 Well, ladies and gentlemen, as he gave you a little clue, it's about the keynote address now. You know, the summit with the keynote address. Here is a brand that was launched in the year 2018 and is today a loved brand among gaming enthusiasts, like me. Talking to us about building a brand from scratch, our experience with MPL is co-founder and CEO of Mobile Premier League, Mr. Saish Neva. His action was posed to the masses and taking us on the journey is the session chair, Dr. Anurag Bhattra, chairman and editor-in-chief for BW Business World and Exchange for Media Group. Welcome, Mr. Sai and Dr. Bhattra, over to you for a very interesting chat and I'm waiting to hear all the words coming from you. Here we go. Thank you so much, Mr. Sai, welcome. I hope everyone in your family and in your extended family of MPL is fine. I know these are tough times. I chatted with you more than two and a half months back. So, you know, since then gaming as a sector and gaming companies seem to be only growing, the only way forward is growth. So first of all, I'd like to ask you one, an IPO has happened which has been super successful, 84 times subscribed. I know it's a season of every day there are multiple unicorns being created, every day a big IPO is being announced. It is in the back because there is a huge consumer shift to digital plays and everything. So give us a sense of what you see happening in the consumer landscape over the next 6, 12 months that we only kind of started to see green shoots off but there are trends that will manifest in a big way. For our viewers, just to give you a sense of the gaming market, it's a very big market already. It's growing at 40% or maybe even more but the analysts say it's growing at between 38 to 40% and just to give you India at the last count had there are two estimates which have between 450 million to 560 million gamers and real gaming as we call it is the dominant growth driver but all facets of gaming are growing and really over the next five to six years these numbers are likely to double and clearly we as consumers, we as business owners have to gamify every aspect of what we do whether it's personal investing whether it's healthcare, whether it's education so gaming also beyond gaming in the pure sense of it also helping us create growth in other sector. Let me bring in Mr. Sai Srinivas and let him give us a perspective. So firstly, thank you so much Anurag for having me in this event. Really honored to be here. So far so good. I mean, luckily my family has been good and luckily even at MPL, at least in the first degree they were a bunch of team members who suffered because of the pandemic but yeah, I mean, so far so good, fingers crossed and I hope that in the next one month things get even better. Anurag, that's a very interesting question that you asked as to what can we expect in the next six to 12 months or for that matter in the next two years or three years? See, I think what's happened in India was that India had, India over the last three, four years has built the entire infrastructure needed for massive digital consumption. What I mean by infrastructure, you need three things, right? You need a device, that's a mobile phone and you need data and thanks to extremely cheap internet connectivity you have data. Most importantly, payments, right? So if you wanna consume anything online for it to make money, you have to have the ability for people to pay using their payment mechanisms, right? So in the last three, four years this infrastructure is coming to play, right? And what happened last year was when the pandemic struck because of the lockdowns and because of multiple different constraints imposed on society, people were in massive forced to consume or adopt digital, right? And two parts to this, right? Imagine if we did not have the digital infrastructure ready it would have been a different question, right? People would have gone online but it would have been a difficult it wouldn't have been as easy as it is today for people to adopt digital services but it's kind of like meeting of two hands, right? Like, you know, there was this digital infrastructure ready and in massive people started adopting it, right? Now, because of that, because of that, honestly I believe that a learning curve which would have probably taken two, three years has probably happened literally in six months, right? Learning curves shorten and shorten very, very fast. Now, because of the learning curve shortening and this entire set of users coming online you would see a massive expansion of the total addressable market for any digital product, right? Gaming is just one of the beneficiary but any digital product will see massive expansion of them, right? And in terms of paying customers as well the headroom to grow for almost most industries be it gaming, be it OTT, et cetera, so on and so forth I think is at least five to 10x from where we are today because while there are total number of internet users are around 450 or 500 million the total number of paying internet customers or people who pay on the internet are roughly around 50 million and that number will very easily grow to about 100 million, right? And that is a huge opportunity for practically every single brand to adopt, right? Which is the reason why for any digital company that's on the horizon today in our ecosystem the upside or the amount of available growth is massive. So it's a fantastic option. Fantastic. Clearly, let me ask you within gaming of course there is as you talked about paying subscribers or everything and that's a shift that's happening in the content tech business environment where we are trying to move to a pay model the traditionally media has been a free to air and aided by advertiser but that's a long-term shift and look at New York Times, Washington Post again you are investing content and you talked about two things that all the last few years we invested in broadband we invested in digital access and COVID then has