 Thank you. Thank you both of you for taking out time on a weekday for our session. You've already, this jam packed room is an outcome of having you both and Cricket as a conversation because cricket is something that unites all of us and excites all of us. Thank you both of you. So I'll start with Ajit. Ajit, as the topic is that World Cup is an unmissable opportunity. You have the rights, you have digital rights, you have television rights. It's coming to India after 12 years. How's the sentiment amongst the advertisers? Oh, I mean, that's the most easiest answer I can give, right? I think World Cup needs no selling, right? If you look at the last world time World Cup happened in India, India won it. Even in 2019 when we actually didn't make it to the finals and we were not the winners, more than 550 million people watched the series on television. So that's the kind of impact that the series has. Having said that, I mean, it's almost what we call it as India Super Bowl. Happens once in a decade that we get a chance to have hosted in our country. If you look at the schedule, if you look at the India performance, if you look at the India players, all of them are at the peak stage as of now. There is extreme interest on World Cup because it's bang on season. And I feel whenever we talk about cricket, whenever we talk about a series like this, it actually lifts the sentiment, it lifts the mood of Indian consumers. And I think from whatever we have seen over the last eight or nine months of headwinds in the industry, I just feel probably this is the right turning point. I think clients are looking at this as a turning point, taking the October season, festive season to up their brand sentiment, intent towards the brand and consumer interest. I just feel we are right at the corner of a change in the way economy is moving and probably World Cup is coming at the right time. Anna, you are already... What can I ask him a question? Yeah, yeah, sure. So who's going to win the World Cup? You think India's going to win? He's already said it. Last time he... Again, I'll make that easy for you. Last three World Cups happened in host countries and the host nations won it. This time it's happening in India. So we all are keeping our fingers crossed and we all are hoping that India wins. I just feel that the last session was about AI and machine learning, right? So this is the easiest. Actually, we could have asked Daniel to predict it for us. And nobody would be happier than Ajit. I'm fully hopeful that India will win, definitely. And I just feel that if you look at India in India, it's an unbeatable combination. So, Anna, coming to you, you have exclusive non-alcoholic beverage partner of ICC World Cup this time. How do you think brands can leverage something as big as the world...pricot World Cup? Right. So I'll just give you the perspective from our company overall. I think even outside the ICC World Cup, sporting platforms like the Olympics, the FIFA World Cup, they're extremely big for us. If I have to really identify one passion point, which is, I would say, still the largest where we invest, it's basically sports even now. ICC World Cup, I think he was mentioning it, is the world's second largest sporting event. So you've got the FIFA World Cup and then you've got the ICC. In fact, if you look at the engagement numbers and if you look at the viewership of the summer Olympics, that's been on a secular decline. So they have a lot of job to do. I think it's still very big and we are the partners of that also. But overall, I think especially based on the brands that we have, all our mass brands, mass reach platforms are very important and nothing bigger than these. But at the end of it, you have to start with the objectives as to what is your business objective when you're activating these. Brands like us, if you take Coke, Thumbs Up or Sprite, we don't need just to be a part and a sponsor, be a part of the overall branding. That's not going to add any incremental value. So you'll have to start with what are your business objectives and how do these sporting platforms help you to achieve those business objectives, whether you want to increase your consumer base, whether you want to have the launch of a new pack range or you're launching a new product range. So you have to start at the end of the day what the objective is and then you build the plan which is going to maximize that objective. So in that, at least in the last, I would say, 40, 50 years of data that we have, most of these platforms have been very, very, I would say, encouraging for us in terms of ROI. And we've clearly seen the returns. So overall, as a company, we will continue to be bullish on large sporting platforms like this because we have seen the returns on this. Ajita. And we recognize that and therefore what we are trying to do this time is what we have seen is if you look at the large screen, TV screen, and we have established this across decades, sporting live action has worked wonderfully. Even if you look at other forms of cricket being available on streaming or free or SWAT, it has not impacted television. So what we are using this opportunity this year is to make sure that the World Cup is available on mobile as free for consumer with the intention of making sure that the flexibility of brand objectives are actually being able to use either digital front or TV front across the funnel. Like, you know, a lot of brands have top funnel objectives, mid funnel objectives. This was actually my next question is already started answering it. So I'll not ask it now, please. This is exactly what I was about to ask you that how