 All right, thank you for joining and welcome to this E4M Tabula Talk series which is a specially curated series touching upon topics that are of great concern to all of us and today we'll be talking about the theme for today is Strong Together. In fact, what COVID has done to all industries is both great challenges and publishers have not been spared even and today we have some of the top publishing executives who will be talking about what COVID has done to them and how they tackled it. So, before proceeding, I want to introduce my esteemed speakers. I have with me Mr. Saleel Kumar who is the CEO of CEO Digital India today group. Welcome Mr. Kumar. Mr. Arijit Chatterjee, Chief Strategy Officer, NDTV. Mr. Rohit Chadda, CEO of Digital Publishing G Digital. Mr. Sanjay Sindhavani, CEO Indian Express Online Media and Mr. Ran Bak, I'm sorry, Chief Revenue Officer Tabula. Welcome all of you to this discussion. Hope we have come to another phase of the narrative has shifted from where it was maybe few months back and now I think there's vaccine around and a lot of new hope is around. So, my first question to all of you is what emotions are you feeling, what keeps you strong during these COVID times? I mean, how have the last nine months been for you? So, I can maybe start with Mr. Kumar. Well, let me begin with saying that thanks for having us and it's a pleasure to be again with you. I think these are challenging times. These are also places where you look at disruption and how disruption gives you opportunity to look at new avenues, be more innovative, be more flexible and see what is it that you can deliver and obviously making sure that everybody is safe and healthy. I think one of the things that the pandemic gave us was trust everyone and make sure that the teams, the real asset of an organization being their man part is taken care of. That's most important and that's what we did and I'm sure everybody did making them work from home, saying that this can work from home. It's a safer environment. Work was second health and family was given the first place and obviously, we all felt the bump because suddenly the business had stopped. But for the digital side, it had turned around and we saw huge influx of traffic and great opportunities. What I was talking to Roy sometime back before we just joined or went live was how it turned around on OTT, how smart TVs came into play, how mobile consumption has grown. I was reading another article which said mobile consumption time spent is nearly doubled. We saw a lot of people coming in reading news and obviously they wanted news which was accurate and factually correct. Everything was on an overdrive, whether it was the fact checking, whether it was bringing the right news to the audience and trying to garner as much as market share as you could do. Right. Mr Chatterjee, your response to this question, what emotions are you feeling and what keeps you going and what keeps you going in this tough time? Well, I'd like to thank for having me and always a pleasure to be with everyone virtually, hopefully soon in person. I'd like to thank a certain Mr Daniels and a certain Mr Jameson. I'm just kidding for keeping us strong during this time but I think strong is too strong a word really Roy. I think we've all had our moments. It's been a tumultuous time the last nine months that we've never felt or experienced before, staying away from friends, family, parents in some cases. So it's been a tough year but I think what's kept us going is pretty much thankful and grateful for being healthy and friends and family being okay. I know that these two should pass. So I think that's been something that's kept us strong. And also I think the fact that making a subtle mention about taking as an opportunity, we saw real surge in consumption, pretty much a technology and for us it's broadcast and digital and we pretty much saw a tonic shift of consumption patterns etc. Moving towards digital which we had always believed in as a force driver. Just working and keeping, as they say, the gunpowder dry, not doing anything silly, making sure you get the basics right, keep it going and then kind of building blocks to make sure that all this passes, you're still doing the things the right way. And also I think just from a work perspective personally, just working for a brand that people trust, that people believe in credibility, I think keeps me going and wanting me to go to work every day. So I think that's what's really been the takeaway from the nine months. Yeah. Right. Mrs. Sandovali, what has been the story at the Express Group? So first of all, thanks for having me here and thanks to all the panelists. Story at Express basically, like everyone else, this came as a surprise. But what I think is fear is a very strong emotion and when the pandemic struck, everybody was fearful of what's going to happen and everybody feared for the worst. And I think that kind of drives your survival instincts. It's an inbuilt mechanism in everyone to kind of figure out what's inside. And I think that brings out some of the best in people. And initially, our response was, like Saral mentioned, to ensure the safety of all our people, to give them that comfort that the organization is with them. We do whatever it takes to keep them safe, keep them protected and enable them to go through this crisis. Having done, I think what we saw was the teams really kind of bounced back in a way we haven't seen in a long time. And as we were discussing before this started, that it's been one of very good years for us, except for the initial months. After that, we've seen a rapid recovery and rapid growth. And everybody's mentioned consumption has been on top levels. And I think with the help of partners like the Boola and Boola, we also saw that we've been following up on the revenue side. Right, right, right. So it's been mostly similar stories. But Mr. Chadda, if I have to ask you, what is the kind of approach that you took at digital? I know there's a lot of spike in digital, but I mean, what was your approach? Sorry, your audio is muted here. I said this before, I tend to do that. So yeah, like everyone else, thanks for having me. It's great to be in such an esteemed company. I mean, so I echo everyone's views. Sorry, I think there's some issue with the network. Okay, I think let me then wait for... Yeah, so whatever I was saying was like everyone said, you know, so health comes first, family comes first. And hence, that was the first priority. We did not have a culture to work from home before this. So I think that was a huge shift in how we started working. And what we saw was tremendous growth. I think the entire team really showed their grit. And everyone came together to work to do really, really well. We've not been among the top in terms of our