been kind of a main accelerator for that because we are forced to stay at home so we're using digital access for everything whether it's a conference that we're doing or education or content but I want to ask you from a marketer standpoint what are the opportunities to exploit gaming as a marketing tool to create brand love? So for example, the simplest question is if my daughter loves a certain ice cream brand she goes back to that ice cream brand irrespective of whether they advertise on but the fact is if you are able to use gaming to be able to enhance the relationships to do messaging give us how it can be done Sure, so I think there are multiple ways in which you can advertise with gaming on the top of it there have been multiple associations that have been done in the US where brands have launched special content within the games like for example if there is a really popular racing game then you see brand partnerships where you see brand avatars for example if there's a movie being released and then actors from that movie are launched as avatars in the game and so on and so forth so that's one way the other really mass way of creating incredible brand love through games is by hosting large scale tournaments like for example today how does a brand any brand for that matter say Pepsi Coke or Britannia or any of these brands in the past how did they create brand love? They used to sponsor these large cricket tournaments that used to happen back in the bilateral and triangular series and so on and so forth it's the same with even digital games a brand can very easily sponsor really large tournaments which has hundreds of thousands if not millions of players participating and that's a very easy way for a brand to connect with every single player who's participating in the tournament in fact to be honest a lot of brands already a lot of brands already sponsored digital sports or e-sports you see a lot of brands even in India but even globally for example Mountain Dew, Red Bull, etc. these guys these brands which are constantly been sponsoring these events and I think as gaming becomes more and more mainstream you will see a lot more entry of these brands into the ecosystem Fantastic now give us a sense of one or two case studies within your knowledge whether it was MPL or other players where you thought that the impact was so deep and the ROI was so huge that it not only created brand affinity but it created brand love give me an example Sure I think I'll give you an example of you know something that we did and it's got less to do with someone else doing something with MPL it's got more to do with what we did right for example you know MPL was we founded MPL in 2018 right I think one of the biggest wins that we had as a brand and one of the biggest things we did as a brand is when we signed Virat as our brand ambassador and that was in early 2019 right and in fact we were one of the in fact we are the youngest brand even to date to actually launch a full blown brand campaign on the IPL and we were the official broadcast partner as well and we launched this and usually when a company is that young a company usually relies more on transactional messaging saying that hey I'm providing this this is what you get why don't you come and transact with me we actually took a very counterintuitive stance there right and we went with a very emotional messaging right we got with we shot an ad with Virat went online on IPL and our entire campaign was about Hiro Banna at the MPL killer right so it was more about you know the whole spirit of winning the whole spirit of competing right it's a very counterintuitive campaign and honestly that created a significant amount of brand love right that completely made the brand more visible yes did it it did not directly create a lot of transaction impact within the next two weeks or three weeks or one month but I mean it's probably one of the best long-term investments that we've done now brand that we can ever think of right I think that's one of the things that I can tell you that's one of the experiences that I've had with participating with a large scale tournament right so similarly when a brand participates with any extremely watched event or a tournament right the point that you were saying right at the beginning of this event right around brand love right it can't it's a very delicate balance how much you make it about cloud and how much you make it about transactional but I think at least one hour in our case making it about love is always both ways otherwise it's talking yes yes yes absolutely absolutely so at least in our case you know that was a very very good call that we made wherein we went ahead and we started with an emotional message first and then built on top of it yeah fantastic example and you know all the D2C brands which are consumer tech brands that have been great in the last few years have realized that they also need to apart from providing the service the product that they do they also need to build a deeper relationship through communication, through brand building and it is heartening to see they're seeing long-term and building that value through communication through brand endorsement you talked about let me also now ask you while we're talking of brand love and we'll stick to it but what do you think of the valuations of the D2C brands, the consumer tech brands and you know while there is no question that they're valuable and they will only grow as businesses the valuations seem out of whack what do you have to say? See the thing is every valuation it's like this right the valuation is a very funny metric it's between the company and the person who's decided to pay the value that they said they would I think everyone's valuing the companies the way they are because of the market which we just spoke about just the sheer size of the market underdog is so large that which is the reason why you're seeing 20x, 25x, 30x multiples that people are getting on revenue I mean