 Thank you everyone for joining in. My name is Vaishak and I run the client technology and solution consulting practice for Adobe in India. Today we have an exciting topic and a very exciting panel. We have without a playbook, the changing phase of customer experience in CPG and retail as a topic. Definitely exciting as we are facing this particular changing times nowadays. Now we have an imminent panel for the discussion today. I have the privilege and pleasure to introduce our panel today. First up I would like to introduce our very own Kunal Mehta who is a retail technology leader. Kunal is a passionate retail technology professional with over 20 years of experience in executive technology leadership roles. Having worked with leading organizations like Favindia, Raymond Ltd, Trans Ltd, Reliance Retail and so on. He is also a mentor, advisor to startups helping them strategize their future road maps. Welcome Kunal. Thanks so much for this warm introduction. Thank you. Next up we have Amit Diwari, Vice President of Marketing, Hevels India Ltd. Amit has solid experience of our 18 years of understanding consumers and markets. And more importantly converting those insights into marketing strategies all of this back with his rigorous work ethic. He is also a thought leadership champion to make consumer centricity at the core of all business decisions making at Hevels. He does that by guiding the consumer insight journey for the organization. Welcome Amit. Glad to have you with us. Thank you so much. Thanks for the nice introduction. Thank you so much. Thank you. We also have Gagan Arora, Marketing Director at IQ. Gagan is the Marketing Director at IQ which stands for iQuest on and on. It is an upcoming premium performance smartphone brand. He is an experienced professional with 14 plus years of experience in marketing and analytics as well as product building. Gagan has also built and you know, two consumer habit changing businesses in India. He was the chief marketing officer for Poole Panda in India as well as the founder for print venue.com. He is also an extension alumni. Welcome Gagan. Happy to have you here in Dhanapal in our panel. Okay. Finally, we have Sobranchu Singh, Global Head Brand and Marketing Royal MP. Sobranchu has managed large profit centers and diverse brands across catalogs like Deodorant, skincare, household care, among many others. He was the customer channel program manager in Unilever and the national customer marketing head for DIGO in India. He has done extensive work on small and organized retail payments as the director of marketing for Visa. And currently he is responsible for customer facing initiative for 2000 plus retail outlets of Royal MP. He has deep experience in customer journey based transformations. Pleasure to have you with us here. Sobranchu. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Now that we have our panel, I would like to kick start this discussion by a rapid fire question. Oh, perfect. So before I get into the rapid fire questions, ladies and gentlemen, we have my co-host, my co-moderator, Raman with us, Raman Kaljha. He's a partner and advisory at PWC India with over 28 years of experience in the industry of consulting. Raman has a very superb track record in conceptualizing, growing and managing businesses. He is known as the turnaround man and he loves to challenge status quo and take the road left travel to build and grow new businesses. Welcome, Raman. Thank you. Absolutely. Pleasure to be here and a warm hello to everybody else on the panel. Excellent. So Raman, I was saying to kick stick and start off, I thought unlike the traditional way, let's start with a rapid fire question so that everybody get to answer in just 10 seconds and then we get into open-ended questions, right? So the title of this particular discussion is very, you know, interesting. It's like without a playbook, the changing phase of PX customer experience in retail and safety team. But my rapid fire questions if the panel could answer in 10 seconds or less. Let's say you are writing, you are eminent personalities. You can definitely write this playbook about changing customer experience. Let's say you're writing this particular table. What is your first chapter in call? If I can start with Sobranshu. Well, I'd say the customer is still queen. The customer is king. That would always be the first time. Excellent. Jagger, if I can go to you. What do you stand for and who do you stand for? Wow. Okay. Amit. I think I would, I would actually circumvent in three different phase, which is the three T's, which is trust, transparency and technology. How about you? Interesting. But I will still say customer is the king. Excellent. And with that, Raman, over to you. Thanks, Aishwarya. I think that's a great, great setup to set the tone. And I'm so glad to hear, you know, three of you actually talk about, talk about customer and I know everybody meant customer in some form and shape. There is no business without customers. And Gagan, you spoke about, you know, you can just repeat what you exactly said in the same line. What do you stand for and who do you stand for? Exactly. You know, we, why I kind of, you know, picked this up specifically is because we did a global consumer goods industry survey worldwide as people will see along with consumer goods forum. And this was more focused on preparing for the future. Very, very recent. And just about a few months or two, three months back on the, and there were five macro trends that came out of that report. One of the macro trend, which was basically, so I'll, I'll quickly talk about the five trends first and I'll, you know, say why, you know, what you said, resonated so closely with me. The first trend is, you know, the store of the future, you know, we want to really, people are struggling, people are thinking that how a store of the future will look like, you know, which is, you know, in the only channel environment, technology will continue to revolutionize online, offline, coming together in Indian context, you know, when the whole geo mark kicks into real existence at the mass level, you know, it can again transform rules of the game. We don't know how Google will step in Google shopping, you know, in and out, they've been trying experimenting worldwide in India also. We never know when it becomes on a fourth gear or fifth gear and again, change is a few things and experience. So, so I think the store of the future is very important where the traditional marketing channels will continue to blur, you know, between retailers and CPG, you know, I think that the lines are getting very, very blurred. And the second one, the second macro trend, which is what you spoke about is actually the brand relevance. So, so what genetically what came out is consumers will keep raising their expectations for the brand that they engage with. And, and they will continue to do more and more work, more and more loyalty with the purpose driven brand. So as a brand, you know, what I've been known for, what do we stand for? It has to go beyond a tag line. It has to go beyond a logo. It also has to go beyond a few very smart creative videos, you know, which we see all the time, you know, there's some very, very deep emotional connect videos that come. It has to really translate every touchpoint with the consumer, you know, inside and outside as to resonate with what we, you know, stand for and what we are known for as a brand. I think that is, that was rather big, you know, the second big macro trend that came out of this study of the five trends. Then, you know, very quickly summing up, you know, the third was around digital supply chain with the whole omnichannel and online offline, you know, the hub and spoke model, multiple fulfillment points. We don't know how the supply chain will keep evolving as we go forward. So I think the whole digital supply chain became the third key point. Interestingly, the fourth, since we're talking about consumer goods as an industry, the fourth macro trend very interestingly, which came out is on the future of food, you know, and that's where people spoke about, you know, it has to be, it has to be very, very, you know, and this is, I think, more of a COVID-driven sentiment and emotions in people that the wellness and the health and the quality has taken far more