more broadly across Indonesia, and expanding partnerships with global technology companies.

Rather than promising an immediate overhaul of the company's marketing, Mehrotra suggested the transformation will happen through deeper operational integration.

Escaping the price war

Indonesia remains one of Southeast Asia's most competitive telecommunications markets, where operators often compete aggressively on price.

Mehrotra believes AI-led personalisation offers a way to compete without joining a race to the bottom. Recalling advice from an earlier mentor, he said:

When you enter a price war, make sure price is not your only weapon.

Instead of blanket discounts, Indosat is focusing on delivering relevant offers to individual customers based on their behaviour, preferences and chosen channels.

"We don't want to be sucked into a race to the bottom on pricing, because that's not what we believe will build sustainable value, either for our customers or for our business," he said.

Partnerships beyond connectivity

The CGO remit also extends to partnerships as Indosat continues expanding beyond traditional telecommunications.

Already working with companies including Google, Nvidia and Cisco, the telco is positioning itself as a platform through which AI services become accessible to Indonesian consumers.

One example is its bundled Gemini Pro offering for mobile customers.

Mehrotra expects partnerships to become increasingly central as Indosat broadens its digital ecosystem.

"We believe that our role is critical in enabling not just content distribution networks but media companies or any other... key players in the ecosystem to partner with them and enable a richer, seamless digital experience for our customers," he said.

Rather than focusing on a single industry, he suggested the company remains open to collaborations that simplify digital experiences and create tangible customer value.

Building an AI-native brand

As Indosat evolves beyond connectivity into AI, cloud and digital infrastructure, Mehrotra sees marketing playing a broader organisational role than external communications alone.

He outlined three priorities: identifying strategic AI partnerships, helping employees understand the company's AI vision internally, and ensuring those partnerships deliver measurable value for customers rather than remaining symbolic announcements.

"Identifying those relationships, evangelising them within the company, and then executing them at scale for our customers, so that they become real and tangible," he said.

Ultimately, success will not simply be measured through financial performance.

Mehrotra wants AI embedded across customer segmentation, proposition design and service delivery, alongside improvements in customer advocacy metrics such as net promoter score.

Longer term, he hopes Indosat becomes recognised as an international benchmark for AI transformation in telecommunications.

"To see Indosat being recognised not just within Indonesia, but also across the industry as a pioneer of the AI-native telco," he said. "When Indosat gets quoted as an example of how a telco leveraged AI to transform into something more than a traditional telecom company."

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