if you take any public market comps or 30x revenue multiple is quite crazy in India in private markets they're getting 50x or 60x multiples so on the revenues I think the reason why these kind of high valuations are there is because of the headroom to grow pretty much any sector you take education, gaming, OTT the headroom to grow in this country is so large but these valuations will only be realized and will be realized if that expansion and paying capacity also happens which I told you they're 500 million customers but they're only 50 million or paying customers 50 to 60 million now the valuation will be realized and in fact it will be even more highly valued when this 50 million becomes 120 or 130 million which I'm sure it will so it is the reason why to be honest some cases the valuation might be crazy but in more often than not I think the valuation is in line with the way the market is shaping up Fantastic I agree with you that it's also the markets always capture the future now so to say so it's a reflection of there's no question that these brands and companies will grow and there's tremendous value it's only about whether the value of multiple is right or not and you rightly said clearly investors know a bit about the future and so do entrepreneurs and so it's between that now let me shift Sai in your own career which are the digital brand outside gaming that and I'm talking about digital brand businesses that have been created in the last 10 years which are primarily digital like a like a Flipkart primarily which are the brands that you've seen who have really taken the concept of brand love and we've built in the way they do business not in the communication I think Flipkart is a brilliant example to be honest I think anyone who anything whenever you say Flipkart I think the first thing that comes to your mind is those is that ad where they had kids talking on television like that's now that's a beautiful way of communicating what your brand is trying to say to to everyone right so I think Flipkart is a great example in India I think another great example that used to do this job that used to do this very very well is Mintra I think Mintra really put forward their entire philosophy of fashion and fashion commerce in a way in a very good way I think I think some of the new age brands and Nica Nica is also very very good that way yeah I mean these are some of the brands I can think of but globally if I were to think of you know globally if I were to think of some brands then definitely you know definitely some I mean it's for me you put me on a stand here but let me actually globally I think some of the brands that do it very very well I mean Tesla for sure like if you see every communication that they put out it's very much in line with it's very much in line with their brand philosophy how they how they view what you call how they view it and yeah I mean these are some of the brands I think but some of the new age brands in India are also doing a really really good job right I think I'd count ourselves a little bit in that category some of the new age brands but some of the Flipkart, Nica, Mintra internationally Tesla then yeah I mean these are some of the brands that come to your mind which I've done it very well. Thank you so much and Zahi again if I talk to you three years from now one year from now two years from now and we are talking of a pitch CMO summit if it was a BW disrupt forum I would talk to you about entrepreneurship it was a BW gaming world I would talk to you about gaming but I'm restricting myself to the narrow brand building leading to business being created what do you think consumers say about MPL when you do your dipsticks when you see their comments when they look at the brand MPL what is the kind of words Jextree attributes you find I think Virat is obviously one large thing you know like you know that the word cloud is a huge match that's how that's one big thing that people always say the second thing is they talk about some of our top games they always talk about tournaments MPL tournaments is something that they always talk about they also talk about how they can compete in games or tournaments of chess or cannon or pool and how they can how they won these tournaments and they talk about winning a lot in terms of winning and so coming first coming second coming third and a lot of these guys a lot of these folks have actually shown how good they are at these games apart from that they also talk about like fantasy, pool, cannon yeah so these are some of the things that they talk about but fundamentally they talk about games they always they talk about games they look at this game MPL in fact even we post on Instagram the first question that people always say is that they always put questions there when is this game coming on MPL when is this game coming on MPL it's almost like the way we portrait MPL and the way our users see MPL MPL is almost like how do I put it a multiplex and they are always waiting for the next movie that shows up at the multiplex so it's always that question yeah so that's the kind of in the times of despair times of fact spending time human connect has been cut because we are not meeting people face to face clearly entertainment gaming really kick people in some way they give it some joy and they use that word some level of engagement some level of fulfillment so clearly there are tools for realizing a higher potential if I may say I want to ask you my last question one a business question and one a personal question my business question is again when you see at the business community at large, leaders at large in the way they look at the future what are the things you think they've got right because you cannot talk about consumers, brands, businesses if you don't see the mega trends if you don't see the shifts if you don't see what's coming in the future right of course digital and virtual and e-commerce that's a train that's left the station and it's only going to