 a very good morning ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the second edition of the PR and Popcom Women Achievers Summit and Awards 2021 presented by Ad Factors Knowledge Driven Communication powered by Standard Chartered Bank, Hero Motocop, PhonePay and Hill and Nolson Strategies, Gold Partner Tude Consult. Before we move forward this morning, I'd like to play the introductory audio visual for all of you. Can we have the AV please? The second edition of Exchange for Media, PR and Corporate Communication Women Achievers Summit and Awards 2021 presented by Ad Factors PR powered by Standard Chartered Bank, Hero Motocop, PhonePay, Hill and Nolson Strategies, Gold Partner Tude Consulting. The Summit and Awards are the celebration of the contribution of women and their relentless pursuit of excellence in the field of public relations and communications. The second edition of the Awards identifies, acknowledges and felicitates those women leaders who are shaping the industry through their incredible work. Through this initiative, we also applaud the agencies and corporates who are setting remarkable examples by encouraging gender diversity in their work culture. This year's During Panel was headed by Dr. Anurag Bhattra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, BW Business World and Exchange for Media. Ms. Nidhi Hola, Microsoft Mr. Parthakosh, Samsung Ms. Rama Paul, ABP Mr. Sanjeev Honda, Maruti Mr. Swapayu Mishra, Standard Chartered Bank Ms. Jasritha Thir, Antara Mr. Atul Sharma, Radafin Ms. Pallavi Singh, Senior Business Advisor Mr. Abhishek Gulliani, Hill & Milton Strategies Ms. Ruchira Jaitley, HMD Ms. Kavita Jagthiani, Peterlite Ms. Parachi Muhapathra, Dr. Reddy's Exchange for Media and the Jury congratulates all the winners. Thank you all. Welcome and good morning to everyone who's joined us today. It's a very special day as it's the second edition of the PR & Popcorn Women Achievers Summit. And I'm Khyati Kawaiyur, host. It's a pleasure to be the host to all of you. It is my second year in running with this IP as well. Now let me tell you something about the Women Achievers Summit. Brought together illustrious women leaders who are stalwarts, pioneers reword in their field of work. As per a recent report by Catalyst, in 2019, women held only 8% of management roles, 9% of business management roles, and were only 2% CEOs of India. Within communication industry, around 60 to 80% of workforce are women. 30% of the PR agencies are run by women leaders. Women not only bring creativity, as we all know, multifaceted talents, but also empathy and flexibility. Exchange for media through its initiative of Women Achievers Summit wants to bring fresh perspective on trends, challenges, opportunities for the women in this industry. Today we have all a very powerful session starting with five keynote sessions, six panels, and the key discussions will focus on subject of gender diversity, creativity, self-growth, world beyond COVID, PR and communication skills and strategies of course. As the day unfolds, we will hear stories unheard and untold by the pioneers of the communication domain. Now before I take you on this journey, let's quickly take a look at our partner's audio visual. Can we have the AV please? No, pleasure. Right? Okay. In submit, you're pink. Why should boys have all the fun? All new style, zippy right, but very easy handling. New hero, pleasure plus. We believe that every corporation and brand has a public. And today's public is more powerful than ever before. They have the power to topple CEOs, reshape strategy, influence government policy, kill products and create unicorns. They demand truth, transparency, and the highest behavioral standards. We are embracing change, constantly innovating the way our clients and communicate, whatever the sector and whatever the challenge. Our client obsession means constantly evolving new products and services. We are innovating the future of public relations. Our belief is that brands with a clear authentic purpose and performance strategies aligned to business objectives are most likely to succeed. We use strategy, creativity and innovation driven by data and analytics to put your purpose and performance at the heart of all communications. Together, purpose and performance drive audience preference. We call this approach three P communications. Hill and Nolton strategies always in beta. Exchange for media, a name synonymous with the latest news about the advertising industry in India. The exchange for media group, set up in 2000, has the most credible media platforms covering the entire advertising, media and marketing domain with its highly acclaimed digital, print and on-ground assets. The group's flagship news portal exchangeformedia.com reaches over 6 lakh subscribers who are the first to receive breaking news in the industry. The buzzing website not only covers the news but goes beyond the obvious to bring in a fresh point of view. Impact, the weekly news magazine from the group is the most widely read business magazine in the advertising trade with in-depth analysis and news based features providing perspective to key happenings in the industry. The monthly pitch magazine provides a ringside view of events unfolding in the marketing landscape along with media and advertising. Another monthly magazine, Realty Plus is a market leader in repertoire on the real estate industry. Today, exchange for media is not only a leading publisher in the domain but owns the IP of more than 50 events spread across Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, making it a powerhouse of information and knowledge sharing. Exchange for media has curated and launched some of the most successful IPs across marketing, digital, TV, print, radio, mobile, OOH and PR. The impact person of the year, exchange for media conclave, Indian digital marketing awards, Tech Munch, pitch CMO summit, India marketing awards, prime time awards, Indian content marketing awards, golden mics and bar are some of the group's top notch events in addition to niche bespoke events and roundtables curated especially for discerning clients. Exchange for media events attract tall warts' speakers along with a loyal audience comprising of leaders, trendsetters and opinion makers. They are the perfect networking platform for the entire media and advertising industry. No wonder exchange for media group publications and events have high credibility and reach and are the destination of choice for agency, brand and media professionals across the industry. Exchange for media BW Business World presents a rich legacy of curated events that enable conversations on policy issues in India. Because of the state of our cities, we have no option but to build smart and resilient cities. Digital India is more for the poorer underprivileged and deprived. Covering a range of topics, BW Business World events look to create a strong narrative around smart cities, digital India, healthcare, Swachh Bharat, human resource issues, education, banking and finance among others. The world is first changing, best practices are available now on the net. Because development has become a focus in the whole of politics. BW Business World events provide a speaking platform to the voices that matter. You don't have to be a technologist. You need to understand how technology influences the world. Mahatma Gandhi was a great man. He was the leader of the freedom struggle. We believe that e-governance and IoT will play a very, very important role. BW Business World is an excellent exhibition platform that helps you showcase your services to the right audience. To be a part of our legacy, write into us at partner at theraidbusinessworld.in. Thank you once again to all our partners and thank you all of you for joining us here today. Now I would like to invite on forum Dr. Anurag Bhattra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief BW Business World in exchange for media to formally inaugurate the summit. He sent us his video message here. But before we play that, I'd like to inform all of you that we are buzzing on Twitter. So we'd like all of you to not forget to tweet to us about this fantastic morning and evening using the hashtag which is E4M Power Women Achievers Summit, E4M PR Women Achievers Summit, E4M PR Women. All of these hashtags can be used, used all of them or one of them, but do tell us about the event and what do you feel about it. So here we have Dr. Anurag Bhattra's video message. Can we play that please? Good morning. Welcome to the second edition of the exchange for media. Women are in communication professionals summit and awards. This is the second edition of this initiative, which recognizes the leaders who are women in the corporate communications PR domain. The media advertising marketing domain itself has a high participation of women across leadership, across political level. The PR and communications industry possibly has a dominance of women. This is one domain where if we didn't research, the number of women in PR and COPCOM is tremendous. So this initiative looks at leaders who are making a difference, who are at the cusp of being catalyst to change and who are making impact not only in their organization, but beyond that. We're talking on 2nd July 2021. I hope the last 12 odd weeks have been good for you and your family or safe for your organization. I know it's been a tough time, but as they say, tough people, last tough times don't. So clearly I'm sure you have refocused me, energized and reemerged to be able to go on with whatever you've set out to do. I wish all the winners today evening, 6 p.m. is the awards. The PR and communication industry possibly has a dominance of women. This is one domain where if we didn't research, the number of women in PR and COPCOM is tremendous. So this initiative looks at leaders who are making a difference, who are at the cusp of being catalyst to change and who are making impact not only in their organization, but beyond that. We're talking on 2nd July 2021. I hope the last 12 odd weeks have been good for you and your family or safe for your organization. I know it's been a tough time, but as they say, tough people, last tough times don't. So clearly I'm sure you have refocused, reenergized, and reemerged to be able to go on with whatever you've set out to do. I wish all the winners today evening, 6 p.m. is the awards. Congratulations to all the shortlisted nominees. Congratulations for being shortlisted. I'm sure you'll do well next year. And throughout the day, we have thought leaders who are women who will talk to us about their professional and personal journeys. So I look forward to celebrating the milestones of these women leaders with all of you. I'm sure you get inspired by their journeys and their stories. I am and I will. We exchange from here. Wish you good luck. Stay safe. Get vaccinated. God bless you. Thank you so much, Dr. Bhattra. He sets the context right for this event. And now without further ado, as we have our speaker's panelist already on board, we'll not waste any time but request all of you to be active during the event. Tweet to us your key highlights from the event, from the sessions. And we're moving towards a first panel discussion, which is going to talk about women power in PR and pull view on affluent leadership skills. We have a panelist for this discussion. We have with us Ms. Shivani Gupta, Chief Happiness Officer, SPHG Asia, Ms. Pooja Pathak, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Media Mantra, Ms. Ashina Jain, Managing Director, PR Pandit, Ms. Manisha Chaudhary, Founder and Director, Value 360 Communication, Laveena Gujral, COO, Canada Communication and moderating this session is Ms. Tarunjit Ratan, Founder of PRPOI. A very warm welcome to you ladies. And Tarunjit, just to give you a markup, we have 15 minutes for this discussion. We are looking forward to this very interesting discussion with all you lovely ladies. Thank you so much. Thank you, Kathy. Yes, that was a note on me making, to make sure that I keep a watch on the time. I'm so happy to be hosting this session with all such awesome ladies out here. So let's get started. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, everyone, for joining us for the first E4M session for the PR and COPCOM Women Achievers Summit, where today we will discuss and gather insights on women power in PR and purview on affluent leadership. This is the second edition of the Women Achievers Summit and Awards and it's a celebration of womenhood and a contribution of the relentless pursuit of excellence in the field of PR and communications. And today, to talk to us on the subject, we have with us a remarkable panel of women who have made an impact in the industry across segments and generations. Without much ado, let me introduce you to our panel. We have with us Shivani Gupta, SPAG Asia, Pooja Pathak, Media Mantra, Archana Jayam, PR Pandit, Manisha Chaudhary, Value 360 Communication, Lavina Gujral, Canada Communications. Welcome, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So let's get started, right? As Mr. Mathur also said, and you know, all of us have seen it throughout our experience in the industry. Women have dominated the PR space just in sheer numbers. But for the benefit of our viewers, could you help us understand why and what makes this field more appealing? Archana and Lavina, I'd like you to kind of, you know, share your perspective first. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. I think there's a great time for women in PR and marketing. Women have the opportunity to become the driving force, take leadership positions. I think more and more companies, not just in PR and advertising, but across industries, is recognizing and promoting individuals based on their talent, rather than on their gender, right? And the same being emulated in our industry too. And it's nothing, nothing is more inspiring than seeing women in the industry that are willing to take risks, are coming out, maybe projecting more innovative ways to reach and influence the right audiences. And we are seeing also some inspirational sort of role models for us to follow. For example, Minu Handaina, Global Role at Google. You know, so that'll inspire a lot of young people to come in and join our profession. I think that is what makes the profession quite appealing. Absolutely. And I love the background that you have. We're still buzzing from home. We all are. Yeah, we're working from home till the end of September right now. Awesome. And we've got to be double vaccinated. Absolutely. Pooja, would you like to add your views to that? Yeah, so, you know, as Ajna had rightly said, about the impact and, you know, how women roles have become very powerful. Also, the fact that multitasking and problem-solving skills, which, you know, are key components which women bring on the table. And compassion is something which, you know, I feel that women are able to nurture it better. So I think these are skill sets which probably is the real thing that why the, and, you know, why there is so much of fascination for this kind of a trend coming up. Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. You know, while we all agree this is an appealing field, there are a few key skills I feel one needs to have, not just to make it, but to actually thrive in the industry. Can you share three top skills that you would want women in PR to focus on? Pooja, Manisha and Lavina, could we hear your views first? Yeah, so I'll start. So I think three skills which I feel women should definitely have in this fast-evolving industry is being agile. You know, the media landscape and the way we are consuming content is changing. So we need to adapt quickly to use these media. And here's the constant need for upskill. These are the three skills I feel is required here. I think in, I'd just like to add to that and say that, you know, because of the situation today, we are in is not something any of us have experienced before. So the need to, you know, be a constant learner, be to have a collaborative approach to our work towards, you know, whatever we are involved in. And also to have a higher degree of empathy in today's scenario, right? Because, you know, people are stretched, people are in a situation where there has been no precedent that they could have looked up to or, you know, so right from leadership onwards, right down to the, you know, the newest kid that you have on your team, everyone at a, you know, at a different level, coping with things, coping with struggle. So I don't think that, you know, we need to, I think at this point, look for newer traits in ourselves also to be able to do better at what we do. Okay, okay. That's, that's very relevant. Shivani, would you want to add to that? Thank you, Taranjit. I believe that women naturally have the attribute of creating a strong ecosystem, you know, and the three things which I think that really carry forward women very strongly are the courage, compassion and the connection. You know, the way I think women are able to carry forward in terms of courageously multitask things that balance, you know, the work-life balance. And of course, all of us know the kind of empathy when we are talking about, you know, so the kind of connection a woman can make whether it's, you know, with your peers, your clients or through the messaging, through your campaigns. These are three important aspects which I feel are the key to any woman in any industry. Absolutely. I just added another couple of points. I believe that, you know, we need to look at two other factors which is how is it that we increase our influence? You know, I say this because, you know, to be able to influence decision-making at every level of the organization is going to be very, very important. We can be excellent professionals. You know, we can have great writing skills, being able to sort of create campaigns. But unless we are able to navigate and convince people of the value of PR and communication in general, we're not going to get that seat on the table, right? Right. And I think, to be able to influence the conversation is more important than having superior skills today. Then the second point that I think is something that the industry needs is mentoring. You know, all of us need a network of people from whom we can exchange point of views, right? If we know each other, we can pick up the phone on each other, get a point of view. As Tom Peters, a leader management guru said once, two leaders don't create followers, but create leaders. So we need to nurture leaders as women leaders. So we must support more women in our industry. And so whether it means speaking to students or within our companies or outside the companies, young managers that are trying to, maybe other entrepreneurs, that's become something that I think is the need of PR. Thank you. It would be amazing if a mentorship program of sorts specifically in PR entrepreneurship were to take place. Maybe it's another opportunity for each one of the PR firms or maybe for them to create a forum like that. That would be wonderful. But I hear you, while we've all spoken about empathy on some level or the other, learnability and increasing influence. These are two crucial skills that I agree we must do so that you can get it right. So how do you actually get started on it? How do you start nurturing learnability in the teams that we have in ourselves? How does one get started on enhancing influence given the situation that all of us are working in? The question is open to the floor. If any one of you would like to start first, that would be wonderful. Ashna, why don't we start with you on increasing influence? Okay. I think increasing influence is linked very much to the mentorship, right? You have the confidence somewhere along the line. If I look at it, there's been a gender imbalance, right? Because historically, there's been inequity in leadership. Men have always had the stronger role and that needs to change. And that needs to change in the way we, maybe the organization culture that we inculcate and we foster in all of our organizations. It's not like big initiatives are required. Just small little things, you know, maybe making your teams more inclusive. If you have a sort of a committee on a particular subject, make sure that there's a balance. And I'm not just talking about PR because in PR, we still have a lot of women. But other industries too, it has to, something I think it's going to be systemic, it has got to be across society where women kind of come to the fore. And that'll encourage, you know, more and more women leaders for sure. An area that I find is women tend to be more inhibited, you know, there's a lack of confidence. They just self-belief is a major inhibitor where women limit their options to, you know, okay, when the opportunity drops on that table, they're very happy to rather than go chase that. And we're seeing that change, but there's a lot more that has to happen. There have to be role models that we need to, you know, so when you, when you hear of a fencer who's going to the Olympics, so you'll hear of Deepika, who's won the sort of archery thing, those are role models that, you know, women definitely, we need to, we need to get more people to sort of, recognize that, learn about them, and therefore, follow the unexpected path. And if we can, we must strongly believe in putting ourselves outside that, you know, to create an opportunity, own the unexpected, and create something new. I think that'll foster a lot of change. But it, it, you know, so you've got to have role models, and you've got to sort of break down that lack of confidence by nudging more of the young people forward. Interesting. So I was reading, you know, recently reading this HBR corporate research that had just come up, and they spoke about the fact that, you know, when they asked women themselves to read themselves on leadership skills and different parameters, it was found that a lot of them rated themselves much lower when it came to leadership positions. But this confidence that you're talking about, you know, substantially increased as they hit 40 and above. And that was a time that the confidence with men in leadership kind of started declining. Now that's an interesting conundrum, but each one of the panelists to give us, you know, one key thing, because self-doubt, self-pious is a very crucial thing that, you know, we kind of kill our own opportunities before somebody else has to. Yeah. I would like each one of the panelists to, you know, recommend one thing to all our women, PR, and COPCOM attendees today that will help them kind of get over their self-pious. Pooja, let's start with you. So, you know, I feel, Tarunjit, that, you know, career into that happened, the hindrance sometimes is also restricted to the way we kind of feel. So, my tip would be that you got to be yourself very, you know, confident and you got to be very sharp and out there, because if we limit ourselves into that thing, we will, of course, get into those things. And another thing is that it wasn't a 90% and still be out there. So, every role, you can't do 100% right. So, delegate the work. If you can't do it yourself, delegate the work. But if you have a strong career, that you want to foster for yourself, yes, you have to yourself get out of that hindrance block and do it yourself. So, my thing would be that do it yourself, be that, you know, runner yourself. Nobody else will do it for you. Understood. Shivani, how does one, you know, get over the self-pious? Answer Tarunjit, I think the self-pious and the self-doubt begins right from the other side. I think it's more like conditioning is such, you know, when kind of always told that you are supposed to do this, you're supposed to not do that. But I see that with millennials and Gen Z and through the workforce, and I see that the softness and I see that, you know, looking up to something. I think it is very important to find a mentor, to find, I don't say that you need to find one particular influencer or anybody you look up to one person, but I think pick up things from all of the places and you can kind of build at your own characteristics and attributes in yourself. And all of millennials and I think most of the millennials and Gen Z are now doing that, you know, there is no one idol like earlier, always used to talk about, oh, I have this role model, I have that idol now. I think people really talk about pick up attributes from different, you know, successful women, men, whoever it would be. And I think that diversity has already started, you know, in terms of taking place, in terms of, you know, the mindset of people. So, that is something that I would still suggest everybody that, you know, looked up to pick up the most important attributes you like in others and learn from them. Absolutely. Having a good role model makes a lot of difference. Manisha and Lavina, would you like to add to that? Well, you know, we have heard it from many people that if you are in your self doubt, you know, you have to work on your emotional question or intelligent question. However, for women specifically, I would like to add that along with other question is very important to work on our you questions and why questions. You question is basically, you know, acknowledge your weaknesses, work on your strength, and then carry forward in your life. And why question is defining the purpose of your life, where I'm not just talking about the happiness, you know, but other aspects you know, that you can actually question, you know, while you know, thinking that how to move forward in our life. So I think, you know, it's very important to engage all these questions, you know, questions together, and then try to make things definitely, you know, such, you know, small steps which you will take, you know, to work on your personality, definitely going to, you know, you know, remove self doubt, whatever you have, you know, like. Absolutely. Self introspection always helps. Lavina. Yeah. I also think that, you know, we need to know our core values and our core strengths, right? Once we are sure of what those are, we can build from there on. The rest of it, a lot, like everyone has said, depends on mentoring, you know, I think I don't know. I think that the core values and our needs and what we stand for, you know, let's let's just keep that and focus because, you know, women are born with a few inherent traits, which I think you know, like everyone has spent multitasking and problem solving and all of that. So I think if those things we try to build on from there, I think, you know, it's a, it's a great place to start from. Yeah. Since Tarun here, as seems to a Taranji shouldn't have dropped out, I'll just continue and add on another point that, you know, yes, you all spoke about the fact that we need to play to our best skills, etc. But I think learning constantly is another thing that will yield a little bit of confidence. If you are sure, you know, like, because the, you know, the outside ecosystem specifically in PR keeps changing so rapidly that we need to be learning all the time, always being at the cutting edge of innovation or technology, because that's what our profession requires. It's important to be looking at what trends are there, what's going to happen next, then figure out how to stay ahead of them. So how do we master new mediums like whether it be social media, podcasts, influencer marketing, only then you will have that disruptive or clutter-breaking campaign idea to impact stakeholder communication, whether it be in the B2C or the B2B domain, you know, predictive and analytics and those mega trends as well. So yeah, in continuation to what Archana has mentioned, in 2020, we had seen the kind of challenges, you know, that were thrown upon us with, you know, pandemic, you know, we had to certainly make changes in the way we were working and communicating with our internal and external stakeholders. So yeah, I completely agree with what Archana has mentioned. You know, constant upskilling and learning is very, very important. We have seen the kind of, you know, paradigm shift that has happened in the PR industry in the last decade, you know, innovation and technology has taken a center stage and now it's no more about just telling a story, it is also about driving a conversation across multiple mediums that are available to consume content. So yeah, I would just backing up what Archana just mentioned. I'm going to rethink, relearn and adapt to the adaptation and what to do. Yeah, you know, but it's interesting that all of you have mentioned learnability, re-skilling, upskilling as one of the key skills. However, when we look at, you know, a majority of the workforce, a lot of them will finish familiar, which becomes a challenge for, you know, it again creates another hurdle or another challenge for people or towards their own growth. Is there, is there something that you would like to add, you know, which will help women in PR and communication understand how to unlearn and relearn? Manisha and Lavina would like you to address that? No. I just, see, one of the things that have changed in the past few years is how much technology has crept into our lives, right? There was a time when PR and technology, unless you were working on a hardcore technology client, there wasn't too much, you know, association for PR professionals on the technology front. Now, agencies have within themselves built a large framework of, you know, technical competencies with which, you know, which I used in the our day-to-day business, be it in, you know, measurements or tracking or what have you. On the other side, on the client side, I cannot think of a single industry today that doesn't have a technology element, right? So that in itself is a huge change that has come. So I don't, I wouldn't say that we need to unlearn what we have, but I just like to say that I don't think we will ever be at a point that we could afford to stop learning, right? So, and especially being a women driven industry and, you know, women and technology is a whole different discussion and it's getting better every day. But for all of us to be able to understand the technological aspect, both on the client side, the media side and the within the agency side, I think that is one area where we will see a lot of growth in the, and a lot of changes coming from there coming here. Absolutely. Manisha? Yeah, so Lavina has mentioned, you know, a good point here, but I would like to answer it from a different, you know, angle. So yes, you know, we have to learn, we have to, and you know, constant upskilling is important and we have discussed it many times also. But I also feel that women need a lot of support both from the organization side and, you know, a personal family side to continue their journey, you know, for a longer period. So that they get an opportunity to learn and learn, you know, we know that in still many families, you know, women are a primary caregiver, you know, sometimes that become a hindrance for them to continue or excel in their profession. I feel that the entire ecosystem has to be oriented where you know, at workplace level, we are introducing flexible, you know, policies for expectant mothers or working mothers, etc. And at the community level, we all women, you know, we have to join hands together to extend support to them when they need it at the personal level. So I think if the entire ecosystem will work together, I'm sure, you know, we have proved our mental, we have proved our potential. There are so many women leaders also in the industry. We are ready to learn, you know, unlearned, we are ready to, you know, upscale ourselves. But I think here, I feel sometimes, you know, there is a gap that needs to be filled, you know, with the proper support, both at the workplace, workplace level and at the personal or family level here. Can I add to what Manisha said here? You know, when we are talking about policies and we are talking about the workplace practices, I think it is very important to have balanced policies and balanced workplace practices. When we talk about, you know, maternal leaves, when we talk about, you know, like women leaves, caregiving leaves, it should be a balanced, you know, policies, which is government, public policies, or the workplace policies. It shouldn't be just like, for a woman. I think if, under Senator, it starts from having a balance between the genders, you know, in terms of even the leaves when we are talking about, we are talking about maternal, paternal, you know, if the person is a caregiver, that person should be getting the equal amount of leaves, you know, that's where I think we start building in the sense of equality. That's where we start building in the sense of, you know, yeah, everybody is in the same ecosystem and everybody's equally responsible. If we try to keep favoring one particular section, then obviously we are still, you know, on one hand, we are trying to fight the gender inequality and on the other hand, we are still trying to give them the extra benefits, whereas, and we are telling, okay, you are the caregiver and men are supposed to be working, you know, which is not the fact. You know, it's interesting that you bring up this point now because my next question is directly on this. You know, a lot has been said about gender balance, equality, especially in the last year when the role of women, as you know, she mentioned that it's primarily been given to women, right? The role of caregiver has been given to the woman and it's been touted as the shadow pandemic. But have, and a lot of corporate law agencies have been talking about balancing, balancing this equation out. Have we changed for the better or in reality, for women on the ground, has the needle moved beyond campaign talk? Pooja, I would like you to address that first. Has, has that happened? Has that happened in your agency? So, you know, Tharunjit, I would also like to bring it from the client perspective. You know, there are a lot of clients that, you know, we had in the manufacturing industry that we are handling. And you know, it was a perception that how can women actually lead that wing. But today, you know, they're CEO, there's, you know, in a way, so this, so this self talk, that awareness talk has happened for good and also in our organization also, it is very gender inclusive and it is more talent driven. It is more talent oriented. But yes, you know, sometimes these conversations are also important because women themselves have to know that they too have the power to do a lot of things. So this needle, I think has worked out in a positive manner only and from the, and from the recruitment, phase itself, you know, if there are women, we definitely talk about the box. We definitely talk about the benefits that we can give to them. So in that context, it has worked to a better. Right. Okay. Would anybody want to add to this? Yeah. I mean, I think we are funded. We, we are at 85% women workforce, right? We are proud about that. You know, we've always, and I think we've built that because from way back in 2004 2005, we've encouraged and welcomed women back to the workforce after they've had to take break to start a family or to become caregivers in any situation. You know, the flexibility to work from home was, has been consciously sort of encouraged. I think those simple measures have, you know, it's only now that the government has sort of come in and said, okay, now we have a six months maternity. But at that point of time, I remember two of my very senior colleagues today who had to, you know, had, had babies to nurture. And they said, we are not ready to come back to work. But we want to get stimulated. So we said, yes, continue working from home in a limited manner. You know, so you can, you can take a limited road. You can have limited hours so that you can balance your life. And I think those options once available to women will certainly will incur. I think the pandemic will assist this. Because in a way, the metrics of evaluating work from home have, each organization has, has kind of figured out a way to do so. And I think that will be a really good point in the long run for women to sort of be integrated back into the workforce once they take a break. Absolutely. I just want to add that no doubt gender diversity or inclusivity is very vital for any workplace. But it is also important to understand, you know, that gender diversity, it is more than maintaining the fair number of genders in your workplace. It is very important that, you know, at an organization level, we actually empower women and, you know, pave the way for them so that they can take leadership roles in the organization. So yeah. And you know, there have been studies that, you know, these companies, those who are maintaining healthy gender diverse in their organization are actually performing better growth-wise or financial outcome ties and in the basis of financial outcome, they are performing much better. Why? It is also because, you know, you are, you are having a wider talent pool in your system. You know, you are having people from multiple experiences who are, you know, adding a lot of value or giving different perspectives to your work. So yeah, it is important. But yeah, it has to be taken beyond just maintaining the mere numbers. We have to empower our, you know, women. Absolutely. And since I have, sorry, since I have such amazing, you know, women on this panel today, it'll be, I'll be amiss if I don't ask you this one question. What is that one leadership trait without which, you know, moving ahead and heading an agency or heading a department will not be possible. It'll give our audience a clue about what to work on. One skill. Could I go first? Yes, absolutely. I think listening. I think that's seriously something that women are good at. But I think it's also something that we need to consciously channel. Communication does involve a lot of creativity, writing, strategy, etc. But the skill that can put all of this into action and channel it towards success is listening. So listen to your customers, listen to your clients. What are they talking about? What are competition things? What is the feedback that you're getting on a particular campaign, right? How can you, as you strengthen this, you know, and input it, you would be able to adapt your into a much more stronger campaigns and strategies. Interesting. All the years of that, we have been charged to be good little girls and listen, can actually turn into advantage. You totally. Yeah. Parujit, I would like to talk about that. Yeah. One skill would be, hello. Is Pooja going first or I'm going first? You go first. That's fine. Okay. I just wanted to add out to you in continuation of what Arjuna said, you know, it's also not in terms of creating a purpose of belonging. When we talk about, you know, that's an institution actually that I can really have. And that's how we think we can have a deep respect when we talk about being a good story there. Awesome. A prioritization. So I feel once you're able to prioritize things, you know, it just kind of, you know, helps you streamline a lot of things. So prioritization for me, I think is that once it should not be a miss for sure. Absolutely. One quality which I would like to add is to, you know, as a leader, we should have an ability to convert an obstacle into an opportunity. I think I learned this lesson when I started my company, which was at the peak of global economic slowdown and then fast forward to 2020 when the pandemic happened. So I think I was able to apply, you know, that knowledge and, you know, and was able to convert, you know, the opportunities, you know, that we able to convert the adversities into opportunities for the entire organization. Yeah. Lovely. Very good advice. Lavina. Yeah. I think for me, the one key thing to keep in mind is to be able to build a narrative at any given point of time, regardless of what the situation is. I think that would take into account many factors, like listening, like empathizing, like, you know, whatever, converting an opportunity, obstacle into an opportunity, all of those things. But you must always know that yes, I have the ability to be able to build a narrative. I have some inherent skills. I've developed some skills. We have the potential. I have the means to collaborate, all of that. So I think if we keep in mind the fact that, you know, building a narrative is what PR is all about, whether internal or external. Interesting. So while you've spoken a lot about the past and the present, let's end the panel on a note from the future. Right. What are the changes that you see happening in the next couple of decades in the PR and communication industry? Arjun, let's start with you. I would hope to see more women leaders. Okay. On this forum, I can't but say that, right? But really on the professional side, I think COVID-19 has fast-tracked everything, including the evolution of the digital landscape. And as a result, PR has undergone a lot of changes. Right. It's a narrative for professionals to stay ahead of the curve in this digitally savvy world that we are living in and how to leverage technology for the benefit of our craft. Absolutely. Manisha? So I feel that, you know, technology will keep playing an important role in the next decade as well. And I feel that, you know, authenticity and transparency will take a center stage. You know, dealing with very smart audiences and, you know, they are aware of fake news and other things. So I think it is, for us, it will be very important, you know, even technology will keep playing a central role but authenticity and transparency will, you know, will become a key. Yeah. Absolutely. I think that is, that will be a key factor in helping change the reputation of the entire PR industry as well. Yeah. Shavani? Apart from of course technology which we have been talking about and, you know, going forward, that's going to be the thing, you know. I think a lot of focus is also going on, you know, purpose driven campaigns. So like Manisha mentioned, you know, people understand, people are savvy, people can not just kind of tell them what a creative story there has to be purpose behind anything. There has to be some standard positive change which you are actually making when you are working on a campaign or you're, you know, there is a strategy. So that I think is definitely very important apart from, you know, working, having hands on with the technology. Absolutely. Lavina? I think for me, with, you know, I think agencies need to be more wholesome in their, out, you know, in their offerings to clients. That is what we'll see happening. We'll see a lot of experience and stuff coming into PR. We'll see a lot of creative, you know, things happening in PR. It could be technology enabled, whatever. But I think overall the industry is moving towards a single point of contact for their marketing requirements. And I think we will see a lot of, you know, consolidation on that front. Absolutely. Pooja? Yeah, so, you know, as we already have seen that post pandemic, PR has already started taking a center stage at most cases. And now I think the role of PR would start from the boardrooms. So that is how it's going to be an upsurge that we see and how the dynamics of communication would very change. Right. Very, very, you know, to see all these trends coming to play in the near future, maybe in the next couple of years, I'm hoping we don't have to wait for a decade for all these conversions to happen. Yeah. So on that note, we'll bring this discussion to a close. Any parting shots that one of you would like to? Sorry? There are some questions in the Q&A. Just check. Hold on. Okay. So there's one question for Manisha. Why are women domination number of PR and COPCOM, why, okay, why do women dominate in the field of PR and COPCOM? Any discrimination and why this trend? There is no discrimination. I think we are very good in storytelling. And, you know, we have some inherent qualities that make us fit, you know, for the profession. However, I do not believe in being gender specific whether male or female. I think, you know, everyone has contributed a lot in shaping this, you know, industry. So, yeah, so I feel yes, PR is a female dominated industry. But yes, I think still a lot needs to be done at the leadership level. We are seeing a lot of leaders, but as Arjuna mentioned, we want to see more women. But it's interesting to note how the word discrimination, I think for the first time associated with women, it's never been like that. It is interesting. I see it from the other end. I'm sure men wonder the same thing. Another question, you know, do you need to be a pastry personality to be in the PR industry? They're not. I see my answer is very clear. Absolutely not. Because, you know, maybe the kind of clients that we work with are primarily B2B, you know, so really there is no page three concept in the B2B world. So no, we are we are very happy to be behind the scenes or just I second what is the client notes that we are. Yeah, I so far as the client knows my importance, I'm happy with that. I think you need to, you know, what he's probably trying to understand is whether you need to be a center of influence. Yes, we need to be a center of influence in the kind of industry that we are we are in and be able to sort of table trends to our clients. So whether it be in the B2B or the B2C, if you need to be networked, and that is very, very important, right to be able to sort of open doors for our clients, industry chapters, or on the right platforms, then yes, sure, you need to be certainly somebody who is a center of influence. Very, very well put, both of you, you know, on that note, I will bring this discussion to a close. Khyati is on the screen. That means thank you to a wonderful panelist for sharing such insightful views with us and a big shout out to the entire e4n team and Karan for putting this event together. We at PRPOI have been delighted to moderate this session for you today. Thank you for joining us and stay tuned for more interesting discussions on this forum today. Khyati, over to you and I did this in time. Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for keeping it crisp and thank you all of you ladies for bringing out such great insights. I can see from the Q&A and the audience interaction happening on different platforms that they really enjoyed this session. So thank you so much for your time and being here on this platform. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks, Tarunji. Thanks, ladies. Manisha, Shivani, everybody. Yeah. Bye. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. With that, ladies and gentlemen, let me remind all of you that keep tweeting to us about the event, your key insights, anything that were the highlights for you with the hashtag e4n women achievers summit or e4n women. We're moving forward to our first keynote session of the day and really excited to bring on board of Ms. Elzandi. She's the APAC head regional marketing and market development from Bayer. She has done multifarious initiative for the cause of women empowerment and today on this platform she will be talking on the topic of women empowerment through agriculture and food, the role of communication in supporting the cause. So very warm welcome to you Elzandi. