 Well, ladies and gentlemen, the topic of our next session is building brands in an era of disruption. And our next speaker has a 21-year work experience across FMCG when it comes to HUL, telecom, Nokia and Reliance Communications and Textiles Raymond. Well, he's a passionate business leader, a very committed professional with a very strong clarity of purpose and objective and analytical power. Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome CEO Raymond Mr. Sanjay Bell. Thank you very much. I hope I'm audible. It was supposed to be as for the agenda, a 10-minute pre-break. So if somebody wants to just walk off and come back with a tea, that's fine. I have about 45 minutes slot and I'm going to probably take that to illustrate a paradigm shift in marketing and brand building that we are facing today. I think the topic itself is very, very relevant, very, very pertinent topic and I want to congratulate Anurag and our entire team which is organizing this Jyotsana to have thought through this very relevant topic of today. However, this is also an era where it's not about just finding the brands which can sell, not actually to buy as the whole theme of the conference is. But there is a disruption which we are going through and which is a hanging sword in times to come for every single brand and every single industry that we need to embrace. And so in a way it's kind of a dual-track brand marketing, navigating era that we've got into. And that's what really I'm going to be focusing on when I talk. So let me just start by first about what's happening and most of you would have heard since the after and it started a lot about the challenges of today's marketing. Challenges of what we are already going through and the whole thanks to the demographic shift across the globe. Probably towards the end of its post-consumerism era there and with evolution of not just demographic, economic prosperity, health care trends are changing. Technology has had a very, very defining roles in not just meeting our demands but shaping our behaviors to expect a very, very different kind of life that we all are living. And so is the whole times change for the consumer. And if you really have to market, this is how the consumer life is really changed. So you see in the last about 15 years, 20 years, we've probably seen more defining changes in the way customers living then the 100 years and you would hear this more and more as we go forward. Or you would say the last five is probably seen more in the last 20 years prior to that. And what's happening at the fundamental level, if you look at absolutely the base level of this change, what we are going through is the first thing is that we are packing a lot more. A lot more in our lives, not just Indian consumer, world consumer. Technology is actually in a way being a leveler, in a way a leveler between the developed economies, emerging economies and yet to be developed or yet to be emerging economies. Technology has been the biggest leveler and because it has leveled so many things for us in terms of excess products, services, communication, awareness, all these things are getting leveled like never before. So now you pretty much have a serial or content getting broadcast in India live as it is happening in New York or you're getting access to products anywhere in the world in 24 hours without having to travel out to get those. So all the things are getting leveled. That's had a dramatic impact on the life of customers. People have a lot more on experiences now. Again, I'm sure some of the speakers would have shared some data around it. We're packing so much into our lives, the whole life that my children are living is very different than I live. And I used to revel on the fact that my parents lived a very sedentary life and I have a super active life and what my children are living probably is not just hyper, but ultra hyperactive life. Now, trying to pack almost everything, not just one holiday, but multiple holidays, the concept of small vacations now, there's a concept of long vacations now, the amount of media fragmentation we've seen used to be pretty much three hours of TV and that three hours of TV has pretty much remained where it is and now there is so much more media has got added. There are doses of small internets that we consume almost through the day. They say about 200 times we will check up our phones in a course of a day and that's actually the impact of that is yet to be seen because this whole industry is fairly, fairly new. Now as we're doing all that, the fundamentals which is happening is all of us and our customers are getting less and less time available time to evaluate, engage to a particular experience is dramatically reducing, already today, dramatically reducing. And as we see not just that's happening, most of the needs are have been almost met. The whole 20th century marketing paradigm was about meeting unmet needs, needs, wants and desires. Yeah, that's the classical definition there that find a need, just go there, have a competitive product offering in a gap area, need gap area. So if there is dandruff, find a something which gets rid of dandruff, if the shirt has a stain, find something which removes a stain. If there is a lack of a good quality, stay places in a tourism place, launch a nice looking hotel at a competitive price and you have pretty much the business going after adding to that a dose of other parts of the marketing mix. And that was what was really happening. And as we look at that, now it is no more the needs. There was an era in 80s and late 90s where it's, we almost got into the post consumerism post needs getting melt, a met kind of a phase where the options in each category that we know, each of those need categories dramatically increased. And I'm going to be using a lot of examples which are in my industry, Raymond, because especially when I build the concept, because they need permission of another marketer there about my point of view. I can give the point of view is the brand point of view there, because if I use examples of Indian brand, it's only appropriate that I take permission from some of those people. Or I'll use the media publicized and media announced viewpoint by the chief executive or those marketeers so that we can build kind of a framework of my talk there. So if you look at this category in terms of choice, simply textile category in about 15 to 20 years, the number of options from broadly 10 brands controlling about 80, 90% of the market. These 10 brands control probably less than 10% of the market. And the number of options from what 10 have gone to over 1000 options that are available when it comes to clothing yourself. So it's a huge number of increase. So from a limited option, it's become a huge number of available choices there. So that's one paradigm of marketing. And not just this, every category you see, look at shampoos. I've just given some illustrative categories to bring in the point. Those five brands on the left controlled 80% of the shampoo market. And today there are, I don't know, if you really get the market, this is what you get. The kind of shelf that you see is this. How do you buy your shampoo? It is market of absolutely surplus. There are 800 to 1000 options, even in a small organized retail today. Of shampoos there. One brand has 30 variants being offered there. So the time that customer has one has come down, options have gone up. And if you don't have an absolutely remarkable product, standing out, popping out of this 1000 option and saying, you know, watch me, observe me, consider me, and buy me, has to go through the entire circle. It's very little that customers really need to do to buy you, to pick up your brands. And that's the challenge that most of the market is already facing today. And it's quite a challenge. Look at yoga. I was just looking at some various categories as to how this has exploded, the number of options that have exploded. So the needs are met. Wants are being created by brand and marketeers. And within wants, look at