positions in terms of ranking, etc., till the past year. But we saw that when the teams came together, started working together, respective, there was no timing, there's no day starting, there's no day end. And I think it also helped the team to focus, because when you have fear in the air, then something I work in really allow you to not think about something that's bad and just change your focus and it helped, that helped. And that showed in the numbers, we've grown really, really well, like most content players. And yeah, although initially the revenue numbers didn't really kick in as the user numbers did, but that started moving in the same direction now. So yeah, it's been a good time at least from a business perspective. Right. Mr. Bhak, I want to come to you. You have been helping publishers deal with crisis many a times. You have done it, but tell me what kept you going? What were the last nine months like at Tabula? So I will start to thank everyone that joined me for this panel. It's a big honor to be with all of you. I think you ask about the motion. I think I'm very excited about the fact that after nine months, we are still strong together. And we're working with a lot of publishers and advertisers to bring the right content to the right user. But I want to start before that, because I think that all the things of uncertainty, and someone even asked me about what is my tips out of the box. And I said, where is the box? So I think that one thing that we learned is that probably in the last nine months, but probably also in the next nine months, we will face a lot of things out of the box. We will need to figure out the box for each one of us. Because what we did until today, not going to happen again. We're not going to be the mode of operation for the nearest future. I don't know what's going on. A lot of people are asking me working from home, working from office. How are you going to manage it? And I think that we need to wait and to see what will happen. You talked optimistically about the COVID-19 vaccine. I still don't see it in the nearest future, even though a lot of people are talking about it. But we need to wait and to see what will happen. I used to come to India probably every three weeks. I didn't come in the last nine months and I'm missing the people I'm working with. I'm missing the environment to do business in. Of course, missing the food, but that's a different story. So I think we need to be optimistic. We need to wait a little bit. There is still uncertainty. But the fact that we are still strong together and making sure that the business will say sustainable, that's the most important thing. Right. This phase has also been a learning, relearning, unlearning, and all of us have had takeaways from it. So my next question is about it. I want to come to all of you that what have been the key takeaways for each of you as a business entity? And I want to start with Sindhavani. Thanks. So I think the key learning is that every day is a new day. You start afresh every day. You get what you are doing. You see the results. If it's working fine, you continue. If it is not, the environment is changing. You re-adapt. You reorganize yourself. So there are rules or a handbook which can guide you through this kind of a moment. And you have to create the, for example, work from home. None of us. I mean, we all thought work from home is a theoretical concept. You can probably have a few people taking off a few days in a year and that's work from home. But for the nine months continuously, 100% of the people working from home, I mean, nobody could have imagined that could have happened. And it's happened. Yes, the team has done very well. They have delivered. But I think there are challenges in that. And as leaders, we need to figure out what are the challenges. And the way I look at it, for example, specifically to this place, the new young people, they do get a lot of learning by sitting together with their peer group and, you know, learning from them. So, you know, the class who's been there, done things, learned it through a social interaction, we may not really fit to work from home is really bad. But at the younger level, fresh people, they need to get that. So we need to figure out what are the alternatives? How do we bring back that same learning experience in a very different kind of environment? So I think the other thing, you have to keep evolving, you have to keep learning, you have to keep looking deeper, keep interacting with your teams. I mean, keeping the moral of the team, you know, in a remote environment is itself a big challenge. How do you motivate them? So fear was driving it through a certain length. But as the and the fear settles down, you have to think of other ways to keep the team cohesive, motivated, connected and organized. Right. Mr. Chabab, for you, what have been the key takeaways for your business, some new learnings for you and what have they been? So it's been, it's, so this is a life changing event. I mean, I call this a life changing event because it has changed the way people behave. I mean, it's, it's very difficult to change user behavior. But fortunately or unfortunately, just in the past four to five years, we've had two life changing events that at least where India is concerned, the first one was demonetization, which we changed the way we started using digital payments. And the second one is this, that COVID it's actually affecting the entire, the entire world. So at times like this, I think also presents a lot of opportunity. You can, you, some things happen, which, which you would not have, which you would not have thought, you know, so there are new opportunities that come up. Some of the, some of the companies also did capitalize on this, especially in the healthcare space, et cetera. For us, I think what we saw, and what we wanted to do was because we saw that okay, a consumer behavior was changing. So we wanted to capitalize on that, on that fact. We ended up, we ended up launching a couple of platforms on OTT, a couple of apps rather on OTT for our largest broadcast branch. And I think the way, the way that we started working was more like, more like a tech startup, where we started focusing on speed and agility. And what we started doing was breaking down larger projects into very small micro projects. So that instead of investing a lot of resources in one project or in a large project, we actually keep re-iterating and keep, we basically followed an iterative process to actually see, you know, what was the result of the micro project and then whether we want to invest more in that same direction or not. So, so yeah, I think that was a key learning in terms of process or the change that we did in terms of process that has helped us adapt in this difficult