 As we go to the finale of this summit, what better high note to end on than a fireside chat with someone who is a CEO and MD, one of the best known brands in our country. Please put your hands together to welcome Mr. Rahul Agarwal, CEO and MD, Lenovo, India. We also have the moderator for this fireside chat who will be joining us very soon, Ms. Suta Agarwal, VP and GM of InMobi India. Very soon in the next couple of minutes, we are all set to start this conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together to welcome our speakers. Okay, thanks for sticking around and being the patient audience. I know it's always tough coming in last of a long, long session. So we will try to keep it crisp, we will try to keep it interesting for you guys and we have 30 minutes but what we will try to do is do the discussion for about 15 and then open it up for questions for about 5, 10 minutes. So I would like to welcome Rahul Agarwal, CEO and MD of Lenovo, India. In his past tense, Rahul has led the commercial business for Lenovo, South Asia, headed the marketing communication for Lenovo globally and played the CMO role for Lenovo, India. So Rahul, given we have about 15, 20 minutes to engage this very patient audience, I think let's just dive right into it. We'll ease you into the questions since you're on the hot seat. So today's agenda and the theme for the enclave has been making brands purposeful. And what we'll try to cover through Rahul's journey and experiences is why do brands really need a purpose, right? How do they preserve or drive that purpose? And how the changing consumer behavior and in the previous sessions, everyone talked a lot about different kinds of millennial audiences, different kind of consumer experiences. So how does this changing consumer behavior really impact the purpose of a brand? Yeah, good evening, everyone. And I don't know if the organizers are trying to save the alcohol. Because it's 8.30 and I'm assuming they haven't opened the bar. Because many people have walked out, so maybe the bar is open. But I believe this event is happening in South for the first time. And in Bangalore, usually at 8 PM, people don't sit in a closed room and listen to supposedly intelligent conversation. So maybe it's a learning. Friday evening. And that's a Friday evening. So Vasuta and I, and by the way, let me clarify, we're not related. But it's good to see that there is life beyond the Buncells. I think we're all sick and tired of the number of Buncells. And Buncells are actually quite close to Agarwal. If you go back to the tree. But I'm happy to have another Agarwal here. And we were talking and we said that, look, let's try and take it really quick. Let's not take advantage of the people who've been patient. I think the smart ones have already walked out. So let us not be rude to people who are polite to us. So we will be very fast. And in case there are questions, we can take it up. But my request would be that we'll end it formally and then maybe over a couple of drinks, we can have conversations. So I hope that sounds reasonable. Okay? Okay, great. So Raul, let's I think start with the first question on, often, brands of course have a top line and a bottom line goal, right? And there is huge competitive pressure. So given these commercial goals that every brand has to meet, why does a brand need to have a purpose at all, right? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, so that's a very fundamental question, not just for organizations, but for individuals as well. And I want to share a bit of WIP research that I've been doing for quite some time on this elusive subject called happiness. When you cross 40, you start getting bothered by vague things. And I started wondering, like many it hits, I think most of us, at a different stage of our life, what leads to happiness. So I've done a bit of reading and a bit of thinking. And when I read people who are knowledgeable about it, who've done research, a few things come out consistently what leads to happiness. One of them is good relationships, second is good health. And third is meaning or purpose in life. Doing something meaningful or purposeful in life adds immensely to the happiness, right? And I'm sure many of us relate to that when we hear it. It doesn't come to us on our own, it didn't come to me on its own. Now, similarly, I believe that organizations also need to have a purpose, have a goal. Now, it's given that every organization will survive only if there is bottom line. And there will be bottom line only if there is top line. So I think that's a given. But times have proven and shown and demonstrated that organizations which have a clear purpose, they are good at creating a differentiation, which is a key for a sustainable survival of an organization. It's so difficult to create a differentiated proposition and a differentiated offering. And you can do that only if you are really focused, do not get distracted by what happens around you. That comes from purpose. Number two and most important is for an organization to be successful, it needs to have engaged and excited and motivated employees. And people love to work for organizations which have a purpose. All of us, most of us are employees here, including you and me. And I think what gives us joy is to not just get a salary at the end of the day or to build profit for the organization, but actually to look for a larger cause. And that cause doesn't have to be a social cause, but it could be, let's say, Google's purpose in life is to organize the information in the world, right? That's a very, very powerful purpose. Thirdly, if