importance, paramount importance in everybody's mind. So the future of food is becoming very, very important and, you know, we are not surprised that all the agrochemical companies or the fertilizing companies or the food companies are investing a lot in, you know, in green food if I speak so, you know, on health food if I speak so. And the last and the fifth macro trend was around ESG, you know, which is, you know, I don't have to repeat that, you know, really, you know, all the leaders know the importance of ESG, how much it is growing, you know, more and more. And with these five macro trends, it came out that, you know, any brand which is into CPG or the retail side, we really have to keep these aspects in mind for the future growth. And that's where, why I picked up these five macro trends to, you know, start the discussion today is because, you know, when we talk about consumer experience, when we talk about marketing, when we talk about marketing ROI or effectiveness or chief marketing officer's role, more and more becoming like a chief integrator role, you know, which is really, a CMO is not just about marketing anymore, a CMO is about growth. And moment we say that the CMO is about growth, you know, it really brings about the lines between CTO and CMO if I ask Kunal, Kunal will say that, you know, I'm not a CMO, maybe I'm a tech leader, but I run on the mandates of, you know, marketing a lot because it is my tech, it is not just marketing anymore and there is a lot of deep tech in that, you know, so the lines are going so much and that makes it even more exciting. You don't have a CFO on the call, the CFO would say that, you know, given the one thing that pandemic has taught us is that there is no free lunch and one thing that pandemic has taught us is that, you know, money is to be preserved for a rainy day. You know, when we were all kids, or let's say many, many, you know, 20 years back, you know, people used to teach their kids that save money for a rainy day. So this pandemic has brought back that sentiment, you know, in the community and also among the consumers. So I think those things become very, very important as we go forward. Now in these blurring lines when we talk about consumer experience and then when we relate the five macro trends that I briefly, you know, touched upon and those reports are all available generally, I'm happy to share or you can download on the net. Then we got to see that what is the experience factor or what is the consumer connect factor that is coming across all these five parameters. So whether it is omni-channel store of the future experience, whether it is the supply chain experience, which means, you know, 100% visibility, end-to-end visibility not only for the B2B enterprise but also for the consumer, you know, side of story. Today when we order anything on, you know, when we order anything on, let's say Swiggy, of course, one can map on a Swiggy, you know, app that where exactly is food, but likewise, a lot of e-commerce channels when we order, there is a fair amount of visibility, but that visibility is still, you know, point A, point B, point C, point D driven. Can that really translate into absolutely real visibility that, okay, if my my package has been picked up from, let's say Delhi, Nizhabad, we're housing of Amazon, you know, where is it exactly? So I think the whole business in supply chain, the little supply chain is becoming more and more important. So I think the consumer experience, which is the overarching theme that we are going to talk about today, you know, and my friend Vaishai Pill will try and nudge, you know, through some exciting questions, you know, a lot more as we go forward. But I think it is important that customer experience often fails. It is not equally hand in hand dealt with the employee experience or let's say with the partner experience or the vendor experience. I think experience is a bigger term, which the time is now important for us to take it just beyond customer and, you know, see that so you might define a fantastic process for customer, you know, fully focused on design thinking, human-centered design experience. But if the call center employees and if the people who are the touch points for that process for consumer are not charged up, are not excited, they are not happy, they are not, you know, they haven't bought that change, it is more likely to fail in the consumer side also. So I think therefore the importance of, and that's where the whole concept of return on experience that started coming in, I still don't know how many, my personal and be as a firm as a people we see, we believe that a lot of companies started talking about the shift from ROI to ROX as a more holistic, you know, measurement across the enterprise but we have a long way to go on that and it is because of some of these, you know, some of these bits and pieces which we are talking about together which we'll talk next and next hour or so that triggered us to really call this session as, you know, the whole without a playbook kind of a thing. There is no there is no playbook that one can open and say that, okay, I should do these 10 things or these are the good practices, these are the best practices I follow. The practices are changing every day, you know, like, like, I'm sitting at high wealth, you know, might might do something at high wealth which is you know, which others might not have done. So I think that the whole, there is nothing called as a best practice anymore, you know, there's so much it all that is prevalent today is who does the best experiments? Who does, you know, which are the bets that you put your money behind and how will you execute those bets? It will change the rules of the game so fast as you go forward. So I think on that note, with that context we really wanted to kickstart, you know, this discussion one thing which I can certainly share, you know, it might if it might be an interest of some of you or, you know, the audience we as a firm we released our Global Entertainment and Media Outlook report, you know, a few days back. It's a rolling 5-year report that we released, you know, so this is a 21-25 outlook which we released now. Next year will be 22-26 kind of an outlook. And if you talk about the India number and I'm picking up media here because, you know, all our market years we are, you know, the whole marketing, the growth of media industry plays a big role in what we do as a marketer. So we are still talking about, you know, close to 11% CAGR in the next 5 years as a whole, you know, as an industry. And while it's a no-brainer and it's very obvious that digital is a high 2-digit, you know, we are talking about close to 19-20% CAGR over the next 5 years. It will be much more in the next 2-3 years than it slows down, but over a 5-year horizon we are talking about 19% CAGR. What comes as a pleasant surprise and but I always believed it to be so is that TV will continue to grow at about 8% CAGR next 5 years. So, you know, we are we as a country, we, you know, we are, we keep defining the global trends a lot. So we as a nation, you know, are always an and economy. It's not digital and just digital. In the media world, it will be a coexistence of TV and digital and print is going to grow at about 2%. They, of course, will face a lot bigger challenge. And in the same fashion in the retail and consumer group, from our perspective, it's going to be again an and economy instead of an or economy and it's going to be the online and offline and the omnichannel kind of coming together. So, if there's a brand that says that I'm focused only on online and we're happy to hear more from the government on that. You know, if a brand says that we are online exclusive brand, I always put as question back to them that even if you are the best of the brands, you know, by notches, by miles, you know, you can't have, let's say, more than 20% market share in online. And if you get a 20% market share and if online itself is only 10% of Indian retail market, it will be a 2% market share. So, so no serious brands can ever be happy and satisfied with 2% market share. So you know, you are, so, so to say that we are online exclusive is a way of, and excuse me for that, to say that we are online exclusive is a way of saying that, you know, okay, we are getting an act together for