environment. Right, right. Mr. Kumar, for discipline also, this has been, I mean, apart from bringing a challenging time and opportunity also. Tell me, what has been your observation and learnings from these nine months? Okay, let me put it like this. I think one of the first things was how connectivity mattered. You know, suddenly the internet became the backbone of all what you were doing. I mean, it was there, but you know, coming into an office with a lease line, you never thought about it. I think the internet, the connectivity, how you work within the family, because trust me, you know, when you work in the home, there is family. And, you know, when you're working from home, morning nine till six, seven, eight, nine, sometimes 10 o'clock, they're just wondering why what are you sitting and doing inside. Then people are coming and going. People think any time is a good time to call out, make a call, expanded number of hours. And then this concept has moved ahead where we look at saying, where from anywhere? I mean, you could actually go to go, I mean, there is some staff of ours, which is sitting down in Goa, there is some staff of ours, which have gone down to some mill stations, and they've managed to secure good connectivity and they're working from anywhere. So what's happened is, as long as you're being able to be productive, and are able to contribute, life becomes that much easier for all of us. Right, right. You know, with that, with that said, I think what was most, what was the most thing was like, obviously, like you said product, I mean, an opportunity perspective. I mean, think about it, everybody's working from home. Suddenly what's happened to the commercial space? I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds of square feet of offices that are empty. I'm sure organizations have already started thinking about it, that you know, what percentage of their staff can actually work from home. And right productive, this job can be done comfortably from home. And the employee now may actually get a choice when he's when he's being interviewed, you know, would you like to be permanently working from home? Now, for some, it is, you know, someone like me says no. And the younger audience and the younger gen sets, they turn on and say, yeah, why not? I mean, as long as I'm able to contribute, I'm more than happy to do that. Right. It was that you had to learn to grapple with emotions. You know, what had happened was this distancing between employees, you know, it was like add a you have teams and between teams, you've got rifts, which gets settled, especially when you sit across, you see a body language, you see a conversation, you relate to the person. And there are times where your body language or you sign off and say listen, cool off, we'll take this down. You know, because you're talking to a screen here, I think that was one, one thing that you realize that emotions really played. And you really didn't know when the day, you know, working from home also they never let you know, we never got to know whether it's a Friday or a Saturday. And then suddenly somebody said, listen, today's Saturday. And he said, Oh, really? Yeah, okay. Because that concept of getting ready and being completely moving out of the office, that structure was not there. It needed a little bit more planning. I think today, again, working from home has now been able to, you know, you've structured it now. So now, in fact, if you ask someone to come to office, you have to actually switch gears. And we have to go back to work from home. It is again, switching gears and setting up the structures, right, executive forces key. So you plan well, and you try and execute is something that I think that will be very, very important. And team management morale, I think is the key. The other thing what we did was we made sure that we stuck with our partners and continue to build and stay connected in terms of what is happening? How are things? What is the way forward? Are they looking? What are the new signs and signals? Are they catching? How can you be nimble and innovative and also make sure that you could change your strategy instantly and say, okay, this is how we'll function and this is what it is. So it was, I mean, it's still learning. We're still picking up the new habits. And I'm sure as we move along, it'll be a new work culture that's going to emerge out of this. Right. Mr. Chattuji, you have heard speakers before you tell me, have we seen a permanent shift in terms of mindset work culture as many of them pointed out? And what are the learnings from you? What have been the learnings for you if you could elaborate, please? Are you in mute? You're in mute. Sorry. That's for his job. Yeah, I know. Real, I think the whole concept of permanence is over with this pandemic, right? So when you say, is there going to be a permanent mindset? Honest answer, I don't know. I'll come back to doing the same things that we were doing nine months ago and take this as a passing phase. But I think some things that have made us kind of think and go back to the drawing board. Or maybe they were always there and this is almost being a catalyst in kind of expediting that thought process. Like, for example, I think something that's now, it was always a content is king. I think that's more true now than ever. The user has become about good credible content and they know where it is available and where they want to look for it. So that makes us publishers work much harder in getting that content to them along with partners like the Pula, which help us disseminate that content as well. Be the frilities of an ad supported business model has become more evident than ever before. You are totally basing your future on an economy, something like a pandemic event, you have zero control. How do you build more direct to consumer relationships is the holy grail of a subscription model. The answer to all of this, we don't know. If you go down the subscription route, you then need to rethink your entire data strategy today. We don't know as much about our users, a lot of our other partners own the data. How do we get back that data as we move towards a cookie towards a subscription model? Those are things I think that this has really got all of us thinking around, right? The overrated importance given to physical proximity. We see a whole building of 300 people and today we've kind of gone into distributed co-working in one of our locations and productivity is at an all-time high. And this would have never happened if not for this unfortunate pandemic. So I think these are changes that will help us. What this has done is make us go back to the drawing board on certain things we took for granted. But whether all this will be impermanence, I think it's too early to say. Right. Mr. Bakar, I want