you, every 25 years people say, hey, if you look at the number of Fortune Fiber and companies, what were they 25 years ago and what we have today, there's a huge decay that happens. And again, one thing that comes out is that organizations which are focused, which have a purpose, which have been true to the true purpose, are the ones who have a better probability of surviving. So I think it's extremely important not to just have a routine mission and a vision of your organization, but to truly believe in our purpose to get the whole organization to be galvanized with it, to have the shareholders and street to sign up for it because they are the people who will pull the rug under you when times are tough. So, I mean, given you have played so many different roles at Lenovo itself, right? In the context of your Lenovo journey, how have you seen Lenovo and in your individual capacity also preserve that brand purpose, right? How do you continue to strive towards it and drive it, given the sort of the day-to-day pressures of doing the job or hitting a business goal? Yeah, good news. You mentioned about me doing different roles. So just a quick show of, and how many of you are related to marketing? It's about 60%. Yeah, so I've done business roles and I've done marketing roles. So when I did business roles, I used to bitch about marketing and when I did marketing, I used to bitch about business and now I bitch about both. So yes, I think I've had a, you know, I was fortunate enough to get different perspectives by doing different roles and perspective changes, you know, it's an honest admission that things change as per your convenience. But when I stepped into the role that I stepped in, I think that's when things really hit me, even though I've been around for almost 17 years in this company, that, look, do we have a real purpose? And Lenovo is a relatively new company, right? Relatively new company, which is good and bad because when companies are new, that is when they have clarity of thought and clarity of purpose and when the beton gets transferred from the founders to the next set of professional folks, that is when things get diluted. So we have been in a bit of a flux, right? So when the PCs were exploding, our purpose clearly was to be number one. We were obsessed to be number one. I don't think about 15, 20 years ago we were really clear about the purpose or even 10 years ago. But I think as the industry started evolving as, smartphones came along, tablets came along, and we saw different kind of movements really attacking to the core of what we do. The organization went for our soul searching mission and they said that, look, I think, whether it's PC or phone or tablet or some other device, we want to really change, improve people's life in a surprising way through technology. And of course there's a clear kind of connotation with devices, right? So that's how we define ourselves, which is why we are the only company, by the way, which had the courage to get into phones, had the courage to get into upper end of servers, into tablets, and now the company is investing aggressively into AR, VR products, IoT products. But everything is to do with devices, technology, and improving their life. I still personally feel it's rather broad, but I think things are changing so dramatically that organization probably does not want to go more narrow. No, I think it's very interesting because since you bring in the element of technology, I think switching gears a little bit in this age of connected devices, digital playing such a big role in the lives of consumers, right? How do you find, how difficult or easy is it now, right? Versus maybe a decade back, to really engage with consumers, right? How have you seen that change in your time at Lenovo? I think given your role and the organization that you work for, I definitely think that you will be able to add more meat to it. So I'll give my little bit, and then I think you should, when Lenovo came into India, I was a marketing head, and so I lived that life. There was no social media, which was again good and bad, because everything in life has good and bad, right? Because people couldn't really bitch about you openly, people couldn't abuse you openly, and as marketers, we could project what we wanted to project. Now, with the technology, with the social media available on everyone's fingerprint, with the power of word of mouth because of the social networks, because of the audience becoming younger and more knowledgeable and more research oriented, I think we are able to understand our customers better. Customers get the comfort that they are able to reach out to us. But as the panel before us discussed, it can also be used as a medium for something, for a small thing, to snowball into something uncontrollable, right? So it's a great thing. I think every authentic brand should celebrate the advent of technology, because if you're authentic, then you would not mind opening a channel with your individual consumers, however small they are. But I think you've got to be on your toes, you've got to be careful on how you leverage it. So why don't you add your orbit? I know you have almost 300 plus clients in India, including Lenovo. So how are you seeing this medium being used? So I think digital and especially mobile now, as a platform, it really places the power in the hands of the consumer, right? I think the previous panel discussed it, and like you're saying, it has its pros and cons, right? For the brand, it puts a lot more pressure now to drive trust, drive authenticity, drive transparency with the consumer, right? So