offline and by the way, we will be there. And, you know, that's me, you know, it's a candidate discussion, but that's my personal thought on that. So on that note, let's have a great exciting discussion. I'll hand it over back to Vaishak, you know, and let's pick start this piece. Thank you. Thank you, Raman, for this topic. Let's hear from the brand and their leaders as much and as you mentioned because all of us got this innovation wake-up call and let's start with that. How have you innovated recently in your business when it comes to customer experience? And I would like to pass it on to Amit if he can start with you, Amit. Amit, you are on the new side. Hi, sorry. So thanks, Vishak. I think Raman very, very good insights and I think excellent part. A lot of things have been music to the ears because that's what we're actually here. Just before I get into the first question that Vishak had talked about, I think most of my partners or most of my fellow panelists have talked about that definitely customers, the king and customers have been and I think there is no second thought or no. But I think one thing that we really need to keep in mind that their wardrobes have changed now. And that is very, very important to know because definitely the larger parlance will remain the same but their wardrobes have definitely changed. Coming to the point, I think as Raman very nicely laid down the entire foundation across the entire discussion today every business and if you talk about specifically consumer variables, consumer electronics business which is primarily traditional business around 18-90% traditional business, we still have to change not the way the consumer is affected. Also our customer which is also an intermediary which is the trade partners which is the dealer, the distributor and retailer how we can actually change and transform that entire particular ecosystem. And how does it actually work in that particular ecosystem? So I think we change a new model which is going to be just an online to offline. So any particular person who can actually see my particular online which is shop.havents.com and any particular dealer near Berserk for example, Gashak says in X, Y, Z place of and you have three particular distributors can be shown. Depending upon your choice the price will remain the same you can actually decide which particular distributor to go for. Why did I actually need to it? So then if you actually see the little meaning of crisis in manufacturing it has two parts to it. One it actually says is a fear and second part is an opportunity. And we actually have to pick up the opportunity because it most of the dealers today didn't have the opportunity to get a footfall because physically people are not coming you're ready to reinvent your particular thing. So I think changing the entire landscape of going to a physical store and getting things that you need to do from your particular distributor who you believe is your particular trusted mom and pops for you I think that's the biggest revolution that I can think from a consumer driven I think that's a I'll just add to it because you touched one of my sensitive core by saying that because I ran a startup in 2015 and 16 called Store Save. It was online to offline focused on consumer variables and electronics and we met a lot of brands at that time. The whole idea was that people would always want to buy with a sense of price discovery and in this industry in particular which was touched upon, I mean any showroom that we walk into you know 99% of the times you will end up buying at a price which is lower than the price which is tagged in the showroom. So for example if a showroom says that MRP 80,000 counted price 70,000 you might end up buying at maybe 65,000, 66,000. That price is never listed. So that's where the whole concept of neighborhood stores and the price discovery and the price bargain in an online fashion became very very relevant. That's what it's called. You rightly said that's called the relationship price. So I have a relationship with this particular dealer. My father used to buy it from his father and I'm buying it from his and that's called the relationship price that has actually been absolutely I completely agree with you. Subran, if we can hear from you how have you recently innovated with this? So I think let me address the retail part first because our brand is a motorcycling brand and naturally with the pandemic things came to a halt last April. There was nothing that was out on the roads. I think we made a conscious decision and the big levers to move were engagement, exploration and I would say to a degree entertainment as well. So there is a very large community. It's almost 8 million people who are on our social platforms. They are interested in Royal Enfield as a way of life. It's a brand that gets you to think about exploration. It's a bonded community. They have genuine engagement at much higher than industry levels with the brand. So one of the things that we were doing continuously was trying to get a sense of what are the consumer tickets? What are they interested in? What is the kind of dialogue? So whether it's convenience I want to maintain my motorcycle but in this environment I don't want to go to a dealer service station. You have service on wheels, you have pickup and drop, you have a variety of ways in which to teach them to do it themselves. You had exploration around the past rides, you had lots of content, you had customs, builders doing broadcasts. So we became effectively a publisher's platform and I think that was a very big move for us and we invested heavily in analytics to try and understand and try and integrate and have a single view of customer because I think that is going to be a very, very precious commodity as we go ahead and as life becomes more omnichannel and hybrid. So I think those were the big investments from a structural point of view and one of the panelists was mentioning earlier about customer simplicity. I think in the changed environment, whether it is retail or relationship with the market and it is truly going to be customer centric because people do not have to go to a shop online or offline to transact and if you see the examples from let's say China in the CPG space, it is replete with things like huyo.com or Vibo, you don't have to go anywhere to transact, the transactions floating in the ecosystem with which you are engaging. So I think to take in that direction are to understand your consumer have a iterative and developing view of them be very, very proactive in terms of engagement and then let them explore and entertain themselves as well. It's not only about the transaction so those I think were the big innovations. They manifested themselves as something called make it your own which was a configurator which allowed people to personalize or customize their motorcycle and also an RE app which is now almost a million strong community that we launched. So it was a Royal Enfield app. These were the tangible forms of it but I was just trying to talk about the spirit and the context. In fact to run to your brand itself stands for an experience. People who buy a Royal Enfield bike they buy keeping in mind the experience that they are going to get to the various rides and groups and all. I think most of it is very good insight here. Yeah. Let's hear it from Gagan and IQ how have you innovated recently what has been the CX changes that you have seen recently. So you know as we heard from Shabranchu and Amit also. So see IQ belongs to Vivo smartphone group and somewhere the challenges are similar also because Vivo has been a strong name in often market or we call it mainline now and obviously now you clearly see that there is a channel in the market that you know there are certain buyers who would always go to a store experience a product before buying and then there are certain kind of consumers who are okay buying from big retail e-retail outlets like Flipkart, Amazon. So how do we tackle these kind of changes. So a same brand can differentiate also rather a same corporate group can differentiate also. So same groups can be manufactured in same facility but it can be made for different kind of consumer. So identifying micro trend as well as micro trend both is very important when it comes to macro trend as you