 Now, going on to the jury process behind IMPACT's 50 Most Influential Women List 2018, here is a brief audiovisual presentation to tell us more about the jury process. Let's take a look. A woman has the unique power to create, nurture and transform. This universal truth holds true even in the business environment of today. And this is what IMPACT's 50 Most Influential Women in Indian media, marketing and advertising lists celebrates. The Exchange for Media Group launched this special initiative in 2012. For the seventh year now, we are all set to recognize and reward the powerful work and inspiring leadership of women professionals in the media, marketing and advertising domain. These are women whose passion and excellence has taken them to the top of the game in their respective fields. Extraordinarily brilliant women professionals have been part of the list over the years. With Malini Agarwal, founder and creative director, Ms. Malini Entertainment topping the list last year. This award means so much to me because I really work so hard in the digital space and for people to recognize this and especially people who are so well accolated and well known in the industry and the jury, which is so incredible. And a group of peers like this that I look up to as mentors and inspire so many people, it is fantastic. It means so much to me. To arrive at IMPACT's 50 Most Influential Women List for 2018, the first step was to call for nominations. This year we were overwhelmed with more than 300 nominations pouring in. We independently checked the list and added missing names of top women achievers who have had a significant impact on the media, marketing and advertising industry this year. The next step was to put together a credible and high-powered jury. This year too, the jury was chaired by Sam Balsara, chairman of Madison World. Well, as usual, it was a pretty exhausting but enjoyable evening. We're doing this for the seventh year in succession. So each year, we tend to bring in a certain amount of improvements and a certain proficiency to the job. This time, we had, I think, almost an all-new jury. I'm the only continuing factor. So that helped bring in a lot of new names from a lot of new areas into the consideration set because as we all know, this can never be a perfect system of ranking. So having diversity in the jury is important. And this time, I think we ensured that almost everybody in the jury was new. So that is why we got a large list. We've just finalized the list of 50 and out of that, as many as 17 are new names. So you can see that we live in a dynamic world and women are doing quite a bit to make their presence felt in our industry. All the best to the winners. And for those who haven't made it to the list, there's always next year. Besides Sam Balsara, the nine-member jury this year consisted of Sonal Dabral, voice chairman and group CCO, Ogilvi and Mehta India, Bhaskar Das, executive president, Dainik Bhaskar Group, Punita Arumugam, entrepreneur and digital evangelist, Gurmeet Singh, voice president and MD India, Yahu Oath, Pradeep Duvedi, CEO, Sakal Media Group, Tarun Raj, CEO, Jay Walter Thompson, India, Roma Balwani, director, strategic resources group and Ashish Sehgal, COO, ZUNI Media. I've been to juries across the world of all kinds of juries and this was one of the toughest jury that I've sat on, which is a good thing in a way because there are lots of debates, discussions, bringing down a list of close to 120 people in the shortlist down to 50 top women, the most influential women was a really tough task. Basically shows you that there are that many impactful, influential women who are blazing their trails and advertising, marketing, PR, media and it also showed that the future of Indian marketing, advertising, media and PR is in great hands. Other thing what I really liked was there was a great selection of new entrants that kind of made the list who made an impact in their very first year into the list and broke into top 50 at times even top 20. Impact team made our life difficult because of the shortlisting process. It was so difficult to take shortlist from the shortlisted one and they are all achievers and from that point of view the debates, the arguments were though interesting but I think all of them are winners in some form or the other but I think the jury chairman has done an excellent job in terms of managing our views and synthesizing them. So to that extent it's a great experience. I thoroughly enjoyed the jury process because I think you had a great cross-representation of broadcasters of creative agency, media agencies and PR. So I think the discussion was very holistic and so thoroughly enjoyed the depth of discussion that happened for every rank and every nominee who was on the list. So that's one thing that I really enjoyed. Within the list itself what was really great was to see a lot of new names come in. I think that was amazing. The second thing is that the world outside is changing going more online and it was good to see a lot of online company women leaders actually getting featured. The jury process was very very vigorous. I was lucky to have very very eminent colleagues in the jury. We started at 130 and you see it's like close to seven now. It's about five and a half hours of detailed discussions. We went through each of the profiles, had multiple rounds of shortlisting, lot of discussion. I got to know about a lot of people whom I didn't know about. So collectively the jury knew about everyone and we had good information provided by Exchange for Media that was very very useful. So the discussion was very productive. There were always counterviews and you know people had their own point of view and it was all discussed in a very very healthy manner and the jury chair was quite efficient and because of that we could come to conclusions very very effectively. The jury had a tough job this year. The nine-member jury reviewed the nominations meticulously on the basis of four pre-decided parameters. Contribution to the role, size of business the nominee leads, impact of her work on the profession and industry, other notable achievements. The jury members were asked to evaluate each nominee silently and independently and these ratings were added up to get the first shortlist. The second round involved intense discussion and debate to arrive at the final list which will be unveiled shortly. In fact, you know top 50 women in advertising and marketing is really one of the most looked forward to events in the year because it brings out such a huge universe of talent in our industry and as with any year this year's jury process was extremely heated and debated I would say and I think it's a good sign because it only goes to show that there is a lot of talented women that are really getting into positions of authority and power and they are not only coming into senior level positions but also influencing the course of our industry. We have seen that women empowerment and women rights are issues that have come to the fore much more in the global context than in India context the creative and the media capabilities of our leaders in advertising and marketing women leaders in advertising and marketing would take that agenda forward for our industry as well. Really heartening is that there are so many women who are in leadership positions in our industry and I think it's heartening so there is definitely seems to be visible change and I was very impressed by just the credentials and the profiles of all the women that we had to go through but that also made it very difficult for us to select the top 50 out of all those so many I think there were more than 150 or thereabouts very very capable women so for that we took some three to four hours. I think the process was very smooth Sam is an excellent chairperson and I think there was a nice representation from various facets of the marketing and advertising and PR ecosystem so I think it was an exceptional jury met up with some old friends had some little bit of powwows with them on certain candidates but overall it was a great experience. Selection process that was carried out in advance and shortlisted that really helped us focus on the top performers in the in the industry it gave us time to evaluate them and at the same time we saw a wide spectrum of women who have some of them had not appeared in this list some who are veterans in the list and some who have really performed in the last one year. The jury process were pretty intense and you know Sam took us being the jury chair he took us to the task to be really sure as to whom we are appointing the top 50 names two things I would say which really you know delighted me to be part of the jury a we got a lot of new names coming in this year second thing which is also a good sign of you know women becoming more influential those women has really come up the process was very fair and I congratulate each and every woman who has been part of this top 50 name. The 2018 list features several new achievers we congratulate them and salute all the winners as we move towards the formal unveiling of MPAC's 50 most influential women in Indian media marketing and advertising list 2018