Swinburne alum bringing clarity to the complex

Swinburne alum Rajan Kumar is committed to helping brands as diverse as Qantas, Movember and Wesfarmers connect with their customers.

Fifteen years after completing a Bachelor of Multimedia (Business Marketing), Raj is now CEO of The Lumery, a marketing technology consultancy he co-founded with three colleagues in 2017.

Headquartered in Melbourne, with additional offices in Sydney and Bangalore, The Lumery uses data and technology to “bridge the void” between brands and their customers.  Raj and his team collaborate with a diverse range of clients, across travel, not-for-profit, retail, property, financial services, media, publishing & entertainment, and government sectors.

Growing up in a family of business owners, Raj’s entrepreneurial spirit was nurtured from an early age.  At Swinburne, he was further inspired listening to guest lecturers such as Boost Juice-founder Janine Allis.

Now that he is in the C-suite, Raj is paying it forward through The Lumery’s new partnership with Swinburne’s Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship (AGSE).

“This partnership ties back to our foundational ‘why?’ as a business,” Raj says. “We want to bring clarity to the MarTech industry, which is complex and often misunderstood”.

Working with Swinburne’s Master of Marketing program, The Lumery is providing projects, co-creating content and case studies, delivering guest lectures and hosting Work Integrated Learning (WIL) placements. They are also working with Swinburne’s Customer Experience and Insight (CXI) Research Group on an industry research project that will be announced later this year.

“We are passionate about looking at different ways to drive education, enablement, and empowering others,” Raj says. “This engagement gives us the opportunity to help shape marketing and technology education and support the future generations of talent.”

Now that he is in the C-suite, Raj is paying it forward through The Lumery’s partnership with Swinburne

Learning at the coalface

Swinburne student Olivia Fogarty is benefitting from The Lumery partnership at the coalface of the business.  She is currently on a 12-month Professional Placement, working with Raj and his team as an Analytics Strategist.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to work alongside leading experts within the MarTech industry and have supported projects on some of Australia’s largest brands,” Olivia says. “This has helped me understand the many ways of working across industries and shaped my idea of career progression in the future.”

For The Lumery, Raj says the WIL collaboration has helped them refocus how they think about nurturing talent.

“We are trying to redefine the traditional pathway of marketing careers,” he says, “as there is no ‘one size fits all’ in this industry.

“This is such a symbiotic relationship for us, as we get fresh emerging talent entering our workplace, and the student get to link their academic study into real industry practice in a supportive environment.”

The Swinburne-Lumery origin story began when Senior Marketing Lecturer Dr Jason Pallant invited Raj and his colleagues to shape some curriculum content through a series of guest lectures.

“These guest lectures have given our specialists the opportunity to be passionate and share their knowledge with the upcoming generation of marketers,” Ray says.

“As a Swinburne alum, these growing collaborations are special to me. I can’t wait to see how this partnership continues to grow over the coming years.”