said some people are buying online some many people are buying offline. So how do we balance that out in our product portfolio something it was very important for us and that's why IQ exists but it's not about you know we are just selling smartphone to a certain sort of consumers the philosophy of the product has to be really really clear who we are making it for. So for us is that should we keep it something you know very similar which is from you know which is present in retail store versus something different which is made for just let's say a Gen Z online consumer. So this is where in task you know study group what people are looking for these things came in and we fixed on one segment you know people who are looking for really really performance oriented smartphone same thing you know as it goes for Royal Infi experience matters for IQ also is that it is not about relationship between buying from a store but it's more about what this smartphone can do for me and in terms of performance it has to match my need plus there has to be a social validation because you have to understand consumer if I'm buying something it has to complement my social persona also because again although during pandemic also we are living in isolation but socially we are always connected so can my product fulfill that need so something we figured that out after that you know let's say one application of the product from IQ performance how do we measure it so let's say it is really really good at gaming but how do I make sure that it is reaches out to the right kind of consumer and if I'm reaching out how do I measure the effectiveness of my marketing performance so we did this experiment by the way where we started you know reading the gamers using influencers right so there are certain gaming streamers on YouTube it's a very niche concept so many may not be aware but if somebody streaming on their YouTube channel you can literally rate them so we use very influential influencers who would rate using IQ smartphones and would go to these gamers stream and a lot of these gaming streamers would get actually a lot of subscribers which will ultimately lead back to the goodwill for the brand itself and the best part about this thing is that you can measure it instantly so your Google searches will go up right so this is where innovation comes in you launch a product for a consumer you did something for the consumer and you get to measure it in the end right in one go so something you know with the new brand like IQ we are trying to establish that but the roots are same with the ego so very old very strong brand but doing something different for a different segment of consumers so that's how it is the advantage of being you know digital in order to actually find them where they are and reach out to them and having their personalized messages to actually have a brand recall higher thanks so much for sharing that Gagan over to you Kunal technology aspect of it so it's been quite interesting honestly you know that the beginning of the pandemic I was with an ex-brand and then at the end of the pandemic you know I was with another brand and you know both very traditional retailers Raymond and Fab India in its own way you know kind of leaders in their own way in their own segments but obviously the pandemic changed all of that right the way each of these brands thought of themselves always thought that the customer walk into their store all of a sudden you don't have any of that right all of a sudden your digital content is is what everything is really working on were these brands ready to kind of you know absorb that and be ready to reach out to their consumers no they weren't right so all of a sudden your digital platforms is your store associate you know so your content building that you do on the website right the cataloging that you have the quality of the images that you put up over there all these things became very very important right so the way our supply chain works so I think these things kind of started standing out in terms of how the retailers or brands in general have been ready to really move towards the whole omni channel story you know we've always been talking about it for years and years to come now but no one was really ready to kind of really take it on the face and that's what the pandemic did it's also helped businesses you know start working more closely together you know different functions whether it's supply chain whether it's IT whether it's marketing the strategies have completely changed for each of them you need to take decisions much much faster which none of the retailers usually are wanting to you know everything happens at its own speed but now you got to take decision in days instead of months and PPT slides happening people are getting on to calls and taking decisions you know so that's the another interesting part which has kind of completely transformed businesses brought people together as much as people are aloof I think it's also brought them together in terms of how to survive this this this entire wave which has come through and the good ones have actually started doing better right so from probably having 3 or 5 percent business coming from the online it's now become 25 30 40 percent for certain retailers also right and we've seen that you would shift especially in some of the categories so it's been a great journey as you know as an IT time I think it was the most exciting time for us because all of a sudden from being a support function in so many ways you know you're sitting right there in the quarter meeting now and people are asking what do we do next and how do we enhance our customer how do we reach our customer better as what are the technologies we can kind of implement over there so it's been very exciting time a lot of people I think when they were having fun I think the IT guys were the one who were really really being put out there and trying to really help the organization make these changes so it's been quite a fruitful journey over the last one and a half year to help businesses transform the way they work and the way they think going ahead great example that actually reminds me of one of the great innovation one of our customers did in India which is like they turned their entire photography into virtual photography using 3D techniques and this is a leading e-commerce player in India they actually set up a huge team so now they don't have to ship this huge furniture or decor items or perishable items from here to there to actually get it photographed they completely make it in 3D the advantages you can serve that to any channel from where you want to VR the 3D content is ready to serve there and it was amazing to actually see brands in developed nations such as Ben and Jerry's IceThings have been doing this for some time but it was great to see Indian brands actually jumping into this virtual photography brand great example thank you for sharing that now you mentioned a very interesting topic so I would like to stay on with you for the next question before that audiences we have a chance to ask your questions to the 15th panel so please do type in your question we will be looking at them and we will be posting that to the panel as well now you talked about this inter-organizational partnership to deliver this promise of customer experience what are your learnings from that how have these partnerships evolved between sales and marketing between finance and technology and finance and marketing how these partnerships inter-organizational partnership one of the panelists mentioned about the ROX it's actually gone to that level now where retailers are asking about what is the experience and what is the value of experience that we are bringing on the table now for the customers every penny that is being spent now is one being questioned of course but I think in the rightful manner where the finance guy and the marketing guy now actually sitting together and working have never seen that happening before because very different thoughts, processes the way they think, all of that but digital is a very different world from your store where you are just talking about rentals and you are talking about the number of store associates all of a sudden all those mathematics don't come into play so it all becomes about the number of