 Hello, everyone. Today we have with us Mr. Rahul Falwar, who is the CMO for Max Life Insurance. And I have a few questions for him and we hope to have a very meaningful engagement. So, hi Rahul, how are you doing? I'm good. Thank you, Ritika. Thank you for having me over and I'm looking forward to the interaction. Same here. Always a pleasure having you. So Rahul, first of all, I really wanted to understand, you know, you have come out with two, you know, ads, TVC's back to back for this campaign that you're doing. So what was the insight behind this campaign and how are you like looking at it as a overall campaign? So thanks, Ritika, for the question. Good question. I'll just maybe set the context and then maybe share with you the key insights that's helped us build this entire campaign together. So, we've known all this while that life insurance is fairly important. And we also understand that there is good amount of mind share in terms of our consumers wanting to have the right life insurance. Equally, we believe that there needs to be more action from our consumers at large to be able to have the right life insurance. There's a very famous saying which says that life insurance is best bought yesterday. And thanks to the pandemic and to the post pandemic world that we are all in, I think there is good amount of interest that we see consumers showing in life insurance in general. So that's the big context. Max life insurance, Ritika, what we have done over time, and as you were building up to this particular campaign, we have tried to ensure that versus looking at life insurance as a burdensome responsibility. We have tried to look at it from the perspective of trying to celebrate the breadwinner because we've realized that life insurance bought under fearsome mindset versus life insurance bought under this entire liberating mindset. It's a completely different way of pitching life insurance as a product and that's where a max life insurance is trying to be a differentiator. Equally, what we have done in the build up to this campaign, Ritika, is that we realize that this entire category is actually anchored on a very important parameter called trust. Because end of the day we are in a long term relationship with our customers which could be anywhere between 10 years to 40 years depending how early do you buy the right life insurance. And we believe that long term trust or Barossa is one of the anchor points that we have used so far on max life insurance. The big motto Ritika that we work with to put all of these things together is this big philosophy of what I call as hashtag ABC DE, which is an always on brand for our consumers or customers, distributors, who are our partners and our employees are given the kind of scale and presence that max life insurance has in in trying to build up a typical marketing campaign. And the thought that we anchor this on under the philosophy of celebrating the breadwinner is our communication platform called you are the difference. And, and we say that what we do as breadwinners or as family members for our loved ones in our normal life, the same habit needs to be extended when you're looking at evaluating the right life insurance. What we have also done, knowing that millennials are a big, big segment for this category. Over time, while we were always on an influencer driven strategy for for the last 24 odd months. We realize that it's right time for max life insurance to step up our energies on the space of celebrities, and looking at the kind of stature that max life insurance has across the country. We went ahead in this partnership with Rohit and Ritika. Why Ritika again, because we believe max life insurance is a progressive brand, a brand that tries to propagate this philosophy of mindful living, and in mindful living, the partner with the breadwinner plays an important role. And we believe that the woman of the house, irrespective of being a working women or a non working women, we believe that she plays an important role in the financial planning decision making. And that's why we brought both of them together. We believe that they are again, a real life young family couple which embodies this entire flavor of mindful living. Life insurance on the product side Ritika talks about protection, which is term insurance, and the larger space of saving plans which is which comes under the theme of guarantees. So when we try and put all of these pieces together is where we got the big insight of trying to build you are the difference as our platform with Rohit and Ritika forward anchoring them very very closely in the space of protection. Where the reason to believe is our ever performing and ever consistent Baroseka number, which is the claims performance that we deliver to and and and we have been consistently trying to occupy an industry leadership position over there so so that's one on on the other guarantees or savings platform side. Again, you are the difference with Ritika and Rohit came together with the reason to believe to say that our savings plan would take care of your future goals of their future planning that that they have for their loved ones as our prospects or young families under the theme of guarantees and and all of this came together in these two back to back ads that you would have seen under this entire flavor of you are the difference. Just another point, while we're talking of ads, we know that today a lot of viewers and consumers are now consuming content across multiple screens. So these campaigns are integrated campaigns which cut across all screens, and we move from the philosophy of being releasing a TV to releasing an AV, because we go on mobile, we go on desktops, we go on connected televisions and we go on TV. So to cut a long story short for you. This is what you are the difference does with Rohit and Ritika together as the face of the campaign. And we continue to ensure that we celebrate the breadwinner. I think that's a very important aspect of what we do with the flavor of positivity around the space of life insurance. Absolutely and you've answered like two or three of my questions in one go because of course I was going to ask you