the options which are there. These are yoga books. About 10 years back, if you look for a yoga book, you'll get probably 10 books or dozen books, maybe two dozen books about yoga. And then suddenly it became a brand in a very, very big way. And suddenly people found a huge economic reason with technology, access to the world, and the number of options. If you go in Google, there are, I think, 15 pages of search you can do in terms of books there. I've just given you some illustration. So a normal brain, a normal marketeer would have yoga for women, yoga for men, yoga for kids, yoga for morning, yoga for evening. But nowadays we have a good morning yoga, a good night yoga. You have yoga for toddlers who don't even know how to walk. There are enough books on yoga for toddlers. How do you get them there? And there are these teddy bear yogas there. In fact, there's a yoga for dogs now. It's called Doga. So imagine, if you are going to find a book on yoga, what do you want to really buy? And there are over 1,000, 1,500 yoga books on every page. And there are 15 of those there. Imagine you're going to a store and picking up a book there. That's the kind of an era that we've really got into. And in this era, if you really see the earlier times, the whole marketing paradigm, and at least I've been brought up and nurtured in an era, but it's all about really putting a competitive product. Not a great product, competitive product, but do great marketing around it. And pretty much if you have enough dollars and enough creativity in marketing a product, you would have a market share. That used to be the era not very long back. And in that, the whole circle, if you see the Moors idea diffusion curve, it's all about you launch a product which is a pilot phase and there are early adopters and then comes the real critical mass of the center, which then the product really takes off and becomes a mass and that's in a product life cycle is when brand marketeers and the businesses make real money. And then over time innovations come and this brand goes for a declining phase. Each category, each brand, each industry really goes through this kind of a dispersion curve. Used to, and this is the Sarka that at least I have been trained and born and brought up in the 90s when I was practicing market and brand person there. This is the kind of things we used to really look at. How quickly can we get into mass extraction of the profits from a brand by making it scalable, making it reach everybody and being competitive and continuing to launch, relaunch so that the relevance of the brand really, really stays. From that now the era has moved to a very different kind of a thing. Currently, today or in the last few years it's already been happening, brands which are doing well are succeeding, brands which are not doing so well are actually facing a lot of diminishing returns on their marketing investments. Today is the era of remarkable products, absolutely remarkable products. If you don't have out of the thousand shampoo bottles in a mall, in organized retail format, your shampoo bottle having a real reason for somebody to notice you and then consider you, evaluate, value for money and actually pick up you and continuing to use it. If you don't have all of these things falling in place, believe me there is enough and more that is available in the market which is satisfying not just the need, the demand, the desire, the aspiration, anything that the brand can fill. So you need first of all a remarkable product and each brand and market you're here and across the community needs to think what marketable product, what is the reason for it to exist, why do I exist as a brand, what am I servicing really in this huge clutter of the market there. Then the second paradigm is that we need to start making money at early adopters stage. I don't think we can wait for the middle of the belly face there because middle of the belly is the most unprofitable belly in marketing paradigm today. That's where the options are going up from 10 to 1000 because you've already tested success in early adopter, people have copied you, imitated you, they have launched 30 variants per product in every single category there. And when you get into the belly it becomes a commodity game and a fight to the price and it is bound to happen in every category, take anything, airlines, what else, this. Unless there is something remarkable and unless you're really going to be ready to make money pretty much in the first 10% to 30% of growth stage of the brand, the rest is going to be a very, very difficult stage to make the money there. So that's again today. And the third is we can't afford to have the same industrial TV complex where marketing would mean that, okay, here comes a brand. My target group is SCCAB and I have different customers to market. Here comes an agency, brief TV campaign, IPL, media, or Kornmanegar, or whichever programs reach my target group. Let's get into that and hope that is going to reach. No, it's not going to do the same job it was doing possibly 10 years back. It's not going to do the same job it was possibly doing last year because every passing day, every passing moment, this is becoming more and more ineffective. So clearly you know that there is a targeted media today which could be digital technology, but there could be other ways of targeted media, point of sale in direct marketing and there are so many other ways of reaching targeted media which are far more cost effective. Then the earliest, and it is not wrong to say that TV used to be and probably still is for some mass brands the most cost effective medium. So it's nothing against television and the thing there. But with that, there is so much more that needs to be done for the effective way of marketing to give money. But that's really today and that's how the value really is of the brands today. It comes not at the center, but at the early adopter stage there. So what is the fundamental change which has happened? In the last 20 years in brand marketing, we have seen two things go up. Resources have gone up because technology and interconnectedness has dramatically improved resources that marketers and brand people dispose of. Today, an access to announcing a product to make, if I want to make a communication to 1,500 store managers in Raymond, it's a decision which takes me 10 seconds and an execution time of 2 minutes. That's all it takes. 10 years back, it would have been such a Herculean task to really reach. You would probably have to have a letter, you would have to record your message, put a video on air, people would stream with very poor quality data and the whole impact would have gone. Now it's just one touch. That's the thing there. The huge amount of resources at our disposal today has a market here. And I've just taken one example of access that you have. There are everything in terms of money, the return, the mediums, the resources today crowdsourcing. In Raymond, we're launching a Kadi collection probably in the next two weeks now with 80% of designs are not by designers in-house, but it's been crowdsourced. I have a whole world to design for Raymond today at a cost which is 100th of the cost of having a designer sitting inside the company. So there are multiple ways to really see as to how resources could happen. And the number of options, as I said, has gone up. One thing which has come down is the time. And that's what really has happened. So fundamentally, the marketing in the last 20 years has really shifted and most of you have confronted with the current era now is from identifying needs of the market here, we moved to creating wants. So we are launching products. Now we didn't need iPhone. Without iPhone, life was good and structure was great and we were communicating, we had all kinds of applications there but it just came and created a completely different shape, a completely different planet because it gave something in terms of the same end of benefit, same hardcore point A to point B kind of communication but it delivered