 Good morning, Mr. Ranga. Pleasure to host you on this fireside chat. As the name suggests fireside will keep it informal I'm not going to ask any questions on market chair business groups, but I think the idea is to hear your personal stories So my first question is a very obvious one Cycle Agar Bhatti is deeply rooted or intertwined in rituals, culture, traditions How is the brand established meaningful connection with today's consumer who might not be vetted so much in rituals or Culture, is there any insight? First of all, thank you for the opportunity to come and tell our side of the story Now as long as there is God, there will be Agar Bhatti. So that I'm not worrying about And as long as the market keeps going up and down, people will continue to praise God my only Challenge would remain to tell people when you're praying please use my brand And the way we communicate with consumers has evolved over the years But more and more I look at it It goes back to who we are as a brand what we stand for what we believe in what is our purpose and how do we connect with the Same mindset of the consumer So as far as the category is concerned, it's almost 85% penetrated category So much every household in India uses Agar Bhatti one one part of time or the other It's just how do we make sure that we are there in the top of mind for them to consume the product? absolutely now coming back to what the theme for today is and with digital transformation and the technological advancement How's the brand established or adapted itself to today's changing landscape? I think you know if you look at the category per se Agar Bhatti as a product You know we kind of think that it is not a significant part of our lives But every day when a mother actually lights those two Agar Bhatti sticks she prays for the well-being of our children Hope of the nation are intertwined with the product You know you may be paying 50 paisa for the Agar Bhatti stick But it has to burn completely it has to be very fragrant if not your prayers are not fulfilled It's a very deep rooted emotional Need that we're fulfilling as a product going to which we had to rapidly Adapt to changing times we had to mechanize quite a few of our processes to ensure Consistency in the product. So we started to look at methods of modernization as early as 1970 On the supply chain side and then on the market side as well If you look at how the categories evolved over the years from an unbranded loose packaging product to a branded product Now I wouldn't want to say cycle push the envelope in terms of branding But when I joined the company in in the year 2000 our brand otherness level nationally was at 3% today It's at 26% and it has happened due to modernization not just on the supply chain But also how we communicate with the customer From channel perspective we've gotten into salesforce automation real-time as a company We have 2,000 sales representatives. We real-time monitor their sales every day. We have a back-end AI For sales forecasting. We are here on SAP. We just migrated to S4 on the cloud So from a technology stack standpoint, we are right up there to sell agarvati's every day The consumer side though we still need to remain traditional yet bring in some level of modernization and that creative challenge continues Very interesting On the same note, we've noticed that cycle has associated a lot with sports over the past couple of years And which is not worthy and I'm sure it would have been in the right direction of contemporizing the brand or You know scaling up or expansion You know what what has it contributed to towards the brand or any insight? Well, I love playing sports being a sportsman throughout I may not look like one now, but I still managed to play quite a bit of sports every day I believe that sports builds a lot of character and for us the whole for it to sports More so to cricket happened in 2004 when there was the India Pakistan series that was happening on 10 sports and The night before the tournament started one of the major sponsors backed out because it was a mighty national And they had to get their approval from Korea and approved income in time and who else would a media agency and the news channel call But a family business who can take a call overnight So they called us and said tomorrow the tournament is starting what do you want to do and then you know being the Typical businessman that I am I managed to get a good squeeze in and we got on board on 10 sports And which say what scored all these amazing runs? We got the property called super force and super success and with that our foray into cricket began We also then created a property around the third umpire branding where we had a tagline That said everyone has a reason to pray and when there was an out-or-not our decision You get the third umpire branding with cycle coming in and that kind of elevated the brand to the next level Where our communications became mainstream and cricket in our nation is a religion in itself It's a great unifier and I realized after that that cricket as a medium will be there in India forever just like a prayer and goddess and So we continue to be consistently visible on cricket But on the other side we said we should also do something for the society that we're part of in terms of sports So as a brand we started promoting sportsmen that came out of mice or that's the city We are across genre, you know could be roller skates could be shooting hockey cricket tennis golf So quite a few sports persons over the last 15 years. We