 Our fireside chat I would like to invite on stage Mr. Alok Jalan, managing director, Lakshya Media Group and Nazia Alvi Rehman, editor, exchange for media. Ladies and gentlemen, give them a big hand. We've wasted much time in introducing sir. All of us who are in this domain know a lot about him. So I would straight away start with the question of you sharing the 23-year-long journey of Lakshya with us. So we started this company in 1997 and in today's day and age startups are very fashionable. At that point of time they were not so fashionable. We were indeed a startup. We started with our own little capital of about one lakh and from the year one we have made profits year on year, grew on our own capital and then raised capital later on 2006 and 2008 but we could grow business on a continuous basis with about 30-35% CAGR. So I think yes, it's been an interesting journey where we ventured into multiple format media ownership, media agency business. We ventured into international markets. We had our share of success and failures but as of now I think we are very well placed to kind of take things forward and make over at one of the lead mediums for many clients. A lot of things that you ventured into, one of them was international markets. So would you like to speak about your experiences with international markets? So yeah, we went to Dubai and we invested a lot of money to create about 1000 air-conditioned bus shelters in the market of Dubai. That was first of its kind project and nowhere in the world you will see such large project and that was a product innovation, air-conditioned bus shelter in the heat of 50-55 degree temperature working extremely well. So a lot of research went into it, a lot of hard work went into it, designing. So I think huge efforts and a lot of capital we invested in this whole project and we also had Colombo Airport for five years with us. So that was again another international experience which we had but now we are out of both these markets. What is your takeaway? I mean if you had to give an advice from your experience so what is it that you would like to tell? So yeah, so the takeaway would be that know the market very well. I think doing the right kind of due diligence when you are venturing into any unknown territory is extremely, extremely important. How supportive government is of private investment? What is the legal framework in a particular country? Because all these things may come into your way of growth. So case in point Dubai bus shelter, we had to give up that project because of lack of government support because in 2008 during the financial meltdown when Dubai went down completely and the way market has still not come back up. So I think it's extremely important to understand the market dynamics before you venture into any market. But one safe territory within those markets might be airports because there you don't have municipal regulations and those kind of things. You have overall governmental regulation but you are not that affected so that might be a safe territory for anybody to start. Sir, talking about government restrictions, you also have those in India. So what are the challenges that you face in India when you have to handle with government? So here I think biggest challenges lack of consistency in regulation. When regulations are not consistent and also since outdoor is a city specific subject, so every city, every municipality has its own rules and regulations which makes the whole thing extremely, extremely difficult in terms of format sizes. Where should you put your site and things like that? So I think uniformity in regulation at least if not nationwide, statewide is extremely important. If it can be done nationwide, some uniformity, I think that will be extremely helpful. Then people can plan things and invest into infrastructure and media and lot of revenue from this will ultimately go back to the government. So government has to think about it as a overall large industry which not only creates a lot of amenities for all the cities but also gives huge revenue to the municipalities. A case in point is the Delhi municipality which earns about 250 crore as per their deputy municipal commissioner himself on a yearly basis. So I think that's a good money which comes to any municipality. So where is it lacking? I mean the government doesn't understand? So I think will power from the government side is lack of will power. We are representing from IOWA side to various government bodies but I think unless there is a clear guideline from urban development ministry, central urban development ministry as to what can be done and what cannot be done it is going to be very difficult because again it will be a local subject. If it remains a local subject then people will do what they want to do. Sir, measurement has always been a big problem in this domain and for last many years it's just been in process. What is the status right now? So yes measurement is a problem but I don't think in today's world measurement is a problem anymore because so much of data is getting generated when all of us have our mobile phones. So wherever we are traveling whatever we are doing is getting captured in a way through digital footprint which we leave behind. So I think with all that if you look at things so there are mobile application aggregated data available. There is telecom data available. So these are the data and data points which you cannot temper with and I think they are extremely valuable and with that you can create a matrix which will be really appreciated by any client. But coming back to measurement again from IOAA side we are now looking at commissioning this research project very soon. So I think we'll be out with RFP for international research companies and as well as Indian research companies within six to eight weeks and then we'll take that forward. Mr. Mehta also spoke about it. Can you give us a little more detail on that? So we are looking at various combinations or various methods of research. So there are some kind of research which have been done in markets like US, UK and Australia and various other markets which I would say is old methodology where you do a traffic count and travel survey and rating off all the sites and things like that. While there are newest service providers also who are only depending largely on technology and not so much on physical traffic count or somebody carrying a diary for their travel behaviour and all that. So I think we are just looking at what will suit us the best whether the old method or the new method or a combination of both. From my side I think new technology and people who come up with new way of measuring audience's behaviour and type of audience I think that will be very useful. And now there are companies who are looking at taking satellite images also and going down to the street level to calculate or count number of cars and all of that. So I think technology has evolved to a great extent. So I think we'll look at something which is really cutting edge and extremely high quality. Okay. So we should expect more clarity in six to seven weeks. Yeah, maybe in first quarter of next financial year because of this COVID issue now things are going to go a little slow. So let's see. So coming to Lakshay, we've learned about a special tool called SHARP that was launched by you. Is that also for measurement purposes or what exactly is the tool? So yeah, so SHARP again is audience measurement tool. Actually it is a hyper-local measurement tool which can be used for outperform planning. It can be used for events and experiential things as well as going forward even for mobile advertising. So it gives you data at a very hyper-local level. So like I just mentioned, we have used application, mobile application aggregated data. We have used mobile telephone data from mobile service providers. We have used old method of traffic count also. So it is a mix of all these three things plus we have rated and geotagged about 50,000 sites in India across 22 cities and each of those sites have a unique ID and unique score which is their visibility score. So I think all this put together creates an extremely new kind of measurement