to bring you in at this moment and I want to ask you that what has been your understanding and your perspective on what people have learned and at Tabula, how have you been helping publishers during this time specifically? So first of all, I think that we all learned and I totally agree with what has been said here. We all learned to be very agile. We need to be flexibility, otherwise we need to keep flexibility, otherwise you're not going to be able to stand still with what's going on. So you need to be agile, by the way, not just in business. Even with our families, with our parents, with our kids, they are facing a lot of changes too and we need to help them to take the right decisions. In terms of publishers and advertisers, I think that the agility means for them, want to help them to be creative to find, for publishers to find the right monetization, but to keep the values of your publisher, your organization at the same level as it was before COVID-19. So Arigit, for example, touched the issue of fake news, who is telling the right information, who is showing the right information. It's become very important to a lot of publishers and the way they kept their values meant a lot to them. That's for the publisher side. For the advertisers side, I think that we found out that a lot of advertisers didn't have any way of doing or creating the right content for themselves. So what we did in order to become agile for them, we actually opened a creative shop, creative studio, and we helped them for free to run and to create content that they will be able to advertise and to sell their products. Now, it sounds like I'm not promoting anything because it's for free, but I think this is the agility of what you're expecting from partners that you're working with. You need them to help you, you need them to support you, and they need to do it in a way that they listen to your needs and create solutions for you. And this is the agility, I think that we are looking from all of our partners. And the last thing I think that Salil touched it very, very much, and I strongly believe in it, is to be agile to your employees, to the people that work for you. You need to accommodate their needs, not all of them are the same, not all of them suffering the same concerns or challenges, and you need to listen to them. So for example, he gave the idea of working from home, working from office, what will happen in the future? Do we still need an office? Maybe yes, and maybe not. Maybe to some, maybe for R&D, yes, but for sales people, no. I don't know what's the answer, but I know that I need to be very flexible and to keep myself very, very open with my mindset and to listen to my employees and to the people around me. Right. So picking from what you said, I just want to pose my next question to everyone, start on Mr. Chatterjee. What has also happened is that the way content is consumed has changed. There's a different interaction between the consumer and content. And if you look at it, for example, my question to you, Mr. Chatterjee, is are publishers now looking at a hybrid model with low cost ads and low subscription costs to stay relevant? I would, again, I don't know what you mean by low cost ads, because I think the day you start going low on your advertising, any hope of being premium, which I'm sure all of us on this panel strive to be. So I don't think there will ever be a point where we want to go into low cost ads. I think what will happen is you will start augmenting or rather complimenting your existing ad business. And I mentioned the audio question as well. If anything, this pandemic has completely evidenced the fact of how inconsistent an ad supported model can be. And that's where partners like Tabula, business models around content marketing, business models around subscription, you talk about subscription, absolutely. But I don't think all of us agree that India is not, and at least we think, and I would love to hear what some of the others think, India is not a country where you can peddle a subscription for anything and get people to subscribe for it. So the moments you need to get into a subscription model, it's probably you're looking at a three to five year plan. What's your data strategy around it? What's the value proposition that you're going to build around content and user experience. So it's not a short term game. Nobody can say I'm going to roll out a subscription model because the pandemic's here and the moment the pandemic goes away, I'm going to roll it back out. So I don't think those things will happen, Raheel, you know, content marketing, and that's where Tabula plays such an important role for us as partners, not as just a platform. We work together on creating content and run mentioned every advertiser today wants to tell a story. I think the days are over when a brand would say on digital specifically, let me run some video ads or pre-rolls or just about banner advertising. Nobody wants to buy by advertising anymore. That's just like the bottom of the battle. You're scraping the bottom of the battle pretty much, right? Brands want to tell stories and that's where publishers and platforms like Tabula become so critical because you create content, you create that content, and then you figure out ways of getting that story out. These are the kind of business models that I think will become more powerful, of course, than exceptions like they are. And I think those are the kind of supplementary business models that we see. It's not about just low cost ads or low cost subscription. I think we just have to say how do we move towards monetizing audiences rather than just a page view. I think you'll see that dramatic shift on digital as we move along. Right. Anyone else who wants to address this? Yes. I think that data is the key driver here, especially for publishers, but also today for a lot of advertisers. You need to get insights. You need to know what your audience wants and what they like. And mainly they are reading some articles or content within your site. You need to know what they want to consume. And I think it's really important for each publisher to have insights into their audience and to act accordingly. So there is no question that data is the key driver for a lot of things, pandemic or not pandemic, data is the key right now. Right. Mr. Kumar, I can see you nodding. Would you like to add a bit to it? So your audience is mute. I guess Rohit is infectious. Everybody starts. I was about to say that my presence is infectious. There's no doubt. I think that's the future goal with all the things that are happening around with the cookie. Data and first party data is going to be really key. And that is where partners, especially when you look at Tabula and I recall the first time I was catching up with Ran and we were