in a very different way and you want them, that product. So this is the idea that we've really gone into. And you will hear a lot of this in the conversations. I'm sure you've heard it through the day. Things like conversations, millennials, customization because if everybody is getting this thing, it's like the challenge we face as a brand, Raymond, of we being the most preferred brand when it came to weddings, Raymond was the accepted port of dressing or actually suits or Western wear was the accepted port of dressing. From accepted port of dressing there, it became a hyper customized market. One, the weddings went from one day to three days now so people don't shop for one occasion only for the wedding. People shop for the teen, then Mehendi and this and the reception so the number of occasions went up and within that the port of dressing changed from Western wear to Indo-Western fusion within that it became hyper customized. So at some point of time if you were the odd man out 20 years back, I would say 15 years back of wearing a strange looking dress which really didn't mix with the pigeon dressing port of weddings which is a black blue or a gray suit with a red tie, you'd feel very odd. Today if you have even one person wearing what you're wearing you'll feel very odd. It's the other way around. The whole paradigm of clothing has really changed. So how do we customize, personalize? I'm saying these are some of the buzzwords marketers are using and rightly so some of them if you really understand the importance in terms of how millennial customers are different and how we can make an experience economy. However, my talk actually in the next 30 minutes is not out today. So that is all you've heard and that's what you're going through and these are the challenges we go through. That's the first track we have to continue to be on while creating the second track and that's really the era of disruption. Something which threatens our existence. Something where a brand and a marketer has to go beyond the call of a duty of looking at his brand and actually thinking in a very different way and that's what I'm really going to press upon over the next few minutes of my talk. And that's the first part is to really do the two parts to this building brands, era of disruption. The first thing I want to really do before I come into building brands is what is era of a decision? What is disruption? Yes, a huge amount of debate there itself is disruption about your business model being challenged. Is disruption about a technology infusion in our category, our industry, our brands? Is disruption about a completely new product proposition like Patanjali challenging Colgate and Hindustani is that disruption? What is really disruption? So that's the first thing I just want to spend a few minutes on. And then let's get into in this era of complexity, disruption, super-wooka, whichever way you want to look at it, what are the principles that we as a community of brand marketeers must adhere to to really build sustainable brands and sustainable businesses. So it's going to be real bit of a 15-minute hair and a 15-minute fall. Now everybody takes this example and so do I. I take it a little more intimately this example because I've been part of this company heading marketing for Nokia in India a couple of years before this came in 2004 and 2005 when Nokia was on a high and I had a good fortune of actually interacting very closely with not just the regional Asia-Pacific but the global team and global headquarters on the board of the company including engagement with their chairman Yorma Alila in 2004-5 who was leaving that time chairman Oli Pekka Patila which then became Stephen a lot. So I interacted with some of these people very, very closely with the anxiety about the growth in the next decade of Nokia. This is the cover of Forbes in 2007 which said 1 billion customers. Nokia had a 40% global market share in 2007 and it said 1 billion customers and it goes on to say can anyone catch the cell phone? Can anyone? And by this time iPhone, the Apple had happened to the world. So iPhone, the first iPhone had launched four months before this article. This is September I think issue. It's September issue and May iPhone had launched and after four months this article comes and says still it's their iPhone but can anyone still catch Nokia? Because it's just too big. It was making phones like two new phones a week and it had a hit rate of at least six to seven phones succeeding with three making spectacular profits for it. That's an amazing hit of success in a technology company. If you can win three bets spectacularly nobody can touch you and no wonder I think that's what I think Nokia was going through the phase and it had 20 years of great success behind them. And this is 2012 and says Nokia world leader bought by Microsoft. It got bankrupt. I remember fighting for an acquisition with the board of Nokia in 2005 and you can quote me on this, a $1 billion acquisition of BlackBerry. That time Nokia's valuation was $86 billion and we wanted to pick up because BlackBerry was very small then. Push email technology, Nokia was working with Microsoft on pull email technology which is later why Microsoft bought it because they were into emails. And look at the dilemma here. Nokia board says that we are already working with the best in email and you are telling us to buy an email app from some Johnny startup in Canada a company which don't even heard, what is RIM? Research in motion, Canadian companies, few people in Wall Street are hanging BlackBerry is not good enough for reason to even consider. We are working with Microsoft, email authority. The only argument we had is that Microsoft's next five year plan is not push email, it's pull email. You have to pull it to the phone and customer is getting the role of technologies to make customers lazy so we should have push email and that will change the whole paradigm. But somehow that $1 billion pill was too hard to swallow for Nokia and apart from that we had two recommendations on moving away from Symbian which was the operating software to a different open source software. Nokia was a very close software, Symbian, but it had great success. The success itself becomes at times your own enemy because it has great success in having close atmosphere but there is a team which was trying to be rebelling against the success so it was again hard to swallow and five years down the line those two or three reasons itself part of the reason for the entire downfall of Nokia may not be the entire reason but eventually BlackBerry became very big and it got sold for under $10 billion, $86 billion, five years, $10 billion. So what happened? And you know when you really go to the CEO of Nokia, this is what he says. We didn't do anything wrong but somehow we lost. I don't even know what went wrong. Just came in. Now here is a global CEO of Nokia who's doing everything right. Huge success, $86 billion, every year going up, great phones, all success, 70% success in the model and then five years down the line they got sold. And then you reflect in hindsight also there is no learning. What do we do? Look at another example. Now I'm going to run fast once I have the track of what I'm trying to engage with. This is Kodak example. Again most of you have heard of it but I don't know how many people know that digital photography was started and invented by Kodak which eventually swallowed it. It was their technology. In fact this is the person who invented it. Steve Sasson was part of the technology team of Kodak who invented digital camera because one of his, I think one of his children, his daughter I think at five or six years of age just casually on her birthday asked why do I have to wait for photographs to come? Can't you just take the photograph and give it to me? That gave birth to Polaroid and eventually he started working on digital camera. That was a harmless query or anxiety or an ask from his children and the first digital camera is what he's holding. It looked like this