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. It's great to be here. Yeah. So I'm going to start off just by telling a little bit about my own story and I hope that there's some learnings or tidbits that can actually apply. It was actually good to listen to the previous speakers on the panel because it's very different. The world that I'm operating in is very much a mild dominated world agriculture. So if you walk into my office you would think that I have an ordinary job that perhaps I graduated from high school, went to college and started working my way up the corporate ladder. But my career did not take such an organized linear path and yours certainly doesn't have to either. That should not be the expectation. It should rather be an exception if your career is taking a linear path. So where am I from? I was born and raised in South Africa. I have a bachelor's degree in genetics and mathematics and an associate's degree in teaching. So I taught mathematics for six years for postgraduate math college students and grade 11 and 12 students while I was still educating myself. So I went on to get a master's degree in plant breeding and an MBA. The first two degrees was full-time while being a student and the others were all happening while having a full-time job, getting married, starting a family and very, very aggressively start to build my career. To say my career path was unexpected is an understatement. Every job I took had some uniqueness to it. Either being the youngest, most of the time being the only female and always the one with the least experience for that specific job. This was many times, as you can expect, a surprise to others and the people around me. For me though, it was not even a consideration. And that brings me to the second topic that I want to touch on and that is what drives success. And this is not just something that I'm speaking from my own experience. For many years, I've been advocating for females in career for women in the workplace and working with students at all levels to try and figure out what is it that makes up that magic recipe and how do we support and enable women to optimize their contribution in the workplace. And for me, really, it all boils down to equipping yourself to be the absolute based candidate which leads into how you navigate the competitive job market and how do you differentiate yourself from others. It's simple. You have to be authentic, be real and live with passion. Make the world see and know what you're passionate about. Don't try to mimic what you see around you. Don't necessarily try to mimic and become the leaders that you see are successful. It's really about who are you and what do you bring to the table. So the first step, and I've touched on it and in one of my previous comments is you have to ensure that you are the absolute best qualified candidate. Educating and daily learning, looking for those opportunities to equip yourself with skills and qualifications and being a lifelong learner, it's a mindset and a lifestyle that you have to adopt. So always think about what is it that I have in my toolbox, what are the skills that I've really cemented in me as an individual and where are those areas that I can further build out my skill set. So that's the hardcore learning skill set part. Then once you have done that, you have to identify the job that is a balance between requiring the skill sets that you've got, utilizing your natural strengths, but at the same time offer opportunities for you to learn new things, to further develop yourself. I myself have not taken a job where I had already done at least 50% of what the job required. So if you look at the job description, I can check the box on 50% of what's required for this job. The other 50%, I view as my learning and development opportunity and I'm very clear on how I use my strengths to overcome my gaps and we'll talk a little bit more about that later on. So first of all, equip yourself to be the base, identify the job that offers a balance between you adding value and you having a development and growth opportunity. Then thirdly, once you have secured that role, focus 100% on performance. Ensure that you exceed everyone's best expectations. Focus on your team and what the team jointly and individually need to accomplish. Go that extra mile to ensure that you do everything in your power to help your teammates and the joint group to achieve and be successful. This is really critical and this is also how you will distinguish yourself from the race. You will earn and build a lot of trust and credibility and most needed the recognition and the support that you need from your peer group to be recognized as someone that can advance their career. People recognize great leadership in those that serve the people around them. And this is something that I want to leave with you and it really worked for me in the tough environment that I had to build my career. If you're the odd one out, if you're the one that people question what you bring to the table, this is a really great way to prove your existence and the value that you can add to the team. And then lastly, if you are successful in the first three states, the fourth will follow and that will be to find that next opportunity. How do you advance to the next step? That opportunity will present itself and it will be well deserved and the timing will align with your personal readiness to go after the next opportunity, which brings you back to step one where you start thinking about what is my skill set? How do I further build out what I can learn and then you go through the whole cycle again? Now, these are all easy things to say. It's a little bit harder to actually execute and it makes me think about what challenges do women face and how do we behave to take ownership of our own destinies? The one thing that I can say that my own career and many of the successful females that I observed around me, that was you have to do things your own way. Do not wait for others and try to do things the way that others previous generations have done it. This is a different world and we have to recognize that if we want to have it all, having it all does not include doing things the same way that previous generations did it. You have to get creative and be bold and really own how you want to achieve what you set out for yourself to accomplish. We must get creative and find new ways of doing things. So what am I talking about? That includes finding ways on how you partner with your spouse or your life partner. Roles in the relationship and the family life and setting is going through an evolution at last. The world in totality around us have been evolving and changing for many years but somehow the male female roles in the typical household have been frozen in time. Now here's the great news ladies. It's time to change and the change will be for the better especially for the people on this call. That though is very closely tied to your confidence. You have to build your confidence and confidence comes really from within. Being comfortable in your own skin and truly understanding and liking be in favor of your strengths, your weaknesses and your opportunities for development. Take time to really think about this and be brutally honest with yourself. If you do not know what these are or you struggle to pinpoint these different facets of the individual and who you are ask the people that you love and trust and that knows you very well. You must thoroughly understand what you are good at and how those strengths could compensate for your weaknesses. Be clear on where your development opportunities are and really look for ways to improve in those areas and once you have this you have to be able to tell your story and tell your story in two minutes with a lot of conviction. So what do I mean by that? What is my story just to illustrate? My story when someone say who are you and why are you doing what you're doing this is how I explain it. Growing up in South Africa and traveling the world through many different roles at Bayer I was privileged enough to meet and see how different people live in their local communities around the world. Working with agriculture and farmers you go to local villages and you really get a flavor for the country the culture and how people build a life for themselves. The one thing that was very evident is there's great need and severe poverty out there. I can tell you a career in agriculture is meaningful in many ways because you can touch and change people's lives. Having a great passion for children and elderly these are the two segments of the human population that must really rely on others many times for their prosperity and not everybody in this world have a great sense of responsibility and that's really something that I'm passionate about. Almost half of the world's population live on less than $2.50 per day. And according to UNICEF there's 22,000 children that die each day due to poverty related reasons. I feel like I can make a difference in this industry. I can change people's lives. The agricultural industry is working to address the challenges that directly impact these people's lives. And this is why I'm doing what I'm doing. In conclusion, there's five things that I want to leave with you. And if you take away these five things I strongly believe you can have a very positive impact on your career in your future. When you think about having it all what does it mean to you? You have to think differently. Do not allow society and the outside world to prescribe what having it all should be for you as an individual. The second thing, who defines what matters and what I can accomplish? Here's the thing ladies, you own that. You write your own destiny. Do not let obstacles that other people perceive as hurdles and limitations limit your future and your potential. So what do you do about this? You own it. You act like you own it. And where do you find your confidence to execute on all three points that I just laid out? You find it within yourselves. From the fact that you deserve everything that you are willing to work for and go after. And where do you go from there? You're early on in career many or you have some choices to make to think about how do you optimize your career life? You go to a place and an industry where you can potentially make more of a difference than anyone else, anywhere else. The same way that I feel about agriculture, that's how you should feel about your career and where you go and what you do with your potential. If you take these five pieces and you cascade it in separate parts, you can feel good about it. But if you take it together and it's clear, if you define it, if you own it, you can have it all. So with that, I want to pause there and any question is welcome. Any thoughts that someone have that you want me to address separately? Great. Thank you so much, Alzandi. That was a wonderful session and so many insights to how to move forward as a female in your particular careers. We do have a few questions that have come in just for you. One of them being about your own personal journey. Have you faced any kind of discrimination in terms of treatment at your workplace personally? Maybe lack of opportunity or a pay gap, gender pay gap, anything on those lines? Yes, I obviously have. And it's actually stretching over many years and I would sort of break it up into two different parts. There's the softer part of discrimination and then there's the hardcore part that's very evident and go across industries. And I faced all of them. Whether it's you think about the fact that I started off my career in field-based roles, what does this mean? Just give me one second. What does this mean? You go out to a cornfield and you interact with farmers and in a cornfield there's no restrooms for the main. It's not a big deal for females on the other hand. It is a big deal. And nobody necessarily wanted to discriminate but it's just not a thought that naturally comes to mind when it's one female and 120 men at the meeting. So there were some of those just physical realities and then there's the softer parts of a definite discrimination that was systemic. And let's talk about the pay gap. Being the first female in role, there was risk to the business. So what do they do? They start you off on probation, you start off with a lower base. If you advance your career fast like I did, I change jobs every two years. You never catch up that gap until you reach a point where you can have a very candid conversation with HR and your direct manager to say, I need to understand where I am at from a base salary viewpoint compared to my peers. And if I'm at a disparity, which in my case was the situation, how do we fix this and then have a clear plan because many times a company cannot make that big of an adjustment in one step. So you need a structured plan to then close that gap. So that's the one part. The other part that I want to call out, I've made my second job. I had direct reports reporting to me. And I've made sure since day one that I have a very strategic and transparent process to ensure that I correct base salary disparities in my own reporting team. So that's something that all of us can do that have people reporting to us to ensure that we correct if there's incorrect things that needs to be adjusted. Absolutely. I just want to point out all our viewers who are mainly females for this particular summit that the transparency that you spoke about while speaking about the pay gap, I think it's so very important to have that conversation with the HR. Sometimes we don't even open up and talk about it to our own peers or our managers or the HR managers to even have that discrimination eradicated from the system. We don't have that clear transparent communication. So thank you for bringing that point up. We have another question for you. As a female leader, what has been the most significant barrier in your career? The most significant barrier that I had throughout my career was probably convincing internal stakeholders that the fact that you are a female or the only female and the least experienced should not feed into how people judge performance. And I alluded to in my talking points earlier on how I approached it is I try to identify the people around me, my biggest critiques first. And how I overcome this viewpoint is I try to identify what is it that they try to accomplish? What does success mean to them? And are there specific areas that they're struggling with? And then I will dedicate my time and energy to help them be successful in the areas where they have issues. That way you build a very strong report and relationship and you build a lot of confidence. So someone that's not necessarily supporting you might change completely their view. And that's how I overcome some of the challenges that I face throughout my career is by making friends of enemies. Wonderful point to be taking everybody right here. So I have another question which is in terms of the context to India because being an agricultural major country, India is highly dependent on its farming infrastructure. Women to contribute a significant amount but lack basic healthcare facilities which you just mentioned in your career as well. So what steps can you propose to enhance health infrastructure for the female farming community and how can communication play a role in it? Yeah, this is a great question. And we're actually initiating a project where we try to really understand the females within our customer base agriculture. There's a lot of female farmers and it's either from a farming viewpoint or it's from a labour viewpoint. In many cases in smallholder world the females play a very big role from a labour viewpoint. And there's a few things that's clear. Many times socially they're not allowed to access training and learning opportunities. For example, if there's a farmers meeting the females many times is not allowed in the decision room or in the training room. Or if they are allowed they can't come because then at that time when the guys goes to the farmer meeting female many times attend to the family needs. So we have to think differently in how we support and reach out and touch these females within our industry. And we're having a deep dive now to figure it out. Now it's too early for me to give a plan but there's a few thoughts that I have around it. It has to be an ecosystem. One company or one stakeholder can't make enough of a difference. We have to take hands and build an ecosystem in which we can support and help these females in agriculture. Us at Bayer are in a privileged position in the sense that we do have the agricultural side but we also have a pharmaceutical business and a consumer health business. So by partnering across these three divisions we can address a lot of the issues that we're having out there. And I also think we have to be realistic in how we approach them. We have to find females to reach out to females to open up a clear communication path and also to create an environment of trust and comfort for the females out there to speak up and share their challenges with us so that we can find ways to support them. And just lastly I want to touch on the communication piece. It's critical that we communicate broadly. Now if you think about us as a company we're probably going to communicate within the scope that we can reach people. But there's other ways through partnering on communication that we can go much broader. So I want to be very clear that the communication is the one factor that will drive success and usually the stakeholders that can have their hands on impact do not have a sophisticated communication channel. So that is something where we can really find a way to collaborate and make a difference. Absolutely, wonderful points there as well. I just wanted to just reiterate the fact that there has to be like a two-way communication where the females can bring out their challenges and then we create a path for them and as well as create the compassion and trust with the workers as well. Beautiful. I have one last question for you which is how women role in agriculture saw a change with Bayer's initiative that the work that you have been doing. Yeah, so there's a few things. Technologies that we as a company bring forward is quite advanced and it's really built and heavily invested in building and developing new technologies to make farmers more successful. But the reality is most of these technologies have been adopted by the countries, the governments, the regulatory systems and the farmers on the western side of the world. Smallholder farmers is still very much relying on very old school technology regardless of whether you're thinking about seed and traits, crop protection products that help them to yield more or the agronomical advice and predictable tools that we have today to predict before a disease actually hits the crop. How can they manage and steer it proactively? And that's our mission. What we do is we are working with regulatory systems and countries to ensure that we can take these new technologies, our know-how and our wisdom to help these smallholder farmers to be more successful. Wonderful. And because this is a communication PR and communication summit, as in some parting thoughts for all the people part of this community, how through communication and through PR, we can create and impact women. So I can tell you, you all are specialists in an area where many people struggle. And actually teams, that's not successful. Most of the time it's because a lack of good effective clear crisp communication. So I think you have a much bigger role to play, regardless of which industry you look at, whether you look at nonprofits or corporate companies by effective communication, we can solve a lot of the problems in the world. So for those of you that have a passion and want to get involved in areas that goes beyond just your day job and your main responsibility, I truly believe the sky is the limit. Wow. Thanks to you so much, Elzande. It was wonderful to have you on this platform and have your insights shared with the wider audience. Thank you so much once again for being part of it. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Elzande. Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have any questions, you can put it out in the Q&A box or in the chat box, comment box on whichever platform you're watching us on. We'd love to hear from all of you. Also, the buzz is on on Twitter. So use the hashtag E4M PR Women Achievers, E4M PR Women, E4M Women Achievers. Go ahead and tell us which were your key highlights. It was wonderful having Elzande here and we're moving forward to our next keynote session bringing in another stalwart coming forward for all of you, Ms. Lucy Harvey, managing director of Meteor, Hill and Nolgen Strategies. Lucy has been with Hill and Nolgen from 2010. She has done several hats during her stints and today she will be talking to us about allyship, be the change you want to see. I'm sure this is going to be super interesting and I'm really happy to bring Lucy here. Very warm welcome. Thank you so much, Cathy. Thank you. And Elzande, I thought that was amazing. Really, really fascinating half hour. Hopefully I'm going to talk a little bit about the other side of that as well and what we can do for other people as well alongside us. So thank you, Karen. Thank you, Cathy. Thank you everybody on the call. I'm really honoured to be here and be involved. Just to introduce myself quickly, I'm Lucy Harvey. I'm one of the managing directors for HK Strategies in the Middle East, Turkey, India and Africa. It's always a bit of a mouthful. But importantly for us that includes India as part of the remit. I'm lucky enough to be involved with as well. So I get to work with Abhishek and our amazing team at HK India on the ground here. I've been working out of H&K based out of Dubai for 11 years now. I'm previously before that I was working in London as well. I'm so sorry I can't be there in person. I've been lucky enough to attend some other conferences in India and they're always exciting, inspiring and great fun. There's nothing quite like exchanging ideas, chatting, creating some bonds, over tea, over a drink, occasionally over a dance at some of the events I've been to as well. I really hope for all assets, for us as individuals, for our families that we can all be together soon at the next one as well. So sending my love to everybody and I hope you're keeping safe. So today I really wanted to talk about how we can back the people next to us. I'm coming up to 20 years in PR and communications and a subject that is really, really close to my heart is how do we fulfill the potential of everyone in the industry at every step in their journey? It doesn't mean everybody's going to become a CEO but how do we all get the opportunity to fulfill our personal potential? And to do that we need to look at both the challenges and the opportunities for different groups, for everyone. And I know that as a woman I can help other women succeed with my experiences. So I want to talk about allyship, sisterhood, feminism perhaps, I apologise for the term sometimes. Some people don't feel comfortable with some of those terms. We should feel comfortable with them but even if you don't like the buzzwords how about just being a kind, respectful person, helping your neighbour? Whatever you call it I really deeply believe in the spirit of supporting those next to you. And I think Alzandi touched on this as well herself. It's not just to expand the tents, invite a few more people in. It's about tearing down the walls of that. There's room for all of us and more to succeed. So hopefully I can leave you with a few thought starters and a way that we can all be the next step in the change we want to see in our workplace. And I'm delighted to field any questions at the end. So firstly what does it mean to be an ally? When do we need to be an ally? When do we need an ally? Every stage in our career comes with many, many different challenges. There's an intersection of our personal challenges and expectations, society, cultural, professional, whether we're a young executive coming into our first jobs at 2022-25. The middle point in our career when we may also be wrestling with families, senior leadership positions or just having had longer in our careers. And those career changes along the way that we bounce between. So I would encourage people to think about what expectations you're managing at this point in time. What do you find the most challenging to live up to? What weighs on you? What's actually a help for you? Because at every stage in that journey, what would it feel like to know that the woman next to you has your back? That she wants you to succeed. And I think that's so important. It's key to creating inclusive workplaces, feeling like someone else cares. Just saying that actually can feel like a big thing because there are many workplaces where that just isn't the case. We're expected to be incredibly competitive. We're expected to be ambitious just for ourselves. I would continue to challenge all of us to be ambitious for yourself and the woman next to you. I started my career, I would almost say nervously. I had a couple of experiences in workplaces where it was tough. It wasn't necessarily always very friendly, but I had some really great senior leadership there who saw that I had potential. They gave me confidence. They weren't actually necessarily women. Often they weren't, but often they were from other minority groups who were struggling perhaps in their own ways as well. But they took the time out to celebrate something I'd done, to notice when I needed a little bit of advice, a little bit of support. Sometimes just make me a cup of tea on a bad day, but I don't forget the impact those people have. They're really inspiring to me. Yes, I know they are still there if I reached out, and these are some people I haven't spoken to in 15 years. I know also that they must have had similar support in their lives to have realized how important that is. Their panel discussion earlier mentioned the Harvest Business Review case, which I thought was so interesting, that women consider themselves less confident. They rate themselves as less confident than men up until they're around early 40s. They also rate themselves lower as leaders up until that stage as well. I hope as I turn 40 this means that my confidence is suddenly going to change, because I can completely understand that. But yeah, interesting when judged by their peers and their managers, women are generally considered in 84% of leadership requirements to be stronger than men. These are all averages, but I think what it does tell us is that women do need extra reminders. They do need some extra encouragement now and again. A reminder they can succeed, a reminder that they can climb the ladder, so that you can push yourself to do exactly what Elzandi was talking about. Taking that next step, putting yourself forward, maybe you're doubting yourself that little bit, knowing that you have those skillsets and somebody's got your back. Those first signs of leadership, those first signs of talent need to be encouraged. That might be for you as a boss, and many people on this call would be leaders of teams. You should take that responsibility incredibly seriously as a line manager, as a boss, as a CEO. But don't underestimate the power it has to reach out to the person next to you and say, great job, so smart. Give someone a compliment, not just on the hair or their dress that day, which is fantastic, and we all need that every now and again as well. But respect people for the amazing brain power they are bringing to the table. Respect people for the impact they have made on the client or the challenge or the opportunity. I think also an important part of allyship and something everybody can show, men or women, and there are many men on this call as well, is when people come back from maternity leave. I have learned a lot. I have a lot to learn about being a working mother. I now have three children under six, so wish me luck. But I really have learned that it's a time when you can show support to the people coming back in, and it's something I take very, very seriously at work. Recognize that people feel vulnerable when they come back. You don't know what your new role is going to be, and your role will always have evolved some way or another. How do I reclaim parts of that role? How do I carve out a new role? Can I even manage this? I have a six-month-old baby, I'm just three weeks back into work again, and it's really hard. I'm lucky to have people around me who recognize that and say, hey, it's okay, well done, whether it's my husband, friends back home on WhatsApp, and a few people in the office who really make the effort to do that, but you feel vulnerable. Just to be clear, that's not about wrapping people in cotton wool when they come back from maternity leave. Absolutely not. Do not shield me from a tough meeting. I want the tough challenges because I am ambitious. I want to keep growing. But also be the person who says it's great to have you back. Be the person who checks in, see how it's going. Offer me my full role back, my full breadth of opportunity, because I want to take it. Recognizing that many, many truths can live alongside each other, I think, is really, really important here. I can have huge ambition, but I can also have huge guilt. I can also have intense vulnerability, all at the same time, and that is the nature of being human. I kind of sum Allyship up in a way, as look left, look right. Any level in any business can be competitive with men, with other women. But part of building a culture of Allyship requires a little bit of opening up, a little bit of honesty, and setting an example, particularly for the people in this call who are seen to be leaders, not just in terms of the obvious business hierarchy, but also many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, maybe you're quite a influential person in your office. It is hard to say, no, I'm busy, I need to stay in my lane, I don't want to butt in, this is their business. Absolutely, but it works for everybody as well. You set one example of support every day, one little example of support. You're starting to create a culture of support, ultimately creates a safe working space, and a safe working space means better work. It means more fulfilling work. It means a happier day, a more successful business for everybody. It's a win-win taking those little steps. And ultimately the more people, the more women who are stepping up another level who get the confidence to push themselves to the next promotion, normalise it for the women next to them and behind them, and potentially our daughters coming 20, 30 years behind us as well. Really act out the change you want to see, be the first step. And again, think about is that culture of Allyship live in your office, in your organisation, in your meetings, how do you support that? And there are many, many ways we can do it. You may be thinking, I do this already, what could I do more? As I say, the first thing for me is look left, look right. Can you offer someone that encouragement? Can you spot something they're struggling with? Can you offer them a tool? Can you share some experience? If someone asks you how you are, that is often a sign that they want to connect. So be honest, take a time out to answer honestly, share something because it's possible they want to share something back with you as well. Formal and informal mentoring at work is really important. We have some fantastic global mentoring schemes at H&K, connecting people from around the world. We have exchange schemes and I'm really proud to be part of some of those. Whether or not you do that within your workplace, whether or not you do that external through an industry body, through people you worked with in past roles, do take the opportunities to be a mentor and seek a mentor, particularly a reverse mentor, which I think is a really interesting area and something I want to work on at the moment, so I need to capture some learnings as well. But all that shit during COVID is tough. Some of those things I've talked about, it's easy to sit on my desk right now, my backdrop screen, look left and right and I'm not looking at a colleague. So how does that work? There is a danger with the working from home. I think as women particularly, it's given us amazing opportunities. Taking out the commute can release more time. We can do more things. There's the danger. Flexi working and remote working have in some ways brought us all closer. They've given us opportunities, but there are dangers. And I think the burden for women and having spoken to colleagues and friends across India is particularly true. The burden has only increased. This is across the world. There are campaigns across the world. Do not let the situation with COVID, even as we come out of a pandemic on the other side, do not let that set back the progress of women. We have too many responsibilities and we can often get dragged into too many caregiving responsibilities. And suddenly the career we've worked so hard for has maybe slightly separate from our home lives, can all get blurred in and become the thing at the bottom of the pile. I do worry about that, that as we become more comfortable with flexibility, it could become an excuse for either exclusion, because you're not giving the opportunities, you're not there in front of people or potentially just overwork, as we try and fit in more and more hours work and caregiving into the day. So flexible working does not mean always working. High woodworking does not mean work anywhere, everywhere. Create the boundaries and let's keep up the casual day-to-day connections with people, whether it's checking in, giving someone a call, just asking someone how they are and do ask up, down, sideways as well. In our India team, our practices have really actually led by a super strong group of women, but absolutely fantastic at their jobs. They're on the senior management team, they make decisions and we're constantly looking for ways to keep supporting those women. For one of the team who has a young child during their lunchtime management meeting, they always take a half hour out at the time when she needs to go and sit with her little boy and make sure he gets his lunch. That's really important. And those are the moments you can do to show the flexibility. Don't let that become then creep into every single part of the day as well. And I guess finally, allyship is also about looking internally. Be your own best ally. As we're investing effort in others around us and just to be clear, investing effort, love, empathy is not a female thing. Men don't get off the hook on that. It's for everybody to invest that time in a culture of allyship. We need to make sure we're still looking after ourselves. We need to take that first step. And every little thing counts. I personally have a thing where every morning I see my husband go downstairs and he takes two or three minutes to make sure he has a big glass of water, he has a small juice, and he takes his vitamins. In my head sometimes, I'm like, how can he be so selfish? How can he take that time? He's not. He's just carving out two or three minutes to do something to set him up for the day. And I do think many, many women and they supply for all stages, not just mothers, easily forget those pieces. Look after yourself. But then the second part of self-care is care for your own career. I think this does lead on from what Alzandi was talking about. Respect your career. Give it the time it deserves. We're going to be in these jobs for 40, 50 years. As I am, just turned 40, probably halfway through, where I need to be. I've got a long way to go and the industry is going to keep changing. In incredibly exciting ways, I'm incredibly excited to see that happen. If I don't invest in my own education, my own learning, learning from those around me, taking the extra training course, listening into that, I risk becoming irrelevant and I'm not setting a good example to women around me about how they can keep growing. Ultimately, our industry is dominated by women. This is not really an issue of getting people through the front door into our industry. The issue is about making sure people keep on pushing up, taking senior leadership positions, taking on CEO roles, being brave, taking those steps. That change can seem scary. I just don't believe it is. I believe it's about the confidence we have to grow in ourselves. It's about the confidence we have for others. We need to make sure we're creating the right opportunities in the environment for young women coming in for all those steps. We need to be ambitious for ourselves. We need to be ambitious for the women next to us today and tomorrow. Thank you for your time. I'd love to take any questions or comments. Kathy, if anybody would like to share anything? Absolutely. We have a few questions, Lucy, that's coming for you. I just want to start with the first one which says, in course of your journey, what key changes you saw with respect to women empowerment globally, especially when we are witnessing perception change in gender neutrality and gender inclusion? I suppose I've been in the business for 20 years. Probably one of the most obvious things I personally remember is coming out of university. I was lucky enough to go to prestigious university in the UK and I remember sitting in the library and this was a time when we didn't all have laptops. There were computers lined up down the side of the library. I apologize to everyone. Absolutely insane. And there were so many men, young men, sitting there, filling in their applications to be bankers, lawyers, going to the city, etc, etc. And I remember at that time really feeling like that was something for men. It's not entirely true. There were women going into it as well but the huge majority of those people and I really believe that came from conditioning from their schools, potentially from their parents that those are the roles they would go into and I do feel that potentially as women at that time we were slightly more left to work it out. There could be an expectation to go into something slightly softer. It would have been slightly harder for me to go into those roles. Now actually I think I found a career that I love and I'm good at and I get to balance all the different parts of my personality but I do feel at the time we weren't necessarily giving the openness around that. And I think probably at the time 20 years ago the PR and comms industry was seen as a very soft skill. I was always passionate about brand building. I was always really passionate about media and how those all come together. So in the end I kind of saw that opportunity but it was seen as a soft skill. It wasn't seen as respected. I do think over the last 10, 15, 20 years as particularly as social media becomes so pervasive in everything we do you have to understand that. So big companies now see the need for that and I think for women who've been grown up grown up in that as long as we've kept learning we now have an amazing opportunity to sit at the boardroom table in new ways. We just have to be continuing to push ourselves and saying I can sit alongside that lawyer. I can sit alongside the management consultant who 20 years ago was sitting in a room tapping out that application form when I didn't know what I was going to do. But it's needed and we need to have the communication story at the boardroom table. Absolutely. Another question says a lot has been spoken about female empowerment and inclusion and pay gap as well but please somewhere lack in knowledge the value this gap that still persists being creative naturally entails ensuring higher freedom of expression and celebrating the nuances of diversity what are your thoughts in the same? There's a lot there right that's a lot to think about but for me I think sometimes I think someone spoke about this in the panel you have to put the fact that you're a woman just to one side you know it's great and it brings many parts my personality of who I am as a mother etc but sometimes I can just put that to one side and think of myself as somebody who is good at being creative who's good at problem solving who's good at bringing up the table and I would hope that in our offices we are able to do that we bring together diverse groups we bring together people from different nationalities from different genders and with different life stories and bring them together and create the space for those people to create create the space for that our industry is a quite unique in its needs in a modern world we are asking for a huge array from left brain to right brain we want people to be amazing at data analytics to be able to dig into brand watch and programs and be able to pull all this smart data then I want that person to analyse that data and bring that together starting to get in the middle and giving a trend I'd also like that person to give me a creative platform and a full creative execution of how that's going to work we ask a huge amount from people it's really important our industry gives people space to explore where they sit on that spectrum and then they get space to learn and develop within that opportunity absolutely now since you spend like most of your time in the PR industry and move through ranks what has been your experience in seeing the industry moving forward from different times I think the biggest piece for me probably is that really growing the communications mix it used to be when somebody employed a PR agency or communications agency we got a tiny little piece of the pie which actually when you're learning your trade isn't too bad because you can focus and become an expert at the media relations the creative stunts that will lead to media relations 15-20 years ago when I was kind of first working in London at a big creative communications agency that's where we were but over the course of 5, 10 now 15 years that has absolutely expanded exponentially and that to me is that biggest change and challenge now and I do absolutely feel for people coming into the industry it's a huge opportunity but with that opportunity comes a challenge of learning a lot being open to so much and I would really recommend people to find the areas of passion find the areas they're interested in you need to bring all your understanding up to a certain level but then find the areas where you're going to push it to the 10 out of 10 where are you going to be the expert that you're going to be incredibly passionate about whether that's data whether your mind's like kind of moves more that way whether or not it's creative solutions whether or not actually you find that you're in communications but then start looking at brand or other areas it's now an area where you can do that you have to increase your understanding to a certain level to become a trusted advisor to your clients and then bring those extra sparks of your passion and your talent to the table absolutely we have another question that says in leadership key aspects in comparison with male and female role play is there like kind of a comparison that you would make or in leadership people make I honestly think there are so many different sorts of leaders and I don't think you can say male or more like this or female or more like this I don't think that's true in any part of our lives and it's absolutely true in leadership I know people try to make sweeping generalizations of women and more like this men and more like this that's partly social conditioning but actually it's just not true I think you have to embrace and try and spend the time to understand the type of leader you are whether that's when you're leading a team whether it's when you're leading a project you bring different skills to the table and recognizing that and being really proud of that and continuing to work on it but to to Zandi's point be aware of your weak points you have to be aware of them and you have to work on them but also here are the things you're great at because the fact is you've got to get famous for certain things and your leadership style is one of those I would definitely say though you need to and no one has any excuse not to have a leadership style that is inclusive and diverse and supportive of all people and opportunities that's not a nice to have now that is an absolute essential in any leadership style that anyone male female or if they come from everyone needs to be working on that absolutely and because this is a women achievers summit we have this question for you who are the women leaders whose work inspires you are there any particular ones that you kind of gain inspiration from that's such a good question yeah I mean that's there's been a few people actually you can imagine many people over the years who've inspired me I would say we are very very lucky to have a set of women in senior leadership teams in H&K that really inspire me that doesn't I mean we are actually lucky enough to have a female CEO who has come from a really diverse background and it's really exciting so we have our CEO there who's a great inspiration to us but I also see women just on a day-to-day basis a colleague of mine literally inspires me every single day by her commitment to learning she's always signing up for another course I have a junior on my team who is every single day signing up to something new and telling me something new and those to be honest are the leaders that I'm talking to all the time and they remind me to push myself on so although there are senior people in the organization who kind of give me the big picture it's actually the day-to-day inspiration that I think sometimes works better than anything else absolutely and because your topic was about allyship and sisterhood and you know just building that community would you like to give some parting thoughts for the women achievers here on how to build that community how mentoring or being a mentee can you know become like a big thing for the industry to move forward Yeah I mean I think I'd say again the idea of the idea of ambition be ambitious to yourself be ambitious to the person next to you and talk to the person next to you about what they want to do about where they're going and support that ambition and back them and tell them that they're great I would absolutely just reinforce that doesn't need to be huge steps change doesn't need to be everything at once if everybody is doing something extra to support the person next to them every day that is going to move us all on and that will absolutely change a culture in an office incredibly quickly if you have that sense you have that person's back and I know I feel excited about the idea of being in an office where that is the case for everybody and I hope everyone would agree with that as well Absolutely thank you so much Lucy for your time for sharing these insights with us and being on this platform Thank you everybody Have a really great day We're taking a quick break here ladies and gentlemen just about 30 minutes and we'll be back right at 1 30 p.m till then let's sink in all the insights and knowledge that has been shared till now from all our speakers go ahead and tell us your key highlights from the session so far tweeting to us using the hashtag e4m women achievers e4m women achievers summit go tell us in the comment box in the chat box what have you loved the most till now and we'll be back after this short break with another keynote session by Ms. Moonmeeth Sanbhu head of HR PhonePay till then we'll see you back we'll be back right after this break Thank you The second edition of exchange for media PR and corporate communication women achievers summit and awards 2021 presented by ad factors pr powered by standard chartered bank hero motor corp phone pay hill and noelton strategies gold partner to consulting the summit and awards are the celebration of the contribution of women and their relentless pursuit of excellence in the field of public relations and communications the second edition of the awards identifies acknowledges and felicitates those women leaders who are shaping the industry through their incredible work through this initiative we also applaud the agencies and corporates who are setting remarkable examples by encouraging gender diversity in their work culture this year's jury panel was headed by Dr. Anurag Bhattra chairman and editor-in-chief BW business world and exchange for media Ms. Nidhi Hola Microsoft Mr. Partha Kosh Samsung Ms. Rama Paul ABP Mr. Sanjeev Honda Maruti Mr. Swapayu