 Dr. Bhattra, ladies and gentlemen, a very good morning and I join Dr. Bhattra in welcoming you to the screen age fifth edition. It's a pleasure and privilege to address here. I also thank Dr. Bhattra for your most generous introduction. I must tell you that on the contrary whenever I meet Dr. Bhattra, I walk away with something new and something precious. I also wish to compliment the exchange for media team led in this particular case by Priyanka and their colleagues. You can go through any of the events that I've attended. It is amazing that Dr. Bhattra and his team are able to get who is who in the industry and the rich combination of speakers on varied subjects I haven't seen in many other events. And also we are talking about building brands Dr. Bhattra himself is an icon how within a short period in front of my own eyes and eyes of many of you have built an amazing brand called exchange for media and several publications in what I call it as the most competitive and the chaotic industry. I will begin by talking about what is in store for us in the country. This particular conference I thought should be I'm you know there is no point in talking about my experience I start my career in 1979 rightly it should be a stage that belongs to youngsters which I'm very happy both men and women but I'm going to be talking about the practicing business leaders point of view on the subject. There is no denial that it is going to be India's decade we are going to be the fastest growing economy of course there will be headwinds but it is widely agreed among the many CEOs of India Inc. and the economists that it will be India's decade going ahead. We are going to witness phenomenal growth in the coming years and we are fortunate to be there and about marketing it is going to be intensely competitive as well and I have seen throughout my career because the market is growing it is not that your brand will be able to get away with it when the market is growing fast the challenges also becomes very high therefore marketing becomes a very important subject and whether the four piece of marketing is going to change I don't think so the price or positioning or the place and the promotion that is not going to get divided but in India's context it is it is a billion consumers and there will be billion bays of marketing to them and it is going to be to distracted customers where most part of my career I saw customers captive to you customers were not distracted and today we have billion consumers and distracted ones and there should be billion bays you you are whichever is the medium we take it whether it is print television digital mobile all you see so much of information being shared and how do you market in this particular environment now dr. Bhattra also talked about the video in a you know we have been evaluating a digital marketing agency invariably all the people who are doing the pitch where 90 percent of their presentation related to how they can create videos so my worry has been and continues to be whether digital marketing is getting reduced to development and posting of video content otherwise why almost all agencies should be claiming about their capabilities and competence to create content in the form of video only thing is a TV commercial which is 30 seconds may cost crore or 80 lakhs from the average whereas in 10 15 lakhs or even lesser cost a digital marketing video content to getting developed and posted now you also have today many categories marketing right from political parties and I think most part of my professional career I didn't come across real estate as an important segment spending so much of money in marketing and brand building and ironically it is the new generation businesses who are who are spending a lot of money the swiggies of the world the we also find even when we grew up when we studied or when we practiced marketing we all felt that building a brand will is a big job it takes five years at least or at least a decade for someone to build a credible brand that theory is also demolished that how will you explain we will oppose these kind of brands getting created in a very short span of time the I will come to one of the researchers that we had undertaken it threw up quite a bit of questions about marketing itself uh I will list them but then I will we will talk about what could be possibly done the very first one is what many call specifically Ajith Ranade talks about it a lot the economics what I call as the what's up university the amount of information misinformation being spread through and the opinions being generated often not regulated and the the credibility it enjoys for people to believe and instantaneous forwarding to someone else and numerous what's up groups the role of what's up university itself it is why do we believe them as authentic and I don't think we even check whether it is authentic or not the second important thing is about the empowerment of consumers as well as the market years the the specifically the mobile platform and the social media and quite a few digital platforms are allowing the consumers as n-powered individuals market years as n-powered ones and I think the growth is related to this because we all like ourselves to be n-powered over the years I have been witnessing the the disability or or the dislike for larger contents small bites are the ones which is very important for building the brands and the study revealed that everyone is looking for or likelihood likability is more when the content is small over the years we also found that the consumer inside the money that is being spent for gathering consumer insights the thumb rule we used to use I am talking about till around 15 years ago whether 20 percent of the total brand spend will be diverted towards or invested for gathering consumer insights it's not being done so the India Inc is not investing that kind of money for consumer insights and I think the growth of mobile marketing and quite a few other when I refer to mobile marketing include the quite a few other platforms that is solving the problem to some extent or a large extent even quite a few cases now equally the important thing is the thumb rule that we all used as youngsters where that 15 percent of the total spend is spent for understanding the impact of the advertising when the advertising marketing cost went up like the consumer insights spent drastically got reduced gathering information about the impact of the advertising also got reduced them the marketers were interested in putting more money into advertising or promotion now the mobile marketing helps in at least getting measurement in a credible way not to not to ignore the fact that we are living in an era where we are