because Rohit Sharma brings up particular brand value but why Ritika Sajde for a life insurance brand but you know that that's an energy that you spoke about is yeah that makes sense. And also what happens just another point because you spoke about Ritika specifically. I think what happens is that because life insurance is a very real conversation and fundamentally it's a conversation which has a lot of gravitas around it. I think what what happens is that the minute you're able to bring back a real life young family couple to talk about this conversation. You're just able to give that much amount of Philip to this entire piece. So I think that's this entire objective of ensuring that we bring back the value of being real. That's one. Also our intention is to ensure that much like our product innovates itself and we are able to bring out propositions which targets the women who have not been specifically targeted by any other brand in the category so far by having Ritika and Rohit together. We bring this conversation direct in front of our women consumers and very proud to say that this philosophy of being a progressive brand appreciating the role of the breadwinner plus the woman of the house is something that MaxLive is on and it's a part of our journey in a very strategic way. And also India is a country with a very little internet sorry insurance penetration with internet penetration increasing people are getting aware but we are quite not there yet when it comes to insurance. So I'm sure your TG is very you know like demographically it's a large TG. So how are you communicating to that TG in order to create awareness when it comes to insurance or financial planning. Again great question. I think fundamentally three points. First I think the category at large with all the players together supported by the regulator. I think we have collectively taken upon ourselves to ensure that we need to ensure that the penetration of life insurance starts coming ahead. I think with the new chairman at the regulator that's a very key agenda that that is being driven by by all players collectively Max Life Insurance Ritika has been a fairly responsible player when it comes to talking about financial literacy and awareness around financial planning. Many of our thought leader platforms that we that we work with in an ecosystem. I'll name a few. We run this platform called the India protection quotient, which is a program that we run in partnership with a credible research partner called Kantar. And what do we do over there we go and talk talk to 5000 plus respondents to be able to understand what do they feel about financial protection and we do this every year in fact we are running the fifth year edition as we speak. Second, we run another platform on the thought leader side to be able to look at India retirement index study. What does that do. We know India is a young country. We know that with thanks to the pandemic and post pandemic, there is a feeling that we need to plan for our future a lot earlier versus again leaving it for too late to be able to gauge the sentiment around what are Indians feeling around planning for the retirement early. So coming back to the second point that I made is that max live insurance responsibility of being a brand and up and a player which talks about financial literacy is in many ways to be able to bring out these insights and to be able to place them in front of our prospects and and key opinion leaders to be able to again propagate this across multiple media touch points. Third, most importantly, coming very close to the question that you are specifically. I commonly believe that the world of customers have a magic mantra which is sitting in the word called customer and if you look at the word called customer there's something called sandwiched between the C as a letter and are as the last letter, which carries us to me. So what are consumers saying the mantra over here is come and talk to me come and talk to me individually customized personalized enable me on the do it yourself journeys to be able to ensure that you offer me flexibility. And like you rightly said India being a fairly large scale country and the kind of customers that we work with. I think we need to be able to cater to multiple choices of our target audience and of our customers. In terms of reaching out to them, like I mentioned in my earlier response. We understand that today our consumers much like you and me and many like you and many like me consume content across multiple screens. And we need to be able to offer an omnichannel experience as max life insurance to our customers. So we would have a central content repository with the car, which in turn gets adapted to various screens, or various media touch points that we have. So we would have a television commercial for traditional TV as we know it, we would customize the same for connected TV because we realize that a lot of consumption is happening to connected TV. We would equally customize the same content for our OTT platforms which may get consumed largely around mobile. And there is an always on a digital push that happens on our content to be able to build this entire play across the funnel top of the funnel, mid funnel and bottom of the funnel. So the intention of all of this is to ensure that from trying to talk about why life insurance, we are able to transition to a space called what life insurance. Because I think the minute we understand or help our consumers or customers understand what life insurance we know that we are moving around down the right path. Yeah, absolutely. So digressing a little bit from, you know, what we're talking about but you know consumer experience is at the core for any brand. And especially in a category like insurance, insurance is a category where people buy insurance, but they hope that they don't actually have to use it. And then they do, they need to be provided a seamless experience, a very, you know, smooth claim claiming process and all of that. So how are you leading your communications marketing and your entire, you know, customer experience in a way that it's seamless. I think largely Ritika, again, a quick