Mishra Standard Chartered Bank Ms. Jasritha Deer Anthara Mr. Atul Sharma Radha Finn Ms. Pallavi Singh Senior Business Advisor Mr. Abhishek Gulliani Hill and Nolton Strategies Ms. Ruchira Jaitley HMD Ms. Kavita Jagthiani Peterlite Ms. Parachi Mohapatra Dr. Reddy's exchange for media and the jury congratulates all the winners Hi my name is Pallavi and I'm glad that I was part of exchange for media, PR and communication Women Achievers Award It was amazing to be part of this jury because ID industry peers were also part of this jury and I think for me it was most important to look at the entries which came in and a lot of efforts everybody's put in it's amazing for all the women professionals who've put in so much effort to fill in the entries so everybody I think in my view is a winner for taking that effort amazing shot for me there were two important criterias to judge the entries one is apart from the work which is your domain how have you kind of you know shown or paved the path for the organization's growth overall and how is it how your role has led to overall growth of the business in the role of what you've done whether it is to do with PR communication working with different peers and organizations to get your company up there in the list and second most important thing for me was how have you developed yourself as an individual because that is the key as a professional how are you changing and how are you developing that was the second one and I think if you look at for women achievers we've come a long way to what it used to be a decade back organizations are more receptive receptive for women now especially for whether it's senior positions or for that matter even if I were to say some interesting strategy work but we still have a long way to go I mean I'm only talking about maybe 0.5% or lesser of what has happened till now I think organizations have to still invest a lot of time and not just do a tick box for hiring women and giving them a platform but it's also very critical to help them and they should help themselves as well and yeah so in the last one I would just say I just want to say that everybody during this time has done amazing work what I read through all the you know detailed notes what exchange for media has put out and it was very very nicely done simple to evaluate and it's a great platform I think for me it's a great platform exchange for media anything to know about marketing advertising any news any new thing which is coming into the market from an industry perspective so yeah I wish them and I wish all the women who've come in the entry best of luck you guys have winners any which ways and be safe take care and let's really make this community proud I'm so glad I was part of it thank you so much let me start by congratulating exchange for media for organizing an event that celebrates power of women in the communications industry at H&K Strategies we are very proud to partner for the second edition of E4M VR-encoupled communications women achievers award the experience during the jury meet was very rewarding and exchange of ideas very thought provoking it was a delight to be a part of an esteemed jury panel that cut across industries the entries this year for the second edition of E4M VR-encoupled communications award were not only exemplifying clarity of thought but also showcased innovation leadership and a remarkable zeal towards driving and contributing to the future of communications in India the entire process was very transparent and the criteria very holistic however for me it was important to see leadership skills and the future and contribution to the industry all the stories this time were very authentic women today are leading organizations or actively contributing to the success of an organization and are really driving us into the future and platforms like exchange for media women achievers award recognize and celebrate the contribution made by women what's a very good experience when this invite had come one was wondering that looking at the number of people how are we going to make it happen because so many heads and so many opinions also the nominations ran into about 140 which had come down to a short list of about long list of about 80 and from a long list we had to bring it down to a short list of let's say about 50 odds so one thought this was going to be a daunting task but full marks to the exchange for media team the planning team they've meticulously planned it out in terms of breakout rules in terms of you know breaking us into two three different groups and then allocating about you know 21 order entries to each one of the you know breakout groups to do so I think my experience has been very good it was meticulously planned well thought out and the experience of meeting other jurors has also been quite enriching if I talk about the first the quantum then I am given to understand that 140 nominations were received out of which the exchange for media team brought it down to about a long list of 80 from a long list of 80 our task was to bring it down to a short list of about 40 to 50 that tells you about the quantum and which means that this is this continues to be a very popular summit and award as far as the quality is concerned I can speak for the entries which were allocated allocated to me and the quality was quite good quality was very good in fact I would say because there were a couple of entries that I was confused about and I had to go over them at least thrice to say where do I put them and when you have this problem of plenty this problem of plenty happens when there is good quality across board that's as far as the quality the quantum and the quality of entries is concerned the two main criteria that I was looking at is one how honest the portrayal has come of the content that people have put together because oftentimes what happens and especially with communicators one sees that there's a lot of jargon thrown in there's a lot of content which is written so basically there's a lot of English but when you distill it down there's very little substance that you are left with it happens oftentimes this didn't happen in too many entries that I saw that I adjudged so for me one criteria was that how honestly how genuinely how authentic the sort of entry comes across as being the profile that was one criteria the second criteria was that giving a balance to not just the accomplishments that have been done so far what has been accomplished so far but also about the future potential because a lot of categories were emerging leaders emerging leader in public relations emerging leader in mac on or in com com etc so future potential is also a balance between what you've accomplished and what your future potential is these were two main criterias that I had put to test while adjudging these categories it's a mixed bag if I would say mixed bag in the sense because when it comes to women leadership to me it seems more of a two steps forward two and a half steps backward kind of a story I've been around now for 20 years and it's these are these press and charts that women leadership goes through there is a time when you see a whole lot of global leaders and therefore a lot of Indian leaders in BFSI and ITS in some other sectors and at the same time equal number of industries you see where at a base level at an entry level at a duty level they're huge employers or women but more often than not the top is still represented by men take the example of PR as a function public relations as a functions public relations as a function has a whole lot of women who enter the ranks you know so at the entry at the entry rank at the ranks which is junior to women management but most of these public relations firms that you can think of are headed by men so therefore like I said it's a mixed bag but one I think what one has to do is to keep forging the head the agenda and for that women empowering women is going to be an important factor in ensuring that how far we go how far the trajectory goes because women have to empower and when we reach wherever we reach in life it's important that we lend a hand to other women who are down the rank and bring them up rather than just reaching there and shutting the door behind us I think it plays a pivotal role it plays a pivotal role because see what what does this platform achieve let's break it down let's small things but small things add up to make big things first of all today in the managing team in the operations team in the managing team one sees a whole lot of women around right and at all echelons of power from lower to middle to senior in the team which is there an E for them so in terms of women representation it's a good platform number one number two look at the number of women which are there on the jury so if you see there's a very very healthy mix there's a very good representation of women on the jury so therefore you again give representation and exposure to women leaders who are in who are in different organizations that's what it does that's the second thing that it brings to the fore the third thing obviously is that it's it is encouraging women to say that your work is important you hold up half the sky and you need you know your contribution so much to the GDP this can't be work that is just going in a big black box that nobody gets to talk about you need recognition you need a reward and here is a platform which will give you recognition and reward at a national level so that's what it does for young upcoming women and I think this encouragement will go a long way in them reaching out to them at the top so that's the third thing that this platform does the fourth thing is also honored organizations which are headed by women or which give a lot of support to women to reach the top which have good representation of women which are doing a lot in terms of the diversity and inclusion agenda so celebrating those organizations this is what this forum is doing from their own internal organization to a jury level to a participant level to organization level all in the same and I would hope that more media outlets more media portals and organizations follow suit because I'm sure this is one area where E4M would like others you know imitation is the best form of flattery I don't think that your mind being flattered in this particular aspect all the best it's a pleasure to be here as the jury member for E4M Women Achiever Awards I think considering the fact that 70% of the workforce in this industry happens to be women I think it is high time that we recognize that and I think it's a brilliant initiative by E4M to make sure that women who are leaders in this space are actually given the deal so very happy to be a part of this great initiative it I think I went through quite a few entries and what I found the most interesting was that it was not only around communications but also around categories like entrepreneur of the year emerging leader in corporate communications corporate communicator of the year mentor of the year in COPCOM best organization for women empowerment I think there were plethora of categories and what I found the most heartening was that it's not only organizations and people but there were a lot of interesting stories that people had to tell people had painstakingly put in a lot of effort in these entries and I was very very you know very happy to see that some of these entries are really really you know just out of their league and completely showcases the kind of innovation the kind of great work that we are seeing in this industry especially by women I think I was definitely pleased to see some great storytelling some great ways to capture the the outcome that the candidates had put in their categories I think and quite rightly so their entries stood out from the rest of the people I am looking forward I think we have a meet right now and I'm looking forward to see people who emerge winners out of this hotly contested award category and I'm looking forward to making sure that the best person win congratulations to all of you I think I always prefer judging in person where you get to interact with the candidates you get to interact with fellow jury but yes in the given pandemic situation I think what was arranged and the way the jury was judging was very very high quality the jury spent judicious time on each entry going through the details of the candidates that submitted and I really appreciate being part of such a jury see I think the number of quantities or sorry the number of entries in terms of total entries I think exceeded 180 is what I've informed we finally you know after going through the second round the juries went through really about 82 entries together so yes the entries are there they're quite a bit in volume and number I think but the most important criteria for any entries that we were judging was to see how the correspondence have told about them how the respondents have written about their achievements have written about their future plans that they have in this field here to your query about the entries this time I think there were a total of 150 plus entries received the jury went through all of them in fact and the final jury round we judged around 81 entries so that speaks volume about the quality of entries that we have received because normally in the final list the list is slightly pulled down it's very small but this time we had a tough time going through all the entries you know each one is a winner in its own criteria participants who have participated trust me are winners in their own rights the whole fact that you're part of this event itself is commendable and the fact you know as a jury as a jury member I think the key things that one is looking in all the entries that you're going through are a brief detailing about the person who's filling the entry the key achievements what they have done and most importantly what are the plans for the future I think that speaks volumes about you know what you're doing and what you propose to do as you move ahead in this field institution is the name of the game today but I'm surprised that it had to be given a name first of all I think as a society we are all equal today everyone has the right to grow and excel and whatever they're doing I'm really really delighted to see you know many of my friends many of my colleagues heading organizations as women you know there's a colleague of mine who's heading Pfizer and she's right way up on the top and you feel proud about the fact it gives you a lot of happiness to see women excelling in whatever fields they are in today and in PR and corporate communications I think it's a field really governed by them you know I am new to this field and I I have no qualms in saying that I've learned from the best in this field today and they were all women I think E4M adding value is separate I think it's a platform that's giving so much of visibility to so much of good work that is happening and a platform that has been consistent over the years recognizing women for their achievements it's Afreen and I really salute P for M for their contributions in this part thank you wow no pleasure right okay first of all I thought of power then do you know what I thought what I thought mileage let's go to Khandala okay leave it then think about power to ratio now in all this I forgot to think about your pink now do you know what I'm thinking what are you thinking why should boys evolve the fun bold new style zippy right but very easy handling new hero pleasure class we believe that every corporation and brand has a public and today's public is more powerful than ever before they have the power to topple CEO's reshape strategy influence government policy kill products and create unicorns they demand truth transparency and the highest behavioral standards we are embracing change constantly innovating the way our clients and the public communicate whatever the sector and whatever the challenge our client obsession means constantly evolving new products and services we are innovating the future of public relations our belief is that brands with a clear authentic purpose and performance strategies aligned to business objectives are most likely to succeed we use strategy creativity and innovation driven by data and analytics to put your purpose and performance at the heart of all communications together purpose and performance drive audience preference we call this approach 3p communications hill and nulton strategies always in beta exchange for media a name synonymous with the latest news about the advertising industry in india the exchange for media group set up in 2000 has the most credible media platforms covering the entire advertising media and marketing domain with its highly acclaimed digital print and on-ground assets the group's flagship news portal exchangeformedia.com reaches over 6 lakh subscribers who are the first to receive breaking news in the industry the buzzing website not only covers the news but goes beyond the obvious to bring in a fresh point of view impact the weekly news magazine from the group is the most widely read business magazine in the advertising trade within depth analysis and news based features providing perspective to key happenings in the industry the monthly pitch magazine provides a ringside view of events unfolding in the marketing landscape along with media and advertising another monthly magazine reality plus is a market leader in repertoire on the real estate industry today exchange for media is not only a leading publisher in the domain but owns the IP of more than 50 events spread across Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore making it a powerhouse of information and knowledge sharing exchange for media has curated and launched some of the most successful IPs across marketing digital TV print radio mobile OOH and PR the impact person of the year exchange for media conclave Indian digital marketing awards tech munch pitch CMO summit india marketing awards prime time awards indian content marketing awards golden mics and bar are some of the group's top-notch events in addition to niche bespoke events and round tables curated especially for discerning clients exchange for media events attract stalwarts as speakers along with the loyal audience comprising of leaders trendsetters and opinion makers they are the perfect networking platform for the entire media and advertising industry no wonder exchange for media group publications and events have high credibility and reach and are the destination of choice for agency brand and media professionals across the industry exchange for media BW Business World presents a rich legacy of curated events that enable conversations on policy issues in India because of the state of our cities we have no option but to build smart and resilient cities digital India is more for the poor under privilege and deprived covering a range of topics BW Business World events look to create a strong narrative around smart cities digital India healthcare swachh Bharat human resource issues education banking and finance among others the world is fast changing best practices are available now on the net because development in the whole of politics has become a focus BW Business World events provide a speaking platform to the voices that matter the connection with smarts is that the basic amenities we should adjust you don't have to be a technologist you need to understand how technology influences the world Bhatla Gandhi was a great man he was the leader of the freedom struggle we believe that e-governance and IoT will play a very very important role BW Business World is an excellent exhibition platform that helps you showcase your services to the right audience to be a part of our legacy write into us at partnerattheradebusinessworld.in welcome back everybody and yes we are at the second edition of e4m PR and popcorn women achievers summit and we are ready with our next keynote session before we do that once again requesting all of you if you have any questions for our speakers you can put it in the Q&A box chat box comment box on whichever platform you're watching us also there is a buzz on Twitter with the hashtag e4m PR women achievers so you can tweet to us using the hashtag as well moving forward it is our absolute delight to welcome Ms. Manmeet Sandhu head of HR PhonePay Manmeet Sandhu heads HR for PhonePay Digital Transactions Platform anchored on payments as the chief people officer for PhonePay Manmeet supports the organization's goal of scaling leadership to keep pace with its exponential growth and build a world-class HR organization with the right tools and systems so PhonePay employees can access opportunities to be the best version of themselves today she will be talking on women in leadership and PhonePay's efforts to change the equation a very warm welcome to you and me thank you very much thanks a lot and a pleasure to be here Cathy thank you we are looking forward to your session all right great let me just get started and firstly just acknowledge how happy I am to be here with all of you today people who have managed to achieve so much and do so much with their lives I know given the fact that women in the Indian workforce less than 20% getting to where you are today would not have been easy but at the same time I think it's great for us all to acknowledge that being here today is also a source of great inspiration and hope for so many women going forward so as Cathy mentioned what I'll be talking to you today about is women in leadership and also what we are doing at PhonePay to help change the system and make it make it a much better and much more equitable work but before I get started let me talk to you a little bit about myself and how I got where I did and what I learned in in all of those those years I'll start right at the beginning the year I was born at the year I was born was the year in which the head of the country for India was a woman and what a woman she was with her in the most powerful position in the country I think the strength the willpower and the competence of women was never really going to be in question again and with that as my starting point and also growing up in Moficial towns all over India the world for me at that point was small and slow but at the same time there was a lot of space to also dream big dreams in the 90s as India began to open up there was now a possibility to make a lot of these dreams come true and for inspiration there was there was Kalpana Chawla Sushmita Singh to Arun Thithi Roy no matter who I wanted to be there was there was there were examples of rich women right in front of me doing a lot more and being a lot more than they had originally thought it was possible it also helped I think that growing up I was left free to chart my own course and do my own thinking and as I looked at young women and girls around me at that point in time it felt that it was more or less the same for all of us our mothers seemed to really be filled with this desire to to make sure that the girls that they were bringing into the world were filled with diligence and courage and very sure about the life they wanted to lead we were never told that there was someone who could not be or something that we could not do and this I believe was a biggest gift but then it was time to start being a part of the workforce and there is what you believe of yourself and what the world believes of you entering the workforce I will admit that it felt a little bit like being a part of a foreign country the rules of success are different but not in a way that is immediately obvious and like in a foreign country what are the rules that apply to the majority don't really quite apply to you and this again is is not a new thing for centuries the survival and success of the outsider whether men or women has really dependent dependent on our ability to follow instructions work hard and gain trust but the thing is this that trust is not just about competency and credibility it is also about being able to figure out what the undridden rules are knowing what favours to call in who to go for advice what questions to ask and what topics not really to bring up this is what culture is it is rules that makes a place what it is and the things that nobody really tells you about the better you understand the culture the more you try the more foreign the culture the more difficult it is for you to succeed no matter how hard you work I realized that some of this when I was actually in a foreign country this sort of came home to me at that point in time I spent a few years working in the US and as an Indian I was part of a model minority I figured out a bunch of people who worked hard who seemed to know technology stuff really well and in general sort of kept their heads down I got a lot of credit for knowing more maths and more computers than I really did and it worked well for me but at the same time I was also conscious of how much easier it was for me to make a point if I was tentative when I was not really shaking the boat and when I knew went to be quiet and again this was not unique to me I saw this play out in meeting rooms again and again women people of color or foreigners generally found it much easier to succeed when they knew what were the right opinions to hold and when it was really safe to disagree once I came back to India I noticed that the same thing applied more or less here as well in fact I would almost say that we are much better at understanding these ancient ancient rules of power you can call it that and I think I've sort of basically come to the conclusion that women in the corporate world are in a foreign country we succeed only by changing ourselves to suit the expectations from the others some of us are better at it than the others but it is not that it is ever easy for any of us so with all of that when at PhonePay we decided that we wanted to focus on developing better gender balance the goal we took on was to make the place a little bit less foreign for women to make it actually a place where they felt they could belong and our starting point was having more women in leadership this was not just about creating role models it was also about ensuring that women were in positions of power and influence so we could begin to change our underreference we believe that if a quarter of the leaders in the organization were women it would help create that critical mask which will make it easier for women to have their voices heard and this is such is not necessarily a new idea it's been done before in fact my favorite story about this is from Obama's presidency at the time when he first became the president a president the women in his staff were a small minority and they usually found it difficult to be effectively able to make a point so they came up with a mechanism whenever a woman made a key point the other women would repeat it giving credit to the author until it just became an everyday thing and then Obama noticed and began to do the same thing until everybody felt a lot more comfortable being able to share opinions and make sure that their voices were not sort of quieted down before they had the chance to make their point and ultimately translated into a much more equitable gender distribution by the time of his second presidents so to me the fact that it is possible for sort of creating that critical mass was a fairly strong learning but then what do you do what do you do to get more women in their leadership positions so one thing we decided a simple enough starting point was that we would make sure that all external hires that we made at phone pay at senior positions in the organization would only be women so we'd take whatever time it took we'd work hard as hard as it took to make sure that all of those positions were filled by women leaders and this was not an easy decision I myself was not sure if it was the right thing to do it felt like a quota and I had been conditioned to believe that quotas are wrong because they distort the market but the point is the market is already distorted in the other direction whether you consider the motherhood penalty the access or the lack of access to networks or the expectations of managing the house and the husband the dice is already loaded against the women this little thing is just the our mechanism our little effort to make sure that the balance the equation is rebalanced a little and if you did nothing it would simply perpetuate the current system which was definitely not something we were willing to accept so once we take in the decision we had to now make it happen and that again had its own set of challenges because there were always good reasons to just hire men it was a bigger pool they were a bit of fit frequently in fact was turning out that we could hire them for less money that was needed to sort of pay the women and we are a startup we felt like we're in a big hurry to hire and we couldn't really wait for so long to get all of the positions filled only with women but we stuck to the principle and slowly it has begun to give us the results that we wanted not just in the fact that we have more women which is also happening slowly but also in the way the leaders in the organization have begun to take responsibility and ownership of creating more equitable cultures within their teams and to get more curious about what it would take to make sure that the women in their organizations wanted to continue be there felt like they were a part of the team and wanted to develop the visibility did another thing which was possibly an unexpected outcome it also translated into a lot more people across the organization men and women to really talk about their own experiences and their own means of being able to feel like they were being included when we first began in fact when we first began started began to talk about this it was very very hard for us to get women to share their challenges and constraints but once we made the commitment a lot more public on creating an equitable workforce more people were willing to come forward and share their experiences just knowing that this was an organization that felt strongly about this meant that people wanted to sort of be a part of the story that helped make the change happen one of the things that we did as part of the entire initiative was also that we spent a lot of time talking to women both inside and outside the organization and what was interesting about that was that when women talked about their challenges they were not usually about child care and like work-life balance those were things that mattered but far more frequently the challenges were really about managerial support about being aware and well informed and having their opinions heard the issues that women seem to care about the things that they wanted out of work were really not all that different from what men seem to want so we've decided not to really pursue any women-specific leadership programs or to single women out or to identify policies that would single women out our goal is really to make the system better so women can contribute without compromising or limiting themselves we're also creating the space for women in the organization to surface their challenges and constraints so we can band together and push for this change much more strongly by creating a community we're amplifying women's voices the fact is that we want more women because we believe that they bring a different perspective and a different lived experience but we will only be able to leverage this experience if we don't first require the women to change who they are if people believe that they're valued and they have a voice they will fight to make things work and our promise is just that the promise of a voice there have been generations of women who have joined the workforce since I began my career in some ways the paths are broader there are more opportunities there are different things that people can do and careers are not just about means to independence but are also frequently about having a calling and there are so many more role models all the way to the vice presidents of the most powerful country in the world but women are still only a small part of the corporate world still much harder to find in the most powerful roles only eight percent of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies are there although this might do is a 1900% increase in 2000 two out of the 500 women were two out of the 500 CEOs were in and today that number is up to 40 so things have gotten better but then as I look at the successful women I know my managers and women leaders across the organization across various different organizations whether in India or abroad the common factor invariably is the support systems around them frequently it has meant that whether as fathers managers or husbands the men have made the space to build the collaborative relationships that puts the woman first sometimes it is about the advice encouragement and faith that they demonstrate in the person sometimes it is about opening those that they have access to and sometimes it is simply about getting out of the way so that the women can shine and it has to be acknowledged that it takes courage for men to do this it requires them to stand up to society's expectations of themselves but in the process I believe that these men and women are creating a generation of boys who have role models not just in their mums but also in their dance so as successful women yourself you probably have examples of these people in your life I certainly do people who for me both men and women who opened up doors that I wouldn't otherwise have had access to so as I think about what it takes to make to build a world where more women can play to their potential I think about little ways in which I can make an impact in how I engage not just by me but also with many of you and the conversations I have with young women so they know not just to be diligent but also ambitious not just hardworking but also willing to take risks and also of course in the system that we build at phone paying that helps them all below so today ladies and gentlemen my ask of you is just this as people with power please help tilt the world a little bit more towards equality thank you very much thank you so much Minmeet that was really interesting to hear you talk about so many aspects and we have many questions that just jumped in on our Q&A box and also we have from other platforms I'm just going to take a few minutes to ask you this our first question is since HR involves a larger gambit within the organization what are your views on role women play and is there any kind of discrimination pay gaps issue and inclusivity in leadership what has changed in these last few years if you'd like to throw some light on that okay so if I understand the question it is about women in HR or is it about women in leadership women in HR and also in the leadership okay so it's I think there are multiple different things and to me I think the starting point is kind of this thing that there are certain things that women are good at and there are certain things that men are good at that unconscious bias a lot of us just start off with men and women and I think that's possibly the one thing that if you can get over would help the question about women more women in HR actually even more women in media sometimes it's because oh you're good with kind of talking to people you're good with being somebody that people can rely on and all of that sort of stuff we've found that when we've been able to create those systems and we've tried to sort of nudge people towards working with their biases and be more open about keeping giving people opportunities about not deciding for them and letting people decide for themselves it has resulted in better output so it's really just about saying that you think that oh maybe I should not give this piece of work to this woman because she's just coming back from eternity don't decide that yourself ask the person whether they'd like to take on that challenge and that sort of helps on the other question around pay gap I think I have a little bit of that in the conversation that I just had as well I think it's interesting what happens is that one part of it is about the roles that women kind of end up taking up they're frequently the roles that tend to be the less paid roles but even in roles that are more highly paid within an organization once you get to the board senior roles that disparity sort of tends to get better in control I think especially because in recent times there's been so much more communication about the women needing to stand up for themselves but I think in the junior roles when women are still sort of trying to figure out who they really want to be those discrepancies tend to come up a little bit more frequently and at an org level what you can do about is just kind of do those surveys do that analysis figure out where those discrepancies are and help manage them right now this is in relation to phone pay particularly is how phone pay has curbed the gap between being financially independent and being between financially educated what is phone pay's vision on empowerment for us I think and that's an interesting question because I think it plays out to both sides both what we do within the organization for our employees and what's happening outside the outside part definitely I'm quite proud of very frequently a lot of the initiatives that you take around creating a more equitable space are just about opening up opportunity so they're not you don't very as you also saw from what I mentioned in the in the conversation earlier it's not really about saying oh I will do these special things for women it's about saying that how this opportunity is now available to everybody and now it is going to make it easier for people to pick it up so for example if I make it so simple for you to just open up your phone and make a payment or receive money or to in other ways be in control of your finances keeping track of your money and all of the rest make financial investments and all of that stuff that by itself makes it a lot easier for anybody in a in an maybe a less powerful position to take advantage and I think that's sort of how we as an organization are helping opening up the financial space to make make sure that there is a lot more independence there and and we have a bunch of plans that will make this even more more concrete in the coming years Wonderful so there's more like a neutral ground where people can come forward what's your message to the new budding women leaders and how they can shine in their respective walks of life I think if I was to think about it in terms of the advice I would give to myself from 20 years ago I think a couple of things one be ambitious and when I say ambitious I mean think about the biggest most complex problem that you can solve and go ahead and solve it don't think about oh I don't know I don't know how I will be able to solve it I don't have the capability I don't have the training you have all of it inside you go ahead and take off a big chunk of the challenge and solve for it because you absolutely can and the other thing is that build your networks have people around you who have faith in you both men and women and move forward with them Wonderful now we have some questions that have come in on the platform itself so I'm going to take a couple of them here Neha says how do you think we are more empowered now that we are able to speak in leaps and bounds about women empowerment and what has changed now in comparison to let's say a decade ago I think the I would say that there were some brave people who first stepped out and made those had their voices heard and then they turned around and looked at the rest of us and held out a hand I mean I would talk about you know people like Indira Gandhi people like Kalpana Chawla Arun Diti Roy people who did not necessarily had anybody voting for them or biding for them but they sort of made that space for themselves but once that space was made I think a lot more of us are role models to generalize I can do this if she can do it I can do it and I think that's what has helped more recent times I think we are a lot more aware also of the fact that we don't have to be limited and I think that has also helped a lot Absolutely next question is from Shikhar he says are women reluctant to take up role in operational HR HR personal in India we only see women in recruitment and training what is your take Okay I don't know Shikhar if this is more of an industry specific thing I have not really seen that if I look at my own team it is definitely a team with more men or more women than men in it more women in the more leadership roles as well and women across roles multiple different ones and not just necessarily limited to anything which you would sort of consider female specific I think what does happen is that HR sort of seems like a place that more women will get started on but I think in recent times you see a lot more of them also going into more holistic positions whether it be compensation whether it be operations whatever else so I see that changing right and here's a very open-ended question any advice to new entrants in the PR industry so I will take inspiration from Priya Patankar who is our communications and PR head I will say that if I had I had thought sort of differently about stuff I thought PR was the most glamorous place to be and I would definitely have wanted wanted to be in this particular space so I love the love the work that the space does and and Priya is an amazing leader herself I think for young women or young people entering the organization at this point in time I think this is a space that is alive with opportunity given how much more that is happening in media I would just again say the same thing just grab the opportunity don't let it go you're great at it don't sell yourself short just go ahead and grab all opportunity and do the best of an industry that has got so much going on in it thank you so much Manmi for your time and for sharing these insights here with us on the platform thank you so much from the entire team of exchange for media thank you for the pleasure of being here thank you everyone thank you the pleasure is ours thank you so ladies and gentlemen we can see the interaction going and the buzz is on on twitter using the hashtag e4m PR women achievers you can share your key highlights from the session so far and I can see that all of you are enjoying these conversations so we are going to straight move into our next panel discussion which will talk about COVID adversity what opportunities and challenges lies ahead of us so here we have our esteemed panelist I'd like to welcome on screen we have Jeanette Aroul AVP and head corporate communication we have with us Sukanya Chakraborty global head corporate communication and CSR VFS global we have with us Pooja Khan head corporate communications Panasonic also on the panel we have Ati Puriya Saravath director brand communication and corporate citizenship itself and we have with us on the panel Nikki Gupta director teamwork communications moderating this session is Ms. Tasmay Roy assistant editor exchange for media group very warm welcome to all you lovely ladies and Tasmay I'm going to leave the screen to you to take the conversation forward thank you so much Cathy for the introductions welcome speakers so glad to have you on the panel today there's a great session waiting ahead of us so without much delay I think we should start this chat and you know what's interesting and what we've been hearing from the speakers before this also that how the your gone by has changed everything right has changed operations it has changed management marketing communications every day so you know I would just start with one question for all of you and I would like to you know your two cents on it how has the past year and a half been how has it changed what is new what's been happening for you and your organization in the year and a half gone by we'll start with you Sukanya thanks Tasmay hello to everyone who's listening and a big hello to my co-panelist it's great to be here on this platform quickly on how the last one and a half years has been for all of us I guess the pandemic has been an eye opener of thoughts of thoughts for all of us all individuals businesses and communities at large disrupting and creating new ways of adapting to everyday situations and a lot of learning as well you know setting a you know the so-called new normal in every step emphasizing the need to be agile flexible to make shifts wherever needed in fact as soon as the pandemic hit us businesses had to quickly we look at ways that they were working and devised the best ways to reach out to the stakeholders both external and internal and for us in communications at that this time when everyone was experiencing uncertainty and turmoil we made sure to shift our focus to address crucial subjects of public information safety health that was more contextual with the times right right we'd like to hear from you Niki since your brand has so many health care brands under its umbrella how has it been you're seeing all your different clients all with different demands how has it been just give us an overall understanding of how it's been unmute yourself Niki yes we can hear you yes thank you exchange for media and Thamsai for having me here so we are meeting again very soon now within the week only so as you're talking about the COVID adversity opportunities and challenges right so if you talk about the whole communication industry we all the panelists are from the different domains of the communication industry and due to COVID the whole communication has taken a 360 degree approach it has affected our way we used to communicate it has affected our daily way of communications be it colleagues be it you know team members be it you know with the media I would say with everybody so COVID in the today's scenario it's a malformation I would say of a traditional PR and the new marketing strategy when it comes so in this scenario multi-tasking communication person in this world a communicator has to play a multiple rules to meet the brand expectations as you have correctly mentioned that the healthcare industry I would say that this pandemic has given multiple challenges to the entire communication industry however it has given it has given immense opportunity when it comes to the healthcare communication industry the whole communication industry has got multiple challenges but huge opportunities absolutely absolutely those are great insights you know multiple challenges and great opportunities are something that you know has been a part of businesses their strategies in the past year and a half gone by Janet over to you tell me a little bit about you know how it's been at your end what are the challenges and what are the opportunities that you put spot in the last year gone by yeah hi Tasmay thank you for having me on board can you hear me yes we can loud and clear yes okay so yeah I think the year and a half has been I would say I would say it's a you know there's a lot of introspection that we all went through because there was a lot of learning we did a lot of unlearning we did I think we were just thrown into a situation where we had never expected and anticipated this kind of a scenario so we all had to learn to adapt to the new scenario adjust to our new ways of working whether it is at home whether it is at you know at the office level I think when you're just thrown into the sea to swim you know you'll figure your way out and from there you know your learnings will begin and I think we all stood together whether as a family unit or as an organization we all stood by each other and I think that has been one big learning absolutely absolutely Atapriya how has it been for you how different was it or how similar was it to the experience of the other speakers we just had how has the year gone by