questioning the data itself I am not getting into that debate whether it is a television ratings or the viewership circulation so on and so forth but the biggest biggest issue is connected with the myths that are going around number one is the digital marketing is is cheaper I do not subscribe to that view it is it may be effective focus but I don't think it is cheaper but but the view that is building up and wrongly promoted is it is the cheapest way of building the brands where quite a few MSMEs and the startups get misguided but the mother of all problems is is whether brand building is taking place or sales and tactical advertising is taking place unfortunately brands are not getting built and even the people who are realizing it are thinking that I can build the brand through tactical ways that is the belief now the we know very well that marketing focus companies deliver consistent results over a long period of time than the sales oriented ones this can be established but why do the advertising is reduced to tactical or the lead generation sales or it's given a new word performance advertising but the fact of the matter is brands are not getting built equally the thing is connected with the e-commerce as well I am not sure whether e-commerce is helping one to build a brand and we can be lectured about it that it is indeed so and often I come across I suppose my my e-commerce channel partners are not here it will work against the brand is my view quite often that is what is really happening that is it is reduced to price price price that's where it is how do you correct it the this is to that extent the article dr. Bhattra shared with me is a welcome relief that at least I don't believe entirely in the article published by the Wall Street Journal the I don't think it'll end equally we know the western media often hypes it up to the other extreme and it is downfall to this other extreme of that it is the end of it I don't think so somewhere it may slow down but I don't think social media will die it is here to stay the fact of the matter is that whether people will learn to build brands consciously and divide their spends between a tactical advertising and the brand building advertising the in a in a era where we are going to witness a phenomenal amount of growth and therefore I mentioned billion consumers billion ways of marketing to these distracted consumers you also have the challenge of India connecting with the global value chain and right now even a company like blue star has been struggling to get the marketing activity going on for those international markets so it wasn't the case that we were people were exporting in the past so it was easy for companies to be finding consumers it was in the b2b space but if India has to play a very large role you need the international marketing itself and we know very well a brand that is doing well in one country need not to be doing well in some other country how do you end up building brands in global markets so there is a huge talent shortage equally the talent shortage is even in the science of brand building that I am not discouraging any one of you at on the contrary I think you all have a very huge opportunities or your children have huge opportunities when I passed out that the top ranking students as spared to be in marketing or advertising industry I don't think today they are that is the case and I pray that it changes so there are two sectors where we have a problem manufacturing huge talent shortage and marketing huge talent shortage in in manufacturing there is a shortage of a different kind as well as that we don't get women leaders at all because for many years India didn't invest in manufacturing and the manufacturing was taken as a job meant for men so you have one one problem there in marketing advertising the the industry where was not able to attract talent for many years but there is going to be huge opportunity ahead now coming to this particular conference we Dr. Bhattra talked about the power of mobile marketing and the data shows that the smartphone users across the world is around 6.6 billion that is 83% of the world population is using a mobile phone it is only going to grow further and three countries China India and United States we are happy that India is figuring there with the highest number of smartphone users and in India alone it is going to going it is already 0.9 billion it will become 1 billion smartphone users by 2025 or 26 and 75% of the digital media revenue is contributed by the mobile devices and the several innovations which Dr. Bhattra listed in what all it what all it is happening the estimate shows the advertising spends will reach around 77% in the mobile devices that is 77% of the digital advertising expenses are going to be there and it is estimated that it will be closed around rupees 28,000 crore to reach around 78% of the total spends by the end of 2023 and we saw the things such as mobile commerce contextual advertising so on and so forth being talked about now one of the things which also I would like to add to what Dr. Bhattra stated is the mobile wallets itself that is also an important thing to keep in mind when we talk about the subject so I conclude by saying so that it is an it is an it is an exciting time for us now and it is going to be a India decade marketing environment which will be far more challenging than when it was not India's decade because there will be brands there will be many others from across the globe entering Indian market we have a situation where tactical or the performance marketing took the stage it is time to focus on building brands mobile phone will continue to be a very dominant medium it is part and parcel of our life and for brand building it will become an important device that way if marketers are told that you you can't build brand without digital it goes one more step to say that without mobile marketing you can't build the brands and the talent shortage is huge it should get resolved it opens up huge opportunities and in when you keep mobile commerce as an important element I think the marketers are as of now ignoring the power of ONDC I think ONDC is going to be a very powerful arsenal for the park tiers the government of India has done a phenomenal amount of job and I think it is going to be a revolution that is happening that is going to happen in e-commerce through ONDC platform and as you can see from the program list there are experts and I I don't think there is a there there will be a conference of this nature which will be put together covering each aspect of mobile marketing I wish you all the best and I wish also the participants for the awards and congratulate them in advance thank you very much