 Thank you so much. What you're seeing here is history in the making because two very unprecedented things are going to happen today. One, you're seeing two competitors on the same platform. I don't think it's happened before. There are many times that I've discussed the same subject and I've only discussed it with armchair experts because we never get the final word from the people that are really involved. So you've got your privileged audience that gets to see that. Secondly what you're going to see is a very soft-spoken news anchor that doesn't happen either and that's got nothing to do with my personality. It's because I've been under the weather the last couple of weeks. So if I do break into a bout of cough then you know just bear with me. That's the only request I have but I may be soft but my questions I hope will be sharp. So starting off you've heard the two gentlemen fantastic presentation guys. Firstly Ajit, I'll start with you. You're very bullish about television and rightly so but all I want to know from you is that you also got the ICC rights. Why did you part with the television bit of that then? I mean there are many takers. We all bid. There are many bidders who came for television rights. But you retain the digital and let go of television. No we kept the you're talking about the World Cup. Yes. Yeah if somebody's willing to pay a price for it I'm more than happy to share the rights. The other thing that I noticed from the presentation that Anil made and that caught my eye. I'm sure it caught all of your eyes. Well that is the word free right. We all get attracted to that whenever we see that and I'm happy as a consumer. I don't have to pay. So I mean I did my math. I'm not great at it but I did it and and you you're paying about 23,000 odd crore for five years and my math tells me that you know advertising revenue at whatever five lakhs or ten seconds the going rate you get about three thousand seconds a game. I did my math and it tells me that they'd be a shortfall of about 15 or thousand crores beyond the ad revenue. And I thought that that's where subscription comes in. But you've got no subscription. So how do you manage the PNL. Yeah I hope that's the rate that all of you agreed to five lakhs or ten seconds. I thought that was the going rate. You might you may be right. I'm not going to come into that but so there are different models here. We've seen what's happened to global giants who've come into India with a view that you can actually make a lot of subscription. Actually subscription money is notoriously difficult to make. You know if you see what's happening on pay TV going down dramatically and your ability to charge households is also limited. Right. Because there is an NTO in place which says that you can't make additional money. So the inelastic side of it because India is such an economy which is growing really really fast is the obvious choices about advertising. And you know especially if you can provide value to advertisers and you know whether it's TV or digital I can assure you that advertisers see genuine value in participating in something like IPL. It should be a good proposition to work. And I'm answering this whether it's TV or digital because the math is roughly the same right because it's almost the same level that both of us have paid for TV as well as digital rights. So our take is that there is a lot more that you can make out of out of the advertising dollars especially if you can increase the viewers and provide that value. Do you agree with that in terms of what he talks about firstly subscription money very tough to get on digital because you've worked on digital before. It's quite natural right at the end of the day when when consumers have to pay for what they watch. This is actually pretty much I mean internationally it happens they all pay for what they watch. In India we have been we almost see three India's in India right. There is a top 100 150 million then there is the mid India which is around 300 200 to 300 million. And then there is almost a 400 500 million at the at the lower funnel right. And the challenges and if you generalize the challenge of India then the I would agree. But if you if you start going deeper the top 100 million can pay the top 100 150 million can pay. They are paying across mediums. They are I mean whether you calculate the pay for view the data cost you look at affordability of televisions or set handsets that you purchase everything at the top 100 million are global citizens or 150 million right. So there the affordability is not a question at all. The second part is the mid and that's where I think the where India be where the digital versus TV comparisons also start playing a bigger role right. And that's because there are stuff that is available to you. And that's where the content explosion has happened in India today. Earlier it was mostly PGC. Now if you look at access to Internet or Internet penetration going up there's a lot of UGC which is coming into the ecosystem. There's billions of TV UGC content that's available. And that's entertainment for many right. But here we are talking about a PGC hero content which cuts across masses age group any any anybody or everybody in India has some stage watched cricket in that in that's the third part is actually the bottom funnel which is where actually the free model works right. I mean anything any word free works offer works everything in India and this brands understand mediums understand consumers understand. But that's where the hidden cost starts coming in. At one end should I pay for content like 50 70 rupees on a subscription or 100 bucks for a subscription per month versus hidden cost of data. And that's where the India's dichotomy is. It's nothing to do with visiting here. And that's where India's core challenges when we start offering them something on an ecosystem. Why are they still watching on a particular medium. Why is the medium not. I mean everybody would have loved it to have linear fault. It is not a linear fault. It is still 500 million 700 million watch sports on television. There is a reason because the movement I start watching it free. It can cost me anywhere between 300 bucks even if it's a Wi-Fi to almost 2500 bucks per month. It's not free. I know would you answer that. There is his point on the data costs as well. Does that then add on. And is it then is strategy more at play rather than P and L that that I'm looking at in terms of your strategy. So that's not