 One of the biggest blockbuster success in the Indian FMCG space has been Pulse Candy which crossed rupees 150 crores within a year of its launch and changed the dynamics in the hard boiled candy segment. The person credited with this success is our next speaker. So ladies and gentlemen please put your hands together as we welcome on stage Mr. Shashank Surana VP new product development TS group who will be speaking on the topic. You can applaud my friends louder. Building brand the influencer way. Let's welcome him on stage. Okay. Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for that introduction. I would say the entire team was responsible. I cannot alone be credited to the success. For the next few minutes I'm going to share my thoughts on the new influencer paradigm in India. And how is it helping brands in building that brands? How is this influencers helping in building the brands? It's interesting. This is an interesting slide. We all know Mr. Amitabh Bachchan. I think he needs no introduction here. He has been the biggest influencer in the past and even now he continues to be. But what is more important to see here is that who is Mr. Amit Bandana? He is a new age influencer influencing large masters today with his content in the digital medium. Let's go back in time. In 1990s things were dramatically different. There were very few people influencing the masses and those few people just came from either Bollywood or sports. You'd agree. And brands had only these few faces amongst themselves and they recycled it over and over again. Let's have a look at the typical endorsement brands used to do in that era. I think this person needs no introduction again, Mr. Sachin Tendulkar. He's referred to as the god of cricket. And every brand wanted a piece of Mr. Sachin Tendulkar. And I would like to cite an instance here. I was influenced by one of his brands that he was endorsing, which was MRF. I was a cricket enthusiastic myself and I wanted to play cricket and do batting. And I wanted an MRF bat just because Sachin uses that bat to play like Sachin. That was the powerful influence he had on me. And he was endorsing too many brands in that era. And that led to a pitfall. Sometimes brands compromise on the reach, visibility, storytelling when he's endorsing so many brands. Then came the new digital revolution. And this digital revolution, I think, is a boon for all of our marketeers and influencers. It's interesting to notice here that today one-third of the population owns a smartphone. And by 2020, this is going to double, almost double. I think I just mentioned one-third of the population have a smartphone. They're actually carrying knowledge and entertainment in our pockets today. With the emergence of the digital age, there came a lot. Digital platforms were born. And these digital platforms, the interesting thing to notice here is that the amount of reach that they have garnered over this decade and the amount of time people are spending on these platforms, it's really encouraging for us marketeers and influencers. Let's just tap into this golden mind. This is the digital era, the digital revolution. I just talked about the celebrity influencers which have been there in the past. They have been there. They are currently now also. They'll be there in the future. But what is more important to see here is the two other levels of influencers that have added with the digital revolution. They are the macro influencers and the micro influencers. The macro influencers are basically area domain. They're expert in the area domains. And the micro influencers are people like you and I. And I would just take an example here. Whenever anybody wants to buy a smartphone or a TV or a tablet here, are we just buying it by seeing an advertisement? I think the answer to that is no. We are seeing, we are following, we are seeing the blogs of the area expert to get that technical knowledge. And we are also talking to our peers, our subordinates and people at large to understand their experiences about the product and then making a final decision on what we need to buy. And the other two layers that I was just talking about, the micro and the micro influencers, what they lend today is lot more authenticity. And you would agree with me there. And that authenticity is really important. Today, if you want to buy a product, we, from online, say for example, online, the biggest e-marketplace, one of the biggest players in the e-marketplace is Amazon. And Amazon, if you want to buy a product at Amazon, we just don't see the product and buy it. We first see the ratings of the product and we also see the product reviews and then make a decision on buying it. Similar is the case with Zomato. Today, we don't see the menu first. We see the restaurant first and the ratings of the restaurant before ordering the food. With the emergence of the digital era, this second part, this is the engagement, is a very, very integral part. Awareness has always been there. It will be there. It is a large part of our marketers to have their awareness to our brands. But what is equally important today is the engagement. And engaging with your consumers directly and transparently, that is very, very important. I would like to present to you a case study on pulse, that how pulse, how influencers were an integral part of the success of the brand pulse. We at DS Group, we have a diversified conglomerate with interest in many business areas. We have a legacy of nine decades