context point customers today from max life insurance or from life insurance as a category is is seeking two things, one, a degree of goodwill. Goodwill is all about that when I need my money if at all I need my money. I get that experience hassle free. And second, they are looking for brands that customers can admire long term admiration. And max life insurance over time for the 22 years that we've been around. I think there is a very seamless DNA that runs across everything that we do keeping customer at the core is a value called customer obsession. And I think that's a very deeply rooted in everything that we that we do. And in audit focus on digitization on being able to look at the digital gateway, not only for selling our life insurance plans, but to be able to also give them an experience post selling or onboarding. In terms of having do it yourself journeys. It's also about Ritika very, very important to have the word called empathy, when we are communicating to our customers, because we realize that we may be a passive category traditionally. And thanks to the awareness and the age of our customers in terms of when they're getting on boarded. There is a good degree of empathetic communication that plays a very important role. So, I think interestingly, what we do in terms of our digital experience, whether it's through the onboarding process in terms of having unified payments or having RQR codes for self servicing, or more importantly, adopting SAP as a communication platform, because what we realize very clearly is that the day of having a monologue conversations are over, and it's all about having a dialogue and having a dialogue in the preferred platform of our customers. We also have a huge artificial intelligence engine that runs behind at the back end of what we do to be able to again enhance our our experience. There are many industry firsts like voice to text analytics that we that we would be using. There are unique offers about buy now pay later, which is again something which are new to this category while we've been consuming such features in categories like travel in bookings etc. And overall, the idea is that whether we have a prospect top of the funnel, or a customer at the bottom of the funnel, digitization and digital runs across this entire omni channel customer experience. And, and like we like I said to recap customer obsession sits at the center of all of this. Absolutely. And you talked about, you know, digitization and the whole online part of it. And when we talk about that, there is a whole new TG to explore the Gen Z is coming on board they are getting more financially aware. So what are the opportunities looking like when it comes to online insurance the challenges that you see. I think interestingly what what's happening. Like I said, in the beginning of our conversation that life insurance is best bought yesterday. I think with this newer audience of Gen Z and and overlapping with millennials, that's becoming more and more important for this category. I think it's very important that we are able to have conversations with this audience. And when you have conversations you have conversations which end up having a kind of a dialogue that's one. And in this conversation, the idea very clearly is to be able to help them understand what differentiates us to be able to ensure that we are able to partner with them in making the right life insurance choices. Also interestingly that the car what's happening is that today with the evolution of information that's available and this entire piece of having informed decision making that sits at the back of our minds and even for people like you and me are relevant target audience whether you look at Gen Z or overlapping with millennials or even the older ones. I think they fairly understand what kind of insurance choices do they need to make the question over there for them is going to be. That are they able to relate to a brand or a brand conversation in trying to make that decision. They're also looking for something that that we are very proud about at Max Life Insurance is a huge degree of flexibility. Two specific things that will stand out in the post pandemic world is this larger value of safety and this larger than life value of flexibility, whether you look at in the way we are working at work, whether you look at in the way we are consuming a lot of content you need to have a lot of control in your hands and that's what we try and offer to our Gen Z consumers in terms of our digital and social strategy. It's again, it's about being able to put out content in the language of our audience, it's to be able to put out content that's relatable and that's relevant. Like I said, gone are the days when life insurance could do fearsome conversations. It's about having more liberating and celebratory conversations, even when by the way, you're talking about pitching a term insurance to a Gen Z, which is the purest form of life insurance. It needs to be done in a far more progressive and a celebratory way. Also, I think again, with me, my team and my partner ecosystem that we work with across the board on the creative side media or on the insight inside. The idea is to be able to triangulate a lot of insights, which are available to us. We work very closely with partners like like Policy Bazaar and other partners that we have in the ecosystem to understand what does first hand data telling us, and the kind of direct to consumer business that we have Ritika at Max Life Insurance. We are able to keep a pulse on on these trends. And hence, I believe that whether it's Gen Z more importantly today, or the larger part of millennials, Max Life Insurance is able to understand their pulse fairly well. Another part of your target audience, I've been talking about this a lot, but yeah, so, you know, apart from the age demographics and all of that, location wise also when you're communicating to a tier two or a tier three, you know, city or a town. So then, you know, there are consumers that I believe need to be told in a more, you know, preachy manner as compared to a Gen Z or a millennial who would not like to, you know, hear it that way. So