 My name is Sandeela Sheikh from Exchange for Media. Today we have the core team of GoaFest 2023, Mohit Joshi, Jaydeep Gandhi and Prashant Kumar with us. They are going to be discussing a few interesting things with us. First of all Jaydeep, I wanted to ask you, is that you know how excited are you for this time? I think you can see on my smile how excited I am and we all geared working hard towards making each and every moment of GoaFest memorable. Yeah, so very excited and looking forward to ourselves enjoying GoaFest. Mohit, can you please tell me, chime in and tell me that what's the footfall that you guys are expecting this year and are there entries from abroad as well etc etc? So you know we have already had a good conversion in terms of the foot also people who have this is sorry sorry for this because I think it's cool. So we have had already a good number of registrations this year compared to last year and we are expecting I don't want to put any number to it because there is a huge target that has been given to us but it is definitely going to be more than last year is what I can convince you in terms of entries while that is the you know the ad club domain and the abyss domain but definitely there have been much better conversions this time and also participation from many more agencies in India so that about it I'm sure PK will share more about it but it's a significant step up from the past. We have more clients who are going to be there on panels as well as being there on the on the on the in the stage as well as the fest so overall I think it's a much better positive step up from the past because for two years we did not have GoFest unfortunately because of the COVID last year was after the COVID people were still worried about COVID at that point in time this year hopefully everybody should be free from it. Are there you know entries from foreign as well like you know like Kans is there for us do you think that you know we're getting entries from abroad agencies as well agencies from outside India? Like always you know there have been obviously categories for outside India agencies so this is more managed by the abbeys and I don't know how they would like to you know share the same but definitely there are categories which we normally do and recognize you know work you know beyond India as such. I'm sure there are people you know participating like how they used to you know in previous years so yeah it's very exciting in fact we have definitely received more more entries this year if you compare to previous years and we've had more agencies actually participating so those are all very encouraging and you know extremely excited. Greatest, greatest. So you know let's talk about Prashant since you have started speaking I wanted to talk to you about you know sponsorship I was there at the curtain raiser event and I saw all the sponsors so tell me like have you received more sponsorship this year than last year and I mean what are the sponsors looking forward to as an entity what do you think that you're going to provide them? I think it has been very much encouraging for us when we've had more people actually you know participating as sponsors supporting the entire first. We are quite fortunate to see a lot more people actually coming forward and contributing to this first across different sectors I mean apart from I mean every media everyone representing different media have been part of this that's really really exciting for us. So you know in order to just put us some kind of you know direction on that you probably will have more than double the number of people who have done in their studies right in terms of sponsors and what we've also done this time is to make them part of across different sections across different events across different activity because this is all they're all part of the industry the same industry right and it's important to give them the space it's important to make them part of it it's important for them to be part of the entire learning unlearning newer things discussions etc so I think you know the great opportunity for us to collectively you know do this together we're quite appreciative of the entire support we're quite you know thankful to everybody who's doing this right even now we see a lot more interest coming not that they're a sponsor but wanting to come to the fest right so that's again very very interesting for us and encouraging for us I'm sure in the next week we'll have more fun so until right now how many sponsors do you have well why not we just put it I told you that it's more than double the last three years right um my number is not significant I think what is more interesting is how do we make more and more people be a part of this fest I mean this is one fest where you have a lot of learning opportunity where we have a space where people across multiple bodies coming together right where you have you know it's a space where different parts of this entire ecosystem clients media agencies different experts from technology side from press you know everyone actually coming together in parts but in one event where in such a size the entire advertising industry of this country is able to come together and recognize great work through awards represent their voice you know learn from different master classes you know thought provoking ideas which come so when you see all of this I think the composition becomes very critical right I think you asked the question earlier you know how are you looking at the delegates so frankly we know that it'll be better than last year and we're quite happy with that but what we are more happy is a composition of delegates right I mean this time we're going to have more clients come there more people from different parts of the media