and our core competence lies in understanding the Indian flavors and pregnancies. For the last nine decades, we are understanding consumer taste and preferences. Brand influencers have been very integral part, as I mentioned today, but they were equally important in the earlier era. But what has changed? The change that has happened is that in the earlier times, the brand, when it was getting, the time taken for the brand to get successful was much more than what it is having today. Because of the influence of digital era, digital age, and because we can communicate to our consumers now, and a large base of consumers to get in one go. So I talked about pulse. I just, we have a video here, and this is how pulse was, when we launched pulse, this is how we got the response for pulse. This was the starting of pulse. People started talking about the brand pulse, their experiences, and celebrities also became fans of our products. Some of the celebrity quotes about their experiences with pulse. Last one is a candy. I've got it open here for you. Now you need to take your time with this one. The only heads up I'm going to give you is that the flavors keep changing. So it's kind of savory. Yeah, for everybody else, pulse candy, you know it's coming up. This is available at every little barn or cigarette shop around the city. Everybody loves it. That's like acid potato in there? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, a little bit of that. So you've got sour, got sweet, got that sulfurous acid deceit, FS, can't speak. Is that orange, look at that. So is that cumin or not cinnamon, it's cumin. Cumin, yeah. Most of you would know he is the Michelin star chef, one of the world's best chef. He was recommending Pulse. That's the power of influence. And since we had a lot of fans, and these fans were our advocates, they started recommending their product to in their social circles, to their peers, to their friends and family. This was majorly happening online, but things were also offline. Our retailers, trade partners, everybody was an influencer for Pulse. So we have talked about the influencers. There's also a site to the influencers is success, when a brand is successful, there's a lot of counterfeits that come. And with Pulse, we had faced the same phase. We had a lot of counterfeits, more than 50 counterfeits available. And some of them were looked like, exactly like Pulse, just slight intervention in the name. And the problem that happened was that a lot of consumers, by mistake, had the product, counterfeit product, and they had a bad experience. And then when they had a bad experience, they started to write about it on the social handles. It's very simple now. And the interesting thing here to notice that there in the social space, we had a huge amount of influencers which had already faced this problem. They came out first, before we came out to the public at large, they came out first and educated those people. That is the power of influence. Media, a very big influence again. Please have a look. It's a 6,000 crore market. I'm talking about sweet candy. And a third of that is owned by hard boiled candy which is approximately 2,100 crores. The DS Group's Pulse has achieved a sales of 100 crores in eight months. Take a look. You're talking, for example, about dump smashes that your fans have made. That essentially is social media. And social media is playing a very crucial role when a lot of brands are concerned. It was a time when Pulse was sold at a premium of 50% to its MRP, but I'm not going to take any chances with Pulse. I'm taking the entire jar back home. Well, they can't keep pace with the demand. Production is... I haven't tried that yet. I haven't tried it, but I know everybody in our Bombay office is addicted to Pulse candy. I think most of the offices would have had this scene. And it is very important to have a great product for all of this to happen. With this, we also had a large amount of impressions in the social media space. We are still influencing the masses, but slightly differently. Please have a look. Karan. Thank you. Have Pulse and live good life. It's a very sour thing in the middle. I like sour things. See, if you want to eat Pulse, don't go for Pulse. Look at everything. Open your mouth. Look at everything. I don't like anything. Oh, dear. Pulse candy. Pulse candy. If you haven't tried Pulse, you haven't tried anything. You haven't tried anything. How is it? It's a bit sour. The last one was a bit sour. Oh, okay. But it will teach you all. Yeah. Pulse. Live good life. Pulse candy. It's a chocolate. Zero candy. What's its name? Pulse zero. Pulse zero. Pulse zero. Lovely. No sugar and no salt. This is the first time in all of this. Very nice. It's very sour. It's not salt or sugar. How is it? It's still sour. It's not sour. Like your movie, I have Pulse zero. Zero. The name of the movie is Pulse zero. Now, I'm going to eat that. Why? Why? Because it's sour. No salt or sugar. Right answer. I'm a vegetarian. I don't eat mass. Pulse candy is the best brought to you by PASPAS. Very nice. Very nice. So with the emergence of the digital space, we're not limited to only one endorser. We have multiple endorsers and you've seen that. We are among the top five confectionary companies in India today. We are the number one hard boiled candy for the last three consecutive years. And all of this was possible because I think influencers play a major, major role in the success story of a brand. Thank you very much.