is Disney Star this time enabling advertisers to make the most of the upcoming World Cup. And this is like one of the things that you're giving it free on mobile and what other things are you doing? Yeah. So I think our first intention is to make sure that, you know, if you look at Disney Star, take a step back and look at Disney Star. We are number one in GC Entertainment. We are number one in streaming entertainment. We are number one in TV sports by a large margin. And we saw this opportunity as today in the next three months with Asia Cup and World Cup coming to become the largest online video platform in India. And that's the opportunity that we are trying to say. So number one across, our platforms reach anywhere between 300 to 400 million across these streams. And we have now a chance to go into a 400 million, or 400 million, or if you look at smartphone users or more online video universe around 550 million, we are hoping that we can reach 80% of that audience. So cumulatively, if you look at GC Entertainment streaming and mobile cricket, we are talking about closing as much as closer to a 1 billion reach possibility in India. That's the first objective. Having said that, why do you think it's advantages of our client as Arnab just mentioned? There are many, many brand objectives today, right? There are brands which are looking at the top funnel. I mean, nobody's only purely looking at top funnel for just for branding. Top funnel impacting bottom funnel, or mid funnel impacting bottom funnel. But at the end of the day, clients are interested in the bottom funnel. I think digital gives us that flexibility. I'll give you a context of what we are saying. If you look at the targeting options that we have improved in digital, last time we showed IPL in 2019 free. We had around 25 to 30 targeting options. We are improving the targeting option to our almost 75 this year. So that's the amount of targeting options that we are having. And you should understand what it means, right? I'll give you an example when you do targeting options on live stream, what it means, right? So you have demographs with geo, mobile, user interest targeting, or even if you look at some of the apography and all of it. Each targeting variable that we improve, that means we have to show a separate stream. So if I move from 25 to 75 targeting options, we are concurrently running 55,000 streams. 10,000 streams earlier. Now we are going to run 55,000 streams simultaneously to allow clients, brands, to start taking custom cohorts, combination of targeting to make sure that you can go as Low as geography, device, user interest, affinity, all the Variables that we have listed. So that's the amount of flexibility that we are adding On digital. Now the second objective that we saw is this lot of Advertisers already on digital today, right? The estimate would be anywhere between 20 to 10 to 20,000 Advertisers already on digital. We are now launching a self-serve. We launched yesterday on a self-serve platform to make sure that a large set of these advertisers can look at Cricket through a self-serve platform and not do only manage through either through a partner or directly. They can sit wherever they are and look at Cricket and make sure that we can now participate. The fourth aspect is when I spoke about online video platform, what I'm actually making is, you know, Cricket always used to be seen as costly, right? At the end of the day, we see Cricket is a high cost event. Its bid costs are pretty high. Using mobile as an opportunity, now we are making sure that you can participate in India Cricket with as low as $1 CPM. So we are making sure that your entry point into Cricket for the large set of advertisers as low as 80 bucks or $1. That's the kind of entry point that we are making. So that allows a large set of both at a brand level. We are making sure that your entry point into Cricket is effective, efficiency, and effectiveness was never a question, right? Effectiveness of Cricket was never a question. So if you look at these three opportunities that we are opening up, and we already know that even in the last IPL that we saw, TV is itself growing. TV as a sport, TV viewership on sport is growing, and we saw that as a business opportunity. When TV is growing, why can't we aim for a mobile opportunity which itself is growing with equal head wind in the future? So all these opportunities coming up very well for us. I'm sure after this session you will have some marketers walk to you discussing the deal. At least that's what I wish. I think there is a huge interest by marketers. It's a question of what the, you know, we are, we are packages as low as $2,000,000, $5,000,000. We are open to that kind of, because it's, it based on the brand budget, right? At the end of the day we are talking about what's your budget? How can we meet those objectives? We are making sure that the audience size itself is a sizable number for your brands to reach. So I think the interest is already there. I'm hoping that more demand the better. Coming to you, you're a very big brand and, you know, your thumbs up, they've always been associated with all sporting properties. What is your objective this time when you participate, when you come as the title sponsor of Coke, of ICC World Cup? So for the last, so for the last three years we've essentially taken a call that most of the cricket activity, in fact, and almost entirely is going to be led by thumbs up. And there's been a strategic reason for that because obviously we've got multiple brands, everybody can't do everything. You start getting, you know, I would say inefficient if you put