are coming there different experts representing multiple sectors boards entertainment Bollywood from south different people from different bodies coming there ASCII multiple other you know representation happening you know senior leaders senior clients senior marketers coming there you know influencers happening there so many many such sessions many such panels customized is obviously going to make it a space where we all interact and you know get some exciting you know learning happening right so that's what we are looking for great is great is but still you haven't given me the numbers oh yeah I am going to be coming back to you again on that together discuss it and go first on the number Jeffy I want to get to you in the conversation again is that you know you have been a part of work since a very long time and you have seen so many different you know themes different things etc etc so what is what are the new innovations that you are bringing this year with you know GoaFest and you know maybe contributing in your way GoaFest is contributing to the Indian advertising industry tell us about that yeah so over the years we've been observing learning and understanding what the audience requires right so if we are in a industry where if we want to stay relevant we have to keep an eye on our customer so for GoaFest that delegate is the customer so we have to be to in order to be relevant to him or to her whatever we do over the years is from there right for example this year we have increased the master classes from nine of last year to made it 11 master classes this year even topics like you know the learnings master class we have different subjects which are more relevant and people would i'm sure would like to explode like you know creative production grant advocacy storytelling we have agencies participating which was very which was just me last you know fcb was the first agency to participate in the master class this year we have havers we have medicine we have publicists we have amazon ads so that's just one thing like you know we have 11 master classes 16 speakers straight over two days so that's where the knowledge is sparked coming to inspiration and conversation that's what's going to happen in the module we have over 50 speakers 15 sessions a new addition is yes we're going to have almost six panel discussions which a variety of you know which will host clients agencies the creative fraternity and of course because you I go back to your first question when you ask me what's exciting to be really true to the answer to this question is the collaboration okay the collaboration we share with ad club aski with IAA with alpha so that's that's really exciting you know we've all become one and we are looking towards goffers with one vision one vision that's it that's that's the fun of it adding to it we realize that there is talent in our industry okay so goffers being the largest I would say festival or a platform in the southeast part of it we thought we should become a stage for our own industry people to come and perform show their talent and skill therefore we came up with the idea of advertising jobs and thanks to so much for you know taking the lead rolling this out so that's all new things we are doing of course last year we started our podcast our own channel govcast now it's already on during the curtain laser we did our first episode and it's going to be a sustainable model where we're going to create content under the banner of govcast so between the curtain laser to the goff fashion after goff fest is going to go on with a lot of new content happening over it so it's start having your own media vehicle this year ad asia which is happening this year is going to host his road show so see we have seniors from korea from our fraternity will go and come down fly down here and do the road show for the ad it's here so that's that's what is making an example i think the too many amazing master classes right you know i should expect too many amazing master classes and too many people to learn from yeah even station wise what is like you know 50 speakers we've never had in the bottom so that's that's a big number and the variety of topic like how pk mentioned the the composition of people the composition of the topics is very interesting the mix mohit why don't you talk about uh you know i wanted to speak to you because you come from a company which is all about you know media uh so why don't you speak about the theme of go of rest this year um ai you know ai which is the main theme of go of rest this year and which is also a buster buster thing and this this amazing thing that that the advertising industry is more excited about so tell me you know what what do you think that you know why do you think that ai is the buster word last year we had better words this year we have ai so what what sort of you know um importance does ai play in the advertising industry and how you are also you know with go of rest how you are bringing that uh that thing into the industry see more than ai it is about the future you know and ai is an important aspect of the future generative ai the way it is today and it it raises a lot of questions in the industry those are the questions that are being answered over here it it impacts media it impacts creativity it impacts everything right and that those are the things that are being discussed so it was but obvious that we needed a topic that was very very relevant to all aspects of the industry and i think generative ai and the future that it is going to be delivering to us is is what we felt was most relevant and as i said there are a lot of doubts that exist whether the whether ai and technologies will make certain jobs redundant certain domains redundant all those things will get discussed