promoted from from our city We've given them that little bit of boost that they're required to take the next step in terms of advertising It's been cricket predominantly a little bit of comedy, but supporting sports You know, we've been doing quite significantly within the organization as well also, you know in the community that we're part of That's that's really wonderful and amazing connect with The sports and I think you've got the bank for the buck in your one and I think that's what kind of cascaded down I can relate this subject but And I know you do a lot of work with the community and sustainability has been a growing concern with a lot of brands Every brand wants to talk about it do something interesting, etc in that area And we all know that the brands which stands for purpose and as you rightly said This is a brand that stands for hope faith And we all know that brands which forge Or transit purpose for the deeper connection with consumer How is your leadership journey being in that approach for cycle where you are today? You are in a very good space in that area So any journey I think all of this started with my grandfather who started the business in nineteen forty eight very very disciplined man I believe in doing the right thing every single time with every single prayer Had tremendous ethical values I've given this example empty number of times in the office when you would drink a cup of tea you would actually pay for it from his personal expense Would not actually book it in the office experience. So that's the level of commitment and Integrity he had and that kind of followed through with the second generation of our business as well total transparency in what we do in our businesses ethical Business practices throughout and when I joined the business in 2000 That was one of the biggest advantages that I had to scale our business to the next level Many of my competitors were actually sitting behind the cash register when I could actually focus on the market Building value and getting more for our consumers and through that our journey began in which we realized that Now we are delivering hope to people day in and day out and everybody is hoping for a better future for their children and for themselves And what better way for us to help fulfill that promise? You know rather than be more sustainable. So we today we are the only zero carbon incense Manufacturer in the world. We have offset our entire plastic footprint this year and by 2024. We would be completely off plastic Offsetting our plastic footprint. We use a recyclable board in our packaging material We have OSHA's occupational health and safety certifications across the board So sustainability is something that we have kind of ingrained into the operations culture and ethos and This year going forward. We also included that in the performance matrix of our senior management Sustainability is part of their performance indicators as well So that you know it kind of gets ingrained into everybody's DNA also I believe most organizations would wait for a lot to be passed to follow through that But we believe we need to be ahead of that and so The market still does not see that as a distinct advantage But I think it's a matter of time as long as we keep communicating what we stand for what we believe in it's a matter of Time that market also starts appreciating it. In fact, that was my next question Lot of times we buy a product or a brand and we are not aware of you know The ethos or this is a brand which I'm buying which is plastic free or reducing carbon you know for print and That's great and remarkable Leading by action and not only you know inside both of the discussions Another question which comes to my mind is Amazing brand built over two decades plus experience and managing this any challenges which you want to highlight You know, it's a legacy brand comes with strong traditional values And you've built on that and you've leveraged on that right and you still stayed relevant and you've innovated and I'm a personal fan of your Iris brand which is into fragrances and personal candles. So any challenges in the last two decades of your leadership? No, I think challenges are empty. I think more than Challenges I'd like to look at them as opportunity. So whenever we've come up with the challenges It's to the leader and leadership team within to see how we can make that into an opportunity That being said, I think the first opportunity came to us in the year 2000 2001 when all the multinationals Came into India and wanted to enter the Agabati space We had right from Hindustan liver to God rates to record Ben Kaiser and ITC and everybody who came in to this So-called relatively unorganized category and that's when we realized that as a brand we stand for two things on one side We're fulfilling people's emotional prayer need and on the other side We're also fulfilling a frequency and that's when we created the brand iris is today is probably the leading home fragrance brand Lifestyle home fragrance brand in the country and we created functional air care under the brand for Leah I think the first biggest challenge I faced was in trying to create Mindset in our company moving away from a single product category business to a multi category business You know, we never sold anything apart from Agabati Ethos the way we function our supply chain our front end value chain our distribution All of that was aligned to selling a single product for almost 65 years Moving that to multi-product marketing was a huge