but that's how all the technologies are. Ugly big. Today I was there in afternoon having lunch with a 3D printer, fabric person from Manchester and he brought his technology and it looks big and bulky and obviously it's not perfected but that's how all technologies start. And what did he say when people asked him? He's saying yeah I know about digital photography when digital started becoming a little more noticeable. He's saying it's cute but don't tell anybody about it. And what happens to a company like this? Kodak continues to succeed while digital was happening. Suddenly towards the end if you see the red box there on the chart in four or five years from 86 billion digital photographs which are being taken, 86 billion photographs most of them were on the rolls the way it was. It suddenly becomes zero while the photographs jump to 1.2 trillion in no time. So from 95% of the photographs being non-digital it becomes 95% photograph. It can happen so quick and that's when you say I don't know what happened. We always had this technology in house. That's the kind of this. Now what does think about a Nokia CMO? And think about a Kodak CMO. They would be doing all brand tracks and the brands would be doing phenomenally well. Well if you get an employment letter and saying you joined the brand team of Kodak in 90, say 2003, Kodak returned or Nokia returned you would say wow man, the offer I left leave us for Nokia as a head of marketing. Wow, what an offer. What a great industry to join. It's a great brand. It's a world leader. And then you know five years down the line it doesn't exist. And even when it didn't exist the brand would have done 80% recall, 90% reference whatever the indicators you see. So how do you navigate this brand as a brand manager or a CMO? And then you say no, it's not my job. Somebody else would have taken a call. No, it is our job as a leadership team. CMO and brand people are at the center of decisions. And you must need to influence such decisions there. Another example, Blockbuster. Blockbuster was a digital video and rental company. And it's not about the cockiness of the CEOs. Don't get them wrong. I don't think it's about arrogance. I think it's general blindedness. Because there is only that much a human brain can decipher and cognitively be able to analyze. Here is a CEO which gave a comment. Neither Red Box nor Netflix are even on the radar. They're not even on the radar. Forget about being a threat to me. They're not even in the radar in terms of competition. This is a quote given in December 2008 by the CEO of the largest content distribution company in US. And he went bankrupt 12 months later because of Netflix. 12 months. It was not even in the radar. And that company, which was not even in the radar, has $70 billion valuation today in the last seven, eight years. 2008, he makes a statement, 2009, he does not exist. Today's share price, if you check, the Google is minus 0.01 cent. It's bankrupt actually. So they're not even one cent. So a huge valuation that that company was at that point of time, about $13 to $14 billion. That could happen. So what's happening? Not just there. Is it technology? One can argue it's all technology. It's not technology. It could be products. It could be business models. Look at this. Is it technology? There is no technology in Patanji. Beyond what is known to human mankind for ages. But here he comes and not just one, but multiple, multinational existing for centuries, he disrupts them. And one can argue, is it disruption? Is it explosion? Is it just about getting market share? I think it's really disrupted the market. I was part of the levers and we had a milestone getting celebrated when we crossed 10,000 crore revenue somewhere towards the end of the century, after 100 years of levers existence. I think he does. He did 10,005 years. I understand. There is speed to it. But the way they are adding, and they're bold enough to say we'll do 20,000 before the end of the next three or four years. Now there is something happening which is shaking the marketeers and the equity and all our brand knowledge that all of us have known as a community in a big, big way. And one needs to watch out. Look at this. Again, lots of examples. There's nothing wrong with a black and yellow cab. It takes you to point A to point B. It's cheap. It's comfortable. You can get it at a raise of your hand. Yes, but something else comes and totally says, okay, end of it. Anything which has been leader for decades is extinct today. And anything which was born yesterday is becoming leader today. So what's happening? What's the role of you and me as brand marketeers in this era? And lots of them, not just global Indian examples. So this is the point I just want to leave you with with all the talk. Age, size, reputation, current sales, brand equity, intellectual property. Any or all of them in any combination used to be the most sustainable, competitive advantage for the brand. None of them guarantees our existence today. In lever used to debate aggressively, long back, even today, I'm sure in coffee shops, the debate, what is our comparative edge? What will sustain? And there was always a demand. Is it brands of levers or is it people of levers? And there was always this constant, okay, I will retain people because people will create brands. And then there was saying, no, no, no. People can come and go. Brands are long lasting. It's perennials. And they will always get people coming on board and taking them forward. Or distribution. I think one of the critical edge for distribution why nobody could catch levers was an early advantage in distribution in penetrating the small market. It could be any or all of them. But today, take it from me when I say none of them guarantee our existence. Because I can give you examples in each one of them of Indian and global examples. Take any of them. And I can give you five examples as to how the argument doesn't stand. So how do you build brands? When brand equity itself is not a guarantee. So you keep investing in brand equity, stronger brand, no guarantee. Tomorrow you can. Yeah, so you won't exist. What do you do? How do you build brands then? Sony. One of the top brands in 80s and 70s and we've all grown up to Sony as to how Lockman disrupted the two-in-one market. Completely disrupted it. And then it got disrupted by digital music. So you can be a brand of good tide one time, but then everybody has its day. iPhone is having a great ride or Apple is having a great ride for 10 years. Does that guarantee next 10 years? May not. May not. You may be surprised in 2025 there is a new Apple equivalent emerging and maybe Apple if it doesn't continue to obviously do things which are ahead of the times may not exist. So today if you have an idea it could be a billion dollar in no time. In fact it used to be taking on an average about 20 years to build a billion dollar company not very 20 years back. That is what the time was. To reach a billion dollars you'll need about 18 to 20 years if you're a top company. These companies on absolutely your left. Yeah, your YouTube, Instagram, they took anywhere between 2 to 5 years and we used to say wow, what a company. What a brand. Companies to your right have taken under 2 years. Pokemon Go, you would have heard about it just launched about a year and a half back did a billion in 4 billion in 4 weeks 4 billion value. Raymond after 93 years we cut a cake when we did a billion, 93 years. It took us to do a billion valuation. And we celebrated and the whole company went into a whole rejoice and jubilation. Pokemon Go did 4 billion in 4 weeks after it launched. Instagram or Snapchat you all heard. Oculus. Oculus founder was 18 years old, 19 years old. He didn't have money to launch that. VR. Crowd sourced money, 2 million dollars. That's it, he crowd sourced. He told all of us please give money I have an idea. So everybody gets 10 dollars, 20 dollars is that. In November 2012, I think he crowd sourced the money in 2013. In January 2015 he sells his company 14 months later