in the interesting panels that we have importantly the relevance of data not just you know ai but data is becoming very very important and we have a very interesting panel on you know uh uh marketing which is data driven and we have very senior clients who are going to be talking about how they were using data to transform the way they are marketing advertising and using media so i think the whole theme is about futurism what is it that's going to be happening in future with the technologies like a generative ai which have become a part of everyday life today so i think we we took the leap from there and we saw how would the creative boundary please be different tomorrow how would be different tomorrow how would the data driven marketing be different tomorrow so it's it's a much larger perspective and it's more about gazing into the future but do you think that ai will come and grab our jobs not at all definitely okay greatest um just it'll help us it'll help us do our jobs better greatest there was this joke outside like on lingon i think i saw that you know when clients uh clients have to give the right brief in order to get the ai to work prashant prashant have you come across that joke yet or not the joke uh joke happened in the curtain research okay one last question i would like to ask three of you if you can you know a few lines that what do you aspire go afest to be like do you want it to be the kans of india or how do you like what do you aspire it to be jenny you want to take uh it's a very interesting question a difficult question also but yes one thing is there from the you'd like go afest to be one festival where anyone from our fraternity media marketing clients will what will wish that i wish i was there i wish to be there yeah that's that's where for this and going back to a vision and a mission given by miss sand balsara is over the few years we will shortly shift into the stadium of go afest where we have more than five six thousand delegates and that's the scale at which you know we are working towards year by year year by year so it's it's given by him that you know we should reach there we'll go there great what do you think what what according to you it's already it's already the kans of india you know but uh we feel tomorrow more clients come for it all agencies participate so those are the things that we want to uh uh future gaze and we are very hopeful that it will happen the way things are what do you think what what do you want to do all this for me i think it's a space that gives you a lot of um you know opportunity to learn unlearn uh get recognized um exchange your thinking with uh colleagues across the industry um have some fun get entertained uh so it's a combination of everything right but i see as such when i look at um you know every we're doing this this is the 16th edition of go afest um but if you look at you know every five years of go afest you know we have had a different uh opportunity and distinctive opportunity because the changing landscape you know um different leaders coming in newer people coming in all that is again in the in the entire evolution of our industry right and we have seen how many newer people have come into industry especially last two to three years how many people have gotten to new roles of you know the expansion of different categories different sectors have happened these are all opportunities uh you know these are all instances where uh you would like to be heard you would like to hear many things you would like to use it and apply in uh in the coming years and go afest gives you that opportunity right um we we you know we all collectively get into this and try and see how every year we can be you know where do we can be incremental and we can also help people shape their own future uh in the coming years right um so that is coming that is that is committed by everybody who gets into this and I must tell you that you're quite thankful to people who have been involved in this right I think we had a great you know collection of leadership helping us to curate the entire content right um when we said that there are going to be clients there are going to be you know leaders from you know global uh markets we're going to be you know experts from multiple facets of you know sectors industries many people from different bodies uh people representing bollywood then their entertainment sector all of them we're going to be the stage we're going to have 50 plus speakers never had before and go afest this year you've had anyway had the highest master class happening right master class being done by experts very senior experts right right I think uh you know it's not a comparison of course I think great work which gets celebrated at the abyss uh we've seen already some many of them actually winning the metals at cons or even many other global platform right I think there's there is an abundant opportunity for marketers across multiple regions multiple funnels focusing on different things to also share different kinds of work different interesting work and therefore get recognized for the same so it's a great collection of great opportunities uh it's also a space where you can celebrate you can learn as well as you can experiment right many things right so we feel that this net net should make people get inspired when they come and go and at least have at least one or two aspects which they can apply right uh that's what it is great is so on that inspiring note of you know nurturing the new talent and inspiring them to do great work let's call it a day thank you very much gentlemen to you know uh connect with me and talk to me about go afest let's see you next week and uh let's let's be go afest let's have go of it okay great have a great day thank you thank you bye bye