challenge for me. It was a big learning curve You know almost it took us almost five six years with the leadership team then I know to build what we did The next biggest challenge I faced was to move in from a legacy system of tally into a ERP system Which was real-time? There was a huge cultural shift that we had to bring about within the organization and that was an amazing journey and the third more humbling experience was the whole e-commerce and digital End of that we went on last five years has been a Root awakening or a fantastic learning experience for me about how that entire monster is a completely different ballgame or together That's what we do in the brick and mortar side of it So that's been a big challenge that I'm still trying to overcome Yeah, and I think you've done really well there because typically as a customer we pick up anything Which is we go and buy free and we have this it needs to be sensorial and we need to smell and Just embarking on the e-commerce journey would have been tough But yesterday it's a you are exporting as well to 75 plus countries. So I'm sure Something you've done right there. The exports is relatively a good story When India went through this whole transition of Ayurveda Spirituality yoga our product was an instant connect with the West So you light an Agarbati immediately the Eastern ambience is created you put one chanting video and then In the West and that's all they consider India to be more or less. So other but they saw that wave and For example today Brazil is among the biggest markets and teenagers there find it cool to light a And Indian Agarbati specifically So that's what we're seeing as a trend in the West but in India for me I think in the digital space the revelation for me was I expected my existence Marketing supply chain Team to actually embrace digital commerce. It did not happen for the longest time When I created that as an independent SBU created a different vertical set up a independent team for it. That's when started to flourish. That was a rude awakening and Lesson learned. I think so whoever is here who are doing traditional marketing. I think you need to stop doing Digital give it to the specialist The next biggest thing that I did is stop all my agencies I don't have any agency that I'm working with right now completely built the entire Creativity Min House both for digital as well as offline and I've seen tremendous results in that as well I'm not saying agencies are bad. I moved out from a retainer model to a Project-based model where I'm getting a lot more for my book Next only thing left now is my media agency that also I'm debating what to do Representing a media agency. I definitely don't want And I'm sure media agencies getting some, you know Concrete and productive stuff. I think media is something that I'm still not I'm not going to touch for the I was staying with the fragrance and the younger audience connect. I think overall the sure awareness Fragrance around you and the people and the change which has happened that also would have added building relevance to younger audience for sure Great, what would be your message to all the young CMOs out there? any leadership lesson or you know personal advice or I mean I'm not a long way to go still in my journey when it's inspirational to hear every story that you know CEOs or leaders come and talk about everything is a learning experience So I think for me having an open mind as a fundamental requirement of anybody who wants to actually take a leadership position Another thing I've realized is many at times, you know, when we are doing when we are marketing We forget what the truth is actually and what we stand for and I've seen many brands that Get so carried away with creative and marketing they stop telling the truth And that that's something that we as leaders need to be very very aware of you know What kind of culture are we building within the organization? I kind of seeps in very very quickly That's been one of the biggest lessons for me with the entire digital Revolution that's happening High level of data consumption, you know, we kind of take things for granted But you know, it's just a Instagram post it'll get consumed quickly and we'll move on to the next one that mindset I think is a huge issue where we're you know reducing organization culture when people actually start seeing things that are not true and Consumer may fall for it once or twice, but eventually it will catch up So that's something that I strongly believe in that you know as leaders we need to take the responsibility for Sure. Yeah, absolutely staying authentic and I think Mr. Chathanya talked about that customer can forget you once twice But if there is a problem and you don't take accountability, then of course you've lost that customer for in life That's great. We have time for questions from the audience Good morning. Thank you for the wonderful session Just a quick one you spoke about the others getting into the same for a I'm a bit lover lover of agarvathis I don't repeat my agarvathis ITC Mangaldeep has been really doing well, so how do you see that you know in terms of the homegrown players doing it? It's a lot space and what is the significance of cycling your logo is something When you say doing well, I don't know what that means actually they've come up with an app And now they don't know they're really going strong on that. So the app is not other but the app Yes, but yeah, I get that's the way to reach the market and the customers No, they've done a fabulous job