for 2 billion dollars to Facebook. That's the kind of value getting created. Now obviously there is something happening which is making Oculus a brand. Not the CMO of Oculus. Not the brand manager of Snapchat. But the brand manager of Snapchat is having a great time right now. He's saying I manage Snapchat. Something else is happening. So what is happening is what we need to understand. The company is now obviously are short-lived and if you're not really getting the mix right not just the brand but the whole business mix right we're losing out. Now one can obviously argue okay change has always been a constant. So what's new? In 80s large chain, 90s world chain this has been my argument to myself. Saying but yeah market is have to be on the center of the customer and holistic and change. Is there something new? About this change which was not there 10 years back that I have been trained on. I have been conditioned on. The second thing is managing brands has always evolved. So again the question what's new? And these are the very very valid questions to ask there. So let me attempt and really solve that in the last 15 minutes of my section there. Change has always been constant yes but change has been linear and that is why human mind can decipher the change. Right from years back till about a few years maybe about 50 years back change has been a linear equation between the resource you throw and the output you get. One person X amount of job. Two people, two X, three people, three X that's the manual labor. You put animals in that if one man can do this kind of farm with a horse or bullet cart we can do double the farm. So double the animals, double the output. Then it became double the machines, double the output. So we know a machine has a certain output. It is going to give me 100 pieces a minute as a garment if I have 10 it's going to give me 1000 pieces a minute. As simple as that. So it was human mind can cognitive easily decide for that. But there came something called information technology and everything meant autopsy turvy and it's really in the last 10, 15 years we've started really understanding what or not even understanding we still are not able to grasp. My belief is in the last 10 years that humanity for the first time in this evolution is lagging technology because we're catching up and technology keeps running ahead of us. And why is it happening? Because the whole thing has become that the price performance ratio of every single thing which has information technology coming doubles every 2 years which basically means that if I have a drone which can go 1 kilometer at a cost of 1000 rupees with a 1 kg payload that's the current price equation 2018 pretty much with all the technology around that drone without you and me being there and that exists today in 2 years it will go 2 kilometers at half the cost and double the payload that's what is happening. Now just think about this it's the same analogy I have used with couple of forums there if I take 30 steps right now the linear steps and that's how human mind works I'll probably reach the end of the room and all of you here with the approximation of plus minus 5% can say where I'm going to be after 20 steps your mind can comprehend it and that's what we do forecast, predict the future history and we do linear equation because you know that but if I say I'm going to take 30 double steps first step is 1 second is 2 third is 4, 8, 16, 32 and I say where will I reach and somebody can probably say you'll reach end of Bombay somebody will say you'll cross maybe Maharashtra but that really means that I'm going to be 24 times a planet that's what it means so at some point of time it's a billion steps 1 billion steps it's not 30 steps 30 compounded is a billion step now when you compound it our minds are not attuned to really do it and that's exactly what happens so when 3D printing was launched or digital photography was launched it was in 1970s 1970s it was 0.001% it became next 2 years 0.002 price performance doubled cost half 0.002 to 0.004 to 0.008 at some point of time it's going to hit 1 then it's going to hit 24 8, 16, 32, 64 120 to 256,000 12 and then suddenly 1 to 2000 is going to happen very very quickly and that's the exponential curve so we use to the red and we've been confronted with the yellow and that's where if we are able to catch the curve it's a great opportunity if you're going to miss the curve you're going to be Nokia's and the Kodaks and other people how do we catch it that's the thing that's the chain that we're having every single industry every single brand India abroad no doesn't matter we'll go through infusion of technology and eventually we'll go through these 6 Ds that I'm going to talk about first is digitization it's bound to happen in every industry if it's not happening it's happening to your industry outside your company somewhere in the shed in Israel or somewhere in fact today the person I met for 3D printing which makes fabric redundant the current process is actually in Israeli sitting in Manchester and has already patented the technology across the world and which basically means he can produce at 1 million dollars 1 and a half million dollars half the output of my WAPI factory WAPI factory is 800 crores for me he can do it at 1 and a half million dollars half the output of my WAPI factory he demonstrated today to us initially it's probably 0.001 stage for this person it'll become 0.002 4 and then we'll have to see when it happens it could be 3, 5, 10, 15 years we don't know and then it goes to so it's very deceptive initially it's very deceptive it looks like typical legacy mindset big brands are saying yeah of course I know these are good gizmos there's a whole talk about variables in your t-shirts and all that which check your blood pressure gizmo has been there for 10 years I can understand that companies are doing it it's okay it looks like that eventually it's deceptive but then a few of these technology not all of them but a few of these technologies become disruptive and when they become disruptive like digital photography just think about it 1975 invented till 1995 deceptive 1997 2000 starts becoming disruptive 2011 the global leader goes bankrupt because what happens then first thing it does is dematerializes everything dematerialize means physicality of the product is over no need distribution is dematerialized today I don't need to have a physical store to sell my product it's completely dematerialized today we didn't really know to have a role and a processing lap of Kodak in the market to get pictures and print it's dematerialized today every single industry clothing will become dematerialized in some point of time in our lives then it goes to demonetization because once it dematerializes the cost, the marginal cost of creating that product is almost run down and then it's run down the physicality of the cost comes down and because the cost comes down it democratizes so this is a curve every single brand in the world is bound to go through in different times a lot of industry data has gone through it communication has gone through it photography has gone through it lots of industries have gone through it hotels are going through it travel is going through this already almost on those phases there these are going to go if you're in a traditional travel and traditional hotels today you have to worry about it because sooner it will be demonetized staying today in Paris I can get a place for ten dollars in ten minutes or earlier I used to book it well in advance there was no chance I could stay at that kind of money so everything is getting democratized today every single industry and not just this 3D printing IR I've given you some examples solar energy is today cheaper than cheaper than oil they say that oil will run out far before you and I think there since stone age ended not because stone got over in the planet oil age will end not because oil will get over yes something else will take over and that's the part that solar is going to play and the funny