all the brands together. So thumbs up is the largest brand. We have very, very strong growth targets. To be very honest, we had a challenging summer. We grew market share. It's kind of still being one of the top performing brands. But the summer has been tough. So starting back, what I mentioned in my first question, the first objective is that how do you get the business momentum back and meet your year-end target? So I can tell all the fancy things. If I don't meet the year-end numbers on the brand, I think everything will be, it's kind of nice to do. But again, I think as Ajit said, the platform is very big. So we are working on a very strong and large integrated plan with all our bottling partners, with all our key customers to ensure that we go all in at this World Cup. And I think we feel very confident with a large platform like this. I think we are very hopeful that the returns are going to be very big. The advantage we have is that the World Cup is in India. And across all the host cities, it again gives us a chance to go and really amplify our activation plan. In the earlier days, and I'll just probably speak about what I think Ajit was how to build on that. You go back 10 years, 15 years, I think activation in a sporting platform was easier. You make a very nice TVC. Everybody loves it. You have some branding on the ground and you walk away, like, okay, you've got the returns, everybody's got the awareness and stuff. Life has become complicated right now. Absolutely. While TV in life sports continues to grow, the fact is a lot of kids and teens, they're not watching TV. And they remain very important for us also. So then how do you go and start working on the engagement plan using this platform, working very closely with his team, and then identifying a lot of different cohort-based activities is what we're working on. So it is stuff. It is even more complicated because everything you're doing with that cohort, how you're going to amplify that in a particular channel on the ground with a very specific customer. It's all doable, and I think the impact is going to be very good, but it's become a little more complicated than what it used to be. And I would say complicated, and also sometimes technology helps us make it interesting, too, like the one we did in IPL during the Star Wars, which is making sure the fan has a possible to interact with their fans or with their recruiting stars or with the panel almost coming through technology. You don't even need a physical destination today for a fan to come here and interact with us. So we are implementing that as we speak, and there are a lot of other innovations and format innovations we are allowing. We are even allowing this year a first-party targeting option within our ecosystem. We are opening up click to whatsapp, which allows you to start engaging into mid-funnel conversations. So a lot of these options getting opened up allow such conversations to become richer. It's a world cup is also the time when you come up with very interesting campaigns. If I am not wrong, even that Tanda was launched during one of the world cups, right? And so how soon will they be launched very close to the world cup, or you will have more announcements coming soon, you know, who's going to be your face this time? All those things, by when should we expect all these things to be revealed? So I was slightly different point. So Tanda was not launched at the world cup. I think it was in the middle of the summer. Obviously we had a world cup or any... There was a cricketing event. Yeah, a cricketing event with full reach platform. But I think my message to you and I think everybody else in this audience, the world has changed. You cannot do with one campaign only. And I think that's a big learning we are having. I think the impact of that one big I would say television campaign, I think those days are over. Will we have a TVC? Absolutely we will have. And you will also have a TVC. Yeah, that's important. See having... Means having a TVC to ensure that we are still able to, you know, get the overall reach and impact, I think it's there. I'm not saying it has gone away. But it is not going to be enough. And therefore as we are making the marketing plan, you cannot just say that I'll have this one wonderful TVC and go. And therefore the energy and the time you spend on how much the team is going to go and spend on the TVC and how much our agency partners are going to spend on the TVC, I think has dramatically declined. And that's a culture shift because that's the way the world is going to move on. Then as you start entering the digital world, you know, then you have to start getting... Because you can't put your TV ad or any kind of video on YouTube because that's not going to get you any engagement. So you have to think as to engagement first. What are the new ideas you can get? So at least even in the last T20 World Cup, we had an interesting idea, worked very well for us. We called it the Stump Camp because we had rights to the ICC. So we allowed... You could actually go and scan a bottle of thumbs up and watch the match live from the Stump Camp. And it was interesting to go and see Virat Kohli hitting a six against Pakistan from the Stump Camp. We didn't put it on mass media or on YouTube, but the amount of data we got with that, the amount of engagement we got with that, with hardcore cricket fans was outstanding. But that's one example. So you have to start thinking of what are the four, five, six things you have to do, rather than say that one iconic TVC will be enough. And by when are you going to... So we have just started actually, so we have