footfalls on the website how do we get the customer over there the CFO is asking questions about are we spending money on social media and analytics and how many clicks have they come on by doing or adding a certain technology so the kind of questions that as a retailer as a finance guy as a marketing guy you were asking those questions have changed completely which is so interesting and it's quite refreshing honestly you know because the thought processes have just opened up for everyone and in the whole digital world you got to take decisions much much faster now in the way you are progressing because otherwise I think brand loyalty again has become quite freaky if you ask me people move on very very quickly to the brands thanks to the Zenzi you know the people of our generation or the generation before us also have their brand do not have a lot of brand loyalty left nowadays because the Zenzi is really influencing them you know 60s is the new 40s and 40s is the new 20s and well I don't even know what to get there below 20s right so the young guys when they are sitting next to their mom and everyone is in the houses right if the younger one is going to an insta the mother is going to get influenced by the daughter or the son right and see what's happening over there and you know if they are not moving with them I mean with their new generation and all you don't cater to these new ideas to these new fashions you are not going to be relevant anymore because you are sitting at home you are not going to the store you are not buying things anymore so yes there has been a lot of collaboration happening across functions people are taking decisions faster and helping each other out faster because it's a matter of survival now for a lot of retailers right so it's helped a lot of ways where functions come together and work together now visual customers and it's 3PL partner so you've got to change the entire DNA of your supply chain and it's a it's a very interesting journey it can be painful but it can be very interesting if people come together and work right true thanks for saying that the questions have changed and it's interesting that CFR is asking here what's the unique visitor today and what's the conversion rate today right so nicely said canal and Gagan if I can go to you what have you seen about inter-organizational partnership to deliver the promise so Vaisak I'll tell you two things when I was at Accenture I used to work with a lot of clients where sales and marketing used to work in isolation right with the advent of model chance like business which are online first this basically no difference between sales and marketing and marketing rather who's the PM in more or less sense right so the role of finance in a digital first organization is actually relies on somebody who's taking care of the communication because that particular guy can actually measure the sales right there he can also understand what kind of activities I'm doing what are the sales strength so somewhere I believe that at least for a digital first branch a marketing is leading the way similarly it does not mean that you know the role of other departments get to lag behind it does not mean that so similarly if I say that somebody has to expend the vocabulary it has to be finance department and legal department because the kind of challenges challenges it brings to the table they are totally different so as Kunal said no finance guy would like to understand that okay if I did the marketing the searches on Google are like this by the searches on Amazon are different right so you have to understand that first for these old style or old school management personnel they have to learn a lot and somewhere taken marketing is leading the way and I think the challenges onto the old department in the organization and how they can come up with this is something would define how this partnership turns out to be but I think innovation should not lie with just marketing and technology it has to go towards every part of the organization and pandemic has affected everyone and same way it goes for the companies also and it same ways it goes for the sub organization or sub departments within those organization so somewhere there has to be this mentality or mindset that digital will bring everybody along and somewhere taken marketing will lead to enable that but yes challenges are always there just that quotients have changed Thanks Gaggan sales marketing marketing sales are the same now you know Shubhant I would like to come to you you have this amazing CPG experience as well and you have seen this partnership evolve between sales marketing and other functions over the years what are your perspective on that I think I agree with the panelists that the traditional boundary lines are getting very very fluid if not fuzzy between sales and marketing on the one hand between the technology stack and who owns it and the application stack or what is consumer facing I think Raman was mentioning that there is now a continuum between the CMO the you know chief digital officer and in a sense the chief experience officer where there are none it's an all in one you know the chief marketing officer has to probably play the other two roles as well so I do agree that job roles are also becoming hybrid and in a sense you know focused on the omnichannel retail kind of an environment however I have two other builds on this one is that you know why should a consumer care you know it's it looks theoretically perfect to say are you having a conversation with the brand have you know engaged with the brand and so on but you know we tend to look as marketers we tend to look at consumer engagements under a microscope and consumers tend to look at us with a telescope you know they have 100 other things happening in their life right from the EMI is to pay to boss tensions to you know 100 other problems that are clouding their mind unless you are really sensitive to iteratively touching them where it really matters you know you have to experiment as somebody was saying if the experiment on it very fast and if you feel you feel really early but the more you try the more you're likely to succeed in consumer terms so I think consumer relevance is not about doing some research at some point in time getting an insight and then you know framing a campaign around it I think going back to this single view of customer I think that's rare the ability to do it has never been easier it's never easier to do it but it's never been more difficult to get it done because you know the wealth of data the kind of interactions the multiplicity of sources it's becoming very different world now and to have an integrated sense now everybody says digital things are turning digital because consumer lifestyles are going digital I mean you know you and I and all of us here have 10 social media relationships we are on dark social I get things on WhatsApp those are the stimuli that move us making decisions I was reading just day before yesterday about a bank in Belgium called KBC if I think if I remember right that has bid and won the online broadcast rights for the Belgian soccer league they're going to show it on their bank app banking app because they believe they have a great app and people who are on other banking apps will come there because they want to watch football and once they do that they will be able to ping so this is the nature or you know let's say Walmart's open admission of wanting to take a stake in tiktok because they realize tomorrow tiktok can be a real transaction platform so I think just as the world is changing just as the channel dynamics are changing just as the job descriptions are changing so is also the consumer reality changing or perhaps because the consumer reality is changing everything else is changing around it and I think we should be welcoming this change and embracing this change otherwise all of us as professionals as brands run the risk of being obsolete so the ones who welcome the change and embrace it are the ones who will survive and thrive. I'll just step in here since you spoke about the sports and the bank app or a bank using sports as a lever to engage the traffic on the app you know I lead a marketing and I lead a marketing media and sports advisory for the firm also so don't be surprised if in India very