been for you and your company Atapriya may I request you to just leave and join back again and connect the audio that's made till then sure Pooja meanwhile we can hear from you at Panasonic how has it been what were the challenges opportunities if you can submit for us honestly you know the life as we know it will never be the same again and I think the year has been like it's really extraordinary time that we are living through it's a life changing experience we all have recalibrated what we believe in what we stand for our priorities are starting to change and I see this whole concept emerging whether it's with my colleagues or with my friends outside the whole YOLO concept or Kharpati M so it's it's kind of taking the whole world at storm and you know we are no different and I see our colleagues going through that quite a bit I'll just give you my two bits on today's topic of discussion which is on COVID communications and how things have been I don't think there's any readily available playbook to help us navigate through what we have gone through I mean the last time we faced something like this as a mankind was the Spanish flu I think that was 100 years ago and today it's really a different world that we are living in and none of us have ever faced something like this before it's been about in the first wave the conversations actually started with that as I was telling you guys earlier also it was life versus livelihood yeah when the second wave it moved towards and during the course of the year it actually moved towards life and livelihood both are equal important part of the pillars of our economy whether it was government whether it was corporate we all had to align switch our narratives and figure out what was the best way to communicate and deal with the situation and like all industries every industry had this unique set of challenges while some somebody spoke about a lot of opportunities yes there were opportunities but there was also a lot of disruption that happened and if you see the manufacturing index again gone down so it's not a very happy time to be in terms of economy and employees and employment generation but having said that there were opportunities and all industries had unique set of challenges whether it was like especially for us being in manufacturing I mean it was a big thing of coming back to business and that I'll speak about more when I speak later there were some green shoots of opportunities if I have to look outside the business and I have to say that you know cloud kitchens what a big success that was that was a very big opportunity that came out IT, ITES huge opportunity again and they have made huge profits so that's been and NGOs have really come up quite a bit in this time and there'll be many more such things with the conversations further will come to life so I think I will leave it at that I don't think there's any playbook it's been a very tough time for everybody right welcome back at the Priya again can you tell me now yes absolutely so you know we were talking about like Pooja was mentioning it was a year like no other and you know while there were opportunities there was a great deal of challenges as well so you know if you can help us understand how has it been at your end how have you all been coping with the entire learnings and unlearnings of the COVID times thanks so much again Taskeen sorry about that those are some perils of you know working from home the technology is the purpose you wanted to serve so let me just start by saying that we are an essential services organization you know focused in financial payments and technology and fintech I think you know pretty much everybody has covered different aspects of how the pandemic really impacted us but two aspects that you know I want to be able to focus on is the fact that you know we very consciously as an organization took a shift to not necessarily identifying the new normal but really addressing the fact that you know what is it that we as an organization and our people and our clients need to be able to do to you know succeed in the new normal right and that was I think something that clearly stood out for us especially because you know we saw a massive uptake in digital and we've all heard about that right that the pandemic has really fueled digital so how do you you know ally and those are our clients financial institutions merchants and customers where you actually saw you know consumer behavior change overnight completely right so how do you align your client needs to your workforce and that required a lot of focus in terms of you know continuous talent and development internally internally to be able to address those needs for clients so I think from my perspective I would say that you know there were two clear aspects that came out when we wanted to be able to see how we succeed in the in the new environment and that was culture in terms of how you really bring your teams together how you're able to actually you know align them to your organization's goals and your aspirations and new changing demands in the industry as well that stood out very strongly for us and something that we are extremely proud of is the fact that you know even before the pandemic we as an organization have very strongly you know invested and believed in the need for a very strong internal communications charter which you know because we keep hearing this and all of us are very familiar with it is that you know the internal and external lines have completely blurred and my employee and my associate is really my first brand ambassador so and we really live that right and the fact that we have a very robust internal communication mandate actually helped us you know really bring out the whole together piece very very promptly and we were able to evolve quickly there was agility in the system that you know we were able to take back to our peoples the intent was really and I think like a lot of the panelists also spoke about was that nobody should you know in a time like this in a challenging time like this nobody should actually feel alone right whether it is your client whether it is your employee or you know the communities that you operate in they should all feel they you know they are shared this is a shared experience that we all are going through and they should all feel a part of that experience relatable stories as to you know everybody is going through the same thing and you know you're not alone in it I think that aspect as communicators we were able to bring out really strongly that was an opportunity that we saw that we completely you know bridged on and that was a probably a gap that existed as well that we were able to you know bridge and take forward with the with the pandemic got accelerated hugely absolutely absolutely very interesting insights at the point and you know picking up just from there it is very important that we value the people that we are working with whether it's our teams or it's our clients it's our customers the entire ecosystem and just to be there just to turn up and just to make them feel that you know there is empathy and that you're not alone in it so I'd like to start with you puja you know minimizing crisis and impact of COVID on employees you know that has been I think one of the focus areas of all communicators across board if you can tell me how it has been happening at your end at Panasonic even in corporate life you know we've been introduced to so many new things like work from home there are a lot of employees who've never heard about this concept it's an alien concept for a lot of people right so getting aligned to that thought getting aligned to that new idea how has it been you know how how have you dealt with these entire COVID crisis and how what has been the impact of communication in this whole scenario yeah as I mentioned earlier you know there was no playbook so we all had to kind of put our hats on and move super quickly you know there was no time agility was the key so I don't think I had any like you know we started off we put together a crisis management plan I think in April in Feb March I just joined Panasonic and most of my time in Panasonic has been in COVID and so first thing I did was put together a quick crisis management plan because that's how we're trained to do right like you know when you get in you look at everything so first thing we did was that but trust me that was followed but not even followed because things were changing things were so dynamic what each day brought nobody really knew I think it was a big wake-up call for the ACE industry which I belong to the technology industry but it helped us change gears very quickly pick up digital I don't think Panasonic is a hundred year old company and you know while we're technology company heavy on digital all that thankfully was there so the ecosystem was in place for internal communications called workplace you had your digital work from home systems in place which could kick into immediately I think we actually like you know I think lockdown was announced and we all went home and the next day we all were connected at least that was the only positive part of the whole thing I would say so we were at least connected and if I have to look at it from a communicator's lens it actually furthered management's belief on effective communications you know as Ate Priya mentioned you know lines have been blurring between internal and external norms and the fact is that you know and suddenly the management actually started to realize how important communications was to bring people together to keep people together with traditional campaigns taking a backseat it was actually PR and social media that gave prominence and became the centerpiece for strategic communication right and as I said earlier you know every industry has this unique set of challenges for Panasonic being being a B2C and a B2B kind of a company with consumer durable energy integrated solutions welding I mean name it and we have in terms of heavy machinery and with 15 factories across the country it was like you know suddenly to the shutdown lockdown across the board and bringing people back was another challenge 100% work from home is never an optional for an industry like us when 90% is actually out on the field or in the or on the shop floor right so communication was the key in bringing people together as I said no fixed strategy the key piece was to inform engage the only thing I followed was inform engage as soon as you get the information analyze process and ensure people are aware of it turn off wise empathy and compassion I think because that's how you could really come up to speed without like if I have to think and make strategies at that time you probably won't have implemented other things that we did right there was a COVID task force I mean for example you had our spokespeople actually became a brand ambassador our employees became a brand ambassador and he rolled out a lot of relevant and exciting campaigns during that time just to keep people engaged and involved right so first we started with work from home hacks because suddenly people who had never worked from home working from home right it's a work from home hacks so how you were dealing with all of this then we thought okay fine that's how we engaged them more then it was life at Panasonic homes so we actually gave people on LinkedIn and on internal platforms quick view of how and it so happened all our employees have Panasonic devices at home so they actually became a brand ambassador during it talking about our products and our whole story out there solutions and youth then there was another campaign we launched the leadership where keeping them engaged because when the market is shut you can't do client meetings so many how to keep them engaged solutions and youth so they got down to writing a lot of content and sharing on social media in terms of the kind of stuff they were doing our CEO was hyperactive during that time I think he's one of the best communicators in my 20 years I've come across right and he actually came forward like I have not seen many CEOs come forward right from town halls I mean bi-weekly town halls we had done them just to engage people keep them informed what we were doing to bring them back and how was business firing and how not to worry that nobody will lose their job we did not sack anyone no one lost their job and so keeping that aligned keeping people giving people that mental peace which was a critical thing daily catch ups with the team you had COVID task force like most organizations that we also did set up ensuring oxygen concentrators and medical supplies and doctors and everything was available but to ensure employees knew about it comps team was the key we kind of bridged a gap between the management and the people by ensuring all the information was easy to read readily available at people's fingertips what a cooler conversations coffee conversations had finished you don't have them anymore right so internal communications platform like workplace Panasonic Times and other newsletter being more prominent and you have to change the way and the content change you have to change the content to reflect what people were going through when to share what they wanted to dissent to I think that was the key things that we had to kind of align and quickly do that these things also helped break silos we have some seven divisions right and each division is a business in itself right and so like when you're in office you walk across it off to people but you can't in a situation like this even when you are back in office you're restricted to your little zone that you are stuck in you can't move to different zone so what do you do there so all these things helped break silos also it was very important to do that so what SSD was doing is it be what consumer durables were doing so it just kept them all informed aligned and then knew what's happening with the business information is the key if people are informed they are engaged they are mentally in a better space so I think this is what communications did and PR was integral for this whole story internally and externally as well I would say right right my two bits on this great insights Pooja thank you so much for all those valuable anecdotes that you shared with us I'll come over to Janet next you know a very interesting thing that Pooja mentioned is there was no rule book so there is no handbook that defines you know COVID management 101 or something like that so there is no rule to follow there is no precedent to follow here so and you know while finding new ways of communicating must have been a very important thing for Panasonic and the likes for retail I'm sure innovation was the keyword right there was a lot of focus on innovation so if you can tell me a little bit about how it has been happening in retail you know at the apparel business the innovation in portfolios we know that for a change that you know an important part of our fashion statement is the mask that we wear right so if you can tell me a little bit about you know how the apparel business has been dynamic enough and adapted to the new normals or the changes that the pandemic introduced walk us through it Janet sure so as Pooja mentioned you know we had to change years quickly so same happened in the business while the business you know took a beating in terms of stores you know had to get in operational and all of that stuff what happened was we had to listen to our customers we had to understand their needs and given that scenario you know we had to come out with mask for consumers right when we didn't have the capabilities and the capacities and given a lockdown situation where your manufacturing capacity are closed your design teams are operating from home you can't have your products touch and feel so in a given scenario like this and your consumers you know you can listen to your consumers what are their pain points and you I think this is where information comes about where you quickly have to adapt the brands have to adapt and you know come out with you know designing mask producing mask taking out to consumers reaching out to them and I think this is where you know I think the adversities bring out the best in you I this is a little bit of a cliche but we were able to create masks for our consumers and I think that was a very big thing at that point of time because you know you had to import certain amount of technology from overseas and how do you how do you manage in you know a scenario where everything is locked down and I think this is where you know our organization you know stood very steadfast and we were able to think think things in a manner where not only serve customers but stand united as a team as it was you know again belonging to another Kerala group organization the kind of support system you get is immense and I think that helps you you know I think we lost Pooja for a bit there we lost Janitya Janitya back yes yeah yeah yeah so I think uh you know belonging to a good organization who takes care of you half of your battles are one over there absolutely the third piece uh you know was the digital transformation which got escalated to a next level because of covid we had while we were there in the digital space it got further accelerated so you know and the collections changed masks became the new normal at leisure became the new normal so I think those were at the at a professional level those were some of the big changes that happened within the own communication space I realized that you know my team we worked like as if there was no tomorrow the kind of staff we did during this year and half was amazing whether it was internal communications whether it was external communications we were all learning to adapt and I think in that whole journey we had to make sure that as communicators we are able to narrate our story in a manner which will inspire people I think that was very very important so whether it is your digital platforms your social media space whether it is your internal communications we had to keep that in mind the sensibilities of the audiences whether it was internal or external and create a whole communication piece which would bring about unity which would bring about at the same time excitement and not create boredom so we built a whole lot of exciting stuff within the communication space as well wow right right so you know one very important thing that I picked up from what Janet you just said that you know listening to your customers what they want and so you know picking up right from there I'll go over to you Niki you have a lot of clients so basically you have a lot of people asking you for the same solutions but in a different way right and you know we also know that how marketing has changed from having focus on one plan fits all to something you know which is customized and tailor made for each of the clients right and since you handle around more than 40 brands under your team so tell me how is it what has been what has been the demands of the clients how differently were you strategizing you know communication plans for your clients in the healthcare segment thanks Tasmay so Tasmay just to add on here so if I'm talking about 40 clients so 40 clients these are all 45 clients these are all health specific right right have non-health specific vertical and it was an equal challenge to keep all the sectors client keep them happy and give them customized tailor-made solution for all the clients right right when it comes to the healthcare you know clients so as I mentioned that you know it came the whole covid thing came as an opportunity but initially it came as a crisis right of course it is very frank and in the crisis in this whole crisis we try to maintain so that we don't become a crisis it's it's very important losing your head in a crisis and become a good way to handle you know the whole crisis thing so keeping that in mind we notice that bigger audience is waiting for the communications because initially if we talk about the post-ovid era there were only few takers of the healthcare news right the healthcare here the everybody be it adult or a child everybody wants to consume everyone wants to know about what is happening in the healthcare and keeping that in mind the agility everybody has talked about that was something because nobody was aware even the government WTO and we have to work for so many clients send the communications to the media and you know at every level I cannot forget that our team used to work till 12 a.m at night when this pandemic started we used to work around the clock no Saturdays no Sundays we very faster accepted the work from home thing but the whole culture is like you know we were just working like mad people and you know we decided okay on a regular basis one can take you know chutti and they can take leave they can take a pause because at the same time the mental health of the team was really important so keeping that in mind because many of them were also facing the COVID problem at home so providing the customized and tailor made solutions to the clients so we work for various client as I talked about we have more than 16 hospitals in Delhi and CR we have diagnostics chain and these are all working with the COVID so how the women so when the communication is going it's not about the communication going and just delivering to the media it was the giving the right information accurate information how correct information because multiple time it used to haven't happened that big media houses were not aware they used to reach out to us okay now what's the solution okay so handling more than 100 plus doctors in our organization the whole media was with teamwork and team was standing with the media and we were just floating and tried to give the right information when it comes to the custom made and the tailor made approach for the brands I would say the when it comes to the bigger audience and the bigger medium so if I talk about the bigger medium so bigger medium was the media so the biggest challenge for the corporate for the PR industry was the acceptability was reduced when it comes to the paper absolutely so I would say the transformation of the digitization and the fast track of the digitization happened that time and everybody started communicating prior used to happen only we reached we used to reach out to the certain cities media and the customization happened we started reaching out to multiple cities media and they also become quite acceptable absolutely they also started supporting you know us and they understood that it's a need because they also want to get the what is happening in the national capital healthcare right right of course not about the national media even the international also we did multiple huge level campaigns right and of course COVID and along with that I would say when the government started doing the press conference digital the biggest thing has happened that we also started communicating with the media on via Twitter all the communication used to handle that was a one tailor made communication because crisis was you know the every become a everyday affair and Twitter was the one thing and the digital media was the one thing we started communicating and keeping the bigger market scenario in mind everybody wanted to know what is in it what it what is it in for me so every health status of every individual vary so be it vaccination so government also issued multiple time communication related to vaccination so keeping that in mind that's also we started communicating for the you know brands in a different level with the different be it influencer marketing we beat a regular shortage plan because you you don't know what you are going to communicate tomorrow so the plans of the all the healthcare clients become you know a week plans we switched to the weekly plans weekly strategies and more over with the meetings with the journalist on a regular basis so that that was a more you know strategic approach that we took along with the I would say the influencer marketing is one of the new tool which as we not only for the other vertical healthcare also it has become a really big market it is not the next big thing it is the big thing and every brand's beat healthcare corporate everybody wants to do it so that's a new thing that we are doing providing a customized solution very focused content driven and then to all the healthcare brands absolutely very interesting insights Nikki thank you so much for it and your one word I picked up from whatever you said is acceptability and with that I want to go to Sukanya you know there's one thing that none of us have been able to accept is that there's been no travel right so if you could walk us through you know the communication that's been happening there there has been there is so much going on around travel anxiety vaccine acceptance etc etc so you know in a field like yours where you are working you know where you're working with travel with where you're working with travel related queries you know what has been the communication like what is the kind of communication that you're giving out how has there been a change in the tone of the communication if any so you know just walk us through that right yes so like you know we know that travel and its ecosystem has been you know one of the worst hit in the pandemic especially with border closures and you know I would say uncertainty over being allowed to move across countries and of course you know like in every in the in this COVID situation you know no company is a stranger to crisis mitigation but right there's no reference point there was no reference point for the pandemic and for us to go back and check and our end with the travel ecosystem you know francing drastic changes slowdowns and even suspension of services it became very critical to keep all the stakeholders both internal and external apprised of every single development and almost real time and you know this had to be done in a way that was both transparent and reassuring because at the end of the day you know while we don't know where in travel would resume like it was in the pre-pandemic era but it's always important to keep the faith on you know the faith that we will travel again we work across you know one 40 plus countries and we serve more than 60 governments and it was no mean task you know given the speed at which the information was required to be communicated every stakeholder and you know this information was changing because every country every local authority had their own rules and it was very dynamic very fluid and we were aware of that so you know from COVID-19 FAQ CDs that you know had all the probable you know questions related to visa applications answered to you know safety first you know campaigns that highlighted the health and hygiene measures if one were to visit our centers for anything or even safe travel for that matter you know where we spoke about measures that people could follow when they review travel and another very important you know series we did was you know how how do you not fall for fraud because this is the time when you know there were a lot of scam stars you know all over the place you know scamming people and it was very important that we did a series so that people realized that you know it's someone's you know telling you about even you know something like you know come to us we'll help you with the work permit no don't do that because there is no work permit at this point in time you cannot move across the border so you know we did a lot of do not fall for fraud series series and it's still continuing even today so empathy engage advocates constantly you know these this became our tenfold for this strategy and several learnings also came up and very similar to some of what micro pan research for the first the need for speed and agility things were changing so much so frequently so the ability to whether unforeseen disruption adopting the newer ways of doing business and working it was important to become agile and adaptive the second one you know one of my co-pandest brought out was the culture bit so this it's another very important aspect that came out is without seeing people face to face on a daily basis you know it became very important to think of creative ways to bind the employees together in such crisis times big focus on health and safety I mean for everyone you know beat employees beat the customers it was you know one of the important teams that emerged from on-ground safety measures to new health and work health and work-related policies rise of digital consumption like Nikki mentioned you know we didn't have the the luxury of print anymore I mean it was primarily digital at that point in time and even today it's continuing the dependency on the platform you know continue to rise which means that for communicators you know you had to expand to the users newer platforms for more engagement and more reach and the other aspect internal communication obviously became as important as external communication is being because most of the companies do focus on external but internal communication is not something that consciously you'd focus except for certain brands to do it very well so this became a big focus knowing that how with a remote workforce how important it was to keep them connected and like Pooja mentioned about newsletter etc so those were the only mediums that were available constantly to keep your employees informed and engaged and you know the L and D programs that helped employees pick up new skills upgrade themselves while there was an uncertainty over the business and operations but how do you keep them constantly know that they are valued in the company and you know how would you reseal them to adapt to the new business or the world order that we were entering at that point in time and even today so I guess these were some of the things and the other things we saw going forward on you know technology is going to become a big enabler it has always been and even so now the digital readiness you know that's become a big topic for discussion across organizations especially with the emergence of the hybrid workforce that's that's you know the the model that's coming up and from a communication point of view of course you know everyone's talking about purpose driven communication but that's going to you know how people interpret that is you know maybe a debate for another day but proper driven communication will become very important as we move forward as communicators in this world absolutely thank you so much Sukanya those were very interesting insights that you gave on travel and how communications change mentioned some very interesting points in your introductory comment about you know a slimming line between internal and external comms and how there has been a role reversal you know in comms and how it has been so dynamic and changing in the last year and a half so you know I think if you can elaborate a little bit about the new opportunities where communication plays a significant role or it has the scope of playing a significant role be it you know in terms of people be it external internal whatever it is help us understand you know the new opportunities for communication roles yeah thanks so much for that question so let me pick up with something what Pooja started with you know one of the biggest spaces I see a huge amount of opportunity and you know to some extent it was a challenge for a lot of organizations transformation that we're going to see in leadership communication right the fact that you know how what what frequencies at what levels at what messaging at you know how are you reporting it and how are you putting a framework in order to be able to ensure that that people are engaged and informed is going to see a huge amount of change to my mind and I think I think and it's not restricted leadership and that's what the that's what that's what makes it interesting right because you know for an organization like us for example which is like almost 9,000 in number of employees how do you you know cascade information across those different levels so how do you empower people to be able to take messages forward right I think that comes is going to see a significant change and a huge opportunity for communicators to be able to build really compelling campaigns around that the other aspect that I see which which which to my mind will turn out to be a huge opportunity is going to be workplace experiences right and so Kanya alluded to that saying that the whole hybrid model that we are moving towards you know how are you going how is you know how are you going to keep of you know a hybrid model workforce engaged right how are you going to how are you going to deliver programs to them like how will your induction module look like what will your learning and development in interventions look like right and I think you know people are workplace experience by itself is becoming extremely center stage right now you know the way you're able to create experiences you know throughout the journey of the employee in your organization I think that is a place where communities can play a significant amount of role as well right just the fact that you know how you will define your employee value proposition because that is really what it is you know when you define what is in it for me for your existing people for your partners or anybody else your suppliers or anybody as well right that is what is going to really drive market differentiation so I think workplace experience and what communicators can do around that to be able to elevate those experience to build stories around it to build narratives around it share experiences around it is something that will will become like a you know will become is a massive opportunity that I see and we should all be able to leverage it you know to give you another example of external you mentioned right like which we as a as an organization saw as a as a great opportunity was right with the whole hybrid model again right we saw an opportunity to you know enhance our talent tools where are we actually going and getting people on board and you know keeping that in mind we introduced this program called Forward for her which is basically a program targeted specifically at you know women who have taken a career break and not necessarily because of maternity but any other reason that they've taken a career break and you know how can we as an organization be committed to getting them back to the workforce you know what kind of a work environment can we create for them so that even you know aligns to the focus around diversity and inclusion that aligns you know that the fact that you you are not only creating a new talent pool but you're actually taking forward a very important message which is you know that you're not only your technology organization right and you like like any of us actually you're not just a health organization or just a you know travel company yes to actually organizations which have very which are invested in very strongly invested in human potential right so that was an opportunity we saw we were able to leverage it it gave the campaign had you know it had like a typical 360 degree campaign it had different aspects social media press and otherwise we had a huge uptake and I think that was an opportunity that we were able to leverage really well we piloted it last year we've it launched a full-grown campaign this year that was one thing I think the last piece that I would you know look at as a as a great opportunity for all of us to jump on in is going to be cultural transformation I think cultural transformation is going to be central and the pandemic has really brought it to center stage it's like it's right in our faces and I don't think it's something that we can anyone of us can as as communicate communication leaders can ignore it anymore right how do you you know like I said earlier how do you align your teams to the goals and aspirations of your organization how do you encourage people to you know be able to thrive in an organization right how do you how do you create campaigns and say success stories and achievements and how do you celebrate individuals in the organization right and for example when it comes to diversity and inclusion you know how are you promoting your people to bring back to bring their authentic self to the organization how are you celebrating originality and these things are going to make a significant impact going forward because you know the more you meet your own employees the more interactions you have externally as well whether it is with a press or with partnerships or suppliers or any one of them people want to be associated with brands that have that are empathetic that have empathy for their people you know they want to be associated with with workplace attributes like culture and learning and growth opportunities you know like diversity and inclusion and all of that right so how do you build that you know as a very interesting part of your culture and you know Sukanya mentioned a very pertinent and important aspect you know like I said we are an essential services organization right and imagine you know anything that you do digital from online payments to accepting online payments everything went digital right and we are pretty much you know we facilitate those services right from starting from for financial institutions right to the end consumer to have a workforce to be able you know to be to be engaged and to be try proud enough to be able to ensure that you know there is seamless work happening and there is seamless you know contribution being driven and we're adding value to clients and we have but you know we are catering to market demands is is a very big you know it's a very big aspect in terms of bringing to front you know what is important at that point in time for the market to be able to do so I think those will be the you know couple of things that I think will make a huge difference and just to add to that I think again Sukanya mentioned this is about security security has been done for so strongly right and especially for again for our financial services company security for us is absolutely of top most importance right so building a culture that you know and and your associates and your employees are your first line of defense right so how do you create a security posture of the security first posture for your organization how do you you know get your people to be more conscious and more aware of it so that you know that is a place that you can you can stop any breach that may ever happen right so I think the many aspects to culture that you can actually take up and I see that as you know significant I see communication is a significant and a very you know strategic enabler to be able to push those messages across in the organization and influence culture to the extent that you are influencing mindset shifts you're influencing behavioral patterns you're in you know you're influencing change in how you do things probably regularly you know you're inducing new thinking you're in you're you're thinking of innovative ways of doing things I think that is going to be something that you know as communication leaders something that we'll have to very actively look into as to how we can you know bring that about for people how you can bring that about for your organization absolutely absolutely thank you so much Atitriya those were very important things I think as a communicator one must remember and you know things that help in carrying on the communication function better thank you so much speakers for those interesting insights it was a great learning session I think as well for all of us who are tuned in thank you so much for connecting thank you thank you that's my thanks folks thank you thank you thank you everybody everybody bye bye thanks you ladies thank you that's my first hearing this very interesting conversation so many nuggets of insights and wisdom for all our viewers and if you have any to share with the wider audience then go ahead and tweet to us using the hashtag e4m women achievers so I'm going to move forward quickly to our next panel discussion which is going to talk about pandemic and power of purpose power of purpose based communication for brands so ladies and gentlemen I hope you are already and set as we welcome our esteemed panelists on screen we have Indu Sharma senior general manager communication Schneider electric we also have Anindita Mukherjee Sinha head of corporate communication L&T metro rail Hyderabad we have with us Shivalika Malik senior manager PepsiCo and Dr. Suvi Chaturvedi PhD IITD chief corporate and public affairs officer at ZUPI and moderating this session is Ms. Chosna Sharma from BW business world a very warm welcome to all you ladies and just I'm going to leave the screen to you to take the conversation forward Thank you Thank you Kyati welcome all so I don't know we're talking about communication and how the pandemic has sort of moved that but if the pandemic has ravaged the economy it has caused so much destruction to businesses okay recovery is taking place the finance minister of you know she gave some relief packages industry experts say 9.5% is the growth the GDP growth expected this year but throughout it all I think communication is the key for brands which has kind of helped us together and today we're going to focus in this discussion on how that communication has changed what has changed in it so let's start first with Anandita let me ask how has consumed sentiment at all if at all during the pandemic well thank you so much and wish everyone a very good afternoon so well see the first one foremost thing is that this is so unprecedented we never expected to happen and the entire planning prices you know the manuals and whatever communication manual or whatever we have everything when topsy-dovey so you know absolutely the change in your thinking change in your you know your approach everything you know completely changed so you know to come again you know like the topic today how we say is that you know how do we connect so the connect with consumer the approach has changed now here we know that you know we for any communication for people the two main stakeholders are internal external so as we say that internal are our main brand ambassadors so they can also play an active active role in promoting the brand so are the external stakeholders to run a business is imperative that to we keep a close watch on how the consumer is connecting with the brand so you know that is very important now didn't the brand do this earlier they did but because of this pandemic the approach their way of looking at things that has changed you know there they are selling credibility now you know they are the human angle being more digitally friendly you know as staying is the new going out as we all know and we don't know when is when this is going to end so you know the promoting the brand ethos of a particular company is very very important that would resonate for a longer time you know it has a positive influence so that it has a positive influence influence on the customers behavior and you know the what to say the accepting patterns the habits in accepting the brand and you know the shift away from physical product is in line with the increase health concerns and accessibility also in fact you know Deloitte study pointed out that consumer concern for physical health now remains high compared to their concerns for financial health so even you know it though it is very very important in this time of pandemic but still it is taking a you know second place so striking a balance between the competitive advantage and corporate social responsibility you know more value driven decision making so that that approach has changed and it has you know now consumers have more they are more aware on how business is intact interacting with the stakeholders the community at large the society at large so today's kind of consumers they are you know they have become more in favor of products that has been produced locally this is one and that's there is a greater you know expectation that brands should display leadership as a process they should be the pioneers the leaders in in their own way in their small way this is one of the very important thing then business already there you know reeling from the pandemic need they return to they need to return to you know a normal normalcy and of course you know get a hold on their revenues replenish their revenues so organization will need to work out you know more how to serve more value conscious I would say health conscious more more digitally you know digital friendly also you know a consumer like who demands purposeful brands that reflects their environmental and social values so what we have seen is that you know everything is having a human connect maybe the way we have dealt with things each and every household has taught us to do so how we did for our family you know it is just resonating with the brands and the customers also so you need for an accurate trusted and up to date data on how people feel how they intend to engage with brands so it's a 360 degree approach you know I would say Jyotsana and it just see the consumer sentiment is evolving for sure no doubt about it you know as consumers feel safer they are prepared to go back to activities previously abandoned they are coming back so therefore any brand whether it's it's any any sector like retail financial services then FMCG travel hospitality we know that everyone I mean has faced the brunt and they're crippled in today's day so they need to capture data across all touch points you know online in store customer services and identify what consumers actually will respond to so service experience brand innovation aligning with customer values as I said articulating them appropriately and truly to live with them see now people have become more aware they see how the brand is living up to their philosophy so I feel that all you know operating more ethically demonstrating a continued commitment to greater sustainability because sustainability is the in thing now we have to think about and being conscious to the current sensitivities also so we cannot be very aggressive in a way that it hurts anyone sentiment or it is completely off sync from what the situation or what the country is going through so the ability to capture you know all these things I think that I know taking this you know a wholesome approach and 360 degree perspective of things and yes empathy I think you know the last session someone mentioned about empathy I fully feel that it is whether it's an internal customers or your external customers it is very very important yeah so humane and purpose driven communication is what you're going to be pressing on Shivalika let's come to you in terms of you know employees and you're at the brand's communication with the employees and their well-being would you like to say a few so thank you for now and first of all very good afternoon to all of you know all of you so like you did mention and you know Ananta also mentioned about employees being the real brand ambassadors it's very very important in terms of brand and our company or an organization to ensure that how you know they are the ones who are actually the real mouthpieces you know for for stand for for the value that to bring to the table and especially what we've also seen during you know the last two years in in the pandemic one and a half years that we you know face that that how organizations have really come forth and it's become more of a people first you know people first environment which is very very good to see while you know it is very important to ensure that there is you know a conversation going out externally in terms of hope trust you know there is a conversation also that we're also going internally as well and that is something that we see across the industry across organizations