discussing whether which are the partners you'd like to really select and go for. It was that you had options. I remember I don't want to name other brands here, but there was stiff competition. And when you looked at what mattered the most for an organization came in from the Tabula team. Right from the top, everyone was interested to, I mean, their hunger to capture business is very good. And in a very positive way, we could make out that being a global organization, I've had the pleasure of meeting there, being in their office in Israel, as well as in Bangkok and in the US. And I'm sure they have a couple of more offices. You're talking about China and Salim, you need to explore. Yeah, it depends on the QBR. What happens is that when you looked at trying to look at which are the partners, you looked at this partner, it said, I'm global. I am leading this by technology, data and numbers. So we got all of that ingredient in there. And I think it was a fabulous choice. And today also, when we look at trying to move ahead with data, I remember about a year and a half back, there was a workshop, they had organized in Israel, where quite a few publishers, I think most of us on this panel would have been there. I also got a ping from a friend of mine saying, is this the version he's looking at this live broadcast. And so he said, is this the torn down version of Israel, the get together we had, I said, no, I'm sure that's not going to let it go like that. The moment times are better, we are going to be back in Israel or the headquarters. So we felt that this was where data is required, where technology help is required, where innovation is required, where you need some support from a partner, you saw it all coming. And I must give this to their credit that being whatever times it is, financially, they were very stable and we've never seen an issue on that front. So this is something, and they've been very transparent. And I hear about their competitors very often that they try and pick up a part of the contract and throw that saying, listen, this is not eligible. Hence this deduction, this deduction, we never seen that. And finally to say this, that while the data has collated all the information, it's not sparingly shared. And I must say this, when I say shared is, it's never a very strong regime of a quarterly business review, which we call as QBR. And the best part of the QBR is it's not that some junior person is sitting down, giving the information. It's a two-day long conversation. So you get into the grind, you get to know all your data, they talk about what they're planning to do in the future, how the performance of the partnerships been in the last quarter, what are the issues they're facing, what are the areas they want us to support, and also say where are the areas where they can support us. And they also look at future projections around this time, I think that helped a lot. We put a lot of that stuff together. And in fact, we had more than one or two of those where we had quite a few of back and forth and saying, I think we could do this and this will do better. And that helped to grow in revenue, it helped to grow in the data that was being accumulated, and how to use it more productively was something that both of us saw. And going forward, I think it's going to be very important. I mean, we have to understand that individuals, organizations where you have your data, how secure it is, whether it is following the policies and the guidelines, global guidelines, you're doing that. And all of that is being done very well. And I strongly believe that the data play is going to be important, it's going to get more and more. Right. I want to bring in Mr. Sindharani and Mr. Chedda at this point. The theme is stronger together. I want to start with you, Mr. Chedda, that how has your partnership been with the Bula? And in your view, what else can they do? How can they make it even better? How can they support their partners even better? Well, I would echo most of what Salil has said, that it's been a very strong partnership. I think what the insights, I look forward to the QBR as well, to be very honest, because I do tend to get some of the insights that I may have missed or my team may have missed earlier. And in fact, if I were to be very honest, I'd actually use the template of the QBR for my internal product team as well and told them to track it in a similar format for other things. So thanks to Ran for that. And yeah, I think every QBR, we do tend to see some interesting new concepts and ideas that the team, that the Bula team is working on and that they intend to bring in, which are mostly good innovations. And hence, it's mostly about, hey, Lokia, this is good, we want to do this, and hey, Lokia, this is also good, we want to do this. So yeah, I think it's been a good strong partnership and we hope that this continues for a much, much longer time and explore more ways of working together in a more strategic way and possibly expand that even further. Ran and I have been having talks about it. So we're looking forward to that, looking forward to a very good future. Right. Mr. Sindhavani, same question to you. You have association with the Bula and what can they do to support better? I think we just renewed with the Bula for the next two years. So I think that just goes out to say, believe in the Bula team. Having said that, a very small example, just a couple of hours before this conference, we were discussing a new product idea and the editorial team wanted certain features and they were saying, take and product will take time to build it. And I remember that in one of the QBRs, the Bula team had mentioned that they could help us with that particular aspect. And I told the team, don't worry about this. Reach out to the Bula tomorrow and your problem will be solved. So it's not just about revenues per se. So there's a lot of other things that the Bula does and they bring out those ideas to you in the QBRs. And I just picked up one example from that, which just happened a couple of hours back. I would like to add one thing, Rohil, because I'm a little bit concerned. None of them gave me a good idea of what I need to improve for the next couple of months. But I'm going to give to myself. I think that we need to get better connection to the editorial teams of publishers that are working with the Bula in India in order to empower them to use the right insights because they have all the tools, they have all the knowledge, they have the data in front of them. Sometimes they don't know how to utilize it. And that's our job to show them because we all agree that data is the key right now and we need to empower them to use the data in the right way. So I think that's something I'm taking to myself and my team to make sure that all the