soon in times to come you will see a lot of fintech pairs and the other consumer facing large apps starting to bid for the digital rights of key sporting properties now there are so many new league coming up for example Coco League or this is a valuable league or many other leagues MLB is going to launch in India so you are absolutely spot on and the key message there is that how do I become more and more relevant to the consumer how do I increase the time wallet share of the consumer on my property if that happens then I will gradually make ad revenues also and of course I'll also have my core business growing whether it is fintech or retail or consumer or whatever it is I think that's a you know I was head of marketing for star sports for close to 5 years and during that time all the leagues came out and one of the things that I learned in the process is you know content based engagement per se not sports alone but sports because fans are passionate people say it's like bonding with cement or you know with adhesive it's not it's like velcro on cotton the more you engage the more it keeps hooking you on you know so I think you know I'm surprised that it's not happened already what you're saying you know for the likes of you know facebook and many other platforms it's small change to bid for very major sport broadcasting right as an element of providing stickiness so I'm in agreement with you yeah facebook has started doing already big time and we'll see more and more people who are trying to do it now I'm the fact that history as you said Subramanian sir right history suggests that companies are invested in big content and innovation whatever through a crisis are the ones who outperforms during the recovery as well at the same time and let's look at 2007 you know last quarter right the S&P index who innovated stayed on and they actually performed well during the recovery what's happening is at the organizational you know I think somebody was mentioning I think Kunal was mentioning that the board is asking how do we change everything how do we put everything everywhere and the catalogs and so on that's true of our lives as well you know because the pandemic forced a certain digital primacy in our lives that everybody started doing zoom everybody started doing you know all means you know digital payments digital shopping all of this came into our lives and actually made us survive the pandemic in many ways so I think what's true at the individual level is even more true at the organization absolutely Amit over to you what are your thoughts how have you seen organizational partnerships changing not changing finance the chief people offices right so of course employee experience at the moment that is also a key part of it what have you seen Amit you are on mute I'm so sorry I'll just take a little detour from what we actually we heard from the views of how the sales and marketing I think this is traditionally from ages and ages and this discussion happened but I think today this the discussion has gone beyond what sales and marketing I think within the marketing scene you need to have a very very specialized goals across otherwise you can't win the battle that you need to have so it can't be just say your general marketing doesn't work in today's day you can't see it because digital is the third word after technology and synergy which is used or underused in the entire ecosystem today and why I say so is because today just by saying that I am a digital marketer doesn't help you need to have what you need what does it actually work in digital and what value that you bring on table you just that's what I say I think more than the blood between the sales and the marketing within the marketing you need to have specialist roles you need to have specialists to do that and I tell you in last one and a half two years we have tried to base that because generic roles is not able to give you what you need to be so somebody say I have a performance for it that's a very good title and a fancy title to put it on LinkedIn but that doesn't what you actually substantiate here is the knowledge of technology and the also the value of technology is a must for everyone and with this all the the proposition of no good no good today I think it is it is no more a time that you need to go to at least go to final can I get 5 crores to get this particular take on I think the days have gone today you decide what you want to do what is the return and I think this is not discussion I always feel little little dejected when people talk about this ROI is always return on investment some financial some finance guy some bank career but if you see from a marketing lens from a consumer angle it is more to do with return on insights and return on innovation however I am actually trying to invest in what are the insights I am getting and how it is emptying the entire value chain to bring so my point and the part which I am trying to make it is it is not to do with sales in marketing the fight is within the marketing how I am actually bringing the entire professionalism which is having a specialist role within the marketing and just to also since you said it is not just about sales and marketing and very rightly so it is also not just about inter-departmental or within the company it is a time of collaboration beyond the company you know whether it is the partner ecosystem or the retail ecosystem or the startup ecosystem which is relevant for your business I think it is a time of much larger collaboration that is coming also just a small point I think two weeks back one of the investors because we have also listed one of the investors asked me that who you think is the brand evangelist for you in your organization I told everybody the entire 20,000 employees right from a factory to a receptionist to a college and everybody is a brand specialist because your moment of truth that you actually decide any of the interaction that you do with anybody in your organization and that person becomes the brand evangelist so it doesn't make this department that you work in what you do it is all about you represent a particular brand and you have to be in that particular sense and the narrative of the brand that you actually talk about yeah absolutely spot on we termed it as a authentic informal leaders in one of our culture strategy report you know sometime back pretty much the same thing it's about brand evangelist yeah I think you are on mute yeah sorry about that absolutely we don't decide the channel but the customer does well so what is the person at the end of that particular channel we are the brand ambassador of your brand yeah well said thank you Ramana I would hand over to you for you to actually ask the question to our final number yeah no I think I've been it's been a good discussion and since we discussed a bit about single source of truth you know Amit you and you spoke about you know single view of customer you know pretty much you know two three times and I agree I mean I would want to ask question you know and this is what we have been discussing a lot I always give an analogy of newspaper industry when it comes to it you know go to any large newspaper group you know I won't name them but the likes you know who have you know by 10 million subscribers you know some of them actually claim to have 10 crores you know as a readership base and sitting with one of the promoter asked that okay you got a 10 crore readership base that's a great by the way asset that you got you know consumer how much of how many of those 10 crores do you know and that's where you know that's where you know it starts falling into cracks because the industry has been run in a very very typical B2B manner where the visibility goes off moment it is at the distributor in the hawker right so so you but the commodity the product is a consumer product it is not an enterprise product so look at the analogy you know you are into a consumer business but you your visibility ends at the distributor in hawker and then you say that you know I'm getting into red my industry is suffering because people have moved to digital and that's where I give my example I'm an avid reader of Hindu Sun Times for I don't know maybe about 40 years and if I may speak so I fall into a high intensity paying customer in digital for them but they