how are you striking a balance when it comes to, you know, speaking to an overall target audience but also in a sort of way personalizing communication for a particular segment. I think, I think today's media opportunities that are available to be able to spread content. I think is is a very important lever that we end up using in trying to ensure that what do we talk at large on at an umbrella level and then when we are talking on a one on one basis what do we use and and and thanks to the balance that we have a reticca between traditional media choices and more new age sharp digital media choices. We are able to strike that balance. Interestingly, like I mentioned earlier, the kind of work that we do in a thought leader way with a lot of respondents coming in from tier two, tier three, under platforms like India protection quotient or India retirement index study. So what we realized is that media habits and media consumption habits are fairly universal. Thanks to the penetration of mobile of internet connectivity of data mobility. We realize that this entire multiple screen phenomena is is so even when you look at your two tier three. However, what's becoming more important is this entire play of vernacular, because what we realize very clearly that to be able to cut across the message in in the right way. Not only do we need to have the right choice of media deployment. We also need to be able to customize content in the language of of the state or the region that we are talking to. And and max life insurance also tries and does that balance fairly well. Also, what comes out a little more interestingly, when you look at tier two, tier three, that the choice of celebrity that we have, which is in the form of again Rohit supported by by retica in this partnership of a young family. We realize that the kind of cut through that we see that that he has again thanks to the stature that he commands in the profession that he's from. I think also allows us to not only relate, not only respondents or consumers from tier two, tier three relate to the message, but also be able to retain that message. So I think that's the power of of this entire integrated marketing execution that we have. Right. Also, we're having this conversation in the end of the year. So what have been the key takeaways from this year. What are the learnings and any trends that you're expecting in the life insurance segment in 2023. Again, life insurance is the category that's been here for the longest while and will continue to have why because it's one of the most important, important parts of financial planning. And I think a lot of work that the industry is doing that max life insurance is doing is to keep re emphasizing the importance of life insurance. And like I said, the aim is to transition from why life insurance to what life insurance. And a few trends that I believe which we would, which would get highlighted as we step into 2023. One, I believe product innovation is going to play a key role and and and could end up being a good differentiator. I believe online presence and and being able to offer experiences or offerings which are digitally native, which would again be something that that would step up more action and more energy from from the industry and even from the consumer side. Also, there's going to be a bit of flavor and a bit of heightened awareness that will come in from this entire conversation around ESG. And while there has always been a very passive conversations around either CSR earlier or diversity and inclusion, but I believe that the larger umbrella of ESG is going to start more action. Max life insurance by the way in this financial year that we're just concluding launched a specific product with an ESG fund. So I think we are already on that journey, but to be able to again make this into a competitive differentiator. I think I think you'll see some more action over there. Lastly, but more most importantly, like I said, there is an us to me hidden in the word customer and hence hyper personalization, more friction less journeys and to be able to keep this customer experience as much as possible, flexible, yet relatable and frictionless. I think that's going to be the key mantra for 2023 that that I foresee as we step into it. You spoke a lot about digital. So when it comes to your overall marketing budget, do you see digital numbers going up? Well, I'm not authorized to speak about numbers in particular. In a sense of percentage of that. So, so, so the way we have looked at this very, very clearly is that I used the word integrated marketing campaigns a lot. And when I say an integrated marketing campaign on the brand today, you could deploy the same message on digital, or you could deploy by the way on television under the phenomena called connected TV versus traditional TV. So we are going to be fairly balanced in the way we spend monies on digital and non digital deployments that we do. I think I think that's that's the view that we always take. And like I said, we are completely in tune with what the consumer or customer is wanting us to to seek as trends to be able to say that we are partners with them in this journey versus being an in the face brand. I think I think that's the intention and aspiration that we have. So walking the talk. Absolutely. Anything else that you'd like to add? I just would using this platform and to the viewers. I just like to wish them a very happy new year and and and also a great start to 2023. I always say this, there's a big heightened conversation that you'll see effective first Jan, a new year resolution, new habits, old habits to be dropped. So I'm going to request all viewers, if not already insured using a life insurance, please have one resolution for the year that have the right life insurance and do remember Max life insurance is in in this journey of being your friend. Thank you. That sounds like a plan and wishing you a very happy new year as well. Thank you so much for doing this today. Thank you for your time. It was a great pleasure having you here and interacting with you. Thank you. Thanks a lot and happy new year to you as well. Thank you very much. Thank you.