it puts that kind of accountability on the brand. But then the technology and the device also gives the channel to do that, right? Because now you have the power to reach the consumer at a very personalized level, at an individual level, to drive that brand purpose or brand message or that authenticity that you're looking at, right? So I think in a way, like you said, if the brand is genuinely transparent and authentic about their purpose, it's a great medium, right? Mobile and digital to have to reach consumers because it gives you the channel, which earlier probably you didn't have at that very personalized level that you do today. Right, and also I remember in those days, if you wanted to do a quick market research, there was no quick market research. There would at least be a turnaround time of eight weeks. Today you can do research in 48 hours because you have people available who can immediately respond to you. There is an internet bias, yes, you got to nullify that. But I think the speed of you getting to know what's going on has also improved because of this. No, absolutely. So I think keeping in mind the time and people waiting to get out to the food and drinks, what would be maybe two or three thoughts that you would like to leave with the audience before we wrap up? I guess I'll come to the core subject, which is the purpose. I think I spoke about why do organizations need to have a purpose. It seems quite logical. Why should you not have a purpose as an organization? But it's as intuitive and logical as the fact that all of us as individuals should have a deep meaning in what we are doing. But hand to our heart, how many of us can actually say that? That what we are doing has a deep meaning. A lot of us are going through the motions. A lot of us are going through the motions and a lot of organizations are at the end of it, just going for top line and bottom line. So I think it's important for very obvious reasons that you need to have a purpose. But you've got to work towards it. You won't just get it. And it's not something that you just define once in a year or once in five years and just put it on a wall as mission and vision. You've got to live it, you've got to really show to the world that you will stand true to it. But the most important question is how do you preserve the purpose? And we've seen many organizations in India, right? Not gonna name, but think of a large software company where when the promoters leave, then there is a vacuum and then the new management, you know, everyone wants to add value, right? When you start a new job, you want to add value. And therein lies the pitfall of the original purpose and mission losing its direction, right? Now there's nothing necessarily bad about it because sometimes you have to evolve. But if you take a conscious call of evolving and changing the direction, we know of a handset provider who should have changed the direction, right? You know of, that's a Kodak, I can probably name that, right? Which they should have changed the direction when they didn't. But when it gets lost in translation because of management changes and because of the fact that you are now listed on the street and there is pressure from analysts to give quarterly performance, you got to have a process and a few principles to preserve your purpose. And in my opinion, that single thread that can do that is the culture. If your purpose gets embedded deeply into the culture, which means it gets embedded in the way the organization thinks, the way organization and people behave with each other, the way they take decisions, when there are tough choices to make, the culture will usually guide you what to do. So if that is deeply embedded, then I think there is a higher probability of the purpose continuing and the brand surviving for a longer period. I probably, that's one thought that I'd like to leave. Great. So thank you so much, Rahul, for that. I don't know if we have time for questions or if you would like to take those, maybe two. Well, we have, I see 30 minutes left here and you say only two questions. The other group was 10 minutes late and you gave them three questions. You know, I don't blame you. If you're nice people take, I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. Six minutes per answer. You got me there, okay, all right. We've got two questions and you know, she's promising that people will come to me when I'm having drinks, right? I'm not responsible for what I say. There are people in this room who know me and they know what I mean. All right, so yeah, if, you know, can I say something, if you've asked questions, you know, in the last round give others a chance. And if others don't want a chance, then we'll come back to you. We don't want closure without questions. Hey, Rahul, Shashank here. I'm here, I'm here. Yeah, hi. So I'm from Vyoma Media. I have a question to you. So Lenovo as a brand in previously has a mindset it's, it belonged to computers, right? Or PCs or laptop. When it suddenly shifted to mobile phones, how did, was it easy to change the mindset of consumer as well or what steps did you take? It was surprisingly easy. I think there is this whole science of brand extension. People wondered whether Kingfisher Airlines is a smart brand extension from a beer brand. I thought I would, you know, I don't know where summer as you left and probably having Kingfisher outside. I thought I'll never fly Kingfisher Airlines, right? But they were able to actually build into a premium brand. So if you look at some examples of brand extensions, what comes out, and this is my own belief that there are