 Quickly beginning with our first session for the day, which is a keynote address. Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for Dr. Navneet Anand, founder and director, Premadas Communications and Consulting. Good morning to all of you. I'm deeply humbled and honored to be here. Thank you Karan Bhatiaji for giving me this really privileged opportunity to come and share some thoughts and ideas about what I feel we are raised about. My association with Exchange for Media, E4M, goes back many years when Dr. Batra had more hair. We will not remember, but sir, I used to go as a faculty at FMCC. I used to work in the Times of India. So, Sajal, I'm sure he's going to join us later. I was a lowly paid reporter in the Times of India and I needed to add on some money and also use my whatever little academic I had gained by doing my PhD. So, and it's always been a matter of pride the way Exchange for Media, E4M has grown over the years. And last year when we received this very prestigious award for public affairs, I think I started to actively engage in the activities of this great organization which has really built many communities for the marketing and industry, communication industry. And as I said, I'm deeply humbled. So, what I'm going to do after a very enlightening note by Dr. Batra is to talk about some of my own experiences, you know. I must confess, you know, and as I heard that Dr. Batra is going to be speaking before me, I had a performance anxiety and I asked my colleagues to help me with a Google on what makes for a boring speech. And, you know, I come from a training in JNU, so I might have an academic bias also, you know. So, one of the things that I found that you don't go prepared, or you come and give a lot of Gyan, which is very common these days. So, I thought of not doing too much of Gyan and instead talk from my own humble experience, I have had the privilege of working with three leading newspapers, The Times of India Express and Pioneer, then Reliance Industries, and then I founded Grey Matters in 2010. So, you know, combining these experiences and, you know, trying to share some of these, I think that is what I'm going to do to not make it sound boring. Now, let me begin with the question. How many of you did economics? Can anyone recognize this gentleman? Anyone? Closer, but no. Okay, he's a gentleman called Adam Smith who wrote The Wealth of Nations. You know, I would also not have recognized, you know, because they all looked the same during those times. And he talked about what is it that creates the wealth of nations. One of my very old friends, colleague, somebody whom I had the privilege of nurturing as a child, he's going to be one of the speakers, Anand is sitting here. And so what is wealth of nations? And I borrowed from this. Why I refer to, of course, I have three very bright colleagues, Madhu, Naina and Pooja. And of course I can see Anand whom I had the privilege of working with very closely with. Now, the intellectual capital is the new wealth of organizers. In the PR industry, there are many who look down upon our industry as something which is frivolous. You know, we do come across many people questioning the integrity, the methodology, the ideas, you know, the campaigns. They think we only go to journalists, pay some money, and then come back and have, you know, make merry with our partners. I like to call them partners, not clients. That's not true. I think as, I will try and display through some of the examples that it requires a lot of intellectual capital. And that is where I think it's very important to understand that you are each. I was hoping to have an audience comprising of millennials. I'm sure they are going to join later. But so Thomas A. Stewart wrote that book. Before him, this gentleman called Carl Eric, he created a theory of knowledge capital in which he spoke about customer capital, structural capital, human capital. Why I'm referring this, that each one of you, each one of us, have to realize and understand that we are the human capital. It is our capital. It is our competence, our knowledge, our pride, our ideation is what is going to make the organizations grow. Now, sorry, I promised in the beginning that I'm not going to do Gyan. I'm sorry, I deviated a bit. So, you know, I'll be back to storytelling. I'm going to tell very quickly, not bore you, with four or five stories and ideas that we have had the privilege of doing and conducting. Now, because I know I'm talking to an enlightened audience, well-read, well-bred, well-dressed, you know, so I think Gyan Bhaji ki jyada jarot nahi hai. But if I am able to kind of leave with some of my own experiences and, you know, enrich the discourse on public relations together, I think I would have been done my job well. Now, my father was a professor. He retired as a professor and he was an English professor. I was very keen to see his son. I come from Bihar, a small town in Bihar. We grew up, you know, learning ABC and IAS and IPS. So there was this extreme fancy and we were growing up in the 80s, you know, in the 90s when India was very, very aspirational, hugely aspirational. And there was this huge emphasis of everyone wanted to do big, you know, so we were asked to get into IAS or IPS or IRS or IFS. So there was this huge fixation with I. Unfortunately, so I went to Hindu College, I went to JNU, I ended up doing my PhD, failed civil services, you know, and I couldn't stick to I but I shifted to the next alphabet, that is