strictly true because you need to do the actual measurements. Suppose you have 17 bucks today or 18 bucks or whatever. Can you get cable subscription. You can't because you need to pay the base price of 130 or whatever per month. So they actually cost even if you were to have no other channel but the television channel that streams not streams actually broadcast sport. It'll still cost you about 200 bucks a month. The issue with the 200 bucks a month is it is not variable. Whether you watch one game or you watch 40 games. It's the same. Whereas when I'm doing it on digital actually I have the choice. Right. I have the choice and as you know data costs have been falling quite dramatically. The real question here is how many games does an average person watch. And again this is data that's available. So if you were to actually look at the average number of games and the average number of minutes that somebody would watch. It is much much cheaper. It's some hundred bucks. So it is it is certainly very much within the affordable range. And we know this. You know I've I've done this in a past role in the past when when when we had I feel free on on on Geo. So we know how how that data consumption works. It's it's no it's no secret that people don't watch 74 games all across the 40 hours. Right. So if if that works out it's much cheaper. Whereas on television you actually stuck. You have to pay 400 bucks. Otherwise you can't watch. You wanted to come in. I have an easy response. You're comparing 130 bucks for X number of channels for the full month with one game. Now in a way you're accepting that it's damn costly for a for a guy who earns. If I look at our per capita income of Indian population that's the reality. It's nothing to do with me and him which side we represent. That's the reality of India. Right. Yeah. Of course people will continue to watch everything including YouTube. All content that exists in Geo cinema would et cetera plus a number of free apps. So like for like comparison is that you get it much cheaper. Okay. Just to you. I know that you have a very robust subscription model for television. Do you fear losing subscribers there to digital considering they'll offer it free. I don't see that as the reason which is why I explained about the data cost. That should not be the reason. I think there are preferred viewing habits today. A lot of people are watching especially paying for HD connections. People are paying for connected TV connection or at least not watching TV and probably moving into streaming. These these phenomenon are consumer preferences at the end of the day. And that actually shows me eventually you still need a TV screen. Whether you watch it through streaming or whether you watch it through pay TV or whether you watch it free. You still want the sports as a ecosystem is a large screen but their argument is you can also watch now digital on screen. Right. You can watch it on a big screen. You can watch it on 4k data cost 4k. So if your standard definition if you want to have a standard feed on your mobile it takes probably around 3 GB to watch a match. If it is 4k it takes 10 GB per match. Now that essentially means people will come and snack in and snack out and TV doesn't doesn't have that phenomenon of snacking and snacking out. So to me digital ecosystems in India has grown in a certain way. Most of the ecosystem 90 percent of that view is actually UGC ecosystem. And that's a me that's a difference. Right. Because people have for decades have been used to professionally made content on television. Digital has come and opened up a new content consumption phenomenon. That's natural. We have found it interesting. Found it snacking snack out. We are here talking about the PGC content and that to appeal which is a religion in country. You don't have to tell people to watch. You know I'll give you free access to the religion of India. I'm going to go back to advertising and I spoke to you on it about you know the PNL and you said that you know you're going to look at more advertising coming in. I looked at the inventories earlier and probably Ajit would know those numbers because they had both digital as well as TV. TV inventory would be at about 90 to 95 percent whereas you know digital was was languishing at somewhere about seventy eight percent if I'm not mistaken. Do you really see that change happening now going just a season later. These are numbers from the last season. Yeah I'm not privy to last season's numbers so I can't comment upon that but my my point on this is actually inventory conversations in digital are not material because you can have as much inventory as possible. What matters is who are you targeting and what what you can sell through. So there might be streams where which might not be interesting for advertisers at all but there will be streams where you will have a hundred percent sell through. So it depends actually on which target group that you're you're you're targeting. Having said that look I'm sure they've done their modeling we've done our modeling. We are pretty confident of the numbers. Otherwise you know it would have been pretty easy for us to get on to a subscription platform and say look we know what numbers you know the previous sort of organization was making on digital right on subscription. So so we can we could have done that. But this is so much so much so better. So if you think about it it is you've got zero wastage. You've got accurate targeting. You've got terrific measurement and lower price. That's that's that's a win win and that's why we think the proposition on digital is certainly attractive to a much larger base of advertisers. The one thing that I actually happen to see great presentation but I'd also seen your presentation the earlier one that you've made a pitch for that that star have to go out in the market. And one of the slides shows that and I think the metrics that you use there were Google Trends as well as considerations where you point out let's say air conditioned brand or a fan them and certain brands that went digital and certain brands that went towards television. And there was a there was a big gulf there in terms of considerations as well as Google Trends. How would how would you response respond to that. I mean if these these sort of trends that exist on it. So again I haven't seen the presentation but I'd love to have a copy if you have it. So I'd certainly like to like to see that. Look you know fundamentally it's defined as