editorial teams will be well equipped with the knowledge that they need in order to utilize in a better way than the data that they have. I'll add to that actually. I'll add to what Ran said that another piece that I can actually suggest to Ran and we've been wanting to do that for a while is more around vernacular languages in the country. So we've seen some tremendous growth come in on the vernacular side in the past year and some of the tools that we have from the Bula work super well for international languages and Ran had really appreciated if we can have them in vernacular languages so that vernacular editorial can gain the benefit of data as well as the English editorial team that we're doing. Mr. Bhakar, I want to ask you this question though you touched upon it earlier as well. So these are times of uncertainty that we saw where on digital they were consuming aggressively content but they were low advertising expense at the same time. Tell me how did you deal with those rapid changes that happened in a matter of few weeks, few months? How did you adjust? So first of all today I have the ability to look at the perspective a little bit back or to do kind of a post-mortem. So yes there was a time that the advertiser spend went down but actually it came back and in a much stronger way. So and we heard it from other people here that the business went down but the business actually went up dramatically and significantly for most of the publishers around the world by the way it's not just in India. I can say that we as I said at the beginning we were very agile to understand let's take airlines. So airlines frozen they're opposed there is nothing you can do with them and this is the right time to shift your efforts to a vertical that can work much better insurance, face mask, health, working from home environment, distance learning. This is all stuff that a lot of companies become flourish or start to flourish as soon as pandemic strikes. You need to shift your resources, you need to shift your people and the mindset in order to make success. I'm going to give another example we took our HR people we stopped to recruit you can recruit on the beginning of pandemic. So we took the HR people we gave them a very urgent training to become SDRs and they helped us they helped us with a lot of leads. So you need to again agile, agility and you need to shift your resources in order to keep the creativity and also to be productive. Right, right, right. Mr. Chatterjee tell me this brush of readers you know online coming online growing digitally has it also forced publishers to introduce some new products when it comes to news and what have been those innovations at NDTV for example do you see what kind of innovation do you see happening as we move on? So I think really I can't stress enough on this and on the earlier question as well the plurry of readers also makes you want to take a much stronger look on the kind of content that you're creating. With new platforms coming on board I think what we've seen is new form factors new platforms becoming more and more prevalent right if someone's at home the when they're creating when they when they consume content what content they consume becomes more important and therefore what we've done as a strategy is always making sure that you can access our content anytime and everywhere. I think under the entire mantra of anytime and everywhere it's really important that the same premium credible content with the same accuracy and the same speed gets published whether it's our own platform whether it's a partner platform or or anywhere else that's what that's the hallmark of what you want to stand for. On the lines of we realized that a lot of people were a lot of our users were reading content late into the night or in the evenings and therefore we actually introduced dark mode on our to kind of their eyesight etc and make it easier for people to read content so the dark mode was one of them. We introduced an EPG product where we saw OTTs and Rohit Sears I'm sure he bet estimated this. People suddenly had so much time to spend on OTT platforms on what they want to watch recommendations etc so that's a platform that we launched where we searched for content and you know ratings and social viewing etc so that's something that we started working on and we see this moving forward as well. So I think those are some of the areas that you know like we just launched on glance the lock screen app and on snapchat we are going to be powering a lot of news content on glance and snapchat that's just another example of us trying to reach an audience that wouldn't really come like the 18 to 25 year old audience which wouldn't be an NDTV audience but we want them to get the content in their format it's a vertical video it's mobile friendly short for mobile these are the kind of changes I think we're all making a vis-a-vis platforms that we're going to be available on and we just see becoming a part of the DNA of business and work moving forward. Right Mr Kumar same question the kind of innovation you have done in terms of new products news products and where would that I mean take you in 2021 would it remain the same would it change our post pandemic I think it's still a new type no okay perfect yeah I guess you know each one of us are working with various innovations right across I mean for example for us we added a few of the tech channels which were in various regional as well as local targeted form of content then there was podcast that got introduced because we realized more and more podcast was going on and we doubled up on podcast in terms of news because audio news is again something that's really big again being streamed at various platforms including devices especially the connected ones like Alexa so you're pushing content there and then obviously there was a leap in terms of trying to see how we could do video commerce I think going forward that video commerce piece is going to be something that's going to grow much bigger as we go along very recently there were some announcements made by some other players talking about how video commerce is going to grow through the roof those have been certain areas where the group has been investing the digital side of business we've always invested and we continue to push as much as possible in fact hiring is on a double drive trying to make sure that you know you get the best talent that's available in the trade today so that goes on right across whether it's in the form of radio or video or text and again we try to work out in new and more innovative ways of our digital magazine which is the India today most trade magazine across Asia and tried to ensure that there were no disruptions of any sort in terms of because physically wasn't available then how do you make it available