J, which is journalism. Now, I had the opportunity to work, as I said, in three newspapers and that was hugely rewarding, great experience, great learning, great opportunity to meet a variety of people. Now, all that came in very handy or coming in very handy when I'm doing this Gray Matters Communications, which is a specialized, now we call ourselves, Public Affairs and Political Communication Agency. Why political communication? Because my PhD was on political communication and when I was doing my PhD, I thought one day when we get a chance, you know, we should, we would get that, you know, we'll try and do something in political communication space and I'm very happy to share that today, you know, as I speak, my mind is wandering to the parliament of India where budget is going on and we have to do a lot of work for some, you know, chief ministers, ministers that we work with. Now, so my father one day asked me, my son, that's okay, always very supportive, but what do you do? So, you know, PR and everything is good that you meet a lot of people. So I told him, Papa, you know, we do this and then I took this, one day I tried and explained to him, I showed him this photo. See, I'm getting to meet who. See, I'm getting to share the stage. You know, I was the backstage manager so I had this president, being there with President Kalam. Now, this is a story, this is my first story. That one fine morning, it was early years for Grey Matters, a very reputed doctor who had resigned from the AIMS, RML, he came to us saying that I am setting up an office, a hospital in Ajamgarh and can you help me do PR? I said, can you get some journalists from Delhi, you know, because that time I will give you a lot of money. I said, sir, we'll all do regards and I'm so glad you're offering me money, but what will I do with the money if I don't give you a result? So he said, no, do something, you know, so I said, what is, he's a neurosurgeon, a great specialist, very well known. So he told me that there is this challenge of iodine deficiency in that belt from Ajamgarh to Gorakhpur, you know, Eastern UP, there is a problem of iron deficiency and people have a lot of neuro issues. Now, so why I'm sharing this story is also, of course, beside convincing my father that I'm doing something substantial, also to highlight the significance and the importance of knowledge, of research. Now, thanks to my, you know, background in research, we went down and all of us sat together and said that we need to create a narrative. In the conversation, he said, I think Ramnadesh Yadav who belonged to Ajamgarh was the governor of MP that time. He said, either get him or if you can, why not President Kalam, because he's a great scientist and he will appreciate something like this, a hospital in a remote region. So that somehow stuck with us and then we did a research. It took us six months to coordinate. It was not about coordination, but what narrative we created. How did we research? We explored almost 50 academic papers, medical journals from everywhere and we realized that this problem was very glaring. With this narrative, we reached out to President Kalam's office and they made us, you know, really slog very hard. But I was happy in the end, he agreed. And this is what happened. And this is so, with this first story, I think, you know, not only my father got convinced, but we got a major boost in our confidence. As a new agency, I think this was very early in Grey Matters life. I think this was a great achievement that gave us the confidence and the conviction that if you have the right knowledge and the right narrative, I think you can do well. Now, going to the next story, now this is a lot of coverage from any, by any standards, for a private small company. So there is this gentleman called Prashant Jan. He came to me, owner of Oswal book, MD of Oswal book and said, you know, we help, we create help books and why don't you, you know, help us in getting some media coverage? I want to do a press conference in Delhi Press Club, which you are a member. I said, press club, I can barely get you four journalists, you know, and two of my friends and two others and none of them will write. At the most they will write one column. So then what we did, we created, you know, again, same process. We told him that we are not going to do regular coke and vanilla stuff. We are going to be, you know, give us some time. I'm not going to do press conference. So we created a, you know, we said that we'll do all stakeholder meet on status of education, state of a school education. And we did that. And this was, I think, again, very early in Grey Matters life. But subsequently, now that has established, so that is a black and white version of, you know, the previous is a black and white version of this product that we created, a platform that we created called Roundtable, Oswal, India, Oswal Books Roundtable, on state of school education. And that I'm happy to share that over the last seven years, we have done eight such Roundtable with attendance of six education ministers of those states. Again, trying to share with my limited experience the significance and importance of knowledge. Now, these are two very happy, I'm sure Nana in her speech is going to share soon. But when we got a mandate from Bihar State, Power Holding Company Limited, the electricity utility company of Bihar, I said this is a, I mean, how to make something very sarkari, very exciting. You know, it was a challenge of packaging