and that is very very hard one and it's very important also at this point in time because what you reflect internally it genuinely comes out externally as well you know and that is what's happening at the moment right so coming to you Indu this shift that we're talking about do you see that it is something that's going to now become the new norm and this is going to stay and it'll be consistent throughout what are your views on this definitely you know uncertain times are not going anywhere we have been anyways talking about this VUCA times for quite some time and you know every brand has maneuvered the conversation around it but I would say the proliferation of digital and the lifetime information that people have today demands that are brand reacts to it you know much more effectively than it used to be earlier no more we have the monologue times you know people have to be spoken to you have to take a conscious call of you know what do you want to stand for what your consumers would relate to and that conscious call helps in making it lot more realistic so you have to have authentic communication you know like my friends here have spoke about empathy your conversation has to resonate and relate with people it cannot be like a 30,000 feet conversation that we are going to do this and that and whatever and not following it through so that consistency in communication is going to remain and yes employees are going to be the biggest evangelist for any brands in times to come because if there is a sense of pride in an individual to work for an organization and that person is putting out a kind of communication then that goes a long way and that paves a way for a lot more people to come in because I was just reading up yesterday only that this has been a year of maximum number of resignations globally where in after pandemic people have taken a call to not work with organizations who are not caring enough so at this time if you have a strong employer brand and you are able to really you know ready click the right chord with people so that's going to remain with you not with consumers with employees but you know businesses your partnerships everything is going to need this in future to come right coming to you should be we were just discussing we lost you for a bit out there but we were just talking about how this change in communication and how this change in thinking from the brand point of view is going to stay now and we've stressed on how employees are the biggest assets and then the changes happened there as well what would you like to say about this Jyotsana thank you so much and I'm really happy that we're celebrating women we're celebrating this platform I really hope everybody's been safe and well I congratulate E4M and the entire team from BW and the group for bringing in some of the champions and heroes to this session so I'm looking forward to a very learning fun engaging session on this really important question you know the discussion centered let me take a step back and let's see a 40,000 feet view above the ground we are putting purpose at the center of all that we do which means your employers your employees your investors people who'd like to root for you people who'd like to consume your brands are now asking for more so when you're attracting the best talent you know many years ago when we grew up in the 90s getting a job getting a house getting stability in life was really important before I came back to my corporate stint I was teaching for five and a half years in Delhi University and you learn some of the brightest minds in the country wanted to explore they wanted to take gap years it was not a bad thing to drop a year and suddenly a new world had opened up so when you're looking at either attracting cutting edge talent or you're expecting brand loyalty from a group of young people whose gratification is instant the most important thing Jyotsna that we need to look at is putting purpose in communication and at the core of central decision making processes across planning across product offerings and when you talk about this I think the most important journey is the transition from me to be so consumers are no longer making decisions you know solely on product selection though we're a price sensitive market but they're assessing what does a brand say when we say that what do we mean as employees why do we choose an organization why would we not want to go to a particular FMCG brand or work with a certain other brand or work or wear a sweatshirt which talks about brand purpose what are they looking for they're looking for what the brand says what it does what it stands by let me explain this to you the support that the brands give to their beliefs to their philosophy and not just pay lift service is the question that consumers and employees and talent is asking today so Harvard Business Review did a research study and they're saying 64% of consumers say when they connect with a brand it is because of shared value it is because of the causes that relate with them that they also want to espouse so 70% of CMOs today are saying that putting purpose at the center of marketing messages is a creep priority you know the metrics have changed so it's now the way we operate has changed it's not about sales it is about engagement it is about finding that authentic voice it is about giving voice and agency and purpose to your employees and saying that these are the single biggest brand ambassadors that you need remember why is this so important because we're having this conversation in a post-COVID-19 world where how we live how we work how we play has changed and that means you had a black swan event where there is a very low probability of that happening but it has happened and it has had a monumental impact which is not incremental it's a paradigm shift so when they say companies you know several surveys has happened and I can quote research studies ad nauseam but 94% of companies are now expected to look at critical problems they're expected to look for climate change they're expected to be green companies they're expected to look at solutions around critical issues shampoo you know and soap companies are today talking about sustainable packaging they're talking about lowering their plastic footprint the brands I love to celebrate body form bumble dove Microsoft you know a lot of these companies are examples of companies that are doing it right when we talk about startups you know the purpose of SpaceX is making space radically more accessible the purpose of zoopie which is a three-year-old startup that was started by iitians is putting engagement and power education and the kind of rewarding and entertaining experience when we look at research studies again if you're looking at either politics or if you're looking at policy solving for health right now making sure you're saving lives making sure that is not mere lip service health causes became the second most popular category after gender equality and advocacy around LGBTQI issues so you know these are campaigns that don't just come in when there is a day to celebrate this is where whether you put your money where your mouth is is important lastly you know on this specific question I believe purpose is an expression of a company's core value proposition viewing purpose as a strategy which is rooted in the company's very reason for existing and that's when we say create a brand with purpose it's not just a good to do or a right thing to do Blackrock's chairman Larry Fink sends out a letter every beginning of the year to all his investing companies where he says if you're not being able to locate your social purpose your social governance strategies and your ESG record you're not worth my money so increasingly both employees your investors and your consumers are going to start asking the tough questions and therefore if we look at an organization that puts purpose first and that designs your products and you know your way of life how do you and it starts with how do you enter the employee engagement process through the very first experience when you walk into an office when you walk into the campus as a lot of startups now like to call their offices what is it that you see so this is where every aspect of how you're designing engagement will get you the best talent will get you brand stickiness loyalty and engagement and that is what we truly care for today I'll stop here for you right so a way of being a way of living really is what we are going to do so coming to you Anandita I wanted to also talk a little bit now about the specific challenges that were faced you know in regards to communication during times of COVID so would you like to talk a little bit about that well we all know that the first and foremost thing what we are facing today is you know shopping of all the marketing and promotional budgets and so this is one of the things which has badly hit us but yes the deliverables has I mean they have to be there so one of the biggest challenges definitely this that fund is a problem everywhere then of course you know the production also has you know been negatively affected you whatever you need to produce even your collaterals or anything for the branding opportunities they are being called off engagement programs for any communication professional which is very important that is very very important which is which has taken us all then you know you don't have I mean the manpower we know that you know coming coming to the led work when it comes to any work even the printing production or anything where all the few businesses have shut down and the people have traveled to their hometowns we don't have people to do this and one of the things other than these topics one is misinformation and fake news about you know we know how it is going viral now no matter how much we are trying to control it so I think you know I'll do combat to counter all these challenges one of the most important things that we are we want to do is you know being being consistently and continuously there you know with your customers like for us you know every single I mean see we were our Metro Rail it was shut down for about more than a you know for five and a half months but did we completely close our shop no so through our social media platforms and other digital platforms we explored and we utilized them and we were continuously touch with the customers so basically you know to to overcome these challenges what we need to do is we have to anyhow we have to customize as for the business we are in and then being completely continuously touch with the customer saying that here there we are there okay we we may not be operating for a particular time but we are there so we know that because of the physical absence to reach out to customers is is very you know is being very difficult and we have faced that Manpower Crunch was also there but so whatever platforms we can utilize we have to do that and another thing is that you know senior management coming forward and being there show you know their face it's very important at least for our product our material what we did is even the single I mean once we our operation started each and every time change each and every operational updates we send and we have been sending we have been even even see in other you know time maybe we wouldn't have used a senior management quote but here even if it was not really relevant for our press release of course a press note but we used that you know our senior management's name as a spokesperson otherwise we generally do it with official spokesperson just to say that we even the small time change of even 10 minutes or half an hour or one hour you know we are communicating the senior management is communicating that we are taking this business and our customers so seriously so all these are you know this posing as big challenges for us and of course the industry you know I think you know people's pockets also is a big problem mainly when it goes to be to see businesses so since they are not being able to you know brand properly or go full gaga over their marketing communication so you know they are not maybe reaching out to people so as we have seen that many people have started you know the other they have explored other businesses the mergers happened and there are you know all these things which are coming up so for us the most important because we see we hard work material we run 69.2 kilometers of stretch in hard work city with 57 stations so you can understand how big the network is and not being physically present in those platforms in I mean in figuratively and you know literally how we are not being able to get in touch with our customers which has definitely hit so another thing we have explored a lot to face this challenges is you know going digital about purchasing tickets or you know the cards I mean tying up with some you know make my trip and sort of that so that they those gateways can be utilized to for passengers safety so that they don't have to stand in the queues so whatever challenges we are facing as communication team I think we are that is what we it has driven us to go more on the social media and website and other digital platforms so slow but steady I think this situation will be there for some time and we have to really think of more innovation and innovative ways how to look at things and of course the decision making we should be more value driven for sure and well we any business I think not only I have any business has to be resilient enough to deliver you know against the customer demand and because the expectancy will be there so there comes a question of efficiency how we can counter the challenges which a communication team has been facing even for newspapers say we are not being able to the print run has gone low for many publishing houses most of them has you know have gone online the physical paper is not available and so you know the mask what you want to reach out to as you did earlier is really posing as a big problem but this I think how we should counter it So Shivannika now moving to you what were the key challenges in keeping consumers engaged during this time like Anandita pointed out that you know still keeping at it keeping them engaged and getting senior management involved and you know that sort of keeping them invested in that what were the key aspects that you want to highlight So now I wouldn't want column challenges per se first of all I think they were you know we were talking all we're all stuck in a position where I think this time needed innovation and I think these are opportunities of innovation honestly if I can put this through like that and I think there are four key things that come to my mind in terms of again as communications team what we really had to do at this point being in an FMCG company you know myself one big thing what we saw was there was a really diverse in a early you know fast evolving changing marketing and messaging mix that happened so you know well when the pandemic hit there was a cautious customer sentiment there was a digital uptake because content consumption was happening more online than anything else there were events being postponed etc but again when we were looking at digital also you know there was a lot of clutter in there because everybody was going there so how to break that clutter how to ensure that we work around the virtual environment more so keeping the customer sentiments in mind ensuring that we're empathetic as well work really you know some of the key things that we had to keep in mind and we had to be sensitive to the current environment more than anything else and therefore how to drive that messaging how to drive that mix also and we seem to have lost your the audio can you hear me now Dotsha we can hear her oh yeah we can hear her Dotsha we can hear her okay so then it was me no no worries no worries at all so I was just saying that it's very very important to adjust the marketing messages and you know and overall messaging per se and where to do it was one thing second was in terms of there was there's a big big focus on the brand reputation because during especially a crisis like this which is a you know global health crisis listening reporting adapting to the entire environment is very key right now because you know even the smallest mistake in terms of anything can kind of ruin your reputation so again working with tact working with empathy ensuring mindfulness in terms of you know in terms of the media you're using the forums you're using the messaging you're having your in-product you know tools that you're using all of that has been really really important and then applying technology I spoke about digital platforms but more in terms of how you're also being innovative in your applying technology was important for example we just very recently did a campaign on Slice and it was all about the fact that we saw that there was a lot of consumer uptake in terms of online consumption people were sitting at home the sentiment was all the fact after the second wave of a lot of gratitude because you know India kind of came together and this whole resilience had to be celebrated having said that what we did was we replaced the logo for Slice into an ode and into a tribute to basically give a tribute to these unsung COVID-19 heroes but we used knowledge because it was just not using a particular forum it was a cross that we wanted to go and ensure that at every platform possibly and also ensuring that it can go online therefore to a larger audience how can you bring that to life and last but not the least it's very tricky of how to get the brand tonality into you know into your fold and then yet be empathetic for example Pepsi as a brand is very irreverent it's a lot of fun in that sense and you know the tour has not been really celebratory in that you know during the last one and a half year so again we did a beautiful campaign called Pepsi Salam Namaste it was all about encouraging people to be socially distanced but yet emotionally be connected and we also understood that you know while people were back home and this was last year people were like you know were kind of wanting that emotion that fun and they were getting bored as well and I'm talking about the first wave and at that point in time awareness was important but how could we do it in a more fun manner and that's when Pepsi kind of came out with this campaign where we were just talking about how Salam and Namaste are basically the ways to bridge each other but be socially distant and yet be emotionally connected so these were some of the things that you know kind of innovation and thinking putting your thinking has kind of came to the forefront So Shubhi I'll come to you right now we've spoken about you know communication and digital communication and the you know importance of it right now especially Shivalika so was there some sort of like also did you see fatigue do you think that there's so much fatigue now because there's too much you know happening in that space Thanks Jyotsana I think this is a really important question what is it that you celebrate which is different about your brand and that's the core of every communication every marketing professionals mandate right unique selling point differential each time I if I heard USP and I got a penny for it I'd not you know look at a tomorrow where you have to think about anything when you look at telling your own story which is unique and different and this is where the idea that are you just looking at a campaign are you looking at periodicity and are you looking at your bi-monthly plan and saying hey I need to get two things out that's where there will be a disconnect which is why when we started this conversation I said you know from the journey of me to be if you're not standing up then you will not stand out what does that mean for a lot of people who play safe it's a risky proposition and they say hey we can look at a backlash this is not our job to look at advocacy it's not our job to look at you know policy change we're telling the story but you have to be invested enough to know how you push boundaries and that's where brands with purposes brands that understand empathy brands that build the storytelling at the core of what they're doing will truly stand out having said that Jyotsna this is as much as a science as it is an art form I believe there are at least five parameters that we need to be mindful of one if you do a campaign which celebrates richness of a product while there's a famine you're going to get hammered if you do a campaign where there is fear where there are job losses and you want to celebrate joy you're going to be in trouble which is why we say that as communicators it's very important that you yourself read newspapers you're aligned with what is happening you're topical and you're relevant to be able to do that and not just say we'll be about moment marketing so if something's happening and you run a digital campaign and you know like festivals a lot of brands would do that and they want to write on the momentum then there will definitely be a me too phenomena but when I say it's a science these are the five things that I mean by it you have to look at geographies a lot of companies in mature geographies will focus on collective values they'll focus on shared experiences you have to look at product categories where when you look at utilities purpose will be less utility and the experience so if you're looking at a cleaning agent or you're looking at a detergent there are some notable campaigns but for a lot of others it's a basic function how much effort will it take what will be the impact of the cleaning agent on the hands of the woman who's washing these clothes right so offering experiences less how much of application will you do in terms of brand maturity so if my purpose is building brand recall if my purpose is building brand recognition I'll have lesser messages I'll have one clear message saying great product buy it this is what we mean to you right if it's a mature brand if people recognize you you know we've got fantastic brands that represent some of the most powerful campaigns today in the room especially look at the CSR public service record of Reckon Ben Kaiser right so from Swachh Bharat to iconic campaigns that's when you take that leap of faith and you change things around and you put meaning and purpose in the middle of it because you're looking at brand maturity but very important to look at demographics what is it that I'm trying to target who's going to understand my messaging what is it that we want to sell golden rules don't confuse the message with too many subtexts or subplots this is not Shakespeare you're not doing a work of art you have to be quick you're looking at 30 seconds you're looking at a minute tell your story look at the demographics look at the appetite that they will have for something and when I say that don't speak only to the lowest common denominator are you know a young population one of the most exposed one of the most articulate and one of the most fantastic and savvy users so if they know that you're faking it or this is a sham they'll move on very quickly so stand by the causes that you pick up lastly most important look at ecosystem readiness so what do I mean by that today you know we're all experiencing this there are virtual courts which are taking place we're dependent on the resilience of your network we're dependent upon infrastructure we're dependent upon many many variables mental health is the biggest issue that we're all trying to solve 40-day jolts now 168 children are out of schools UNICEF is saying that for development of children today we've taken two decades back in terms of how much of a setback the society is facing so three things very important you have to be human you need to humanize your statistics you have to be clear you have to be authentic and you have to be creative if you want to cut through the clutter so activating purpose led brands puts the traditional view that customer is a buyer to bed forever that doesn't exist instead companies will need to focus on creating loyal communities why is it that an Apple user will not switch loyalties it's a brand experience it is a cult it is a community so engaging them creating value if you have a bad product no amount of storytelling can help you so that's a given you know bringing this sense of community giving back when you talk about gaming right a lot of people said that people were scared and people were and that's the sector media and entertainment this is the only sector where you've seen green shoots if I tell you very quickly we're doing 13,600 crores in numbers in 2025 you're looking at an uptake of 30,000 crores there's 700 million gamers in India out of that 43% are women these are huge numbers you know so if you're looking at projection everywhere across the world India is now the fifth largest in terms of a market share we own 70% of all of the globe in terms of attention our user engagement went up to 215 hours in a day that's not a problem clearly what are you solving for so is the boy in Merat or is the guy in Lucknow can I be relevant therefore in making his life better that's when it creates thickness so my digital campaigns will have to work with my CSR initiatives they'll have to work with my social impact initiatives and that's when I have a story that's worth telling so our brand at Zupi is looking at jobs of tomorrow the WEF report World Economic Forum Jyotsna talks about the need to upskill at least 750 million Indians by 2030 how will you get there we're exhausted we're learning online this is COVID it's disrupted schools how do you put gaming and gamification in the middle of upskilling re-skilling in the middle of job creation and for that we decided to launch the Zupi Skilling Academy so as we speak we're training young people in the marginalized communities in slums in areas which have been less fortunate we're giving them digital skills we're giving them training in retail and purpose-driven marketing that's where you're truly making a difference that person will lead their life for your brand for the experience and that's when you take an experience which is about mental health which is about joy which is about casual entertainment and you make it relevant and say how do I make learning fun while staying true to my brand purpose so kalki tayari you know looking at preparedness looking at making sure where there's uncertainty how can you see results and that's where you cut through the clutter and you say hey we're here to stay and this is a brand that actually makes a difference in my life right well said well I'm running out of time so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to come to each one of you and we'll do your summing up remarks so let me go to indu first indu if you'd like to add anything to that or we can just go to you and you can give us some summing up remarks your key trends that you see all of that sure and I'm very happy when so we mentioned wrecked the teaser I'd been there for four years and you said this wish so there was a sense of pride when there was a conversation about that but I would say I would do a mix of you know what I want to say and you know what are the remarks but you know there's a saying that's you know I would say for me it summarizes all of this people don't really buy what you do they are buying why you do it that buy is very very important and that buy is your purpose hence for me I would say purpose is the umbilical cord which is really connecting a brand to the consumer so what you feed through this umbilical cord is going to bolster your relationship and that's what you're going to carry with within your relationship for times to come and broadly if we have to really look at you know for me I always say there is an A, B, C or purpose communication so for me the A stands to be authentic you know any story which is real which is not fake is going to relate to people second is believing first of all you need to believe what you're saying a lot of times you know I see a communicator doing the story and which is why your pitches are not though so strong but you're not able to put out the right kind of communication because you do not know you know what's really happening behind this C is consistency you know it's it's scientifically proven that humans don't you know remember things only once told to them so it has to be spoken again and again with creative ways you know so when we did uh and I'm going back to my previous employer and then we did you know the TikTok challenge of people uh being shown or participating in how do you wash hands it was uh engaging consumers it was passionate it was fun it was creating awareness so it picked all the right boxes so hence the medium that you choose the message as you choose you know your call to action what we in comms we call it cta the powerful cta is engage consumers and you know uh in the end uh purpose communication humanizes the brand you can only have a relationship with a human hence if you really want to have a relationship with your consumers be your human brand have a face have a personality and you know that is going to stick with you right shivalika hi sorry you hear me now yeah great so uh I think I'm just going to keep it to the fact that you know uh especially particularly in times of a crisis you know consumers interaction with the company is all about uh triggering trust and loyalty one little thing here and there kind of just fix it away and given in this situation it's very very important like in convention how do we engage with consumers how how do we also ensure that we not only engage but how do we engage with empathy care and concern so that's really important in today's time you know also understanding consumer sentiments and what we at PepsiCo kind of have seen especially in these last one and a half years is hope trust fund they've been our key pillars in the sense because you know as a consumer we need we need hope as an individual we need hope trust you need to trust each other and the fact is that there is fund required there is that little element required which can basically make you feel more celebratory more alive in that sense another thing that I want to talk about is the fact that you know all brands at this point in time or organizations they need to know the target audience but plus they just know they don't need to just be mouthpieces in terms of coming up with stepping up a message they also need to basically ensure that there's action to it so when you're talking about purpose then you need to be purposeful first you need to obviously reflect that for example if you know for PepsiCo the key thing is winning with purpose but the fact is if during the pandemic in both you know or any other situation if you are not being purposeful you're not thinking about the environment we're not going out in you know helping the communities in need then it's all a waste and that's exactly what we do we action it as well and the last thing is then I think again effective communication is not only important externally it's very very important internally and being humane being empathetic have showing concern being purposeful all these are basic pillars to ensure that we actually say and do what we really mean so yeah that's pretty much what I have to say here Anandita closing remarks from you okay so here I mean we have spoken enough about communication and brand I would talk about the awareness on the awareness part of something you know the communication whatever we are doing it is it only should we only stick on to what we want to communicate or the you know peripherals around that we have to see suppose Atman Irwal Bharat is a fantastic initiative but what are the things we need to do for that what is ease of doing business where India ranks in you know doing business now by world bank it is in 63rd position what are the parameters to start a business to continue a business what are the you know there are six seven parameters how to you know end the business so when we are you know hopping on the point that we have to be self resilient and self sufficient so what are the facilities available around so it is just an example basically I want to say whatever the product is with the communication about the product I think the peripheral awareness is very very important and also coming to you know someone already said that yes all communication it has to reach to every level that is true for some products but some products you have to have a clear segment you know so it has to reach to those particular customers and also some products we have seen a very established jewelry brand they have come to a strong CSR messaging but then again the when the CSR messaging what is it about now is it about promoting you know like women education okay fine then it's okay how you promote it but when a very established you know a brand ambassador wears a very ordinary village dresses up like a villager and goes to withdraw pension we have to think does it really click what we want to get because then we can match the two personalities you know that product what the messaging should be and the person who's doing it no one believes that so I think you know we have to make a total balance we have to go with a total balanced approach in our communication so that the product itself become a brand in itself if you see it's very funny to say but you know 90% of our domestic health when they need to use a washing powder they say my madam serves the DJ whatever respective of the brand it is served for them or for many children when you want to have a chocolate they will say category irrespective of the brand I'm sorry for people who are in that brand so this is the you know resonance what we are looking for with effective communication and awareness I think these two things need to have a good I mean an effective marriage for you know in days to come and also with the purpose as everyone has said human approach with very you know to live by the philosophy by the brand and of course a very you know messaging that will you know keep in mind you know keep will be in people's mind for a longer longer time for them to be established brand right so should be back to you and then Jyotsana thank you you know a lot has been said and but not everyone has said it it's it's a sheer joy for me to listen to everyone and these are champions and heroes for me what is amazing is when you bring women into the room you're not just looking at profitability you're also looking at user simplicity brands that obsess about what is it that will truly make a difference in the lives of their users and when I say stakeholders I mean your employees I mean people who are associated with you in every shape form and purpose of the way 70% of all people surveyed in the latest Edelman's trust barometer talk about putting trust at the core of what brands are doing how can you build trust if you're shaming it if you're telling a story and if you're doing a campaign that's peripheral I believe there are six very very clear metrics that drive this arrow to a higher level of trust so if you're disingenious you're going to lose out if you're commercially motivated you're going to lose out if you're opportunistic especially in a world where it is fraught with uncertainty and human tragedy with the kind of proportion that we've never seen before you're going to lose out if you're only branding motivated let me look at a transactional opportunity and plug my brand there mindlessly you're going to lose out when you start gaining is when you are CSR centric when you really care about your community and when your purpose led so brand purpose needs to go above and beyond being an expression of a statement that you'd put out in your annual report it has to be a core value proposition it needs to address societies like Dreda Thunberg said you have to respond to the environmental situations like your house is on fire and believe me friends who are on the call today our house is on fire so if you don't care about the environment if you're not focused on the positive potential impact of the company that is creating products day in and day out you will get knocked off sooner than later and that's where COVID-19 Jyotsana and I'm going to end very quickly on this brand focus and purpose have been married like never before companies have had to move away from differentiating their products and they're joining hands with the government they're joining hands with networks so creativity collaboration and curation and finding common minimum points of interest with partners from your own sectors who've been your competitors is the way forward if you truly want to purpose and if you truly want to build a brand that stays and that truly is at the heart of your consumers and your business thank you so much for this opportunity I've really enjoyed this conversation thank you so be humane be purposeful thank you ladies this was very informative thank you for your time and thank you for speaking to us thank you so much and wish everyone of all who are this stay safe please take care stay safe and be connected thank you be connected yes thank you thank you so I'm going to hand this back to my colleague Mr Bhatia yeah unfortunately Khyati got stuck I think there's a dropback so I'll take over for some minute because this is a women conference women like to stay out for some time oh we love our men Karan they're more than welcome otherwise we'll be the converted especially if we good things about us yeah absolutely and you're celebrating women so you definitely need to share the stage with us for a little while for the ride absolutely so we also have so thanks for your lovely session we really thought for working I was watching it and we look forward to see you more we'll keep engaging thank you bye moving over to our next panelist thank you everyone thank you Jocelyn for an amazing cooperation moving on to our next panelist we have Miss Pibi Segins who's the chief operating officer of a little black book welcome Pibi can you hear us hi um I think hang on my video is on one second okay I think now you can start on your camera oh there you are hi hi so nice to see your face yeah I hope everything is fine in UK so Pibi she'll talk about the topic break the glass ceiling put on different shoes and get ready to make yourself uncomfortable a little brief description at 5 to Pibi Segins and spend a lifetime in platform shoes and trainers but this talk isn't about retaining her feet after a year locked down wearing slippers it's about confidence like many women it's one of the things Pibi wishes she had more of as a young person sorry my bad something she recognized women needs more of in order to move forward in their career quickly and regardless of gender Pibi Segins gained her position as a chief operating officer of global marketing and news platform Little Black Book at the age of 28 Pibi joined Little Black Book PR arm LLB lab in 2014 as a PR accounts manager in just too short here she was running the entire department and has supported her 10th bold growth in its clients base during her lifetime at the business so a very warm welcome to you Pibi such an honor you know reading about you and we've been interacting a lot so I'll pass it on to you and you know you can just share your presentation or anything you want to share with our audience amazing over to you thank you thank you so much I wanted to actually start off by thanking you all for taking the time to listen to me speak today when I first was approached by current and exchange for media I to talk on the topic of breaking the glass ceiling I was so humbled to be asked to speak in front of so many business leaders and incredibly successful people in the field of PR today so what I would like to talk to you a little bit about is my experiences so far as you've just heard I'm the chief operating officer and head of PR at Little Black Book some may know it as lbbonline.com so doing a talk this way is fairly new to me I tend to be the interviewer as opposed to the interviewee I'm normally crafting talking points and thought leadership for other people rather than myself so at the times that I speak in public it's normally in front of a live audience most of whom I can see all their lovely faces so please excuse my fresh approach to this it's it's a bit new to me but I hope you enjoy it so today what I'd like to talk about two things I really believe have carried me through right from my school years in education up to the point of taking on a more senior leadership role in 2020 and those two things are putting myself in uncomfortable positions and putting on different pairs of shoes and when I say that it's not because I'm five foot two and I love wearing a platform heel this is actually in the metaphorical sense about building confidence and understanding other people and I'll tell you why so when I told my friends I'd be speaking on the topic of women in leadership and breaking the glass ceiling they all nodded to one thing you should talk about imposter syndrome perhaps embarrassingly I hadn't heard of it but I obviously quite often had the signs of it written all over my face I feel at least six different people maybe told me the exact same thing so for anyone like me who wasn't familiar with the phrase imposter syndrome refers to a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their skills talents their accomplishments and has this kind of internalised fear of being exposed as a fraud or not feeling like they deserve to be where they are so as I looked into this I found a study by KPMG from 2020 that found over 75% of female executives felt that they had experienced this at some point in their career and I could certainly count myself amongst them and as I started to think this is something I also hear so much from my own clients and female business leaders that I work with it's a daily conversation so having started to research this the topic immediately threw me back to a panel series I've been running for one of my clients basically this panel brings together senior heads of production from across the USA to talk about their experiences and on these panels we always ask one bonus question right at the end to everyone who we're speaking to and that question was always if you could go back in time to when you were 10 years old and could tell yourself one thing what would you tell yourself so across that series I found men and women answered this question very differently and on one of the panels in particular I found myself together with three really forging successful female heads of production and they all said the exact same answer unprompted I would have told myself to be more confident I would have told myself to believe in myself and my abilities and to not worry about what people thought of me so much and in all honesty this is something I had in my head the whole time it would have been my answer too and the more I started to think about this I realised that building up my confidence has been so important to my progression in the field of PR and communications and essentially breaking this glass ceiling but I found the incredibly frustrating thing about confidence is it's not an academic skill it's not something people teach you in school or something you can easily teach others it's not something you can buy for yourself or gift to anyone else it's not something you can easily acquire without making big changes to the way that you think and act personally it's also one of the things I really believe men and women experience quite differently I still wouldn't call myself an extrovert today I know I've come a long long way from the kind of nervous doubter that I used to be and whilst I can't offer up a kind of silver bullet solution to a lack of confidence or imposter syndrome I do believe two things that have helped me go from that complete wallflower to where I am today was as I mentioned earlier putting myself in other people's shoes learning from them and making myself uncomfortable so in order to I guess explain myself I really feel I probably have to first put you in my shoes so I grew up in the 1990s in a big seaside town in the UK I'm incredibly lucky to be able to say I had wonderful supportive and creative parents who never imposed any gender bias on me or my brother primary and secondary education was free compulsory accessible to all children and the kind of thought that was ingrained into us was that if we worked hard the sky was the limit and that was something that just stuck with me that the moment I got into school I loved learning and I pushed myself towards that I wanted to achieve and at age 10 my teachers recommended that I take a test to an entry test to one of our state-run grammar schools again this was something with free and accessible to all children so I was incredibly lucky to get the opportunity to do it and I ended up going to one of the top achieving schools in the borough Southend High School for Girls so academically at this point I had no doubts about my abilities in regard to my gender if anything being at this all girls school it kind of reaffirmed to me that my gender wouldn't hinder my results it may actually improve them so it's funny because there must have been something a bit in the water in the early 90s in my home county of Essex as we were often told we were one of the highest achieving school year groups the area had produced and teachers would often mention how the girls were outperforming the boys which you know was often celebrated because it was rare but outside of school I'd grown up with a brother male cousins a lot of family friends who also happened to be boys so I was quite often in male company but I was starting to notice at this point in time the rifts in our levels of social confidence especially as I worked my way through secondary school I kind of feel a growing amount of curve balls being thrown my way that simply didn't bother my brothers or my cousins and other people that I knew so I kind of actually at this point said thank my lucky stars that I didn't grow up in the age of Instagram I think in the 90s and 2000s magazines and TV were kind of enough to rock my perspective on my body image how I should act and you know what limited options might lay ahead for women especially if you wanted a family later in life so I guess this is when I first started becoming aware of what the glass ceiling was perhaps not so much under that phraseology but the fact that no matter what grades I got there was going to be some barriers to achieving what I wanted to achieve so despite the fact I was doing well academically my confidence started dropping through the floor definitely during secondary school I just wasn't comfortable conversing with people who weren't my close friends or family or they weren't in my age group I'd become very insular but I'd also started to cotton on to the fact that when I entered the real world my safe bubble of being at a smart girls school with good grades was going to burst quite quickly so by the time I got to the end of my fifth year I realized I had a decision to make even if I continued to work really hard that lack of confidence was going to start holding me back in my next stages in life getting a job applying to uni starting a career would all be much more difficult for me so how could I stop this? as I mentioned earlier I couldn't learn confidence from anyone else I couldn't buy it I had the realization I was going to have to completely change my mindset and my immediate environment in order to do it I had to put myself in an environment I didn't feel comfortable and essentially I wanted to be ready for the boys club of the working world that all women kind of told me about so I took the leap to move to a sixth form at the boys grammar school so these schools the six forms tend to be mixed at the grammar schools but just to give you some context there are about 150 pupils in my new