digitally right across so there has been a good focus there going forward into the next year 21 like I mentioned the focus drivers are going to be audio podcasts how they are growing we're seeing huge growth adaptation there we are also noticing the video piece growing and consumption on the bigger screens grow because like I said you know how smart TV consumption suddenly grown everybody's sitting at home mobile obviously he's been growing because now everybody's at home I'm sure not Indian houses four members have four TVs so what's happened is there are four mobiles which are picking up content and you're trying to make sure that you've been able to personalize content that's one other area where we see tabula helps in with the feed that they bring in they have a good intelligence tool which is always learning and I mean I think these are two words which we all will hear you know artificial intelligence and machine learning keeps improving but that's a fact I mean the recommendation engine helps in fact we've seen more than 100% click-through rates which helps not only increase pages per visit from within the content of our of our entire repertoire of content and reduce the bounce rate effectively and that's one of the unique factors so we see that more and more of that growing and as we move along data is again going to be a key area where we are going to be focusing much more and see how we build that right right this is my final question to all of you I'll start with you is that 2020 has been a year we'll all remember for all the reasons maybe negative reasons but what do you want 2022 look like from a business and a personal perspective 2021 2021 yes I think that's a given that you know everybody wants the business to grow and stabilize I think if I get to the core I think we would like to see our revenues to be more diversified because I don't think the pandemic is going away anywhere as as Rand said you know uh there's talk of vaccine but but everybody getting the vaccine is to the long time away and we will see more waves coming so so I think we have to be prepared and diversification is one way of preparing for it secondly I think like it or not the ad inventory is going to keep on increasing as more and more people digitize as the consumption shifts to more digital platforms the supply side is going to increase and the prices will keep dropping for advertising so the value of advertising will be on what kind of audiences are you able to collect and what knowledge do you have about your audience I think that's where data becomes key so if it has information about my users you know which can be add value to the advertisers uh like you know this is what the bullet does and that's where they create value of the drive so that will help us help you get me minutes and that's what publishing are interested so we are not ad forms which will aggregate billions of people we all operate in missions and we we get a certain percentage of market but I think where all of us excel is attracting a certain pile of audiences but today what happens a large part of these audiences are sold at the same price as any other audience and that premium that you you you are supposed to get for the premiumness of audiences is not really happening so I think ability in data to get that next year and to ensure that use that data to get the premium is one thing uh divisive revenue streams whether it's subscriptions whether it's content commerce whether it's uh content marketing whether it's e-conferences I think that's the other large part that you want to grow and get right and I think ensuring that your teams say stay safe and healthy uh you are able to get the right work environment from them whether they work from home or whether they work in an office environment how do you ensure their well-being uh you know for uh last months have been very high stress for a lot of people right the impact of stress is not immediately visible but it starts showing over prolonged periods so how do you find means to mitigate that stress uh across your teams and people across different levels uh the good thing is the work behind us uh as sir said you know we are back in the hiring cycle we are now planning for the next year we are hiring for the next year we're preparing for it telling those are positives and that will help us solve the issues but I think for me the largest concern is how do you ensure that your team stay in the best of spirits uh going forward and uh the new work environment becomes more conducive to for them whichever way it is right right so same question to you how do you want 2020 to look like from a business perspective from a personal perspective and your thoughts sorry it's on mute yeah third time's a charm I thought but it didn't happen yeah so 2020 wasn't 2020 hasn't been a bad year for us at all uh yes from from a health perspective there have been the concerns that everybody's talked been talking about from but from a business perspective if I speak it's not been a bad year for us and hence and personally personally as well I mean if business does well then I'm happy so it's it's very very intertwined so from business perspective it's been it's been it's been well it's been good we've been able to be been able to show some very good numbers both in terms of user growth as well as revenues I echo the sentiments of my co-panelists about you know the fact that there have to be new areas new areas of monetization I echo the sentiment around the focus on video in fact I didn't mention earlier that we launched news OTT apps during the pandemic in fact and I really appreciate the the effort that the team actually put in working in in the kind of environment naturally building brand new apps and launching them during the lockdown um so it it was great I think what I want 2020 to remind us of is is the grit and strength of the team that we have in fact all of us have because all of the all of the leaders here I think have seen that you know that their teams have have stood the the tough time and and have actually come out on top each each and every one of us so I want 2020 to stand for the fact that um that if then the going gets tough we we were tough enough to actually get going um and 2021 is um the focus there is obviously going to be about new areas of monetization new products we have a lot of things that we had lined up actually for 2020 which unfortunately for the pandemic we we will have to do we have had to push them to 2021 um because like Ran said once the pandemic started some of the pressures on hiring etc happened um and hence we had to put some plans on hold um to keep mindful of the investments that we are making um because nobody knew as to which direction is our things going to go in so so yeah we look back at 2020 in a very positive