don't even know me 40 years of avid reader of Hindu Sun Times you don't even know me then how will you capture me on my digital journey you know so it's a so I always say that that the demise of or the or the gradual demise of the print industry over the years and over the next few years and the and the lack of revenue curve because of digital I think the industry itself is to be blamed for it and that's where that's where my next question comes to you know to all of you is it is good to say that you know a single view of customer it is good to say that you know we got to we got to have insight of them I will ask a very quick rapid question let's say in two parts you know one where do you think you stand on a scale of let's say 1 to 10 on the universe of your consumer base which means if you have 10 million then you know how much of them do you really know so on the universe of knowing your consumer base and second on a scale of 1 to 10 how deep are you knowing them you know so for example you might know me as Raman Kalra page 40 45 plus north Delhi or you might have actually invested deep down into mapping my consumer journey and my deep persona and my habits and we all know that I'm not getting into that that's all but the question is on a scale of 1 to 10 how would you see knowing the universe of your consumers and the depth of your consumers maybe Amit if I start with you and then should branch you so I'll say the first thing which is I would say a scale of 1 to 10 would be 4 and second would be 5 and I'll tell you why I say just 405 is the point to say in terms of one view of the customer first of all you need to know who is the customer bigger challenge should and I think Raman you do spot on with this example of the print industry if you see if you have the database of the 10 crore people who are actually there with you on a newspaper you will not wait for a sports news that has happened even that has happened today from tomorrow morning to read you would have immediately reached out to them to learn about something directly as a personalized message so for example Amit Tiwari, Raman Kalra very interested in soccer and this is the game happened at 12 o'clock in the night I will get it 12 1 what is the update I will not wait for tomorrow the hawker will give the newspaper and my engagement and interaction will be much much higher the larger point is today everybody talks about and I think it's a good platform to talk about in terms of what's the view of the consumer but who is the consumer that is more important I'll give you an example in a category like air conditioner the buyer is the male earning household but the user is the entire family that becomes a very very differential who is the final consumer and I think to be keeping the hand to the heart and since I am actually addressing the entire marketing photography I have hardly found an answer to most of the people nobody has a very very bright answer that I would really admit on that and who is the influencer you picked the example of air conditioner I need to buy an air conditioner as we speak because one of my rooms I want to replace the air conditioner and I was very clear I will buy for a decent 1.5 10 capacity I thought let's buy a 2 10 AC and my wife said if the new AC comes it has to be hot and cold now so who is the influencer behind the scene also becomes the influencer absolutely so Banshee what do you think about this whole 2 dimensional thing I think as Royal Enfield we are quite blessed because I think it's a very tight focused brand with a very very cohesive and adoring community which has been very consciously and I think Siddharth our MD has been very very conscious about we are a lifestyle proponent we are not only about the motorcycle we care about motorcycling so I would say on this although your question is very profound I mean if I was answering it in another dimension as marketeers per se it would be very different sports but I think for brand Royal Enfield I'd say it would be a it would be a 7 and a 9 in my assessment although I would agree Banshee a lot of brands will have to be coming to you now to learn our endeavour so that's always pushing this our endeavour is that let's not understand their motivations only as riders while we put the rider at the heart of the community at the heart of everything we do but that's still a somewhat monochromatic view because a person who adores motorcycling whose passion is motorcycling also has 4 or 5 other passions in life they may be interested in cuisine in adventure in mountaineering in astral photography in adventure in fitness so we are trying now to see where the circles intersect and can we arrange rides which take people to Hanle or Kutch and then they can shoot the night sky Raman you were out to Himachal recently can we take people to roads that have never been travelled before and that's the proposition of a motorcycle called Himalayan which is all roads or no roads so I would say that even though we may know our motivations to come to Royal Enfield or want to be a Royal Enfield rider we need to put a lot more colour and complexion to who they are as persons so what we do and why prefer us are two different things we need to work on both fronts and just finally one other thing Raman is that you know consumer is easier to understand than consumer journey and I think you know any company in the world that has opened a web front you know what I have started my digital journey but it could still be happening in silos and they are not on scale or they don't connect across the board consumer motivations get decided and get developed in their journeys you know what I got a promotion or I got a hefty bonus this is the time to buy my dream motorcycle or the pandemic lockdown is lifted now I want to ride from Delhi to Jaipur visit my parents need to get that servicing done these are triggers and journeys that then they don't care about oh you are servicing department you are call centre you are retail, you are finance you know they are only looking at the motivation and that's why from a retail standpoint if I may go back it's very important because when somebody walks into a dealer they are walking into Royal Enfield they don't care you know that this is a dealer establishment this is a company establishment or so on and so forth so the world is changing fast more than understanding the consumer understand the triggers and the consumer journeys and I think that that will be the beginning of some solution that's very important I think that's a great one thanks for actually bringing it up because you guys clearly are a case study on that not just a case study on how well you know your consumers but it's a great case study on how as you rightly said it's not about motorcycles it's about motorcycling and how that has you know being you know imbibed into the personas and the you know it's almost like cult you know I was having this discussion we were driving through in my trip last few days when we were crossing Punjab before entering Himachal you know there you see a lot of bullets you know they have a fascination for riding a bullet right and they did not and feel not you know the new age of bike but that sound making bullet is there you know a fascination part and the whole question came that you know why is that you know a lot of people I know for example I'll give a deviate from Enfield and go to Java I should excuse me for that so one of the promoter of close to a 20 billion dollar company in India Indian run global companies among the top three worldwide in the space in the 20 billion dollar with the promoter founder he went on Laila Dark on a Java so one of my friend I was trying to one of my friend and he said why would he go on a Java you know like for example it's the fact it's a cult in people's mind it's a religion so people who are into Royal Enfield you know they will they are there because they believe in that brand they are you know passionate about the brand and the whole experience that comes with that so I think thanks for bringing this up it's a great case study moving on the same question, Gagan to you or on the same you know two dimensional knowing your consumers so so Raman I'll answer this question very differently I think given that you know we have all market airs there I think most market airs