a pitch deck. You don't expect it to say that look TV didn't work and digital did work right. So that is that is not the numbers remain true. Yeah. Certainly I'll keep that in my back pocket for when World Cup cricket comes in to say that look digital doesn't work and hence you shouldn't advertise. But look on a more serious note digital is one place where you actually have accurate call to action that says look is it viewability. Is it something around you know I want to drive an action of at least getting into consideration or is it an action of purchase. So all that is only possible on digital. So you don't have to rely on you know any other metrics right to say that OK look we did a survey amongst a hundred people and this is this is what came out of it. You can actually have accurate metrics and the advantage of digital is that you can choose to buy on those accurate metrics and customers finally pay on what has been delivered. It is not on an esoteric one of look we expect the ratings to be X and hence you know you must pay Y. I think it's it's high time that television actually paid on a per mill basis. OK. Talking about metrics I've spoken to a few advertisers and their circumspect and this has happened in the first world where you now know that since there is no platform agnostic measurement system for digital I think there are a lot of advertisers and brands that are circumspect about you know you they don't know who's watching it. So we also know now there are a number of click factories that exist. How do you allay those fears that an advertiser or a brand might have. Yeah. So certainly we'll provide world class measurement systems including trackers wherever you want. So if if that is you know there can be arguments at both sides right. Finally Bach is an extrapolation of whatever 55000 homes across the whole of India and there could be click factories etc. But typically on live events click factories don't work as well. So it's very difficult to do that because there are live streams and it becomes difficult. We'll certainly provide all forms of tracking whether it's double click seismic any any of those whatever a customer wants. We'll provide that so that there is accurate track. Now that the TV rights have seen a substantial increase in the amount that you both the players. Yeah. So you wanted to come. In the initial conversation that he had in the last two minutes I actually tend to agree. You know digital has got measurement digital has got. You know how are most of the things that you're saying is actually true for a YouTube ecosystem where you don't know where consumer is watching when they are watching. Therefore it's very difficult to therefore estimate how that view happens right. And that's where the criticality of IPL versus digital viewing is different. IPL is appointment viewing. It is going to be family viewing. It is going to be community. You are not going to take that away from a hero hero content item right. And that to me. Yes we can buy for it. I'm happy that we can buy for it. We also have hot star as our ecosystem holds many cricket series. All attempts will be to what my colleague is saying is exactly what we will also be attempting. But please understand if you overdo that too much. This is a community viewing game. It is the billion Indians interested in that game. That's my first point. The second point is yes we are saying this about targeting micro all of that and that's mostly valid in a mobile ecosystem. Now when I move into connected TV you have mostly somebody logging in with your mail IDs or numbers right. And that the whole family is watching. You still don't know whether the wife is watching or the kid is watching. Even today for example watching connected TV. It's on my ID. My kid can actually watch all the ads which are targeted on me. So there is a dichotomy when we start digging deeper into digital or connected TV mobile ecosystem or or larger ecosystem. So while the thought process I agree digital ecosystem has got its own merit and we will sell digital ecosystem on its own merit. But having said that when you are started comparing yourself with TV which has been established ecosystems start comparing then the if you're comparing on reach start comparing the reach because the reach is the one which has unified this country from the sport. That's an interesting point that he makes about the reach because everywhere else in the world court cutting is a phenomena. It exists. I was at a Bach conference the other day and and India is completely the opposite where you actually television numbers are still growing. So the household where television is still coming and court cutting is so negligible that it really doesn't account for that. So is that something that you're wary of. Not really while television is growing smartphones are growing much much faster. Conversion from feature phones to smartphones is growing at an unbelievable pace. So there is no comparison between a medium that is growing that fast versus something that is you know at best marginal. The other thing actually and I just made a good point. This is really about community viewing. One of the points in the midst of all this which I forgot to mention is that we are going to also do a massive job outdoors. Right. So far outdoors has been television. We are now present in over 20,000 universities colleges. We are present in over 35,000 Horega outlets restaurants. So in all of those places people will be able to enjoy the geocinema features. So that's that's something that we recognize the community element of it especially considering almost all Indian homes tend to be single TV households. Right. So that's why while the TV is on there are multiple people who are actually viewing on other screens. And the reason this happens is the amount of choice that a consumer would have whether it's language whether it's a particular team that I want to follow all that is a lot more possible on digital. And as far as the data that backs it up goes look the sort of data sources that we have and the types that we have ensures that our data accuracy is at par with any of the global giants. And we are working with all the global giants in fact to ensure that our offer is actually right there. So we are absolutely certain that it will meet any of the standards that are required to demonstrate accuracy. Just the last couple of points I want to touch upon because I think we're completely out of time. But this was you know in terms