just started our promotions already. That's already on, as I said, because it's not going to be at the World Cup, because that's where the build up to the World Cup is going to be important. So you will see a lot of action. We are going to be sponsoring the Asia Cup. So we're going to be activating the Asia Cup because it's all a build up to the World Cup. So that's going to be very important for us. And also we need to activate, because it's in India, it's not just the consumers. We go close to 3.5 million outlets across India, 3.5 million outlets from a indirect way also. Huge opportunity to activate the trade. And the trade partners are very critical for us. So again, we're working with them to see that are there, you know, certain elements we can do which could be specifically meant for the trade partners also. Ajit, you've already given us a glimpse about your digital plans, but you know, lately sports has become very big on digital. So if you can talk about it in detail, you know, what all do you have to offer this time on digital? As I said, I mean, one is obviously our targeting options moving from almost 25 to 75 options that allows us to get into more targeting variables, custom cohorts, user interest, apography, demographic variables already there, so that itself is a big variation because I think last decade or we are all used to a certain tech way of working tech platforms of UGC space, right? I think UGC space has grown in the last decade in multiple folds. I think bringing that benefit on a PGC platform that itself is the big move that we are making because otherwise PGC platforms normally are in the TV space or in the streaming space, but are very much like, you know, appointment viewing or a convenient viewing but long viewing, like it's long duration viewing. I think what we are trying here is a big difference. We are trying to get the UGC platform benefits into PGC platform and I'm not talking PGC here, I'm talking live cricket and that's a big change, right? Apart from that, there are a lot of... I mean, we have a lot of regular ad formats that we have but we are now introducing click to engage, first party targeting, you know, 3D rich media options that we are opening up. So there are a lot of custom formats and new formats that we are opening up. I already spoke about self-serve. For any advertiser with any budget, we are helping them to see the benefit of cricket because, I mean, over the last one, two, three decades that I've handled cricket, effectiveness of cricket is seldom questioned. I think that brands have realized that it's only about my creativity to use cricket but as a platform of a sport across any platform. You take a TV, whichever competitor does it, doesn't matter. I just think cricket works in India and it's a religion that does not need to be sold but it's about that usage, right? Am I using just for creating a one campaign? Am I doing that for making sure that my ground level, whether it's franchise owners, whether it's consumers, whether it is dealership excitement, or am I creating a new format of engaging with my audience? I mean, can I make it two-way? Is it something that I'm activating on our fans and consumer pulse? And last but not the least, I think this whole... If you're able to enlarge the audience size on cricket, which is already a religion, I just feel this is an opportunity for us to reach to the 800, 900 million audience in India which allows brands to use it the way they want it because I don't think in the next decade we are going to get a chance like this of India playing in India. I don't think we are going to get it before 2030, right? Now, here is a chance market headwinds have been tough. Brands, marketers are looking for options to revive their... Do you think they were saving for the World Cup in the first half? I'm 100% sure marketers are already thinking this like nine months in advance, making sure that, you know, obviously there is quarter-on-quarter planning. Obviously there are profitability issues, top-line issues, but I just feel they're looking for an option if it permits within their pockets to make sure that I can be part of this because effectiveness is unquestionable. The question really is how they participate, how effective that will be, and is the platform now offering me all the options, right? I think TV is established. Digital, we are just making it three-fold in terms of expectations. What do clients really look for? Can I adapt to that requirement as much possible and to go to even a large set of advertisers and say, not everybody will come with 100 crore budgets, right? People, brands have various budgets. Can start from 5 lakhs, can go up to 100 crores. How do we make sure that this suit is entirely available as a stack? Anybody can participate. Anup, the same question to you. As a brand, you've been on television, like you also mentioned, that it is not just about one TV series this time. How do you plan to leverage digital this time? I think it's going to be bigger than we have done ever. I think overall just some very simple statistics. On brand Coca-Cola, for example, and this outside the World Cup and overall, if we used to have maybe 12-13% of our overall marketing budgets on digital, we'll probably end this year close to 40%. I want to take the number to 60%. This World Cup? No, next year. No, no, no, respective of the World Cup. The fact is that we have to make the transition. If we don't force the transition, because the consumers have moved there. Let's be very honest on that. On TV, at least our numbers show that life sports will continue to be very important. But if you look at our