or repackaging, you know, because there is a lot of distrust, a lot of mistrust about the way, and you know, perception is that electricity company, you know, we take our money, the electricity is not right. Fact is otherwise, we realize after starting to work with BSPHCL that there is a tremendous amount of modernization, tremendous transparency, yet there was this challenge. If I go, and even at the, you know, if we stand at home, even if we speak, no one will believe. So we created some, you know, mediators, and we thought that an aspirational young, you know, two characters who could represent the rising Bihar, you know, the rural, rustic yet rising Bihar. So Bijli Didi and Voltage Bhaiya was born out of one such, what do you call, brainstorming that I was having with Pooja and Nana and Madhu and a lot of other colleagues. And today, I'm happy to share that these have found very good traction with the audience. Now Bijli Didi and Voltage Bhaiya have become the voice of the organization. They are engaging with the audience seamlessly and talking to them. So some of these tweets that we see, I mean, we do a great amount of social media work over the years. I think we have transitioned, you know, from being pure play, PR agency to also a lot of digital work. So you see these, Voltage Bhaiya, Bijli Didi being used in a lot of these communication. Not only this, when we are doing physical events also, I think we are using cut out. And this has made communication much more smarter, faster and transparent. So these are, so smart prepaid meter, Bihar is a leading state and, you know, thanks to the dynamic, CMD Sanjeev Hans was an IAS officer and we are creating a lot of activity, communication activity to support that success story that you see. Now, we also work with Rajasthan Police. So that was to highlight my third story. Again, we thought how to, you know, I have had the privilege of working with the police organizations for a great deal, you know, starting with IPS association. So the challenge that I faced always that police is, police is ruthless. Police wale danda ke albhaas te. So there is a huge negative. O abhi bhi persist karta hai. But what we thought that among others, you know, why not use some of these tickles, you know, to excite our audiences. I'm happy to share, you know, that at one point we worked for about two years, you know, and this method earned us a great deal again as PR professionals. What I'm trying to basically convey and communicate is that we have to be innovative. I have highlighted the significance of being this thing. So I'll, you know, so you see a lot of these got, you know, we used, for instance, KBC, Kithna Bada Crime Quiz, and that was a massive hit. The Sanju. So we were absolutely having a fun. In fact, the ADG, Mr. Pankaj Kumar Singh, who went on to become BSF, DG subsequently, now is the deputy NSA, he gave us a lot of free hand. So also depends, of course, on your partner. You know, how much you can, you are able to convince your partners about your ability to execute something non-conventional in a non-conventional way. That is also very important. So when you're engaging with your partners, try and impress upon the need to slightly go off the clutter of beat out of the box thinking, and that will do you well. This is again highlighting the significance of knowledge. I will skip this. This is important. Madhu sitting here, she was much slimmer than I think. So she is giving a presentation to, this is the DC of Nasik, Madhu, Nasik. So this was, we worked with DuPont. Now DuPont, as you know, is a big multinational and they used to, they are in agrochemicals. They came to us and said that we have this massive challenge of spurious and counterfeit pesticide. Sorry, pesticide, yes. What can you do? Now I told them that if I go as gray matters or you go as DuPont and try and create a flutter in the market, no one is going to believe, given that there is huge anti-MNC sentiment, especially in rural areas. So allow us to design a campaign. We designed a campaign where we would do a workshop. There is an independent forum called Fizija on that. So we bring stakeholders, we'll get farmers, agriculture scientists, policy makers and call the media's partners in progress. You know, we said that this is something that is creating a lot of loss to the exchequer, causing our food system, harm to our food system and so on. So they said, okay, we went ahead with the campaign. Eight states, 300 journalists, nine media workshops, you know, over two years and the result was that this gross safe food that you see for the first time, Ministry of Agriculture issued an advisory to all the states to, you know, target and address the menace of counterfeit this thing. Now that's about some of the stories. As millennials, I think you must understand where have we come, you know, starting with the classical PR which was more people-to-people personalized, defined audiences, two conventional PR, organization to organization, media centric. And now today contemporary, your audiences are diverse. They are wanting to communicate with the brand directly and so on and so forth. You have a huge challenge, you know, and since... So these are some of the things that you all know. I think that is all time that I have time for. Thank you very much for this opportunity Karan, Dr. Bhattra and all of you for your patience here listening to. Thank you. To present that token, can I please invite Miss Ruchika Jha, correspondent from E4M.