of that mentioned earlier there's a substantial increase of television rights that you've paid. The one area that everyone's going to look at maybe the price per 10 second might increase whether it's on television whether it's on digital. I believe if I'm numbers are correct it was at five like four digital at 10 like four for television. But does does the fact that now for the very first time there will be two players in the market. Does that take away your negotiation power with the advertiser to the two of you maybe Ajith you could start. See I've been in this in this Disney for almost a month now. I've met probably around 20 or clients in the last three weeks. Not a single client has told me checked me on the effectiveness of TV sport being on TV negotiation. Yes everybody wants to negotiate but more importantly people have negotiated more because of the macro environment trend that's in India rather than trying to stay comparable. Right. Because the moment you compare TV and digital I ask them cost per million. You want to talk the digital language. I'll start talking the digital language. Then it's about video views and all of that. We are happy to happy to actually do like to like comparisons on CPMs and then see whether it's cheap or I'm happy to then work it around. Imagine even after a decade decade and half of internet penetration and growth in India. Would you have imagined that TV still compares similar CPMs then on digital. Right. That's that that that even when I was in the digital ecosystem. I didn't check TV. You know I didn't check as much as because it's a it's we are all growing right. We are all growing money is coming. But I little take a step back and looked at television and I said oh this is that GEC the hygiene content hygiene content is around 15 to 25 UGC platform sells at around 50 to 70 bucks. How much of are you target. It keeps targeting only increases the cost per million. So even today now I'm all I'm saying is yes connected TV will grow. HDTV is growing TV still has headrooms to grow. There are enough population in India who wants still wants it real free rather than being said as shown as free. I think all four pillars in India uniquely is still growing. There is room for everybody. I'm hoping that with this increased conversation increased interest in this game on both mediums helps both of us grow because both of us have actually paid cricket cost have increased right and I'm sure you know and we'll look at most strategies to expand that more client list into cricket because cricket was known to be you know you know only certain advertisers come on cricket equally. I'm now willing to talk everybody to you don't need a budget as a constraint. If you want 50 million impressions on television happy to discuss what that what what that cost and at a certain cost which is comparable to any other ecosystem which can give me a similar reach. If reach is not comparable then obviously you start paying higher. I think most people in the room should thank me for two things that I just mentioned one is that he's putting it on FDA which means a larger audience base which which has access to two games and second is he's willing to sell on a CPM basis on targeted audiences. So both things great for all advertisers. So I I don't I don't necessarily think that IPL will necessarily have a constraint in terms of number of advertisers and I did this bang on all the conversations that we've had so far people have been quite excited about IPL coming up. Few of the agency folk that I've spoken to have also said the same that look IPL should sort of kick start the the the economic spending on advertising. So that is is likely to look look look quite good. I think the key around IPL and advertising is if there is a way to increase the base of advertisers TV typically has about 100 digital last year had about 200 to 50. Is there a way to make this much bigger because all said and done IPL as a property whether it's TV or digital delivers really really well for audiences and that is the reason it's actually a natural choice which which which which would help the industry grow. Finally I wanted to touch the content side of it because up until now you only had that one player and me as a consumer had to make do with whatever was available in terms of what the content is there. Would there be now special focus on that and now suddenly does content become that currency to be the differentiator just not in terms of the medium that you're broadcasting in or streaming but also the differentiator in terms of which place does the brand or advertiser target. Both of you could answer maybe you could start content suddenly becomes that currency the differentiator between the two platforms. Now the content has always been the currency but earlier I had no option. Right. There was only one broadcaster and if I wanted to watch the game I would watch that but now maybe it's how you present it or the way you present it could be that differentiator for someone like me who probably has both available to him digital as well as TV. See I think even if I had both the both the rights with me or if he had both the rights I think both of us bid for TV plus digital. It's not as if we are we bid uniquely only for one and didn't bid for others. But at the end of the day when cricket costs go up we would have done everything in the ecosystem to differentiate irrespective of who holds the right. Even if I was holding the rights technically the rights on cricket costs have gone up. So every possible means to expand the both whether it's a cost whether it's access or whether it is whether it's more number of viewers coming in and watching that game is a option that we would have tried. We would also like to look at more number of advertisers supporting the game because the cost of cricket has has actually gone up across. It's not just one medium. So to me whether you hold the rights together or more content is the currency because to me if you look at IPL during covid time it was we went up to six rating it was never six rating it was around four rating. The reason is IPL when it starts happening. Let me just complete OK. IPL when it starts happening it's almost is like a mood upliftment of the country and its sentiment its passion it's you know it's almost like it gave me a window to express myself family being connected. So to me IPL is stands way about everything else in India and it probably will boost the economy or the sentiment in India today.