school year less than one third of these were female it was a different part of town together and I knew I need two people there but in my mind it was something that could potentially mimic a working environment of the future so the first day I walked in there I was absolutely terrified and I often get these kind of vivid flashbacks of walking into our common room at break time on the first day of school looking in the room realizing there was no one I knew in there turning on my heel and walking straight back out and hiding in the toilets and I thought I would never be able to speak to anyone really thinking I'd made a huge huge mistake and I'd left this comfortable environment where I was going to get the best grades I could get but I had to tell myself there was no way of backing out I put myself here for a reason and I had to come up with a way to work out how to interact with new people so I started putting myself in their shoes I'm sure you can imagine what a group of teenage boys are like who suddenly have 50 girls thrown into what was previously an all boys environment in which they were already familiar and confident testosterone flying all about the place they were vying for our tension and trying to prove who was the most dominant often that translated into banter which kind of sometimes would scare or upset most girls but by detaching myself from the words coming out of their mouth and putting myself in their shoes I noticed one thing very quickly a kind of overly defensive reaction to their comments and jokes only fed their desire to kind of be more cutting getting upset was helping prove that dominance so what I realized was in fact they wanted to be challenged they were also all very smart boys and they appreciate as someone who could speak to them on their level so I kind of sat back and observed what do these people find interesting what makes them embarrassed what commonalities do we have how can we have an engaging conversation with each other so little by little using that approach I began to get more comfortable being somewhere completely different around people who actually completely different to what I was used to and I began to make some really great friends friends that I'm still happy to say very close to today and when I look back making that change is something that I can point to as something that started to get me where I am today I realized at that point that confidence can be earned and that I had to recognize when I needed to try new things that were outside of my comfort zone so this combination approaches is what I believe I've used ever since to try and take step forwards in my career if I fast forward slightly I then studied history of art at the University of Warwick having creative parents I've always had an interest in how the creative world collided with social and cultural history something that has become hugely valuable to my career now I get to thrive on this because I speak and hear from business leaders all day long who bring these two elements together to create amazing campaigns so I guess at this point alongside trying to develop my social confidence I was still working incredibly hard academically I came out with a first-class degree and this was the academic pinnacle I'd been gunning for since those teachers first told me to take the entry exam to grammar school I thought this would open many many doors that these teachers had promised me and in my mind I felt it proved that as a woman I wasn't at a disadvantage academically but alas when I left university we were coming out the back of a quite steep recession in the UK and there just weren't graduate jobs about at this point I still wasn't confident enough to get through the interviews well the few interviews that I had and what I had to do was still earn my keep at home I didn't come from a wealthy family I had to pay for my social life pay for my food pay for my accommodation and I'd kind of just took whatever part-time jobs came my way in order to do that and it wasn't until a year later that I was able to get an unpaid internship at a small healthcare start-up in London using kind of some of the funds that I'd saved to cover the travel costs it wasn't the creative field that I hoped for but once again I knew I was going to have to try something different if I wanted to move forward and at this point I was obviously so grateful they gave me the opportunity when no one else would and actually this uncomfy moment turned into a very happy accident this job at Network Locom which is now known as Lantham in the UK it paved the way for my current role the CEO Melissa Morris was a former McKinsey consultant and she was only a few years older than I was I was kind of in awe of the fact that she had secured investor funding for a business that would support what I always saw as one of Britain's Britain's greatest institutions our national health service and after a year of part-time jobs post uni I was desperate for a chance to prove myself especially to this incredibly this just this amazing this amazing woman so she she took a chance on me despite the fact I kind of knew nothing about medicine doctors the systems behind the NHS so what I did was I just I threw myself into the research and talking to as many GPs practice owners anyone they would they would put me in front of obviously at this point something I was I was still very very nervous about I didn't want to trip up obviously these are highly educated people in a field that I knew nothing about but I knew I had to learn so I had to get over my fear of speaking to them and again find that common ground that that would help me learn so I have to mention this but obviously despite running this forging an incredibly busy startup I'd have to thank Melissa and her team because they personally took the time to train me in how that business worked from top to bottom it was everything from the sales and marketing that I was hired for in the internship to customer management website development funding proposals digital marketing reporting business development clinical governance and their teaching and my kind of drive to learn meant I went from an unpaid intern to a full-time communications manager after just one month and it was one of the greatest starts like I could have possibly had and it's still something that that that feeds my knowledge and my approach to my job today so then the job arose at LBB in 2014 for a junior PR account manager and when I saw the role I could just see the culmination of all of these amazing skills I had been learning in the industry the skill like in the place that I'd always wanted to work in in advertising communications media and production and despite the fact that I loved and admired my current colleagues that I'd been swiftly promoted and that the business I was in was clearly moving towards bigger things and I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to sidestep into the creative industries so I guess once again my goal was to learn as much as I could about a completely new industry to me and this is where putting myself in people's shoes really began to make a difference and the unique thing about LBB lab is that the PR agency was born out of its news platform so unlike anywhere I had ever worked before I had this incredible global resource at my fingertips something that could provide me with all the teaching on who's who and what's what that I ever needed to know and what struck me about it was that it gave everyone a voice from junior to senior from post-production to brand marketer I could get into the minds of anyone in the business something that I knew up to that for this point would would help me get ahead so despite not having done PR before I realized quickly that the first thing you have to get to grips with is who your clients really are who their customers really are and what's interesting about them I'm sure it's a given for most of you listening today that the first thing you need to do is to get to know your client's business their audience and the media that you're working with inside and out but I believe there's another level to all of this what are the extraneous factors that might affect the way that those clients or journalists interact with you and the audience that they're trying to reach I always think one of my biggest pieces of advice for other young people or for leaders who were supporting young staff is that when you're a woman and grappling with a fear of imposter syndrome or a lack of confidence working with business leaders who are your clients but who are people that you've admired for a long time that you look up to that you want to be and learn from it can be so hard to take a step back and realize that they might be just as eager to hear your thoughts perspective and your advice about your field as you are to theirs so I guess for me being able to put yourself in their shoes isn't just a case of knowing what their business does and what goals they need to hit it's about being able to anticipate what them and their customers want and need along the way and also give yourself the confidence to give your best advice so as I move throughout my career I recognize it was just as important to learn from your colleagues and bosses too to look to learn from their experience when I draw and they still are half of our team with journalists working on the news side of LBV and they could actually put me in the headspace of anyone I was pitching to in the wider trade media and the CEO Matt Cooper he was in fact the kind of real life walking little black book who seemed to have worked with anyone and everyone in the business so their knowledge is something that still keeps me moving forward today and still something I do every day to try and understand my clients and this business more I guess at this point it would also be a remiss of me not to mention but I couldn't have learned so much and moved so quickly in my career at LBV had it not been for the support of Matt Cooper he's never let age, gender, race or sexuality kind of blind him from people's ability he has taught and nurtured every single one of us on his team with this kind of passionate and insight he'd acknowledge and for this I can I know I can say I'm one of the very lucky and fortunate few to have had such great role models to learn from as a parting thought I believe breaking the glass ceiling is about keeping it broken and keeping it open for the people coming up through the ranks from the same I will report I mentioned earlier conducted by KPMG they found that when asked which dynamics within the workplace were most valuable to help reduce feelings of imposter syndrome 47% said having a supportive performance manager and 29% said feeling valued and being rewarded fairly helped combat that lack of confidence when it came to running my own team I wanted to give back some of the wonderful support advice teaching and insight that I've received over my career I've perhaps found this is where putting yourself in other people's shoes is most important I mean it's a well-known fact that employees are more productive and happy when they feel empowered when they feel that they are on a forward trajectory that them and the business they are in is going somewhere in order to put them on that path I think you have to be able to put yourself in their shoes you won't know how to make them feel empowered if you don't know what empowerment looks like to them you need to understand what type of trajectory they want to be on and help them get up to that speed you need to work out how they learn best and how to keep them going because it is so so different for everyone and I think for me it is always keeping in the back of my mind that the confidence hurdles I've overcome and helping others to do the same so if you do one thing to help your confidence or the confidence of others I think you need to pull on a different pair of shoes thank you thank you Phoebe that was wonderful and I am sure that you know a lot of these young girls who are watching you right now are getting inspired with your story I have few questions quickly I want to ask you you've been a female leader who's revered and respected what do you think are potential challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for future leaders? that's a good question I mean I'd love to say that these challenges will the challenges that we all face now will be less for the next generation but when you look at the stats in terms of how slow our industries are moving towards gender parity it's frightening really and actually I can't remember where I read it but more recently there's a lot of evidence to show that the pandemic has decelerated in like the recent progression that women in business had made so I guess the biggest challenge will be to keep I think keep moving forward and learning how to accelerate that process to to give women more opportunities to make them feel more confident and to I think yeah just speed things up also Phoebe you worked in diverse organizational setup so what culture difference that you observed as world becomes closer and there's like diverse workforce in almost every organization now so would you like to share some anecdotes from those yeah I mean to be honest for me and I know this is there's evident a lot of evidence to support the more diverse businesses you work in the more creative they become the more successful they become and like I mentioned I've been so fortunate to work in two places which have been incredibly diverse and I think that the progress of those businesses speak for themselves if you have diverse people in the business you get more success and you get it quickly so yeah I mean there's countless amazing people that I've worked with and actually day to day the thing I enjoy most about my role is that I get to speak to people from all over the world from all different backgrounds and it's not just my own team that I get to experience and learn from it's everyone in this industry and that to me is I think gives you that beautiful well-rounded approach and ideas absolutely there is another question which is about the global PR communication scenario and how women are leading the band as we all know since LBB is widely covering global market what has been your experience in terms of the global PR scenario communication and PR so do you mean that as a woman or just yeah so I think for me actually it's been funny because a lot of the people that I work with in communications like you're saying they are women and they are you see you see it a lot so globally is what most of the global heads of comms that I work with at agencies or marketing or in production companies like you're saying they're all women so for me that there's been role models there throughout my career but the one thing I think I guess the biggest challenge is keeping it fresh and I sometimes experience the fact that some women who have have been through a lot in their careers and have overcome this huge adversity is that it seems they sometimes find it difficult to not pass that down to the next generation I think it's for global female PR leaders I think no matter what you've been through it's about like not having to put that down to the next generation it's making their path easier and yeah not lumbering them with any of the things you might have had to go through yourself Thank you so much Phoebe it's been a real pleasure to hear your story and to let all the females and the younger girls especially entering the industry know that how real imposter syndrome is how important it is to overcome it and develop your own confidence in the world of PR and communication Thank you Phoebe it was great having you look forward to have more engaging conversation and in other events as well Absolutely, thank you so so much for inviting me to speak I'm incredibly humbled and a bit like that imposter syndrome I didn't quite believe I'd be invited so Oh absolutely look forward to and have a nice trip take care Yeah, you too Thank you Bye Thank you so much Phoebe With that without wasting any time we are going to move straight to our next panel discussion which will talk about success or failure our prerequisite for personal growth exchange panelist on this session we have Ashken who's the personal branding and Instagram marketing expert Ashken pro we also have a my political journalist political analyst we have RJ Ginni Mahajan from Radio City we have Kumal Lath from who's the founder of Tute Consult and moderating this session is Mr. Siddir Mishra founder and managing partner Trust Legal a very warm welcome I'm going to check on our yes other panelists as well requesting all of you to please switch on your cameras and mics and join us on screen and Siddir over to you to take the conversation forward Thank you Kati how are you and it's a pleasure to moderate this panel I'm a lawyer but I know why Anurag wanted me and Karan wanted me to come for this panel the reason is I have gone through many successes and failure and maybe there is a story behind it but I'm a great believer in woman power most of my law firm have a majority of women working from partners to associate to senior associate and that has been my journey I'm always very guided by their inclusion about their energy and their positivity so it's a it's a privilege to be here moderated such an important panel Ginni I have been hearing you on Radio City all of us know you very well what you what kind of positive story you talk about you talk about challenging stories all the time Komal I know about your book also and that is something and Akshayn am I pronouncing it correctly Akshayn yeah your name Akshayn Ashwin so welcome you all in this and the topic is the topic is very I don't know who thought about it but it's very interesting success or failure are a prerequisite for personal growth I think all of us I come from a small town and I had mostly my 10th and 12th almost under the tree in in place in Bihar which is called Sivan it's almost like a village it's a very small town and came to Delhi University did my graduation and later became a full-brighter scholar became a lawyer now my door tenant in London in the attorney general of the United Kingdom chamber also run my practice out of India it has been a very torrid journey for me I have seen a lot of failures in early part of my life and honestly speaking I was not knowing that failures also teaches you something but if I look back when I'm 50 I can surely tell you that I feel that my failures whether it's an interview of IS in 98 or some bigger failures in course of my court litigation they taught me so much they were much bigger teacher to be then whatever success or small success a big success as a professional I got so I was very excited about this topic and I will start with Ginny you because you will set us tone for this conference what do you think about this topic what comes to your mind also I'd like to say I'm very complex talking to you because you just told me what are you done and I'm like where is the failure in that this is all super success but I think I can talk a lot about failures because I think my life has been a series of failures and every time a failure has come and I've thought that this is it life is quite over it's actually given me a new direction to move in life so failures teach you a lot but also I like how they've said success and failures both are equally important because inevitably we talk about failures but success is very important for people to actually have faith in you for you to know that you're going down the right path good evening to everybody out there I'm sure that all of you are extremely successful people and I do believe that for everybody who's extremely successful they've had to have some major failures come their way I also think that those people are very very lucky who at the age of 10 or 12 from a small town or a big town can actually sit down and chalk out their life and their life goes like that I wish I I don't know anybody like that in my life and I think that those people would be supremely lucky with the rest of us we start taking a route and then you have a failure you have a cross sign and then you got to change direction completely and go down a different route my route was I was going to be a very successful corporate person I wasn't going to do anything related to media or anything and you know I had it sorted I wanted to do an MBA I knew the institute I was going to do an MBA from I cleared the return and this is it life was going to be set then the interviews happened something went wrong and this was my first biggest failure story throughout school I think I'd been an above average student I didn't know what failure was I come from an army background I was shifting every three years so life had taught me to be on my toes very fast but I think not getting through that MBA exam was my biggest biggest failure and I thought life had ended I went into a series of really bad decisions and decided to go into a shop and start selling stuff there which was horrifying for my parents one who was an army colonel the other who was an established doctor and their daughter who's relatively successful is going to a store to sell but that store is where somebody once asked me to start making announcements where all of you've been to stores right where you say one is free or 20% discount if you're taking a 15% or something those announcements actually led me to meeting somebody who said where from all India radio do you want to give us an audition and I was like are you serious and that's where life completely turned another failure I don't know if it is a failure or not was I was working with a radio station which was a talk radio station I was very very passionate about it and I remember when Miao shut and I had to go back to say commercial radio so from a 40 minute talk time I was coming down to five minutes of talk time and I was like this is not my cup of tea and I left radio and I decided to go down to management which was my original goal realized wasn't my cup of tea and then came back to this and again it was a failure in terms because everybody was like you're going on the corporate ladder you're being stupid you're taking the demotion of such but well those were decisions that I took and were actually forced on my throat at that point in time but they shaped me into the person I was so failure is very very important also keep you very grounded more than anything else and before Sudeer I go back to you I'm going to say that success equally important because if you don't get success I think it's becoming a world where people judge you by your successes people also want to judge you by what you've achieved or not achieved it doesn't matter how much hard work has gone into it so I think success really matters at that time your rewards would matter people talking about you matters also success sort of for me personally I think that you'd be very successful at something that you are passionate about for me as an individual I can't be successful at things that I don't feel passionately about so I think that success was very important for me to know that this passion was well placed absolutely so yeah equally important I'll come back to you Gini one very important observation which I have is that when I was getting success I was being challenged in after 10 years of working for forest, wildlife and transmission, climate change when nobody was doing that in India I was told keep ha yeh putta billi bachana toh thik hai kush payasah bada kum aakhe dikhao so I created a firm which is one of the largest media broadcasting law firm in the country today and if you ask me whether this gives me more happiness happens of course any success gives you you have another top taxpayer you feel pride in it but you know failure is very personal success in the universe that is something which people see your exterior see but failure is something which is a soupy thing which which you live with and you really internalize it and that gives you the energy and other aspect success absolutely success sometimes gives you a bigger vision and direction very few are lucky and you made another very important observation that tendulkas are very few who know that 16 that I'll become a great picketer or one day I'll get a Bharath Ratna people like me we're not even knowing what they'll do till 27-28 actually and everybody said yeh karega kya leh so that way we are fine what are your thoughts Komal how you see success how you see failure so very interesting conversations Gini and Sudeet and I believe in Gini when you said that after hearing your career trajectory I'm trying to find the failure with Gini and totally totally in tandem with her I think success is important let's absolutely agree on that with that validation you need it to be able to say hey you're doing okay if you don't get that so hustle is a great word and what it goes to has negative connotations if you're only hustling you need hustling with success whether it's failure or rather setback failure is a very heavy word you need both sometimes to be able to learn and unlearn and relearn and so it's always my way or the highway it's what is it's to take the road ahead and the long road ahead I use this quite often when I say like entrepreneurship for example is like building a flight as you jump off the cliff because you don't know what you're in for you're doing that whether you're an entrepreneur or an entrepreneur or something who is just even attempting to do something failure or setback is important for you to relook at dimensions of life because you don't know what's in store it's like going to a menu car if you've only been to India and you don't know there it's the Chinese Thai Mexican food out there you do need to know there's a global cuisine and a word out there and I think that it's something you learn and you step up instead of scaling up only with the sign and feedback so that's my two bits on it wonderful very well said Ashkin I will ask you that we three have talked about success or failure which propels you more what actually propelled you more you are influencer and you have such a role so just tell us what propels you more actually both are very important I can say because okay one example I'll say one hand will not climb isn't it so one hand is the failure another hand is success so when you bring together you will hear the sound and it will be achievement of your goal so I can say that which one is more important what are important because to fail it means to learn to fail it means to grow one more step okay to fail it means knowledge experience as more experience you have as more you will grow so yeah as you mentioned the failures is only for yourself and success is for everyone it's true but you know you can't just close yourself and stay alone and say that okay I failed and that's all I never will try again no I just want to say that we have to look babies how they are trying to work okay how they are trying to stand like catching trying finding to stand we are a baby when we are trying to achieve to a new goal our new goals it's like a baby we have to try to do our steps we have baby how many times we fail many yes and never will feel discomfort that oh I never will try to walk no we have to try to walk like a baby so to fail and to have a success it's equal and I wish that yeah now no one will fail the feelings of failure but to have the failure feelings you have to be ready for it also because on your journey to achieve to something there is not only you know just successful stories you have to understand what is the behind also you have to learn from your mistakes whole our life is like a huge journey that we are going through failing and standing up and continuing so it's like a long-term process that we have to go through it yeah very well said so these are the initial thoughts Giddy let me tell you I did few podcasts and I used to listen to you sometime in the evening when I'll switch on the radio and I have very good friends who are RJs and Sharath is a very good friend who Sharath who does in the morning show on that is Red Isle Drive and we are half fever and all of them are training me on my podcast Rahul Martin and him so they asked me who who is the person whom you really want to meet I said I want to meet Gini Mahat are you serious thank you yes I said that and when the fold is back and I'm saying it very openly the reason is I told Anurag he said there is one panel I said I have no time because today there's a very important matter going into people he said there's a panel and this is the panel he said I'm going to moderate that back how sweet thank you so so this I'm saying very openly look positivity stories success failure Jiden Krishnamurti has said that what you should practice is detachment if you are detached from success of failure just be indifferent to it it's very difficult thing to do actually that how indifferent you can be like you watch it flow in front of you that's what I think Ashken also tried saying that like a baby you are doing that journey I have actually started realizing when COVID was at the peak in the second phase I was appearing for many hospitals before the oxygen went to Delhi High Court and we had these letters coming to us that shall we take a consent letter from patient because we can't provide oxygen for the next morning and I was telling them that we will not sign these letters I assure you by four o'clock in the morning I'll get the oxygen to the hospital and I'm talking about large COVID hospitals like Venkateshwar I was representing them my son had COVID at home my mother had COVID at home but I was in these hospitals not even once it bothered me that what is going to happen so beyond success failure how you deal with fear how you deal with selfishness how much detachment you practice ultimately will decide your success and failure stories to guide you so coming back to you Gini tell us you were a journalist also and you came in you are a positive you always talked about a positive side whenever there is some question to you you will say you give a very light response to it sometime which I think is what childlike with Ashken has very rightly said it's childlike which everybody teaches every religion teaches that tell us what is your what is your motivation I don't have a motivation I think that life is cannot be led by being extremely negative or being extremely cynical I think COVID was a realisation of that when COVID happens especially the second phase happened all of us you know I'm sure that there was a time for everybody where you got caught in the whole social media of helping for oxygen plasma beds and it just went on and on and after a point in time you didn't know what was going on and there was this whole nervous dread that we were all living with and at that time I was looking at a lot of things and all of us were actually looking at shows which were more humour which were lighter which would make us feel less anxious because as people I think we want to gravitate towards slightly happier stuff I also think that's an over-enthusiastic response that we are seeing to go with guidelines now when people are going out and eating chole bature openly in the streets because we are positive but I think that basically intrinsically we all want to be happy and happiness comes from small positive thoughts because you can't afford to get too cynical and bitter in life and I think that as somebody who's in a media sector it's our job to make people feel a little better and I think that little seriously so there will be days when you will be low and I think everybody should indulge in those low days when you come out and say that I don't know what's gonna happen and I'm scared and I've said that on radio a lot of times that I'm scared because now this is going beyond control it's in the air I don't know how to protect us but then you get out of it two days later and you want to again spread happiness because that's intrinsic I think it's more intrinsic than anything else and when you were speaking right now about COVID I think COVID taught us all that the things that we run behind right in normal days is not something that you want in life what you want in life is peace of mind a little bit of happiness a bit of people that you feel happy with not spending time in things that you will later on do with those people so I think that's helped in making us all slightly positive in that sense Komal tell us some personal growth stories how you are a business woman and you do so many things and tell us that in your journey of being an entrepreneur what is your personal growth which has guided you more your success or continued success or there has been failures which were the milestones for teaching I think continued success is a great utopian Instagram story if it doesn't exist in your life let's say let's be very real about it but thank God for those thank God for those setbacks and failures it's a very interesting conversation I was doing Harvard course and the professor mentioned something that's perhaps stayed with you and he said that we're not scared of change we're scared of losing what we have in the current which is why we are about to change because we're going to lose what we have but why don't you celebrate failure sometimes a setback makes me say right whatever happens is to be good you also need to embrace and celebrate I think at some point it helps you do as a person it's just so yeah it is very difficult to feel detached so when I had a big smile on my face when you and me mentioned the bound attachment which is it's great to play but the practice part of it is very difficult and remember when I was transitioning so I was working for eight years before I took the ground just starting with my own company in a little purely situation let's put it that way so at 25 I started my company I don't think I slept well for three months because the fact that you don't get a fee will take you at home though you don't think about it in that manner sort of you said okay how are you going to manage it how are you going to play your team you're not thinking for yourself but you suddenly have an attachment to so many people that you're associated with absolutely and that is the founder of a business so I think I'm going to relearn being able to celebrate taking a deep breath and saying okay not only with your past the science thing we currently not come back so you know I make time to move forward it's really going on oh and I was self which is normal to do and I'll celebrate it but I have to do it because I need to get over it and then you get up and you walk because you have no option to keep your goals and heal fire that's how I sort of have lived by and that helps me there's a journey to it I think I'm enjoying my journey really wonderful steady but I'm loving it so good Ginni I'll tell you that I am actually the only social media I know is LinkedIn and I have 75,000 followers there I'm not on Facebook, Instagram I don't know so I just kept the urgent kind of focus on one particular thing and that's what I do in life but feeling responsible about your ecosystem which you talked about and which is a such amazing thing commonly you said the feeling responsible towards your ecosystem the people who are dependent on you the people who look up to you and your journey and being ethical and that's an island concept it's an island concept which they say that don't bother about what others are doing you have your own journey which will have integrity which will have trust which will have a lot of gratitude and perseverance and you propel yourself with these things so basically when you talk about personal growth also it is not in terms of money or it's in terms of something it's more than that so when you generate money you generate for yourself for example when you generate wealth you generate for the entire community your ecosystem so these are the thoughts which should guide you in your journey Haskin tell us more about the examples which you gave us that how do we deal with like you give brilliant example of children very young children tell us more about what other things should guide us when we interpret success or failure um well knowledge so you have to you know the first thing okay I give you some keys the first thing that you have to fix the goal that what you want to achieve okay that is the most important part before the goal you have to like you have dreams yes you have to realize which one is more important for you okay you'll fix your goal and you after fixing I want this or I want to achieve of this level you have to do analysis of your resources okay it can be knowledge it can be financial part it can be your connection your network that your friends who you have around the field and who can help you or what resources or what kind of resources you need to achieve to the goal or if you need to you know improve your knowledge improve your skills to get that goal to achieve to the goal okay what you have to learn how to learn from where to find a teacher or that I don't know expert so when you already write down all these steps everything will be clear for you like what you have to do the next and always be ready the second point is always be ready to study okay in all your life okay you graduated university it doesn't mean that you are a super professional and that's all everyone should hire you everyone should come and ask you so your services or buy from you because you have to grow okay you have to be ready always to study always every day get something new improve your knowledge improve your skills because your knowledge is the most important is the most valuable thing that you have as the knowledge can maximize your potential can maximize your talent and can open doors front of you and you be ready to learn yes that is the second key that will advice everyone not to fail to have a success so always if you try to search on nowadays internet gives us great opportunity you can sit in India you can take the courses from I don't know from another side of the world so and you can improve your skills that is the second point that I'll advise and the third one I'll say that you know be responsible whatever you want to do don't start one day and second day you say oh I'm busy I have a guest I have to go somewhere so be responsible whatever you want to do or what you are doing because if you don't fix it in your mind that this is very important I have to do okay for example no one one day will become an Olympic champion isn't it so you have to train yourself every day if the champion train himself one day and the next day say that oh I'm busy I can't go so he will not become Olympic champion isn't it so you have to be responsible of your goals of your future of your life and the fourth point that I would like to advise that always look around a few like you know be in good people's like be always with good people surround yourself with good people people who will not only help you they can advice you they can teach you or you can inspire from them or you can learn something from them that is very important because to be a failure or to be a successful person in personal life in business in any like generally in your life it's very important to have a connection we have connection we are starting to have a good connection since our childhood since our school so as strong is our connection it doesn't mean like you know financial part okay I did something for you you have to do to me yes it's not like that you have to be kind to people you have to you know give something always be ready to help others especially nowadays like this pandemic is like a really big challenge for everyone if you are able to give your knowledge free also don't feel bad to give it free because it will come back to you absolutely so this is my it is such an exhaustive list and I'll tell you I'm so surprised that we are talking about same kind of stuff I just got a quote from Ami Polar he said the same thing you can't do it alone find a group of people who challenge and inspire you spend a lot of time with them and it will change your life this is what you said in one of the points so what and this is the quote of the day somebody had sent me so good things are being manifested here I can see Gini one important thing I'll tell you when I gave the interview of 1998 for IS me and my father we came out of the final world and he was very dejected person because Gini you know in Eastern UP Bihar IS preparation is a journey of life like you spent four five years in that so I was very dejected very disappointed but he said a very important thing he said son you have no chance now you you came out of 12 lakhs people in last six hundred you didn't clear it but the knowledge you got that knowledge won't go wrong it will be used somewhere so what happened what you just said Ashkini seven newspapers I was reading at that time I was still reading 72 papers even in pandemic and it helped me a lot in my profession I never realized it so my marks in my tenth was very less it was 60 61 percent I had 59 percent in 12 I had barely got admission in any evening college in Delhi I taught my college in final year I did very well in IS but if you rejected from IS until nobody takes you because your academic curriculum was very bad so I told my father one day that I will be teaching one day in the best law schools I just manifested so today I have a full right scholarship because of IV fellowship which I got in 2005 because of my walk on climate change and environmental law and I'm teaching in Ophijindal University with one of the best private university in India as a honorary professor I'm also teaching in Southampton University in London and I said okay I can't study in LLM or something because of my marks but I didn't teach for that there is no academic criteria your excellence, your success is the greater value so life has a strange way of rewarding you life has a strange ways of telling you that no verdict is final no defeat is final and it's only a moment which can change your entire life giving your final thoughts about one, two, three which we should follow this is my time to ask you those things which I can't ever call you and ask that it's so difficult to get you there yeah I think that after hearing everybody I've realized that success is very important because it takes you from point A to point B but success also brings in a certain amount of fear this is what I feel at this point in time because you're too scared to take risks because you've been successful for a while I think what failure does and it's a very interesting thing because now that you're slightly an adult about it and you're not breaking down at every failure is that it gives you the freedom because you have nothing to lose and when you reach that point of nothing to lose is when you actually open up and go ahead with full steam about whatever you believe in so I think both equally important but sometimes I think after every five years of successful living there should be one massive failure in our lives I'm God I'm not calling in for it but literally so that you get back and you're able to take those risks which success sometimes after a point in time does not let you take because it's predefined why would you want to shift the focus so I think that's very important beyond that I just hope that beyond success and failure whether you're very successful or whether you're a failed individual the one thing that you're looking for is happy people around you because that's what you want at the end of the day again COVID biggest teacher in this and I hope that all of us just remember that that's very essential in both cases but yeah don't be scared of any I mean my president just quit the other day and one last lesson that she gave all of us was don't be scared be fearless I think that really works in all situations don't give up okay just final thoughts 30 seconds for Komal what are your final two suggestions to us on success and failure yeah you're mute you're mute be your fan and be your critic both staying both in stride and the opposite of failure is not success and the opposite of success is not failure there's that journey walk that keep your goals high you'll be fine but Ashkin your final 30 seconds I just will say that failure is that the oil and your success is your engine you so put oil in your engine and go ahead wonderful thank you all over to you Kati I'm so privileged to moderate this panel thank you Sudhir Bhai thank you everyone well thank you I said that we've had an influx of knowledge and insights during this sessions so if you'd like to share your key highlights from the session so far go ahead and do that by tweeting to us using the hashtag eformprwomenofchivers and now we're moving towards our next panel discussion which will talk about work beyond COVID hybrid working models are here to stay and we have panelists in this session bringing on screen Anjana Asrani communications lead Yuma Pasna Dash founder and CEO Jhajubar brand consultancy Simran Kodesya communications lead India and Southeast Asia Airbnb P.L. Banerjee head external communications IPM India and moderating this session is Ms. Nafisa Shaheen correspondent at exchange for media a very warm welcome to you ladies thank you so much for the lovely welcome Cathy I think yes and hello all you lovely ladies and welcome to session five of the second edition of eformprwomenofchivers summit and awards 2021 so before we begin are you guys all vaccinated yes fully vaccinated awesome okay I was not at first dose so okay okay so you are on the step and everyone I guess everyone is at least I've got the first dose okay so you have explanations bring us closer to a post-COVID world many business leaders across sectors as well as countries you know have started contemplating the future of work spaces you know on how and where will they fix those workplaces that you don't sit dormant for the past one and a half years so while I was researching for this session I got to know that there are two set of employees the first set believe that they will be comfortable working remotely after the pandemic ends which I feel is a distant dream but we all can be guarded by optimistic thoughts while the second set of employees feel that we will be moving towards a hybrid working model so I'd like to start this session by asking my co-panelist about your views on if hybrid working models will become the norm moving forward so we will start with you Anjana what are your thoughts on the same oh thank you so much for the introduction together Nafeesa it's really great to be here so I think see the fact that the whole work ended to a work from at the same time kind of really put the focus on remote working and hybrid work models right and at the moment I think companies are experimenting different methodologies or models as we can call it like there are some companies that are saying let's have a more staggered approach come in two or three days a week there are some where you know they've probably decluttered the end of 2021 that it's going to be work from home or some have even left it completely up to the to the employees themselves but I think as organizations think about the longer term hybrid working models will become a reality but having said that it will only be in my opinion be impactful or useful for certain sectors right it cannot be applied at a mass scale at the moment and as we go through this I think it's more about what are the new policies what are the new initiatives that organizations are thinking through to make sure hybrid work models become you know or we're creating a more level playing field for employees in a hybrid work model because it's going to come with its own challenges it's going to be brand new there's going to be a lot of unlearning that needs to be done you know culturally and you know in terms of organizations that are thinking through this so yes it is going to be a reality in my opinion