key cohorts, engagement is happening on digital. So just coming back, if you look at the important cohorts for us on thumbs up, which is slightly older than a Coke or a Sprite in terms of, so TV is going to be very important and it will obviously give us the reach. But we are working on very sharp, specific, I would say mini IPs, which is going to be relevant for, say, a 20 to 24. Then you start breaking down into clusters, because when you're doing the World Cup, you will have a bunch of people who are super fans. They're hardcore, hardcore, crazy cricket fans. They also happen to be drinkers of thumbs up. And the way you activate with them is going to be very different on the IPs you create with the general fan. So it's about understanding who these cohorts are, how important they are going to be for your growth in this particular quarter. And then we are working with Ajit's team, with our agency partners on what are the mini IPs you can create. The Stumb Cam was one example. You'll see other things happening this year. Very interesting things coming up. I just want to add there. And he's right in saying that. I think I put that in the context, right? All advertisers, brands, marketers are looking for down funnel metrics at the end of the day. At the end of the day, they want some transaction, some indication of transaction, or a purchase, or a sale. And as publishers who are engaged in the business of storytelling, or in the business of consumer attention, it's our job to then therefore prove how does awareness lead to down funnel metrics, how does engagement lead to down funnel metrics, how does preference lead to down funnel, right? I think all our content making, all our content experience parameters, now whether it is television or digital, our job is to prove by a measurement to make sure that it is making an impact down the scale in the business. And that's what we are endeavoring. So therefore we are pretty much platform neutral. If we can show that the content or the experience that the consumer is having with our platforms leads to a down funnel metric, then it's a win-win partnership. Only if both of you allow, can we take some questions from the audiences? Although the time is up, but if you can spare, because I'm sure this is a topic where there are people here who would want to ask questions. Any questions? Hi, Swati. I just wanted to ask whether, like whatever we have talked, we have talked about B2C, right? So do you think World Cup or digital platform in that case will be helpful for B2B? Will be helpful for B2B? It completely depends on the brand objective and the cohort that you want to address, right? At the end of the day, the platform doesn't decide whom you are reaching or what you are, as long as you are able to clearly distinguish, this is the audience that I want to reach and this is the response I need from it. I think any platform can give you that. I'm from SuperGas. It's into energy solutions. So we do have two categories for B2B as well. Like one for the investors, like who is looking for franchisees and all. And one, like business decision makers of industries who use this LPG. So that's why... I'm happy to take that offline with you. Can I just add one? I think my only advice is, this is a massive platform. It's about how... If you're able to capture a nice idea around it, you know, you could apply it even in B2B and B2C. And for us, B2B is my very small, but we've also got the internal request, right? With a lot of the B2B partners asking that, okay, how do we activate the World Cup? Everybody's going to do. So finally, it boils down to focusing and cracking an interesting idea. What's the idea? You have a big platform. How do you take an interesting idea out of it and then amplify it to meet your business objective? Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? There's one gentleman right at the back. Hi, Ajith. Hi, everyone. Injrit here from IBG Media Brands. So quick one. So we always hear about the wall gardens that the commerce platforms have, right? Do we have any partnership that we will be doing with these commerce platforms to actually get back some kind of a data once we bring in the traffic to these e-commerce platforms? What is that? Explain the second part again. For example, if you're throwing in traffic to, let's say, an Amazon or a Flipkart, right? What is the customer behavior once they have entered that platform? It's something which becomes a black box for us. So I'm coming from the e-commerce side. That's why this problem statement. So do you have any such partnerships that you would be doing with these e-commerce platforms to get that customer data and understand the lower funnel metrics? See, especially from the shopper or e-commerce platforms, we don't have it as of now. We are doing a lot of tie-ups with third party like pay you, IOTA to make sure that our data enrichment happens. But at this point in time, we don't have any tie-up with any other wall garden to get their data ingrained. But having said that, we are going to experiment with one of the partners going forward, not in live cricket, but in the other digital space where we can get into this data partnership, where we can have shopper data ingrained, but probably through some data clean rooms so that there is no actual sharing of data between two big publishers. We will be getting into that space in the next quarter. Correct. Interesting. Thank you. I think we should close it now. Yeah. Thank you both of you. Thank you so much. Ten X ROI for your investments, and I wish you some good examples of sales this time. Thank you. Thank you both of you. Thank you.