with the app They post half my team and built that so that was a wonderful thing that they that being said That's what competition is all about. We do have an app as well, but we don't call it We are brand our app is called pure prayer They will do home who jazz and all of that. We have another product called sole weather. So on the digital side We have quite a few initiatives that we have done that are all running independently. What my father believed Was that unless something becomes successful and is worthy of carrying the cycle logo on it? Don't attach it to it. Right? So that's the reason why we don't communicate quite a few of the products that we have beyond just the Agabati brand But it's a lesson learned. I think I need to start communicating that why the word cycle Grandfather thought about it in a year 1950 He said I need to create a logo and a symbol and a name that everybody in India will understand You might hear of where they are from what that cultural background is and it needs to be something that unifies everyone And the word cycle was so simple everybody in India called a cycle a cycle It was powered by your own will you can go wherever you want with it It's just like what God is to you Philosophical value of what cycle means is that for everybody the cycle is a cycle no matter who you are in the social Stata God is the same and so is the Agabati which is cycle so kind of unifies everything and that's why we Thank you What are you doing about CSR activity since you use sticks for your Agarbati There'll be a lot of trees being axed So are you taking up any apparel station programs and your aromatic chemicals are How do you reduce the carbon footprint? Like I said, there's only zero carbon manufacturer. We completely offset a carbon footprint We also follow the international standard called ifra international fragrance research association So we completely follow the ifra guidelines. We also have a NABL certified lab where we do complete testing And most importantly my house I use my Agarbati every day my wife and my child live in that so apart from that I think about Sticks that we use we use bamboo sticks and we are one of the industries that I have Increased by the forest department because bamboo is actually a grass that needs to be wild harvested if you don't harvest the bamboo It'll encompass the entire forest So we do work with a lot of forest departments in the northeast as well as in Karnataka and Maharashtra Work on a lot of programs. We're trying to now do monoculture of bamboo through the forest department as well So quite a few initiatives we do on the social side as an organization We've been running a school for blind girls children from the last 40 years. We run a Skill development center for women with disabilities quite a few of our initiatives around Women empowerment rather. I'd like to say as an organization We are empowered by women because 80% of our employees are women both at the you know, right up to the manager so Awesome on that. The woman can ask you a question before you lose. Can I is an opportunity a high so I'm Charlie from luxury media and like me they love people from agencies And you made a very strong remark that you moved from agency to in-house into creatives And you're finding right find a way out from moving from media agencies to in-house So, you know, this is like the evening we have a lot of awards and a lot of agencies are winning awards for their brands So I would like to know what was the challenge that you're facing because we feel that we are partners in progress for our brand So what is the challenge that you faced with agency? Yeah, like I said on the creative side, right? I saw there was a huge turn within creative agencies and I was there was just no consistency at all the planner would change the my project, you know in charge of one manager would change creative would keep changing and On the retainer, I would just keep giving and giving for training the team in the creative agency So rather than that I said let me work on a project basis, which is a start date and date clear deliverables with creative agencies I get tremendous more value now I do work today also I call in whenever I have a new project to start on I call for a brief Agency is brief. We pay pitch fee which most people don't we pay pitch fee as well We select an agency and do a project more or less is shooting an ad basically, right? So then the ad is done and then we move on. So there's no point of retainer. That's what I meant So I'm off a retainer basis still work with quite a few creative agencies and now I've seen I need more Vernacular localized agencies. So I'm working with four different agencies. I have an agency in West Bengal now That's working on a project agency in Delhi have an agency in Chennai working with an agency in Mumbai now So there's a different localized agencies far more nimble far more agile That I'm getting tremendous value from media agencies again I'm really looking at a lot of freelancers are available now really smart Who are able to do far better buying able to do far better? Analytics for me as well and negotiation channels are coming to me directly now and give me better deals also so, you know that whole Situation is also there. So I think just like every industry goes through a Revolution so as to speak I think your agencies are also going through that and I'm sure you'll all follow and fall in the right place I think peace of the puzzle will follow. Thank you so much for candid feedback. Thank you. Thank you