but in a very very selective manner okay so according to Anjanay it will be limited to some of the sectors and we need to do a lot of oil learning what are your thoughts of us now on this thanks Navisa firstly great to be joined by such incredible women and I think this is an important question to ask specifically in the services industry and industries like we are right where all the capital is actually human capital right so how you place them is very very important my personal experience has been that you know my employees actually leaning more towards working in person and tilting more towards being in the office as opposed to being at home very surprisingly we've always had a very democratic setup where people can choose and vote in terms of whether they want to work remotely or in person and surprisingly what they've actually come up to me and said is couple of things right one is that in India the work from home infrastructure still needs a lot of work right access to wifi you know just making sure electricity is there on time private space to work so those challenges still exist for people at large secondly in the field like PR communication a lot of it is to just do you know creative conversations creative thinking in person makes a huge difference yes there are tools except for that available and I think thirdly people loved having that dedicated space for work and you know work there and then come back home so they actually felt like work-life balance was getting heavily cannibalized when they were working from home so these are the three things that got them to really want to be in office but I actually completely agree with Anjana that the future is definitely hybrid I don't think we can have a one-size-fits-all approach here right there are specific industries and specific companies that can do this completely or not and I also think that I don't think we reach the end of the cycle right none of us have a crystal ball to say whether the pandemic is here it's over every week there's a new development right and I think we'll have to be really agile but I think in the in the long run and when I say long run I mean till the end of the year I think hybrid models are definitely here to stay and in certain industries specifically PR and comms I think they'll be tilted a little bit more towards working in office but you have to keep the right checks in place for example we've gotten every employee vaccinated we're enabling vaccinations for them etc so thoughtfully getting them back to the workspace is what I recommend should happen and possibly will happen okay so as you know Basna mentioned about infrastructure for working from home so Sindhu I'd like to ask from you like how can employees at their workplaces accommodate or try to accommodate this hybrid work model that we are moving forward sure thanks thanks Nafisa and you know I sort of really agree with what Basna also just mentioned I think it's you know it's very important that employers are you know taking like a very cautious approach when they're getting employees back so I can you know when talking about Airbnb I can tell you that we've been given flexibility till September of 2022 to decide whether we want to work from home even if our global offices start opening it'll be like a face reopening and employees will still have the option to work either from home or you know relocate to another place you know live anywhere as they say in the terms of travel so I think that is definitely a hybrid model will definitely be here to stay employers are doing all their best you know to sort of aid making sure that employees are getting vaccinated when they're bringing them back into work spaces you know the spaces are now set up in a way that you know not too many people are on one table in some offices I also realize that you know you also have to check in before actually going to work and you know to realize that it's a very important thing to do but I think the most important thing which Basna also mentioned is that you know that that human interaction that people sort of miss that was the best part of going to office you know so even if you were interacting with your colleagues you know some of those best conversations and ideas especially in the themes you know across PR marketing communications we actually used to come across having those Chai Bar conversations right so I think it's a very important it's a very important tool you know for people to sort of interact with one another you know get that creativity and get that energy from one another's but I do think that employers have to be extremely cautious as they sort of bring employees back to work space What are your thoughts on this field? Yeah so thank you for the opportunity and it's lovely to share a stage with all you wonderful women today so I want to step back a little bit you know and I think everybody's echoed a similar sentiment that you know the hybrid model is going away you know it's obviously a blend we're a people centric country we're all about you know sort of meeting each other doing our chai paani doing a little gossip engaging and that's that's going to be primarily a one that all of us have but having said that I think this entire concept of working remotely and working from home had a huge trust barrier like the minute somebody would say pre-pandemic it's like we're working from home so you never know that we're working from home or not you always feel they're not all hands are not on the deck or there's something else that the individual is doing and possibly not being as efficient possibly not being as dedicated and you need to sort of check into that right so all of that has completely been dispelled I think so work from home is a reality and work of home is a reality and our people managers are embracing it was thrust upon us at the back of the pandemic overnight no less but I think it's a format that everybody's figured out where you know that you know it is something that you can do it is something that you can seamlessly sort of incorporate so I think it's a cultural ideological and psychological shift that things can happen you know when you're not physically engaged so that's number one and that actually has to be ingrained in the culture of every organization that hybrid is not any less it's as much as effective and as productive you've done well number one that so it's cultural top down communication which has to find its way into the policies into the cultural narrative into the stories that you're telling your employees so that's number one number two is of course the infrastructure right and you know the government has repeatedly put you know enough and more preventive and precautionary sort of guidelines which need to be implemented it needs to be in a rotational manner it needs to be phased out it needs to be one that makes your employee comfortable you know it doesn't feel like a you know sort of mounting the Everest to come to work so there has to be abundant communication enough soft landing just keep the personal touch keep it not a memo but a dialogue so that people are looking forward to it saying that you know it's a safe haven for us to go through so I think just putting all of that in order and I think everybody's spoken enough about the temperature checks the vaccination so do one camp do two do booster camps and you know make healthcare of you know intervention agenda almost not a camp that happens as a rosy you know thing to do at the end of two years but almost like probably every six months to you know understand what is the what is the privilege of good help so I think all of that come together in making hybrid a reality because I definitely feel that if a blend is right both things can work beautifully so definitely all for it I think we all agree with what P.L. has just said and you have pointed out a very important topic of productivity so while we were working from home and everything started and we had no playbook so we have seen that some of the sectors have gone really high on in terms of productivity while rest have gone you know seats down so when we talk about this hybrid work model so will it have its own implications or will this be a more comfortable and adaptable way of working for the future so this time we can start with Simran sure thanks Nafisa so honestly you know to be very honest with you I think you know when we were going to office you know there was like a routine that you were following you know you could shut your computer down you could actually you know take a breath have a cup of tea when you come back home and you sort of feel that the day has ended you know all of us as communicators are so compulsive about checking our emails that we would still go and check our emails on the phone but now working from home there is no end to your day right because everybody thinks you have nowhere to go you've got nothing better to do and you yourself are now tuned in a way that you know if I have to do this tomorrow why can't I finish this at 10 o'clock this night and you know get one thing off my agenda so when there is no end to your work day you know instead of being productive I also feel that there is a sense of fatigue setting in you know there is no switching off you're constantly looking at your phone you know in your in your mind there are like multiple tabs open at all points in time so there is no rest so I think sometimes if there is lack of productivity in some sectors maybe they're absolutely fatigued with this whole work from home you know another reality which is very true for women is that you know they're also sort of double-hating you know being a mom you know being a homemaker you know managing everything at home and doing their Zoom calls in between it's it's not an easy thing and you know like men folk have obviously you know started helping more you know but you know children are not going to school as well so how much how much of all of that can you sort of manage so there's not one thing which is impacting your productivity but there could be many things and the fatigue of overall all of this pandemic fatigue we've sort of hit the wall with the second wave right when the first wave ended and you know we saw somebody on normalcy coming back and the second wave was like you know episode season two of a show you didn't like the very first time right and nobody was sort of ready for it so I think that's one thing that both employers as well as employees have to take care of at finding that balance still taking your PTO even if you have nowhere to go is like an important way to just sort of sleep off and get that fatigue off to be productive on on your next Monday so that that's my take here okay so what would you like to say Anjana on a pizza so I think see as we transform into this hybrid work model right I think the expectations and needs of employees must be seen as an opportunity for organizations to transform their work culture I'm not saying it's not just the cosmetic changes that need to happen right it has to be at a much much deeper level the concept of office will definitely change like you know what we know as of today so in my opinion I I'm not sure if enforcing rules like employees need to come in two or three times a week or you know just you know kind of binding them by rules in terms of how many days a week they have to be there versus can we look at teams where we feel it's going to be more productive for them if they're in the office right simplest example is if I'm on the innovation team does it make sense for me to come two or three times a week have face-to-face meetings do those you know kind of cat-ups with them so I'm able to see progress in my work versus say someone who's working for the warehouse or in the warehouse right he has to be there he or she has to be there on the floor every day so it's very difficult to say that okay come two or three days a week and you're also not being inclusive because there are certain teams in an organization that don't have that freedom or that flexibility to offer a hybrid work model so yeah I think whether like I said like I've said before and I think a lot of them on the panel have said the way organizations look at it we have to change it of course hybrid work models will become very a lot more adaptable than we are today but I think it's also flexibility versus clarity of expectation and we so you versus yes I think that's really important so Piyal what would you like to add to this you know Anjana has touched upon a point that I wanted to probably be labor with repetition but you know there is no one-size-fits-all right so I think it really depends on the function it's specific to the function that you can sort of enjoy the luxury of you know indulging in a hybrid format but having said that you know also I feel that within functions for instance the sales fraternity of any organization which is intrinsically the backbone as they say of any commercial practice like what we've done for our organizational is that it's rotational so for instance you have a brigade that goes into work at a certain stipulated time and the rest sort of take take precedence from there on so I think the way that a lot of organizations are looking at enhancing predictivity is by saying that it's people first guys for this term and business sort of comes second so we'll be ensuring the lives of our employees first and then livelihoods are a second guess so I think in that whatever needs to happen whatever enhances whatever is the mode to productivity and to efficiency one has sort of walked the path on and like I said like you know it's important some people just have to go in whether it's finance whether it's sales whether it's operations especially it's a supply chain they have to but the way that they can possibly do this and divide and conquer and we've seen that in our organization is that do it on a rotational paced out manner in such time that the inoculation process the vaccination process is all done one of the other things which is important is to do an antigen test after you've done your entire you know doses that have come through you and just to see how much protection do you have and all of these things kind of find their way like I said previously into the policy framework of people today so I think we're sort of rewriting the entire script on that where everything is about safeguarding you know people first and business second and I feel that's going to be a trend now because this is not going away in a hurry we have the third wave quite on our toes so one will manage but we don't have an idea yet we're still learning and unlearning that's the catchphrase of the season I guess but yes that's what I feel about this one point that I would like to you know put forward like I I work for a Delhi office but I am based out of the Pradesh so for candidates like me this hybrid working model can be can be proved as a bliss because I can sit at the comfort of my home and work for in any international organization so I think this one point that can be counted as a positive side to hybrid working come to Pasna you have two cents on this please firstly so many interesting points that came up I think my biggest takeaway is that you know you have to empower your employees to co-create these policies with you right this is something that impacts them deeply you know when the pandemic started a founder once told me that you know stop saying work from home say work from pandemic you know that for completely different ball game and what we started doing very early on I realized was that you know this is not one of those great HR policies that two people in the HR team can make and then implement via email you have to talk to them and I think they also need to be given the freedom to co-create these policies so that's one thing that is very very important that we've seen and second I think there has to be like somebody said on the panel you have to redefine what productivity is productivity does not mean being plugged in for 9 to 12 hours so what we started doing was you know give them metrics and say hey this is the metric this is the timeline feel free to do it in whatever format you like and whatever time you've got left right let's have fun right let's do a virtual meeting take the day off you know watch shows together do whatever you like so that gave employees a big sense of power and they felt like they were in control of what was happening to them as opposed to oh my god you know have to show up have to be productive have to deal with vaccinations and so on and so forth so I think empowering people very important secondly redefining productivity and third is you know the biggest problems that erupt are when you set a certain policy framework and you think this is great I don't need to look at it again for the next couple of months right I think that's that's one approach that really hinders you know great employee productivity you need to relook at it every couple of weeks if needed until everybody is satisfied and I think that's the third thing that we did we did try implementing certain stuff for example we said here on Friday everybody let's sit then you know catch a show together but after two weeks everyone's like no we don't want to watch a show together we literally just want to go take a nap or you know we love the metric approach we don't like the whole being plugged into the hours approach so I think the biggest takeaway is go create this with your employees and redefine productivity and I think we've been lucky most of our clients and a lot of incredible startups and founders have been so empathetic and I know that people on the brand side here who have been so empathetic to the agency side and I think it really this pandemic also showed us the best of what happens when all stakeholders come together so many big agencies you know work by closely with really big brands who said hey it's okay to not meet this particular target right now let's rework and relook that was such a beautiful thing to see throughout this ecosystem and I think we need to see more of that happening so yeah I think productivity needs to be redefined relook that and then must be co-created with employees completely agree with you Basna I think empowering our people is really important and being empathetic as I think has become prerequisite now that's not something that has to be there in the agenda that has to be the norm now so moving forward like talking about work and productivity and talking about office spaces so this this session will be incomplete if you don't discuss about the safety of both employers and employees so how do you think I will start with you Ali Basna how do you think employees can remain safe from or be at minimum risk and what can employers do in order to maintain that kind of safety yeah well this is so important and you know I think couple of things one of course is really you know it's not enough to just say hey go get vaccinated you have to step up and enable them empower them we had somebody in the team who was dedicated to making sure that vaccinations happened right so one is you have to sort of empower them second is I think every week right you need to look at you know I mean at least I'm waking up every weekend there's a new variant right so I've actually you know touched base with a friend of mine who works in a medical profession and I say hey just give me a condensed you know zoomed out you know what's happening and what should we be doing so it's very important to keep track of you know what's happening externally send out memos etc third of course is making sure you're socially distant as much as possible while we've called back our team to the office we make sure you know office layouts etc have been changed and put a lot of transparency right anytime anybody is feeling sick make sure you you know you don't feel scared to do this we actually heard some really scary stories about you know people being scared to say that they're feeling sick because they were like oh my god we can't ask for an off so you have to remove that from their mindset and you know just we can take away sort of any fear and taboo and just you know work as closely as you can with them to make sure that you're able to get them the resources that are needed to be safe and vaccination being of course the most important thing and also cut down on in person as much as possible just because we're starting to go back from to the office doesn't mean you need to keep doing these meetings etc so and in those are some of the couple those are few things that we've already implemented and could be important okay and Sindhu what are your thoughts on this sure thanks Nefisa so obviously workplaces will change for good you know there's absolutely no playbook to how do you know come out of a pandemic so the important thing is that you know a lot of things you know from layouts to how we sort of interact with one another will change you know a very important perk for most of the startups and offices is a cafeteria where you could actually just go and have lunch with your colleagues you know in a common area and common space I do think you know that that will probably go away for the next one year or two years so I think you know some of some of those perks so my employees might feel that a perk is being taken back right so it's very important to keep and you know keep that communication going and keep telling them that this is what is important for your health and safety the other thing about vaccination is that you know it's not just about companies looking at vaccinating their own employees but I'll tell you what Abby and me has done so we set up a camp and office and we told that you could bring in your family members your in-laws your friends you could bring your domestic help you know so bring as many people as possible but get them all vaccinated right like I am we are not out of it until we are all out of it and that mindset and that approach has to happen and like to somebody like how somebody else on the panel mentioned that you know we don't know how many booster shots and doses we'll need to sort of get out of this so I think it's important to have that approach for a longer term to ensure that you know employee safety is the number one priority okay so we have discussed a lot about you know getting vaccinated and following some protocols from by the employees and the employees both but don't you guys feel that the physical proximity that's there when we work in an office environment the corporate culture that's there you know when students are trained to enter the corporate life we are given a kind of training that we will have to you know follow when we enter that that phase so with this hybrid model coming into action and pandemic becoming the way of life so how will this be this physical proximity thing be disrupted at the bulk places what are your thoughts Anjana on this you know that's a very interesting question Nafisa because there were some organizations I heard were experimenting to introduce pay cuts for those who've moved into you know non-metrocities because obviously the cost of living is much lower and I think that is such a deterrent right and that is that that just I don't know it it seems very wrong at many levels and very unimportant and sensitive on many levels to me so talking about proximity I think proximity buys will be a real challenge we can't run away from it right there will be people in the office who will feel more included superior compared to those who are working remotely but I think they are like you know I think Simran or one of them pointed out earlier I think it's the organization culture that needs to change right and it has to become a culture that hybrid working model is okay and it's it's absolutely fine whether you're at home or you're in the office that's one and two is I think you know as leaders we need to level the playing field for everybody right imposter let's face it right I think imposter syndrome is real for many people and just because you don't speak up in a meeting it does not mean you're not capable or somebody is overly confident just because they're speaking a lot more in a meeting so I think it becomes very very important for us give everyone an opportunity decide what the quorum for those meetings should be if you're in a hybrid work model give everyone an opportunity to be heard to be you know to have a chance to speak and finally I think technology will evolve even further to any of you right I heard somebody from Microsoft say that you know virtual whiteboards are y'all and you'll have microphones in different parts of the room but you'll also have camera technology where probably the camera zooming into the person who's actually talking from the room so the person working from home feels like you know it's a more close setup right and it's a more knitted setup so technology will evolve to enable that but the most important thing is for leaders like us to level the plain field for everyone right so Piyal Anjana talked about technology would you like to add something on the same lines no I think I'd also like to mention you use the word disruption right and disruption in the new age world is usually when something new and something novel is you know at the helm of things right so I see this as a positive transformation right we can look at it in any way and we can debate and discuss this but I feel like it's I don't see it so much as a disruption as opposed to a transformation to a newer and different way of working things out and technology I mean look I don't know how much one needs to say it's the backbone of our existence today it's not just about the workplace it's about everything it's like my grandfather at 78 is online today and trying to sort of make a WhatsApp call to me or just see me on the phone so that you know feels less of a divide so I think technology as much as I say is going to be less because it's I don't think we could function in this world today without the backbone and creativity and the innovation of technology leaders and they're constantly sort of upgrading our life so it's kind of synonymous to that and the other thing that I want to also say and you know we discuss this a lot that you know I mean there's no replacement to human interaction humor interface but I also feel like you know work-life balance and one of your mentioned this is lot more detail how it's taking away from time but I also feel it's forcing us to take time out because it is not just work from home it's working for home I remember the first six months I could not work all the time because I had chose to run I had things to do and so I had to align it with my managers and my superiors that I'm going to be off so I know it's at the back of a really brutal time and a really harsh time but it's forcing us to take that time away and I wish we did it differently but we have to stop work and do something else of course the flip side of it is like we'll start working at three in the morning or wherever we have time and there's no such line or such timeline as it were but at least in our organization we're very clear that it's eight to twelve and then you know do what you need to and it's in a way forced upon us I just feel like we can evolve from this and make this as a good as a good learning as a leaf of progression and not so much as about what we're missing out but what we're really entering we've just made ourselves future ready we probably would have done this about a decade into the life cycle of technology but we've had to embrace it much ahead of time and we've done a really good job with the ecosystem that's come along of course but I feel like there's also an advantage in this like Nafisa you pointed out you're sitting in UP and you're able to be with all of us and you're being productive and efficient about it the barrier of you know efficient working if you're working from more remotely has is sort of going away right everybody's embracing it so I think I think it's not a disruption it's a transformation and I feel it's going to be good for all of us yeah so it is a transformation and we have come towards the end of our session so as parting remarks I'd like to ask all four of you you know one key point to keep in mind to be virtually ready like we all are right now all four five of us are virtually ready so one key point or one suggestion that you would like to give our listeners to be virtually ready we'll start with Simran sure Nafisa sure so people to people connection is the most important thing that's one thing that you know a pandemic has taught us and just think of technology as an enabler okay technology as an enabler upasana I think tools have a really really great way to make this experience much better find and invest in the right tools they exist and they will just make your experience and interaction so much richer investing in the right tool tell your thoughts engage don't transact and make a technology or holy grail humanized technology to sort of f the gap humanized technology and we'll we'll you know end with you Anjana your thoughts on this so I think flexibility is great but it's equally important for all of us to draw boundaries and be very clear on expectations flexibility is great thank you so much all you lovely ladies ladies it was really an insightful and an interesting conversation and I hope we'll be able to meet soon thank you so much thank you thank you thank you thank you so much the pizza I'm going to invite quickly our next panel discussion for the day the journey to perfection real life stories on success and failure of the women leaders so I'd like to welcome Raki Lalwani vice president public relations and corporate communications IHCS CL Josna Ghoshal executive director enterprise lead government affairs and policy in India Johnson & Johnson Shravanidang independent consultant Ruby Sinha founder and managing director commune brand and moderating this session is Mr. Ruhil Amin exchange for media and Ms. Ruchika Jha from exchange for media they're going to be talking about the journey to perfection real life stories on success and failure of the women leaders a very warm welcome to all of you and Ruhil over to you thank you so much Khyati and welcome all of you hope I'm audible first of all am I audible to everyone all right okay so we have a very interesting topic and joining me would be my colleague Ruchika Jha who would also be posing few questions and the topic that we have been given has a context you know it's like not just about the practice of corporate communications and the communication space it's also linked to the societal societal you know aspect to it so I have a couple of questions and I want to start with Ms. Lalvani first if you can hear me so we're talking about you know we're all here I mean all of you are celebrated leaders and you have your own journey to talk about you have been through certain phases the ups and downs so what was the story before you have become the celebrated leader that you are a little bit of that Ms. Lalvani starting from you so your audio is muted I guess I cannot hear can I am unable to hear yes can't hear okay okay let me quickly jump to Ms. Dang with your thoughts the same question till Ms. Lalvani comes back give me a sense of the various challenges that you've faced as a women leader there were many I think the most important thing is to act and behave as if it doesn't matter if you're a woman or a man you're there to do a job and you do the job I remember once I was being interviewed and the gentleman actually turned around and said that you know I really like you and you're great and you're just the perfect fit but you know what you're a woman and I said yes I am so what and I don't think he he just spoke aloud and I don't know what he had in his mind maybe because I was married I had kids but I just put that aside and I said it doesn't matter gender has nothing to do with the work I've been given all my responsibilities I have to do what I have to do and I think that's my biggest learning and that's the way I've dealt with at all my workplaces with all my supervisors with my CXOs who you know I've been a devil's advocate to a lot of them and that's the way I've been treated right right Miss Lalvani your thoughts? Yes am I audible? Absolutely yeah thank God okay yeah go ahead so leader I mean that you are all of us on the panel and all of you on the panel so there has been a story of course not been never come so easy and of course we talk about gender bias and especially you know in the context of a corporate world tell me what all did you have to overcome before you found that spot where you could call the shots? Thanks Rohit so basically you know I think I'm really fortunate that I'm part of the Tata group which has always been an equal and fair organization and gives women an equal and enabling environment to grow so I possibly am I'm in the lot that is blessed but that doesn't mean that I didn't encounter my fair share of individuals who would you know stereotype you who would sort of you know have these prejudices and you know who you would like who you would have issues with you know whether it was in the decision-making table or any of that you know management issues that you come across so I think what I did very earlier very early on in my career was to what was the myth that I need to be louder for my voice to be heard you need to be in your face for my presence and all of that was actually the wrong thing to do and I realized that I just need to make sure that I'm accepted the way I am and I need to be authentic and I don't have to pretend to be a man or you know say that okay now listen I need to kind of show these guys that I can do it and you know I too can be louder and I too can be sort of just like the men in the room and that was a mistake I made and yes there were individuals who were constantly judging me but I overcame that by just making peace with the fact that I am in the minority but I can still make my presence felt with the personality that I am with the value that I bring to the table and with the raising my level of competencies and skills and I like I said the culture was enabling the data culture is still enabling they always tend to nurture and you know sort of give them in that opportunity you know as much as that they would give the men so I'm kind of fortunate from that perspective so yeah I didn't have too many obstacles but yes certain individuals one had to kind of battle with and you know in terms of perceptions and things absolutely absolutely miss gushal you're your story I mean have you faced such situations what miss dang and miss lalvani spoke about so no thanks Rohil Rohil I'd be you know I'd be amiss and and probably not speaking the full truth if I said I haven't faced situations but at the same time I have to say that you know the challenges that I faced were also to do with the fact that a bit of stereotyping and not just stereotyping because you're a woman and you're supposed to only do so much but stereotyping also because of the choice of career that I decided to take very early on which was public relations and somehow the career itself so here was Rohil sorry was was you know was sort of stereotyped into a women's career was stereotyped into a good to do thing was stereotyped into something initially which was you know which was not part of the decision making of a corporate you know and a corporate culture and and was not that the center and was not always a function that had a seat on the table so for me that was you know in the early days of my career I would say what what was you know what was an eye opener but at the same time I think a couple of things happened on the importance of public relations and corporate communications became more and more realized and more and more something that people realized was intrinsic as we saw challenges as we saw opening up of the economy as we saw global companies coming in as we also saw you know issues becoming center stage and which were you know which were literally leading the stock price of a company to go up and down the importance of public relations became more and more and I think as leaders we started being appreciated and started getting a voice and a seat on the table and and that is you know to me that is the initial part Rohail which I will say was an initial part of the challenges that I faced in my career not so much as a woman but more as the career choice that I took which was looked as as a softer career sometime ago and nobody will say that today nobody will ever say that today when we you know when with all the women power that you see in the room right now and all the corporate communication power that you see and then of course was the next step that I took in my career which I I went into uncharted territory which was into government affairs and you know policy and into CSR and those were areas that I hadn't done before but at the same time you know the the challenge of taking those on the challenge of learning a new area but also then leading that for an organization perhaps the people reporting to you who had far more experience in that area but what you brought in was your insight what you brought in was the experience of a full corporate communication professional as well as a corporate professional and that you know so those those were the challenges around around the way but I think the one thing that has underscored my career and has been the win beneath my reins has been mentors and sponsors across the way and at some point you know during this discussion I think that's a really really critical point that I'd like to bring you know up for discussion and the importance of sponsors the importance of mentorship especially where women are concerned and the importance of paying it forward right I saw Ruby around I think if she is here okay I can't see it but so I want to request my colleague Ruchika to ask her a set of questions Ruchika why don't you start yours yeah thanks Ruhi, I hope everybody's available so could you lead to our esteemed guest here you'll have to be louder I can't hear you okay can you hear me now slightly better yeah first of all a very good evening to all the esteemed guests here my first question is that women leaders value work-life balance so what do you think are the key reasons that made them great leaders? yeah so if I heard the question it was about how do they manage work-life balance was that your question and what are the key reasons that made them a great leader? good leaders okay so yeah I mean women want to give their heart and soul to everything they do whether it's their profession or their family life and I think that's who they are it's not like they have a great work-life balance they want to have it and sometimes for people like us who are career women and like my other colleagues here on the panel today we struggle but the thing is that we're equally passionate about making things work for our family and whether it's our children or our extended family so that's who we are as people what makes us a successful leaders is I think the obvious ones which everyone perhaps has stated in the past which is we do have a higher emotional quotient and therefore we can understand people better bring in that layer of empathy which is very important in leadership and we bring that very easily because we are nurturing we're very collaborative I think it comes very easily to us to be a team player we don't necessarily like to operate solos because we feel teamwork can make the dream work but we're very good with conflict resolution again because we pick up nuances we pick up dynamics very easily and we're able to work around it and are extremely adept at you know at conflict resolution like I said so a lot of soft skills and apart from the obvious ones of having the competencies and having the skills that is required for the job these are really good soft skills that make them effective and successful and empathetic leaders and thank you so much. Ms. Dang I would like to ask the same question what is your take on this? agree with Raki I think at some stage we realize that we can't be and we're not super women we can't do everything but at the same time I think there is a drive within us to be good at work as well and at least for me I learned as I think Raki also said that to be assertive and not to be aggressive which worked I'm very ambitious as well and I think I am lucky to have a partner who understood that and that we and we both wanted to be extremely good professionals and also somehow managed to you know chat time between the family and between work manage the pressures there were some bad ones when my kids both had their boards and things like that or when I took a small sabbatical in between because my kids were very small so you managed to do these things because you have to you have all your responsibilities that you need to do and I think also if you give your team that understanding that yes you give your best and I also want that understanding from my you know mentors and and the persons I work for directly that helps you know the companies I've worked with whether it was the entity or the CSC the you know and and other international companies that even the Indian ones Indian ones tend to be a little more I think patronizing which you need to put aside the which is changing which is good to see but yet they understand and when you deliver and you get your teams to deliver you manage to somehow get a work-life balance it's not easy do we get pangs of guilt on on occasions from about what we're doing to a family or what we're doing at and able to do something at work I don't think this happened I think we tend to push ourselves more at work and something has to give way at home so somebody picks up that flak at home that's how it is or somebody doesn't pick up the flak at home and you make it up at some other time it's never easy I agree it's always juggling yeah okay so moving on to Ms. Roshal what is what do you want to say on the key aspects that make a woman a great leader I think a couple of things I mean Shravani and Raki have spoken about quite a few things but the one thing I think which makes us really good at leadership is that we're good at multitasking and prioritizing at the same time and it's something I mean I don't have anything against men's surreal sorry about that but it's something that I feel women do better that they're able to multitask far far better and also within the multitasking prioritize far better so I think that's one thing that I would say that it makes women leaders really special in addition to what Raki and Shravani has spoken about the other thing is we're not shy to ask for help and and that is something I think that rarely underscores you know leadership you're not trying to raise your hand and say this is something I need to know more about this is something that I need to learn about or ask for help and I think I think that that asking for help also extends in the personal space where you have a conflict and you know and you have to have then an ecosystem of support around you to be able to then succeed in your career you have to have something that is a support back home someone something an ecosystem a system in place that is there that is allowing you to take all those chances that is allowing you to extend yourself that is allowing you to vote for men and women but I think women are just better asking for help and better at setting up that ecosystem of support so I think I've been extremely extremely fortunate in having that ecosystem of support from the beginning whether it's with my mother my husband or you know or even my son and everybody else around me and I I think that's the other thing that makes women leaders even more effective not that men don't have that support but they will think twice before asking for it so so these are these are the two sort of things that I think that sort of stand out for me okay I I want to come in here Ruby if you can switch on the camera we can see you here in case you're able to oh great sorry I told Saran lovely so let's have some perspectives from you quickly some initial what I my first question was some initial incidents or you know situation that you remember before you landed up in that leadership role what all do you have to overcome so sorry for the background noise you know suddenly I was driving up but I stopped the car and now I'm you know thanks thanks for this opportunity Roel and Chika you know as I started off as a journalist and you know when when you start up as a career when I was studying journalism there were a lot of men around and but eventually when I went to do a course in filmmaking there were very few women over there I think I was probably the only woman amongst the batch of men around there and from there when I came to communications as people earlier mentioned there were a lot of women in our business but what I also saw is that a lot of women actually left midway in their careers so when you start your journey at the entry point there are a lot of women and eventually you know many of them had to take a sabbatical in between or leave because of all the challenges that they faced on the way and so eventually when I started commune my own enterprise that's my that was my initial purpose you know because I could I had faced these challenges myself you know after the birth of my daughters and I felt that let me bring these women back into the forefront so we started commune with a bunch of working working work from home mothers so work from home was a reality for us then and we got these trained communications professionals who had taken a sabbatical and were at home to come back and join the business and according to their flexibility of course the biggest challenge that I faced as an entrepreneur along the way was to get people to take me seriously and do not think that it's part-time business that you're doing so you know so if you are really looking at a scalable business somewhere it's a challenge for even the woman to come across and you know what people are saying a lot of my co-panelists have said work-life balance is a big issue with women but now I also feel it's more about work-life integration so if you feel you can really work it out amidst the challenges and there can be no excuse for not being professional enough with the client or committing you know a delivering on something that you have promised so yeah so that was one of the biggest challenge to you know really get big clients and people to take you seriously that you are in there for the long run perfect you know what's brilliant about this panel is that men are in minority here very few panels that you see so you know you touched upon you touched upon this subject this word of mentorship you know leadership and that plays a crucial role in addressing the gender gap that we often speak about one my question to Mr Alvani starting with you is how are you mentoring the women in your workforce what is the current situation of the workforce like in your industry is it are men also very sensitive about that you know they have been on the receiving end of this conversation and they need to address these issues what is your observation on that front sorry audio is muted yeah your first question was also about mentorship and how we're doing that yeah so at a personal level I'm mentoring a few people through various organizations and bodies like GWPR and also Promise Foundation at a professional level I've just been made the head of diversity for Indian hotels company and one of my biggest sort of goals and objectives is to increase the participation of women at all levels not just at the entry level which actually is fairly high in the industry across hotels across unstructured structure and like every other industry they drop off in the middle and at the senior level it's a huge challenge and honestly that is going to be my number one sort of point in the agenda is to increase