no hard and fast rules, really. It depends on a lot of things, but a lot of it depends on your offering. If you have an authentic offering, if you can satisfy the need of the customers in a good way, people will accept your brand. When we launched phones, we launched in the 5,000 to 10,000 category, a phone that was easily available by and large online at a good price with good features, which is what, by the way, Xiaomi is doing, right? I think we heard him eloquently saying that, look, there are no secret sources, just do the basics. So I know this has bothered me because after Kingfisher, to be honest, I wasn't clear about the theory that I think many of us have learned in B schools about brand extensions. If there are, if Mercedes starts selling, I don't know, low price footwear, that that's probably an issue. So brand extension has to have two points. The products should be related, though again, beer and airlines don't. But I think in terms of the positioning of the brand, if something is premium, then a brand extension, which is in the same, same, same band, will be an easier brand extension. But net net, there are no hard and fast rules and Lenovo actually didn't have a problem at all. Yes, Ganga here. So you, excuse me, you can stop whenever you want. I have the power. You have the power. I give you the power. Thanks, Rahul. My question is how easy or difficult is it to separate the purpose of a brand as a brand custodian from what the brand should stand for versus what you as a person might believe in? Or do they, to me, do they end up converging? So you're saying that you as an individual, then who's you here? So the brand custodian, right? As a human being, we believe we have purposes also in life. How easy or difficult is it to separate that from the purpose that you're building for a brand? Yes, so it's important, right? Which is why while hiring, the cultural fit is very important, right? If, I don't know, I think it's nine o'clock, so I'm just thinking about alcohol. But if you think about an alcohol brand, right? And if the marketing head is a tea toddler and believes that drinking is bad, which my mother-in-law and father-in-law do believe, right? I think there is a misfit, right? And then the person will not be able to stand the brand. Similarly, I've realized that if you look at the marketing folks of super premium brands, right? They look like people who could afford those things, which is why I never got one of those jobs, right? So I think organizations are smart enough to know that, look, you've got to have a brand fit in the individual. But it's a challenge, right? There are brands with hundreds of thousands of employees in more than 100 countries and people are different in different moods. Does every individual always stand to the true values of the brand all the time? No, it does not. But I guess strong brands survive because they become so strong that they can accept these minor variations over a period of time. And which is that very few brands become big in the first place because to get everyone in the organization to talk the same language all the time is tough. I think maybe Vasudha, you could add because in Mobi, I mean, remarkable, remarkable success, but it's still the first unicorn from India. And you've been at Unicorn for almost, you've been at Mobi for about five years, right? Maybe you can share your experience as to how are you building one brand? Yeah, so I think just to add to his point, I think in the early stages of, because we are just 10 years old now and I've been for about five and a half of those. So I think in the early stages of an organization or a company as you're trying to build a brand, the first set of employees, or you could say the first 100 or 150, probably associate with that brand purpose a lot more because the success of the brand and the story of the brand is built on the power of those people. I think as he said, as it expands to hundreds and then thousands and then tens of thousands, probably that brand purpose does dilute a little bit as that goes bigger and larger and global and so on. But yeah, I think that's probably what good brands do is to keep that flexibility, allow for that variation, but still hold to their brand purpose. By the way, thank you for closing the bar. I see that many people have come back, so thank you. Makes us feel good. Hi Rahul. Hi. Hi. So this is Deepi. I'm the head of marketing from Suze. And we work very closely with Fujitsu globally. So I have a question. Recently, you had a joint venture with Fujitsu laptops. So how do you see this is gonna impact your brand? You know, the Lenovo brand in India, so. Unfortunately, it will not affect at all because Fujitsu doesn't sell laptops in India. So I don't get any benefit and I'm pretty sad about it, but Japan, Germany and Australia are three large markets for Fujitsu and I think there immediately, we will get a bump, especially in Japan because Japan as a nation, the culture is very patriotic, unlike India. And they believe that buying their own technology brand is the best thing to do. Which is why Lenovo bought NEC about six years ago and we became the number one brand in Japan, not by being Lenovo, but by being Lenovo plus NEC. And now we are Lenovo plus NEC plus Fujitsu. But thanks for empathizing with me because unfortunately, you know, there is no bump into my revenues. Thank you so much, Rahul. Rahul Mukund here. So basically you were talking about, you know, a particular company not being able to read the signs of the market and hence, you know, you talked about a handset maker and you talked about Kodak. What