which I believe would be one of the first across the world and we are seeing a lot of client interest in this kind of product. So this was developed internally by your team? Yes, yes. So it was developed by in-house by our team. My colleague Manas Mohan is sitting here who championed this thing and we are still looking at newer ways of making it more and more robust in every possible way. So another area in your domain which everyone is talking about is digital outdoor. It's relatively new. It's only a few two, three percent of your entire pie. But how do you see the growth of this particular domain amplifying in the coming years? So actually it's not new. In India it is new. If you look at Times Square and Piccadilly Square, it's been there since ages. In India it has just started and unfortunately because of again lack of regulation and governmental issues as well as a little bit of vandalism kind of issues, a large format digital OH will take a little bit more time but you have a small format ambient OH everywhere from malls to airports to corporate parks. So I think very soon we are expecting a policy from Mumbai municipality also and we are expecting that they will come up with and encourage digital out of home. So once there is encouragement from government side, I think there will be enough and more players who will be looking at investing into creating very high quality large format DOH. What are the trends that outdoor players need to keep in mind to interconnect digital outdoor with mobile and integrate the two mediums to garner more impact and ROI for brands? So it again boils down to hyper local advertising. Actually mobile and digital are two mediums which are which could be as global as you want and they can be as local as you want. There's no third medium which gives you this kind of flexibility. So when it comes to mobile and digital, I think I would say that digital OH is an extension of mobile phone only. You have large screen, larger impact, that's how we see it. It does not interrupt you when you are browsing through your mobile and thing like that. It is just using your free time. There are a lot of technology with which you can do a two way kind of interaction with those screens and as we move forward with the programmatic way of buying media, once digital and digital out of home are bundled together, I think it is highly possible. So I think a lot of people say and yesterday there was a speaker who was saying that outdoor should become part of media plan, overall media plan. I think now digital is becoming main mainline media. So outdoor has to align more with digital than any other medium is what I feel. Also as I said that at a hyper local level it can give you out of form, digital out of form as well as digital. You can just kind of earmark a particular area, geo fence a particular area and serve advertising within that particular. So if you want to advertise in Lokhandwala in Andheri, so you just geo fence that area and you are able to advertise through digital out of form or normal regular out of form and mobile within that catchment area. So I think that's a very, very big plus point which out of form and digital can give to any client and which can drive which can drive footfalls into various stores and malls. So traditionally we have seen some particular sectors that spend more on outdoor where for instance automobile or your media channels. Which are the brands and sectors which can leverage it more but are not doing it? So actually I would like to say one thing that outdoor is one of the most utilized but most under undervalued medium in the country and maybe in various other parts of the globe also. The kind of impact it can give you overall, no other medium can give you the kind of impact, the kind of innovations you can do on out of form at a huge larger level you will not be able to do with any other medium. So I think these are a few real benefits which not too many people or clients are utilizing but as we see downfall of print and later on television more and more people are going to come to out of form media. Right now I think most of the categories use some people use, so within the categories there are clients who are heavy users and people who do not use out of form so that also that also happens. So when you come across and you see and you feel that they should be advertising more on outdoor than on traditional or other mediums. So I think that way if you want category wise I think FMCG can spend much more than what they are doing right now, BFSI can do much more than what they are doing right now. So FMCG believes more on TV than any other media similarly BFSI believes more on print than any other media but things are changing very fast. So I think all these sectors will come around and there are examples within these categories also who are spending decent amount of money on outdoor and off late have interacted with the various clients and more and more people are saying that we are cutting down on our TV budgets and putting it on outdoor or we are cutting down from print and putting it on outdoor because ultimately if you look at youth today they are not consuming print or TV at all. So that's the reality and will you have some percentage like how much of TV and print has come to outdoor in last few years? No we don't have any such data but I think it will move it will yeah and it will move very very fast. So as you see print still holds huge number so every percentage drop in print advertising will be beneficial for outdoor. Time so I have two more important questions to go one is your vision and your plan for Lakshay you have in these 23 years you have created many I mean you've got Lakshay assets you have got Lakshay is you have you're into experiential you've also recently got into digital what exactly is your plan ahead and what more should we expect in the coming years? So we want to be in the space where youth is so youth like I said youth is consuming largely out of form experiential and digital so these are three areas where our focus is and so we are one of the largest in out of form we are extremely large in events also and digital we have just started we want to become large in digital also and then serving a combination of these three to target youth and kind of delivering the kind of ROI or the objective which brands set out for us. Astri veteran what are the challenges or what are the things that you would want to speak about for the industry for the outdoor industry? So I think largely measurement and government regulation are two things which are spoken everywhere and measurement I think will get addressed either through a collective effort or on it on its own when it comes to government regulation I think there we need to make much more collective effort and lobby and go to the government and make them make representation to them to come up with certain regulation which are uniform overall and then I think it's all about going to the clients and presenting it in the best possible manner and if you are able to demonstrate the kind of ROI you can deliver I think all the clients are looking at ultimately what a client wants that you give them return on their investment in whichever form and manner they want so I think if you are able to deliver that there is a huge scope for how to form to grow. I also have one question from Mr Mehta who had to go because he had a flight to catch so what he wanted to understand from you is how do you handle being both owner of media space as well as being an agency? It doesn't matter actually in today's time it doesn't matter if this question was asked to me say 10 years back then maybe it was still relevant today we have companies like Google who sell directly to any client or through agencies also so in a way that they deal with both the people and similarly if you look at investment banking if you look at various other businesses people do both so what matters really is the value which you are delivering and if you are doing a business in a ethical manner or not I think that is what ultimately matters as a business owner I can be as many as many businesses I want to so long as I do justice with all the businesses