participation for participation across all levels especially in the middle level so that they make it to that level to grow into senior leadership roles the percentage is not great it's between 17 to 20 I think at an average we're possibly a little higher being being a data organization but we need to do far far better I mean as we know there is you know a huge potential population in our country that is waiting to be tapped and we're an industry that I think fits very well for for women because they have so many natural skills that they can sort of bring to the table which is very great for hospitality so yes I think it's a it's a huge agenda point for my organization and me personally because I feel very very strongly about getting more involved Ms. Daing up where do you see the gender conversation right now in the times we live in has it improved where is it headed oh so let me flip your questions around a little bit when I answer them I think the gender conversation is at a very good place now and if I've seen it from my career and if I look back to even to my mother who had a career it's unbelievable where we are I think women have a voice they have a seat at the table and are given opportunities and it's not happened automatically I think we've all worked hard for it I was lucky I got the right breaks I got the right bosses I got a seat at the table and at the same time I think there is an awareness that the leadership skills and the professional skills that women bring are very different and a balanced leadership is is something that organizations do need and I don't think there's any argument on that front right two things that have happened in the global world one is of course the me too thing that happened and other issues like that I'm so I'm just bringing that in I know it's unpleasant but that has enabled women worldwide to bring in issues that was actually stopping them from having an equal kind of an opportunity or being equal in the same world and that is good that is good that's what I have to say right miss Gushal the point came from your earlier answer about mentorship in your organization how are you hand-holding people and sensitizing both agendas about you know the divide that is there that we very often talk about so Rahel I think you hit the nail on the head when you said both the genders and I think that's the point that I do want to bring at this point that it's not about mentoring women alone and it is not about sensitizing women alone if we don't bring in men into the conversation we'll never be able to be an equal and that to me is absolutely vital to the whole discussion so even at Johnson and Johnson you know it is part of our credo this entire piece about you know about about being a equal opportunity employer and creating an inclusive environment respecting the dignity dignity diversity of all people irrespective of gender so that is you know that is the most most important thing that I want to you know wanted to highlight and I think also you know for for large organizations and a number of us to represent those or have worked with those in order to succeed in order to grow in order to innovate we need to understand the diversity of our customers the diversity of our consumers every everybody that we save serve and therefore you know this this entire piece about diversity about having a conversation becomes fundamental to that discussion so when it comes to mentorship also of course we have formal programs at Johnson and Johnson both at the regional level and at the you know at the India level but at the same time there are programs that are focused towards say women but there are programs that are gender agnostic and for this reason only that it is most critical to bring in men into the conversation otherwise you're not going to succeed with what you want to do and and the other thing I do want to say is that you know especially covert times have made it so important to understand about this whole concept of a purpose driven compassionate agile organization that can only come if we appreciate diversity if we get that you know empathy going into that entire discussion and and mentorship of course has a role to play there but at the same time you know it is it has to be gender agnostic and it has to pull in everybody because also what's happened in Rohil that set stereotypical roles even in the home environment have changed you know the the the areas which were demarcated I feel have changed as well you know both partners are playing equal role in in in achieving success professionally as well as in in the home environment and covert has only sort of precipitated so I would just say that that's a critical area absolutely to we need to bring up as well totally we have 10 minutes left so before I go to Richika I want to quickly go to Ruby with her thoughts on this on the question yes on the gender diversity thing you know you know that's a very that's a very important topic and when you look at it there are two aspects you I'm just speaking as an entrepreneur right here because I've been through this experience where I've seen it's very different the gender diversity is very different in India between the metros and the tier two and the tier three cities and there you require a lot of mentoring for women especially along with a lot of empathy which I feel is so important from a leader leadership point of view so what I what I started after starting commune I felt there's a lot of mentorship requirement for women at that especially in the tier two tier three cities so I started a started a platform called sheatwork.com which which is like an information platform for aspiring women entrepreneurs especially from the smaller cities that's what my focus is beyond and as well as we go to other geographies and these women can be entrepreneurs across different you know different professions or different any sector that they look at and that's where we started even mentoring programs for them we started scaling programs for them so so for me I feel you know if you get if you bring in more entrepreneurs you'll have 150 to 170 million new jobs by you know women will bring in those jobs by 2025 so so men do have a very important role to play in this entire conversation and we can only do our best to bring in more and more women into this phone over to you Ruchika I was told is five minutes so it's going to be a 30 second answer so over to you okay thank you so my I have a question that is that today also we see that most of the decision-taking making positions is in this country or any other country or organizations are male dominant for what do you think that there is still a distrust in the women leaders what is your take Ms. Dan we've had a woman prime minister for men don't agree with that at all you know maybe inside I think most organizations the decisions are weighed against certain parameters they are taken because it has to be a good business decisions good business decisions so I don't think gender comes into it that's my answer discrimination definitely but you can't just spin it only to discriminate I think there is an issue of numbers of women at that level who are competent and capable enough to to take that seat or that position so we need to grow the numbers we need to definitely mitigate the discrimination as well parallely and also realize the importance of gender balance which I think everyone has spoken about which is very important today and the fact that we perhaps very very genders whether it's to country or to organizations which is required today you know so whether it's in terms of social change like you said Raul at the beginning of the session or in terms of just you know partaking in education and increasing sort of welfare initiatives for women or even climate change which is extremely extremely critical today to realize the importance of the fact that women can bring in that change and to have them in the decision on the seat and in the decision making table but yes I feel that there's a lot that we need to do as as as a unit as well as individually so yeah and I I say something here please if you look at school and college 50 percent if you look at school and college over 50 percent of people coming out or women they are getting into the work work life into the workforce so I think we're getting into better times and decisions will be well balanced and taken by for the right reasons no absolute yeah we are short on time I'm sorry yes yes yes sorry Ms. Ghushala and Ms. Sinha to you I just have one point here which I can quickly add oh sorry sorry I dropped it yeah just one point you know we need more women at the top so if you look at it amongst the nifty fifty companies there's only one woman CEO in India if you look at our parliament today there are only 4.3 percent women parliamentarians they were 20 percent earlier so if there are no if we need more women at the top who can bring you know because women will know women in the problems which other women feel so diversity from a women point of I mean of course organizations have their own business decision but it helps to have more women at the top which I feel which is solely lacking right now in India so I mean the data supports that so just very quickly Rohil and Ruchika to me the challenge is not that women are not heard at the top it is of course about the numbers but me for me the challenge is unconscious biases and that you know when those come into decision making that becomes a huge huge sort of challenge and and therefore it's not about the fact that I'm a woman I'm not being heard but it's about the fact that they might be people around the table who have an unconscious bias or I might have an unconscious bias and therefore that's become a very important area Rohil and Ruchika for you know for companies to really focus on today in order to ensure that everyone is heard everyone voice is heard and that decision making happens in a very you know not always a democratic manner but after everybody's opinion is taken into account but ultimately there has to be one decision maker so thank you so much I feel extreme minority okay thank you Karan I can see me here okay over to you Cathy now I just I just want to say thank you to everybody thank you Raki thank you Shravanji thank you Jyotsana and thank you Ruby and thank you Karan for coming and giving some value to the gender yes no no you know your Ruby was traveling I said no you'll have to come and Raki was being very kind and so is Jyotsana Shravanji of course there's a very big announcement which we'll make later in the evening we can't reveal it now but yeah I'll look forward to it thank you everyone how can you call me Shravanji you don't have to call me Shravanji okay it's a horror reverence and respect for you thank you thank you Rohail thank you thank you ladies for sharing the insects thanks a lot thanks so much so without further ado I'm going to invite our last keynote session of the day most awaited one here I'd like to welcome Dr. Maya Akbil B. Bilakbil doctor of clinical psychology psychology for you welcome Maya Maya has decades of expertise with a multicultural and multinational population she firmly believes in evidenced based and community based programs promoting self-actualization in an integrative approach promoting clients in our resourcefulness today she's going to talk to us about emotional agility a key skill to achieving success facing change so very warm welcome and we are really looking forward to the session thank you so much I'm really honored to be part of the women achievement awards and summit thank you so much Karen for having invited me and thank you for exchange for media to allow me to participate in this great event I was listening to the previous participants and I was really happy to hear really fall into the psychological functions that I'm going to address we do right now that really contribute to women achieving success and not only women but also men I'm just going to take a minute to share the slides and here we are what what I find very interesting is that and what we're looking at right now is we are facing very peculiar times times that are really hard and I find it always very controversial when I hear people talking about how we could lead the stress-free life right now well I want to say we cannot really lead the stress-free life since the outburst of the pandemic and and by the way I hope that things are much better in India I hear throughout the world that even here in the Morocco where I'm where I'm based things are not doing that great but hopefully things are going to just get better with all the I said the interventions that are put in place by the different governments but what I wanted to say is we cannot really talk about stress-free I really want to talk about stress-friendly and to talk about stress-friendly there are a lot of and different psychological functions that take in place and one of them is what we call emotional agility earlier for great women I had the chance to hear what you were sharing in terms of your personal and professional experiences all of you were talking about empathy about disability of juggling different things the agility of leading the work and personal lives the multitasking and right now women and men are exactly facing that since we've been facing a pandemic that has really put our lives I would say upside down and I really like this quote because we never know if down is better than upside unless we experience it so right now as I work with my clients I really can observe a broad range of emotions as I listen to them sharing how their lives have been completely changed and moved around and they were really facing different way of looking at things and perceiving their daily routines from leaving work dropping the kids and going to their offices men women and kids found themselves in the same place trying to figure out how they were gonna about their daily activities some are embracing what is ahead and others really feel the grief for what our normal lives used to hold for us and the current forecast gives us an outlook that make it seem that normal will be will actually be gone for an extended period of time so we either put in place new tools and strategies to face what is ahead or we live the struggles of trying to go back to what is familiar but without much success so this situation that we're living really gives us the opportunity to enhance our emotional agility how we see the current situation is mainly rooted in three factors our beliefs our experiences and our assumptions so as we can change the circumstances we cannot change the current pandemic but being able to adjust our frame of reference and to choose how we react to this situation is where our personal power lies and I want to say not only the pandemic but just the daily changes working from home having to organize the workspace at home while the kids are next door and having to take online classes and then doing the homework so this is something that really applies on every single level of our daily lives and when we look at the modern psychology we see that how our belief system impact our own abilities and potential it really fuels our behaviors and it predicts or not our success much of that understanding comes from the theory that has been presented by Dr. Carol Dweck where she speaks about the growth of the mindset theory and basically what it says is that changing even the simplest belief will impact nearly every aspect of our life and I think all of us did experience that with the lockdown where we throughout the planet we found ourselves locked within our homes having to really look into what seemed normal as being abnormal and to relearn how we could manage our daily responsibilities in our daily lives so depending on which way we see the challenge or the opportunity Dweck's work shows the power of our most basic beliefs whether conscious or subconscious they strongly affect how we want and whether we succeed in getting it so basically much of what we think we understand of our personality comes from our mindset so if we're thinking we could handle another lockdown let's hope it's not going to be the case well we might really develop the internal resources to face that situation one more time if we really think that we don't and we can't handle that well basically that's not going to be a walk in the park so if you're like most people a typical day at the office or working online from home raises all kinds of challenging and involuntary thoughts and feelings so stress can be a sign that we are doing things that are valuable and a lack of stress well could be a sign of boredom or doing something that is disengaging and it is often during times of greatest growth and learning and challenges that we are experiencing stress and as Susan David the psychologist says you don't get to grow in your career raise a family or leave the world a better place that you found it without some stress or discomfort so basically discomfort is the price of admission to meaningful life so today the question is do we have the emotional agility to put our inner turmoil to good use and do we address it or do we just run from it doing exactly what we know what to do and how to do it basically just going with the familiar habits so how can we tell the good stress from bad stress well the answer is pretty simple it really comes down to coping bad stress is caused by stressors that are beyond our individual personal coping resources you're going to tell me well we don't have all the same coping resources and that is true bad stress is really different from everyone so just like what overwhelms one person might be walking the park for another person so when we look at leaders workers executives within the work environment there's a prevailing wisdom that says that they should be either stoic or cheerful so basically stress-free and they must project confidence and dumb down any negativity bubbling up inside them so basically if we're looking if we're talking about women achievers there is that expectation especially when they are in leader positions that they're not and they should not be emotional and they should not address any kind of situation from an emotional point of view or perspective but actually that goes against basic biology all healthy human beings have an inner stream of thoughts feelings that includes doubts criticism joy stress fear and that is just exactly what our minds need to do that's the job they were designed to do trying to anticipate and solve problems and avoid potential pitfalls and I I believe that every woman is going to say that it's exactly what we do on a daily basis we are multitasking we're going to be thinking about how we're going to do the next project presentation in front of the CEO but at the same time we're thinking about that homework that our son or daughter has to do while planning a family dinner and that's exactly what our brains do but for them to do that they need to be tuned to what they pick up from the external world through our emotions so at work individuals stumble not because they have undesirable thoughts and feelings actually that's inevitable but because they get hooked by them like fish come on the line and this happens in one of two ways they either buy into their thoughts treating them lack facts and they avoid any situation that evoke them so let's say if some of if a worker thinks that her job is not good enough and that she doesn't is not comfortable presenting early she will avoid constantly putting herself out there and presenting her ideas to her chief because she believes she cannot do it or it could be a different way a person will challenge the existence of the thoughts and try to rationalize it by actually exposing herself to a situation that is against her core value either way the person the individual is paying way too much attention to her or his internal chatter and allowing it to sabotage important cognitive resources that could be put to better use for her achieving success so the internal the internal chatter turns into stories that interpret the facts it is therefore important to identify what kind of internal chatters we have mind you that 16 000 is how many words we speak on average each day so imagine how many unspoken ones course through our minds and most of them are not facts but evaluations and judgments entwined with emotions some positives and helpful and some less so I'm thinking about all those women trying to juggle personal professional life their couple their family relationships their children caretaking while not expressing how they feel and not accessing their internal resources because they have to portray themselves as only thinkers and achievers who are only thinkers and basically that would be a perfectionist style of internal chatter which is a thinking trap and these stressful thinking traps make actually change hard and as we cannot change the current circumstances the pandemic or as an executive or worker or collaborator cannot change the work environment well her ability to adjust her frame of reference and to choose how she can react to that situation is where her personal power lies and to adjust to a frame of reference where there are three important things that needs to be put in place agency agility and attitude and today I'm really going to focus on emotional agility emotional agility means you can accept understand and manage your thoughts in productive way effective leaders don't buy into or try to express their inner experiences instead they approach them in a mindful value driven and productive way developing what we call emotional agility and emotional agility really englobes empathy the ability to juggle between different tasks the multitasking and performance agility so in our complex fast changing knowledge economy this ability to manage one thoughts and feeling is really essential to achieving success in his research studies friend bond showed that emotional agility can help people elevate stress reduce error and become more innovative and boost their creativity so Susan David who was the first to address the notion of emotional agility speaks of four essential steps the showing up the stepping out the walking your why and the moving on so the first step is having the space to show up for your emotions and stress not to dwell on them but to learn from them what am I feeling right now what does it say about my values an emotional agile woman is able and a man is able to recognize his or her feelings with self-compassion and understanding the stepping out is the next step well basically it means specifically labeling the problem for example I feel stressed well I want to tell you I feel stress doesn't really mean much it might mean an individual is disappointed and it's in a situation it might also mean he or she feel right about an obligation or it might mean they are not being heard perhaps and somebody speaking I'm just gonna stop I just heard or I'm just gonna go on no no you go on you go on please okay so it might I feel stress we really need to define what it means so it might mean also that I'm not being heard at work during my meetings or at home so once a stressful situation is diagnosed specifically it's much easier to create an action plan to move forward walking your way is the third step of emotional agility it involves self-identifying values even in times where we are right and others are wrong we still have the capacity to make choices that are values aligned it is important for individuals to reflect even in the context of all this change for example who do I want to be even in the context of a conflict who do I want to be it is important for me to be a contributor is it for me important to be a collaborator or an innovator so I think it's really important that to ask ourselves what kind of person I want to be in the situation that I'm facing even if a situation is a conflictual one a challenging one and a stressful one and then moving on so once we've unpacked what we're feeling why we are feeling the way we are feeling and aligned all the next steps with what we want to be and focus on and it's time to move on and take action so emotionally agile individuals handle situations as they come up feel them fully make a plan and don't delay and I'm smiling because most women have that I believe one of the speakers earlier was saying that women leaders are inclined to have much more success because that's a natural resource they have so emotional agility is both a practical set of tools and a means of building resilience it is a pathway where individuals can stop ignoring or being beaten by their stress and learn to become more comfortable with feeling uncomfortable so if a mother is really stressed because she needs to be up on her task ready for her am presentation while she had to care for her baby well that's okay to feel uncomfortable and it's okay to feel and to be attuned to her emotional needs so they can guide her to get to get what she needs to be a better performer be it as a caretaker or as a work collaborator so whether it is in the workplace or in personal situation emotional agility provides the framework for people to think about who they want to be in difficult situations and then become that person so I really thought that all of us beyond our borders beyond our languages beyond our cultures we look to inspiring people and like these inspiring individuals who embrace their fears face the diversity define their values and foster changed each one of you each one of us really can foster emotional agility to build a dynamic that will tackle problems inspire growth and effectively manage stress along the way and I really believe that developing emotional agility will get you and anyone to open their wings and to continue achieving and thriving so while I really like this quote because while crawl through life when we were born with wings so for me women achievers are women who were able to really spread their wings and inspire younger girls and continue transmitting their ability to be emotionally attuned to their needs and the needs of their ecosystem a woman who is an achiever and who has succeeded she didn't succeed alone and she doesn't succeed alone because she's always working within her community I'm gonna stop here and I'm gonna let you thank you Maya we have two questions which Khyati will share with you and then we'll sign off okay we have the winners waiting so we'll just proceed yeah Khyati please move on absolutely so Dr. Maya firstly thank you for sharing those insights here with us and we have this question which says that what are the advances and barriers within psychology for women could you could you just say the last part because I couldn't hear you yeah what are the advances and barriers within the field of psychology for women well I'm not gonna I'm gonna answer the question differently in the field of psychology we really look at personality functioning behavioral attitudes and thoughts so I'm not gonna talk in terms of successes or barriers it's a field that really tries to look at the individual's development from an integrated and an integrative perspective so specifically for women research will always look at what are women's what women are facing as challenges but also as successes and there are different themes that we could look at in terms of what women are facing as challenges and successes throughout their lifespan right Dr. Maya a very interesting question I have for you which I'm sure a lot of our viewers will benefit from which is that do you think gender disparity and mental health are interlinked? It's an excellent question it's really an excellent question I don't think and that's based on my experience and expertise I would link the gender disparity to the economical access to mental health so we know statistically that women have less access to health overall because of lesser access to higher salaries you know and the rates of poverty are higher within the female community versus the male community so accessing mental health is not due to gender disparity it's more due to not accessing it because of a lack of means right that's one the second point is when you look at small communities villages the inaccessibility to mental health is due to the fact that there is no way to access larger cities and towns because there are no commutes means of commutes so men are able to access public transportation while at times women don't access that easily public transportation so they don't access health services right and if you'd like to throw some light on what COVID kind of implications has had on people in general if you'd like to put some light on that I think really the pandemic has exposed humanity to really question our essentials to really reevaluate our core beliefs in terms of our abilities and limitations and what we have found is that people who were previously more attuned to their emotional needs and had developed stronger internal resources facing challenges did better facing the lockdown and facing all the consequences of the pandemic and people who were struggling beforehand well it was much more challenging to make sense of what has been going on since the outburst of the COVID absolutely thank you so much Dr. Amaya it's been a pleasure to have you on this platform and share your expertise and your insights with us thank you so very much thank you thank you for having me and congratulations to the winner thank you thank you Amaya so thank you Karan thank you it was amazing Fiati Mr. Ahuja is joining us in some minutes and then followed by so we'll take a quick one minute break and then we'll get on with the valedictory session absolutely so till then let me thank all of you who've been part of this summit so far and if you have any key highlights that you'd like to share with the wider audience then don't forget to do so in the comment chat box or tweet to us using the hashtag e4m women achievers and yes we have the awards coming right up and my friend colleague Abhavna Bhatia will be taking you through it so I'll be signing off here and leaving you with some audio visuals while we get the stage ready for the e4m second edition of e4m women achievers awards thank you so much everyone we will see you again shortly but not with me but with my friend Abhavna so till then stay tuned everybody can we have the AVs till then hi Abhavna Hi, how are you doing? very well thank you how are you doing? I'm doing great so firstly thank you so much the summit was excellent let's first have a look at the AVs and we'll progress here is what you're talking about hey you were thinking of taking a scooter which one did you take? hot pink or baby pink what do you think of girls? wow new pleasure right okay firstly I thought of power no this is a thought you better put it in then do you know what thought? what thought? mileage shall we go to Khandala? okay leave it then thought about power to weight ratio baby now I forgot to think about your pink in these summits now do you know what you're thinking? what are you thinking? why should boys have all the fun? bold new style zippy right but very easy handling new hero pleasure plus just phone pay sweet jab har baat ko nahi kahi tum sahi har baar jab thordi ho glass ceiling jab khul ke express karthi ho feeling tab har baar manati ho tum aazadi har baar jab lagati ho comments pivre jab karthi ho apne career ko accelerate aur har baar jab tum be fikr bindaas sard ko pe nikalthi ho tab har baar manati ho tum aazadi kyunki aazadi tumhare liye e bin nahi id aadat hai mana aazadi har baar har din we believe that every corporation and brand has a public and today's public is more powerful than ever before they have the power to topple CEOs reshape strategy influence government policy kill products and create unicorns they demand truth transparency and the highest behavioral standards we are embracing change constantly innovating the way our clients and the public communicate whatever the sector and whatever the challenge our client obsession means constantly evolving new products and services we are innovating the future of public relations our belief is brands with a clear authentic purpose and performance strategies aligned to business objectives are most likely to succeed we use strategy creativity and innovation driven by data and analytics to put your purpose and performance at the heart of all communications together purpose and performance drive audience preference we call this approach three p communications hill and nullton strategies always in beta ladies and gentlemen well we hope you're having a great time welcome to the second edition of the exchange for media PR and core communication women achievers summit and awards 2021 presented by ad factors PR part by standard chartered bank hero motorcock phone pay hill and nullton strategies gold partner to consulting well ladies and gentlemen the summit and awards are the celebration of the contribution of women and their relentless pursuit of excellence in the field of public relations and communications my name is Bhavna Bhatia and I shall be your host for the awards segment well the second edition of the awards identifies acknowledges and felicitate those women leaders who are shaping the industry through their incredible work through this initiative we would applaud the agencies and profits who are setting remarkable examples by encouraging gender diversity in their work culture well ladies and gentlemen this year's jury panel was headed by Dr. Anurag Bhatra chairman and editor-in-chief BW business world and exchange for media Nidhi Ola director integrated marketing microsoft Mr. Parthas Bhosh VB and head corporate communications and CSR Samsung Ms. Ramapal VB marketing ABP Mr. Sanjeev Handa senior VP and head of communications corporate communications Maruti Mr. Subhaya Mishra MD and head corporate communication standard chartered bank Ms. Jasrita Deer head marketing and communications Antara Mr. Atul Sharma managing director Rudevin Ms. Pallavi Singh senior business advisor Mr. Abhishek Guliani CEO hill and old and strategies Ms. Racheera Jaitley head of marketing India HMD Ms. Kavita Jaktiyani chief marketing fidelite Ms. Raji Mohapatra marketing head Dr. Reddy's Let me tell you firstly a big big thank you to all our jury members for taking out their valuable time. The jury went through a rigorous screening process and shortlist is best 100 out of the 140 entries. Out of the shortlisted entries top 50 plus winners tall birds were selected and will be honored today. Well, we also have two special lifetime achievement award winners as well. Last but not the least we also have 10 best organization which have set new precedents milestones and have supported the women word force through various initiatives. We will be honoring those best organization for women empowerment tonight. Well, ladies and gentlemen before we move further with this fantastic evening ahead, let me remind you on our hashtags once again which is hashtag E for MPR women achievers awards as one word. E for MPR women achievers summit as one word and E for MPR women as one word. So ladies and gentlemen before we progress into this wonderful ceremony, let's first have a look at the intro avis and partner avis please. Requesting the team to please have the intro avis and partner avis please. Amna, I will because Dr. Bhattra and Naval are here. Let's ask them to give an address and then we move on to Of course, let's do that. Let's do that. So ladies and gentlemen, we are very honored. We do have Dr. Arora Bhattra and Naval Uguja who are right with us. Dr. Bhattra, first over to you, sir. Thank you so much, Amna. Thank you for hosting this and doing a great job. Current congratulations to you and to the entire exchange familiarity for making this happen. This is the second edition today, the deliberations and the ideation and the thoughts that were shared by the leaders throughout the day. It gave new perspectives to the communication and PR and COPCOM domain, seeing these women leaders. We can safely say that our future is bright. And as I said in my opening address in the morning, the marketing advertising industry has a lot of women leaders, thankfully, at all levels, senior level, middle level. But within that PR and COPCOM possibly has more women leaders than the average. So that augurs well for the industry. We're in the first week of July. June is celebrated as the diversity and inclusion month. So clearly this initiative has come at the right time. This is the second year. If it is so good and big in the second year, I can't wait to see it in the third, fourth, fifth year. I only want to say that looking at the winners, the age of achievement is only getting lower and lower. And clearly the winners are multi-faceted in the true sense of it. They have a day job, they have an evening gig, they have hobbies, and they're juggling families. So clearly they're multi-faceted in the true sense of it. And I salute these winners tonight, these organizations, who have led these leaders prosper and foster. So all the work is best. And the world of PR and COPCOM is changing because social media, because of online reputation management. And I think in the last 16 months, when the spends on advertising marketing media, at least for some time came down, PR and COPCOM made sure that the connection with consumers, with stakeholders kept going. July is the month of mega-IPOs. You'll see many IPOs being announced. And coming up that again means that the PR and COPCOM professionals will be very busy. I think over the next 10 odd months, you'll possibly see a lot more IPOs. And in terms of the July itself announced, and the actual number will be, we're looking at $25 billion of being raised on the Indian bosses. So clearly it's a month that will keep the PR, PR professionals busy. So I will just say this and hand it back to you so that the awards are in the progress. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Dr. Anurag Bhattara, for joining us and giving us your inputs on the same. Ladies and gentlemen, it is now time to call upon the stage and screen, Nawal Ahuja, who is the co-founder of Exchange for Media Group. Nawal, over to you. So we have him on the ballot decree. Thank you, Gavna. Thank you. And good evening to everyone. And it's a pleasure for us to have you join this second edition of the Top Women Achiever Awards. As Anurag has already mentioned, PR, corporate communication is not a domain that has an issue with gender diversity, unlike lots of other parts of corporate India, especially the media entertainment sector. It is up there already, where women have broken glass ceilings. And this initiative, in a lot of ways, recognizes that effort that women have made in the industry to break the glass ceiling to make it to the top. As Gavna has mentioned, and as you will see in the AV, this year we got more than 150 entries, which were shortlisted down by the editorial team of Exchange for Media. And finally, I'm told 50 odd winners were chosen, all of them top notch professionals in their respective domains. What is most interesting this year also is the recognition of corporates who are making extra effort towards gender diversity. And I think that's a very important aspect of what's happening across corporate India, where companies are going the extra mile to create an environment for women to succeed, for women to compete better, giving them extra opportunity to be able to balance their various pressures and various goals. So I think that's an important thing. And some of you who have logged in through the day, I did listen partially to a couple of sessions, one by Manmeet of Ponte and the other one by Lucy Harvey of Hill and Nolton. I think there were very interesting sessions around gender diversity, what's happening, as far as inclusion in the industry, in the corporate NPR industry is concerned, hybrid working environment, what COVID has done, it's put significantly extra pressure on a lot of women, because now you are the line between office and home, as not just blurred, it's completely disappeared. You are sitting at home in your office, so that's doubly hard to handle, so to say. So as Anurag said, kudos to all you women for having led admirably. We look forward to the knowledge you have to share and congratulating all the fantastic work you've done. Just to share of nugget, I was discussing this with a colleague the other day, eight of our nine heads of various division in exchange for media are women. So you can imagine gender diversity for us is something we practice. It is not just something that we talk about with that. Thank you again, Bhavna. Thank you everyone for joining us, and I look forward to celebrating the winners tonight. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Navadan. It's great to know about the gender diversity in that respect, because you're walking the talk out there. So thank you on that, Navadan. Thank you, Dr. Anurag Batra for joining us to amazing visionaries who just started the awards for us. So a big, big thank you once again to both of you. So ladies and gentlemen, it is now time before we start with this wonderful ceremony. Let's have a look at the intro Avis and partner Avis before we get ready to welcome all the wonderful winners on the screen. Could we have the Avis now? The second edition of Exchange for Media, PR and Corporate Communication, Women Achievers Summit and Awards 2021. Presented by Ad Factors PR. Powered by Standard Chartered Bank, Hero Motor Corp, PhonePay, Hill and Nolten Strategies, Gold Partner, Tute Consulting. The Summit and Awards are the celebration of the contribution of women and their relentless pursuit of excellence in the field of public relations and communications. The second edition of the Awards identifies, acknowledges, and felicitates those women leaders who are shaping the industry through their incredible work. Through this initiative, we also applaud the agencies and corporates who are setting remarkable examples by encouraging gender diversity in their work culture. This year's Jury panel was headed by Dr. Anurag Bhattra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, BW Business World and Exchange for Media. Ms. Nithi Hola Microsoft Mr. Partha Ghosh Samsung Ms. Rama Paul ABP Mr. Sanjeev Handa Maruti Mr. Swapayu Mishra Standard Chartered Bank Ms. Jasritha Thir Antara Mr. Akul Sharma Radafin Ms. Pallavi Singh Senior Business Advisor Mr. Abhishek Guliani Hill and Nolten Strategies Ms. Ruchira Jaitley HMD Ms. Kavita Jaktiyani Peterlite Ms. Parachi Mohapatra Dr. Reddy's Exchange for Media and the Jury congratulates all the winners. Hi, my name is Pallavi and I'm glad that I was part of Exchange for Media, PR and Communication Women Achievers Award. It was amazing to be part of this jury because eyed industry peers were also part of this jury. And I think for me, it was most important to look at the entries which came in and a lot of efforts everybody's put in. It's amazing for all the women professionals who've put in so much effort to fill in the entries. So everybody, I think in my view is a winner for taking that effort and giving it that amazing shot. For me, there were two important criterias to judge the entries. One is apart from the work which is your domain, how have you kind of shown or paved the path for the organization's growth overall and how is it, how your role has led to overall growth of the business. In the role of what you've done, whether it is to do with PR, communication, working with different peers and organizations to get your company up there in the list. And second, most important thing for me was how have you developed yourself as an individual because that is the key as a professional. How are you changing and how are you developing? That was the second one. And I think if you look at for women achievers, we've come a long way to what it used to be a decade back. Organizations are more receptive for women now, especially for whether it's senior positions or for that matter even if I were to say some interesting strategy work, but we still have a long way to go. I mean, I'm only talking about maybe 0.5% or lesser of what has happened till now. I think organizations have to still invest a lot of time and not just do a tick box for firing women and giving them a platform. But it's also very critical to help them and they should help themselves as well. And yeah, so in the last one, I would just say, I just want to say that everybody during this time has done amazing work, what I read through all the detailed notes, what exchange for media has put out. And it was very, very nicely done, simple to evaluate. And it's a great platform. I think for me, it's a great platform, exchange for media, anything to know about marketing, advertising, any news, any new thing, which is coming into the market from an industry perspective. So yeah, I wish them and I wish all the women who've come in the entry best of luck. You guys have been us any which ways and be safe, take care and let's really make this community proud. I'm so glad I was part of it. Thank you so much. Let me start by congratulating exchange for media for organizing an event that celebrates power of women in the communications industry. It's like come on. And in case strategies were very proud to partner with the second edition of E4M, PR and corporate communications where energy was involved. The experience due to the jury meet was very rewarding and a change of ideas very thought provoking. It was a delight to be a part of an esteemed jury panel that cut across industries. The entries this year for the second edition of E4M, PR and corporate communications award were not only exemplifying clarity of thought, but also showcased innovation, leadership and a remarkable zeal towards driving and contributing to the future of communications in India. The entire process was very transparent and the criteria very holistic. However, for me, it was important to see leadership skills and the future in contribution to the industry. All the stories this time were very authentic. Women today are leading organizations or actively contributing to the success of an organization and are really driving us into the future. And platforms like exchange for media women achievers award recognize and celebrate the contribution made by women. What's a very good experience when this invite had come? One was wondering that looking at the number of people, how are we going to make it happen? Because so many heads and so many opinions. Also, the nominations ran into about 140 which had come down to a short list of about long list of about 80. And from a long list, we had to bring it down to a short list of, let's say, about 50 odds. So one thought this was going to be a daunting task, but full marks to the exchange for media team, the planning team, they've meticulously planned it out in terms of breakout rules in terms of breaking us into two, three different groups and then allocating about 21 order entries to each one of the breakout groups to do. So I think my experience has been very good. It was meticulously planned, well thought out. And the experience of meeting other jurors has also been quite enriching. If I talk about the first the quantum, then I am given to understand that 140 nominations were received out of which the exchange for media team brought it down to about a long list of 80. From a long list of 80, our task was to bring it down to a short list of about 40 to 50. That tells you about the quantum and which means that this is, this continues to be a very popular summit and award. As far as the quality is concerned, I can speak for the entries which were allocated allocated to me and the quality was quite good. Quality was very good in fact I would say because there were a couple of entries that I was confused about and I had to go over them at least thrice to say where do I put them. And when you have this problem of plenty, this problem of plenty happens when there is good quality across board.