manner uh because of the way that business has turned out um and we are very excited about going into 2021 hopefully um being able to to execute the plans that we had for for 2020 early on right um and Mr Chatterjee what quick thoughts um firstly I hope in 2021 we can do this in person and we don't have to be doing this virtually I agree and that too in the tabula office in Israel yeah absolutely fine with me I'll settle for anywhere so as long as we are all together in person and socializing and we can get run to India I think we settle for India as well so that's the first thing that you know that comes to mind um from a business standpoint we just want to keep building on the fundamentals getting those right um it's been a tough year I mean I know numbers are great uh while revenue um the last quarter we recorded the highest ever revenue in the digital business growth of 31% year on year so business is good but make no mistake it's been a tough year um mentally challenging uh more than numbers uh numbers are just one part of the business the entire framework of you know health uh people um getting through uh you know friends and families and colleagues who have been affected by the pandemic it's been a tough year so hopefully it you know we are all in a better space mentally next year is what I would want to hope for everyone and once we do that I think business will follow suit so I think we'll be covered there right right right uh so there are some questions from the audiences I'll just try to get into them uh yes there's a question from Mr. Sumit Rana content takes a long time to kind of yield results is displacing important for keeping the gas on Mr. Kumar I want to ask I want to pose this question to you okay yep yeah yes yes can you hear me yeah yes can I can I get the question again please so Mr. Rana is asking uh content takes a long time to yield results is display still most important for keeping the gas on well I know I mean listen display is um is a is a is a is a key a part to the mix but uh you know would it keep would it help you keep burning no uh advertisers today look look at telling a story they want to do it in the most innovative ways one of the reasons I if you recall I mean during this session I mentioned about uh video commerce uh that's again a part of the storytelling it's um also trying to get contextualized and make sure that you know what you're talking about how you're going to narrate the story what is it going to be it could be in form of a text content piece it could be in a form of a of a video story anything like that how do you integrate the advertisement with your content is going to be more important display advertisement is not I mean today not everybody is really interested in it's not um a key component I mean it's not the biggest component anymore right right Mr. Buck I want to pose this question to you it is from Surabhi Nagpal the question is how do you see content marketing taking shape in the times to come basically the trends that we can expect so I think that first of all content marketing is for a long time um stand uh and I think that we're going to see a shape of video as as Salil mentioned I do believe that video will become a very key component within the content marketing um I also think that in some country they call it native um and that will be embedded into discovery platform like tabula that native will be part of the offering uh as of today it's it's part of the offering so it's it's about native and about discovery I think by the way the most important thing the most important thing about content marketing or about discovery platforms will be the place you will discover content in the future so until today we thought only about desktop and maybe mobile right probably probably in the next couple of years you will find it in autonomous cars on your refrigerator in some other places maybe on your tv uh so content marketing or discovery platform will become much more wide use for a lot of users right right miss and Rani and there's a question do you see subscription as the primary source of revenue for digital publishers in the future so I think it will become an important part of this revenue mix uh becoming a primary mix I think it's a long journey uh I think Alijit mentioned that you know it it's it's three to five years uh at the minimum scale if you look at samples in the west for instance you look at the most successful nyte or wsj or financial times you know they've been in the game for almost 20 years before they hit you know a million mark on subscribers so subscribers are short term play it is a very important play uh it is going to be a indeed integral strategy I think for most publishers but you will have advertising subscriptions and other forms of of revenue as a as a part of your mix different people will have different proportions but I think people will like to have a diversified revenue stream right uh there's a question from antarik shgol this is for Mr chedda what can be the impact of any new censorship laws on advertising and subscription revenue streams well till now I mean digital has been a free bird from where the otta is concerned um and I mean they've been I mean we've been taking liberties in terms of content because and we've been showing the the two two reality good good content I mean um it it is going to impact to um to an extent um that so while it may not so two parts yeah one is uh the quality of content or the kind of content that that you're going to end up seeing um and second is the impact that it's going to have on revenues now um I I don't see that it is it is going to have too much of impact on revenues um while I mean good content is good content if you chop off a few scenes or you add a few beeps here and there um I mean while it's obviously not going to be appreciated by the by the end user but then if it's happening every I mean if it's happening across platforms you you don't really end up having a choice from from a user perspective but I don't think that it's going to affect revenues um revenues at all right I think there will be some kind of discontent among users because of these this censorship because they're used to watching um you know all kinds of content on digital um and once the censorship laws come in uh that's going to be I mean some sort of customer dissatisfaction great we have still a lot of questions but unfortunately we're out of time and I want to thank all of you for joining us especially Tabula for partnering and supporting the E4M and bringing us E4M and Tabula talk series and we look forward to many more and many more such conversations with all of you thank you once again for joining us thank you very much and uh wish you a healthy year for everyone thank you thank you thank you bye bye thank you bye bye