get a new administration but tell us what are the mindset changes that you think are needed to be able to make this new digital economy this virtual economy that we're still missing as leaders I think one very big mindset change that needs to happen for companies in any sector for them to grow really big in India is you've got to design your business model around microtransactions you've got to figure out a way to take one rupee or two rupees or five rupees from 50 million folks you've got to design a business model on taking say 10,000 rupees from a small set of folks that mindset change is something that's very, very important because India is a country of microtransactions in taking a rupee or five from a lot of different people for your services is a much better business and a much better value proposition I think that mindset change needs to happen for a lot of businesses that come from physical to digital the thought process thinking that a sale for one rupee or two rupees might not come naturally because anything physically that's sold is usually at least 40 rupees or 50 rupees or 100 rupees and so on but yeah micropayments and sachetization what happened to shampoos three decades back or that I used one yes exactly exactly you are saying we have to think in terms of micropayments yes everything micropayments in that sense you see right now gaming at least to me from the numbers I see is a very urban phenomena so when it becomes an even bigger rural phenomena or a tier 2, tier 3, tier 3 phenomena which it is already but even bigger possibly what you are talking of will become even more important I will tell you how big it will be and I will play this out very well I think there is going to be a point in India where you will start seeing Nagpur compete with Nagpur competing with Bhopal etc in multiple tournaments where there is a Nagpur team, Kanpur team etc so on and so forth that level of competitions will kick in and at that point it will become very mainstream across the board and it's going to happen it's just a matter of time it's getting there my last question to you time is our biggest resource and I am most important and I am enjoying my conversation I would go on what do you do as an entrepreneur as a business leader as an individual who wants to make an impact to reinvent what you are doing at MPL and to be able to get new ideas inspiration I think the most the most important thing the most important thing I do is try try and take time to spend as much time as possible trying out new products as much time as possible keeping myself free to explore new products like one of the things I do one of the things that I have learned in the last one year is the number one job of a CEO is to ideally not have any job that you've delegated everything so that you keep your time to spend as much as possible on trying new different products trying to see what are the other things that are coming up in the world what are the different ways you can engage with your customers and most importantly spending as much time as possible as much time as possible seeing what the customers are saying be it on YouTube or be it by be it via the testimonials and so on but keep yourself free I think the one piece of feedback I give to anyone and in fact this is something I learned one one and a half year of the company I was a very different person try and keep yourself as free as possible the only way your brain can actually invite ideas is when it's free if your brain is filled with like 50,000 things it's very difficult for you to get new insights I have a double problem I'm busy thinking I don't have a brain come on Anurag I'll take that from anyone but you what you have my kids who have grown up tell me that I have no brains kids kids kids have the right to say that kids kids they talk to me like they call me bro but I I agree that you have to be free to be able to notice new things to be able to study and I must tell you when we started exchange for media 20 years back Sai we wanted to build a market place for advertising marketing media Ajit's been a friend for 20 years I know he's doing a session immediately after that is because we were able to pivot and now we are pivoting of course we became a content company so even to create new IPs new ideas you need to be free that's when you are able to give and clearly our business is a creative business while we are at the heart of content tech and a content and a media business hopefully over the next 12 to 18 months we'll pivot to become something else which I don't want to talk about today but hopefully something special and really relevant to all the things you said so I agree with you we need to be able to get new inspiration you know I think that's very very important and when you're free time that's when you're able to get ideas so and I keep saying mind is like a parachute it only works when it's open wonderful that's I'm taking that line I'm taking that line mind is like a parachute it only works when it's open and because we have our own preconceived notion the strategies, ideas may have worked up to the point they may not be relevant to what's happening in the world now so I think the biggest job for people like me is to unlearn and I really believe in the process of reverse mentoring I could learn things from you because really what you are doing is very different my son who's a gaming enthusiast of course I can learn a lot from him he runs the gaming YouTube channel of gaming that's awesome but he's a big gaming so when everyone sleeps in the night he's just playing games and so clearly the world is a very different place and gaming is mainstream and I'm sure gaming companies like yours and MPL especially in the way it's kind of built its business and brand epitomizes brand love so kudos to you Sai and at exchange for media and pitch we should luck all the best look forward to another conversation hopefully soon about entrepreneurship and gaming thank you so much God bless you