part here is about the change is that what we have seen till now is only 1% in the next ten years what we're going to see is 99% of it why because that's the rate at which the internet devices are going to connect and when internet devices connect they're going to do many things because it creates great and that's when humanity starts lagging because you cannot control your watch talking to your mobile phone and your mobile phone talking to your physician and your physician talking to a different device and then you cannot control that because it's outside of our purview and once it goes outside our purview human intelligence will make those machines create value that you and I can't imagine think about the cameras today there are 40 billion cameras on the planet today including satellite cameras they are going to go up to about 400 billion in the next ten years that's why the camera costs are really run down to peanuts today 40 billion cameras are 8 cameras per capita consumption all of us have 8 cameras today on our head somewhere there is no way the world is not watching everything we are doing with a resolution of 1 meter today if they want to and that's what world we are getting into if this is going to go up 100 times in the next ten years everything you do is wake up sleep this somewhere some camera is going to watch us and it's going to get recorded 99% of disruption is ahead of us and internet is the true global system as we go that diamonds being made today the technology which is scarce will be made as good and even the best judges can't do that which is scarce technology at $5 that's what we can do $5 and this technology the debuts is like keeping it under the feet because like Kodak because if it comes out it's going to demonetize diamonds and then everybody will have diamonds so the whole industry is destroying it think about every single thing everything is now Uber, Amazon there is going to be abundance of everything that you and I have known we are getting into the best time this planet has ever been we will have abundance of everything water will be free, energy will be free food will be free, education will be free because everything is going to get demonetized in the next 10, 15, 20 years for example in 1944 I think the entire planet will get lit by the ounce of any other energy and think about that's the price performance of solar so in 1944 that's going to happen 25 years from now in 2045 two planets can get lit in 2046 four planets are going to get lit just by solar energy that's the price performance ratio that's happening so clearly everything is going to be we are going to live in a lifetime where I don't know how many Germany has so much of surplus energy surplus technology, renewable energy that this Christmas they paid back people to burn energy because the storage cost of energy was more than burning it so you actually lit up your homes everything and you get money back you did the best here is 10 rupees that's the world you are getting into because the storage cost is not feasible it's better to throw back money at the customer that's the world you are getting into clothing this is an article last month what happens with it what happens when clothing gets demonetized what does Raymond do it's a very tough question because eventually we could have digital skins where in your mobile you can change it oh everybody is in yellow I forgot and I will just change the mobile application everything is yellow because digital skins and as I keep saying level of opaqueness is to the customer's discretion how much do you want to do so you could get into that era so how do you really run and demonetize and how do you play for that oversupply of everything ownership is going to come down the car ownership they are saying will be dead in US in 2025 you don't need cars they are going to be much better far better economical way more luxurious to travel to the customized way the customer wants to do that production costs are coming down I already told you this whole WAPI and this example that I took virtualization and decentralization is going up these are the 3 key drivers in the disruption era for all the brands at least for the next 5 years these are also going to change there is a world of virtual and digital connectedness which is obviously there and the next I think panel is going to talk about it just in time delivered if you don't want to own it I just want it then and just give me then I don't want to go wait I just want to wait for even checkouts out of a store how do you just give me walk out kind of service and I think Amazon has done some parody of work on that and hyper customization these are some of the things that are happening so this is given marginal cost of supply and marginal cost of demand are being driven down and that's creating the market power velocity its consumer is bored enough consumerism already and this is what is happening now the next 10 years this is what will happen only thing which is coming down was time resources and options are going up resources and options will go up exponentially and time will also start going up because then you don't need to own and keep and wait and everything all 3 things are going to go up 100% this is the trend that we are seeing how do you market in a era where there are enough options enough time enough resources there how do you become a marketer there so how do you manage the brand that's the last part I'm going to talk about another 5-7 minutes and really finish there these are the 3 things I want to leave you with if you really want to become a sustainable brand that's my view may not be the authoritarian or a recommendation here but it's just sharing my perspective with all the learnings that we are having first is really to envision the characteristics of our current brands in marketing and I'll talk about this a little bit second is why wait for others to disrupt self-disrupt it can demonetize but so be it you don't want to be a Nokia or a ODAC so self-disrupt how does that happen I'll talk about it and building ecosystems that's another way of sustainably there was something that Pidilai talked about echoes a lot with building ecosystems and in fact even the narrow presentation talked about that the whole era is getting extremely volatile we're living in a woke environment where time is compressed today complexity is very high new actors are emerging let me show you a picture all this couldn't have been a headline of any of the global magazine 5 years back none of them Trump didn't exist in our lexicon beyond Trump powers in New York or a project announced in Bombay you know the skim young whom obviously was not even an entity at that point of time or gender ads or strength is only going from strength to strength 2012 he was almost told that he won it by corruption and today it's 80% popularity for this man in Russia and virtually seen as the next conqueror who will make Russia to the superpower of the world things like those were not existing so what's happening look at this for a change the first time in the history of time no person is the person of the year it's me too hashtag me too so it's a movement with technology platform and that's the person of the first time the person of the year is not a person of the year that's what is happening so the first thing to do is to define the purpose of our brands and purpose of the brand is why do I exist what is the purpose of Raymond what is the purpose of Kodak and I think this is where at some point of time could have been in hindsight it's very easy to say but may have been the miss by the Kodak team when they said we are here is a technology digital in 1991 apparently it was presented in the board of Kodak that this is a digital technology this is the future and they said okay how do we make money and we make money through commercial roles and we do it through processing labs and we do it through our cameras and this is what analog photography is the model and they said this is free or almost will has a threat of becoming free so I said