new the communication for which kind of consumers they are creating for and which consumer are going to buy this product you know we always say that we want to make a premium product and this kind of premium imagery but ultimately people who are buying up most of them may be actually less running low on money also right so the TGU target in your communication and TG which end up buying you is a very different story and it is very important that we should know both of these universes yeah right unless you don't know these two universes you cannot merge them in the future and somewhere I believe most of the marketers are good in the first part that identifying universe on the both side making communication for and who are consuming communication but when it comes to deep down you know how do we do we know them better what do they want what are their preferences I think most of us as a brand are not doing great job and obviously Royal Enfield is an exception I think there is nobody who's have never thought of buying an Enfield whether their fathers would not allow or allow but that's the kind of sense you want to create in the young audience that okay this product is there and why it changes your life it may or may not but how it changes your life that's the perception you should be able to create and this is where I think on this panel Royal Enfield is a great case study with that being said there are localization differences also so that's why you have all kind of technology you can create single point of view but when it comes to you know how do you connect with the consumer it's a totally different story so that's why you know what you can do with the technology is a different thing but who do you stand for is a very very important thing and can you define in your communication is a very difficult task and I'll give one example and Harley Davidson works very well in US but did no longer exist in India right so what do you stand for and who do you stand for is something I always keep it as a mantra that you know if you want to deep down understand your consumer really well there will be technology help there will be different kind of methodology research you will use but somewhere as personally at my level I feel that on the second part I'll rate really really low like 2 or 3 what are the on the universe side probably 7 and 8 I know you know who do I want to target and which product it suits for very good I think that that's that's 2 is it's a fair a fair admission you know and I'm glad that you know you are open in saying this that you know it is 2 because the fact is that most of the brands have to invest more and do a lot more about it on the Harley Davidson piece I just hope keep my fingers crossed I hope Ford doesn't go out now with the whole changes happening in the Ford story in India but Amit with a little twist to the question you know so that you don't have drunk anymore sorry you don't have drunk anymore so Amit coming to you with a little add on to that question since Govind spoke about PG and the campaigns and the brand story and the content around it you know would you would you think that you know the campaigns that you know you run or let's say the market the whole market mix marketing that you know which we have been using in the in the post pandemic environment for you has that gone you know through a dramatic shift or you think not much has changed well I think Raman very important point I think it has shifted from definitely from three different tangents and we all know that empathy and brand purpose as you started with your particular narratives is very very important and we knew it from ages and ages but what has happened is because of our daily life so it has actually missed out or it has just taken the back burner today today the brand purpose with empathy has actually taken in all the communication that you do nobody knows what product features that you provide and what is the essence of how much of the 3D that rendition of the product that you can actually do second thing is can you actually make it linguistic technology and and that is very very big demand which people I'm not interested you may be a north brand or south brand but can you speak the language which I understand and also in the technology that I adapt or that knowledge I interface it is very very important today which was not there before and I'll tell you there are a lot of architects interior designers electrician they are very very well connected because today I can't call them for any seminars today neither an online but how I can actually communicate in their language in the medium in which they actually operate third is you don't need contact today today you need to have a connect and I think the connect is more important than the contact today that has changed the entire market mid modeling also in terms of the approach to the market has actually changed nobody is interested in how many brochures and leaflets but whatever you are providing is providing in my particular context and also the way and I want to do it which is much more comprehensible today and I can connect that chord with your particular grant that is why if you see most of the communication that we are also trying to change is also about making it see we're talking about consumer experience perfectly fine but also there's two tangents to the entire experience about safe experience I don't want to get something and safe experience not only from a health or hygiene standpoint but also from my data privacy standpoint I want to actually give access to some people which I don't think is something which is very open to it so your point is absolutely bang on the changes have happened and it also changed that the needle has always started moving and the change will also come because what has happened today for last two different years if you see 50 to 60 percent products in India are primarily basically seasonal products by next year you will see most of these things will actually be a very very different tangent in totality I think that's a question to have this conversation forever and ever and ever and ever we have time in our hand I would like to end it with one rapid fire question right and Kunal I would like to start this with you which is tell us the audience the one unforgettable lesson that the pandemic has taught you about the business I think adapt change change and change I think that's the most important thing you know disruption is here to stay for everyone and you need to adapt to it and move on very quickly that's that's that's that's how I would put it you know it's it's a matter of survival and you need to be out there take the right thing take the right decisions and move very quickly that can change well said so branch if I can go to you sorry I said the pandemic may have brought it to focus what we already knew I think for me it's personally that we are a small planet we are a small world community and we are all in this together you know so so there's no place to go except here we will set again if I can go to you I think it has to invest on experience not on expansion whichever kind of customer you have focus on them give them best experience and expansion will have should happen automatically very clever very clever what's your take my take on this would be Vaisak however small or big you are you got to adopt a startup mentality to survive in the changing times because it's an agile world it keeps changing a lot so one got to be really a startup frame of mind look at Amazon we got Google they are not startups but they are the biggest organizations in the world but they always work like a startup I think that's the mantra to success on the agility and second go very sharp and bold on tech driven innovations true true I mean what's the biggest I would say I would say re-skill and re-calibrate unless and until you re-skill yourself it is very difficult for anybody whether it's marketer whether it's consumer and whether it is anybody and re-calibrate your entire consumer decision journey and map with consumer digital journey that's what I say thank you for saying that amazing amazing thoughts as lessons right go all in adapt and change re-skill startup mentality and invest in experience these are profound thoughts today thank you so much our SGM panelists for sharing this