let's not get into it because our purpose was logged here for the brand but that's not the purpose the purpose of Kodak was preserving moments now if they would have really got preserving memories photography is not about camera roles and processing lab it's all about in humanity in emotional terms it's about just preserving a memory that's why we click photographs if that was the purpose if a board would have used that to see the decision digital was preserving memory in a more competitive way more cost effective way for a brand called Kodak then the camera roles and maybe the decision would have been different but that's not good enough a lot of brands have great purpose Nokia had a very clearly defined our purpose is connecting people we will connect people then we need to connect people the way people are getting connected in the era you cannot then get logged to the way you want to connect people Nokia was logged into Symbian which is obviously software which or the operating system which got disrupted by and then IOS these are the two things we disrupted or they got logged into multi-media phones now they said at some point of time this is a discussion obviously my personal experience Nokia got logged into saying we are creating a world of multi-media phones so let's make our phones better on music better on camera better on this but then you are about connecting people and so just by having purpose not good enough a guarantee that you are going to live with that so we discussed what is Raymond's purpose I'm just giving you my example because obviously this is a brand that I can talk about so we started this work here and we said are we talking about cloth tharn, meter, Raymond shops or are we about something else so we are about wardrobe solutions but are we about wardrobe solutions we are probably a big and then wardrobe solution if it's about a digital skin so be it why is Raymond not offering a digital skin if it's about a design why is Raymond not offering a design kind of a thought process there and then finally why do we exist what is the deeper motive for Raymond to exist is it about making people look good or actually because they look good they feel good those kind of questions and they did not think that they are not concrete answers but at least there is an exploration journey that we are going to and that's the phase that currently we are in 2017 to 20 we are trying to do and then build the organization further the second thing I want to leave you with most of the brand and market is are really time is up but I take another fight and we are just to big build the concept here all of us know we work with 3 to 5 year plans and I am actually standing here with a live telecast saying 3 to 5 year plans are dead because we are living in super book environment things change everybody in this room I can pretty much watch for you on your behalf has never had a plan which is static for 3 to 5 years you would have changed the 3 to 5 year plans every year for the next 3 to 5 years again you change it because assumptions change so to make and commit resources 3 to 5 years ahead of time and the strategy is absurd the way it works is zoom out and zoom in and that's what I am actually recommending and proposing to the team here once you are clear with your purpose you are about preserving memories you are about making people feel good because they look good you say ok 2030 2040 I don't know 10, 15 year horizon whatever seems ok we will continue to be about preserving memories in that era and then come very quickly to 6 month horizon and work to make sure that milestone whatever is there is being done while you are managing everyday business anything beyond the 6 months to 12 month horizon is ridiculous at this point of time how to measure zoom out and zoom in is very important and that you should decide and look at nothing else nothing else zoom out, zoom in, zoom in is the metric and look at nothing else second so that's the first thing second is self disrupt I will give an example how you are trying to do that why don't we disrupt ourselves before somebody else disrupts is the point I am trying to make and the way to do it is very simple every value chain into 6Ds every single value chain every single node of a value chain must go through this filter to find out what could be digitized because anything in your value chain if it can be digitized it is getting digitized so it's better that you digitize it because very soon the deceptive will become disruptive and disruptive will demonetize and the thing will go away supply chain one of the biggest capital block for Raymond is supply chain today 30% of my cash gets blocked because textile is about supply chain you go out you need to have 100 designs and 100 products there because you want to choose one of them why should I have 100 because you eventually will write just one you will not buy 99 and it's not that 99 you are getting sold in the next minute so all things can get disrupted so these are the thoughts that really go and then you say how do I do that and once you do that then you really start saying how do I do that to myself is the point so what we did in again I am taking a Raymond I am taking an example to illustrate my point here we picked up two months back we did this next generation conference about next zoom out conference in 2017 2017 October and we picked out from there it was only for under 30 people in Raymond nobody else was allowed only all channel across the country global partners everybody is under 30 if you are 31 you are not allowed in that conference to really dream and create a possible zoom out scenario because they are living in a different world or that we picked up 12 bright minds of Raymond and we told them only one brief derail Raymond this is the only brief you have come back in November present to the chairman and the board of the company that if you are given as much of money as you want hypothetically at this point of time assume you have all the resources and technologies at your disposal just go and derail Raymond finish my company finish a node of my company finish one value chain of my company digitize democratize demonetize whatever you want to do and these people came with three ideas in November they are three teams which obviously got formed and they said ok they could be 3d printing which could disrupt potentially disrupt not that everything is going to work but potentially the team feels that this is possible another team which came and saying how do we eliminate physical retail we take a lot of pride in Raymond saying I am the largest physical retailer with 1500 Raymond stores in the country reaching 600 towns they are saying we can eliminate in one year you don't need any of them and still we will service the customer better than you are doing possible and how do you change the way you are selling looks and experience rather than selling kappa and functionality and designs in style so that could be another way of disrupting Raymond I am not going to take through the recommendation but just to say that that is one way to do it and look at this, this is the last two months this is some pictures of Mr. Singhanya Raymond chairman interacting with each of these technologies about how to disrupt Raymond in 3d physical retail and the last one is really eliminating the looks and experience that's the president of suiting business there so all then the next job for a marketer and a brand is to really seize the imagination of the board and the chairman and the CEO and tell them please come, I will tell you how our brand is going to get disrupted not because of the brand equity getting indexed in MP or Gujarat or my share being less this could potentially threaten us the second part of this is never mix this is a mistake we all make we always try to get these new ideas with the core business never mix with the core, such ideas put it in core will die in no time because corporate antibodies are very strong to really say not invented here and push it transformation in organization is a political process it is not a logical process don't believe anybody who says it's a rational process it's a political process and in political process you don't want to get disruptive ideas getting subjugated or derailed because of the internal dynamics, human dynamics there keep them away, satellites, scale edges not with the core separate and once you do that use a skunk work method what is skunk work? small teams 3 to 4, 6 people like little little start-ups we are formulating a company called Raymond Ventures Ltd in which we are just taking these people out or getting people from outside actually and putting a few people there in each idea but never more than 8, never less than 3 and multiple skilled people very different not textile, maybe technology, maybe supply chain maybe blockchain, whosoever comes there and then start there and the second mistake we make when we are a big company like we are and a lot of industries are or brands are we think what do we have? we don't have money we have money, so we gave 2 million dollars for the idea that's the biggest mistake we make we should starve the edge because the moment short cut to success is never money never, it's always the idea and by putting money we are starving the idea and hence we need to starve the edge that's the third thing we need to do and then it has to be seen by top management they are killed there these are some mantras about how do you disrupt because if you start disrupting with this structure it has some chances to succeed but if you disrupt with some other structure nothing because of the disruptive idea because of the structure itself it will get killed and the last one is building an ecosystem some people talked about it and it's very important because we were differentiating our brands on our content, our products in our service and a lot of brands are stuck here but believe me every of these areas will get digitized these areas will get disrupted suddenly we will come and take away some of these things and so will happen to all ours of the world will happen to each of these brands in their own respect, in their own category the moment we start then what does a brand marketer do he starts creating entry barriers for even technology and disruption to come in, how? by creating platforms, by creating ecosystems and not just that let me give you another example before I end what we are doing in Raymond is to create a huge tailoring ecosystem by a loose definition till about last year we had 5,000 tailors attached with 500 or 1,000 Raymond shops 1,000 to 1,500 Raymond shops so 3 to 4 tailors per shop one tailor and one master tailor so 4 to 5,000 tailors and we said the biggest bottleneck today is a shrinking tailoring ecosystem and what can we deliver which others can't this customization is a tailored cloth could we dramatically increase it to 1 lakh tailors because the moment it's like painters for narrow lock and maybe the car painters for Pidelight we looked at that and not just that we really go and upskill them raise their capability raise the technology so that nobody can match that now how can a technology beat a customization where tailor is trained latest equipment total dignity is restored back economy is taken up a tailor was earning 8,500 rupees before Raymond got into this last 12 months today he earning 18,000 rupees because of Raymond coming in and taking the technology up so we created massive ecosystem not 3 to 1 year takes 3 to 5 years to really do that but who else than the market leading brand to do that so in the last 1 year this is progress we've already made we have set that center of excellence in our company everybody is welcome to come and really see it's a R&D for the world of tailoring is there absolutely the cutting edge tailoring tailoring advisory board with people from Savile Row in London are there at the chair of the advisory board right now the ones who dress up the queen there to 25 tailoring factories we've opened in 1 year we open factory of tailoring every 2 months 2 weeks to a store every day Raymond store coming up has been spoke model and then we are going into online tailoring where you press a button and if we get a tailor send to your house and deliver a cloth to you in express service in 48 hours to normal service which could be 7 to 10 days but the combination of each of these 3 things still doesn't secure a digital disruption for the industry but it dramatically increases my staying power for a long time as a brand because these things will take a decade for even digital disruptions to manage so while we'll do that at the edge we should do this at the core building ecosystems look at Musk Panasonic partnership with Panasonic surprised everybody he's into car and what is he doing into batteries but basically he was trying to make it cheaper because eventually battery is one third of the cost of the car so if battery is driven down because of the scale that he has in the vision he has the cars will become cheaper and the cars will become the cheaper of the cheapest cars diesel cars or petrol cars in US or planet and then suddenly electric cars is the only industry left so that's what he's doing and look how he's driven the price back this is 2010 $1000 is now 100 dollars almost $200 now 80% reduction in the cost of lithium ion electric batteries which are used in Tesla and now it's being used by Nissan and Ford and everybody there everybody benefits but he's okay let everybody benefit look at the statement Tesla other companies making electric cars he's okay with that the world would benefit by a rapidly evolving technology platform but what it gives Musk is the first mover in a platform which he controls and really puts his models ahead of everybody by the other's catch up and this is the way the electric car demand is going up so this is the second part about this thing is uncommon partnerships are critical we must explore as brand we're not used to it you never know where the big is going to come from is it going to come from government bodies, NGOs we have a partnership with Cornell University now in New York, fabric technology we're looking at startups we're looking at some imaginarium or digital startup company in Andheri now Raymond wouldn't have looked at it because we would have looked at Italian manufacturers Chinese, big machines, big this we're looking at government agencies which are looking at skilling the manpower in India we're skilling tailors and that's an uncommon partnership for us we're not used to it but we must get used to it that's what we're trying to embrace there so that's the third one so eventually it's about these three things to build readiness for the disruptive era and I tell you this is what I want to leave you with this last chart the greatest danger is not turbulence it's acting with yesterday's logic and the problem with human mind is to drive for tomorrow's rational so we need to take some funds and I have given you some some indicators of how to take up money thank you thank you very much Mr. Belf for that very engaging presentation I'd like to request Mr. Ram Mehrodra to kindly come on the stage to give a token of our appreciation we have an excellent thank you very much we have an ad of Raymond which is not on air yet let me put it as I think getting released today I don't know how many people have seen it on digital but just it's a 60 seconds bear with me it's the latest ad of Raymond in black I see things you don't flawless like a knight that roars with elegance selfless like a slate that wants to elevate every bit of your chalky musics fluid like the drape that takes your shape as you conquer every cityscape hopeful like the dawn that promises to spawn a yarn that makes the past uh black is quiet as a hush that says your presence needn't rush to make itself felt black is unapologetically creative like a poet who doesn't give a dime about the rhyme as long as there's reason I see restlessness I see calm I see a lot of things and it all begins with black once again thank you very much Mr. Belf thank you