are the signs that you need to look for as a businessman to say, hey, you know what, this is fading. I mean, apart from the declining revenue figures, because declining the revenue figures, you will notice only two, three quarters, but what are the trends that you notice to say, hey, this is approaching sunset? Because it's easy to say it in the retrospect, right? How do you kind of keep looking for it? Yeah, so I don't know whether anyone of us is qualified enough to answer that. We had very capable executives, very senior capable executives in all these organizations which are no more prominent. And they just refuse to see reality. To me, it comes to the culture of the organization. If you have an open culture, if you have a process of reading the market, forcing yourself to reconsider your positioning, your strategy, then I think people have less of a risk of being stuck to their history. Organizations fail because people, and organizations become arrogant. People become arrogant and they refuse to see the reality. Now, I don't know whether I'll be able to see if I'm a part of an organization, because when it hits you, it hits you, right? I don't know if you have anything to add to this, but to me, it's the culture of the organization. Organizations who are rumble, who are grounded, who are listening to the customers, will rarely go out of business. And you see too many organizations today reinventing themselves so fast to listen to their customers. You? Future of PCs I think is outside the scope of this discussion today. And it's also outside the scope of what I should be talking about, right? So maybe after five drinks. RAHUL, you gave me the power to actually say stop, but then I had a question to ask and the mic never came to me. I had to come to the podium, but I just had one question. I hope that's anchor privilege. You call yourself a slave to fitness? At least your Twitter account does? Yeah. Is that the truth though, first of all? Yeah, it is because I set stupid goals and I don't give myself the freedom and the choice not to hit the gym when I don't want to. And then you take away freedom from you, you are a slave. So I made that mistake, which I'm hoping to correct next year. Yeah, but it's really out there in the public, but on a serious note, how much does really the fitness part of it and the spiritual side that I think, again, you put out there, contribute to you being you and for the job that you hold? Yeah, I think spiritualism is a quest, right? At any point of time, you are three or four or five percent on where you could. So I think nobody at least, I can't claim that I've got it, but you got to go on the path. And as you cross 40, I think a lot of things, these happen. I know this is a heavy subject and people are dying to hit the bar. And I think the number of times you've said this, I don't know what the people, but you certainly seem to want to. And I was hoping you'll get the message and put something here, but, you know, and I tried this and it's actually Kingfisher water. People don't take the hint, do they? But please, ladies and gentlemen, let's give it up for Rahul Agarwal. I'd like to invite Amit Gupta to give away. My mentor is apparently you know more about him than many others do. There is a amendment to waiting to be given. Whether they gave you other liquid or not by the token of gratitude on behalf of Sneha and the entire team who worked to put this together, we request you to give away the... Mr. Nawal Ahuja, if you're here, then it's your turn to propose a vote of thanks. You're meanwhile to vote Vasudayam. I have to do the most hated job, which is stay here between people and their drinks, but I'll be quick. Thank you, thank you for doing this. Thank you to all the speakers. And, you know, one thing that I'm going away with is the fact that most brands need purpose and, you know, Rahul was talking about brand extension and the CEO of ITC Foods was here speaking first up in the afternoon. And while he was on stage, I was wondering, you know, when you look at a company like ITC, did any of those ever go to a B school? Look at the kind of brand extensions that they've done. You know, mind-boggling in nature and they've excelled at everything from making tea, coffee to, you know, cigarettes to, you know, premium foods and whatnot. But fantastic sessions today. Thank you, Rahul, for ending the day on a very high note. Thank you, especially Shashi and Srinni for flying down out of their busy schedules to be here in Bangalore. I think the standout story for me was Amul, you know, which personifies brand purpose. One of the oldest brands in India. And like Shashi shared today, I didn't know Amul has sales of 38,000 crores in a year in India. That is mind-boggling. I did not know that. I must confess. I think two people in the audience knew about that. And a company that has kept its advertising partners for the last 25 years intact. The only client that pays 15% advertising commission, I wish there were a lot many more clients like that in this country. So with that, thank you all for being here. Thank you for lovely sessions to all the speakers. Thank you to all our partners, sponsors, Deccan, Harold, Aisha, Net, Amit and your team. Colors, some of the colors team members are here. Malayalam and Urma Online. Thank you for being part of this event. And as we mentioned at the start, exchange for media conclave is an event we've done here after almost seven years. And we plan to be here every year. So look forward to meeting you next year. Before I go, one last plug for an event that we have coming up. Some of you travel to Delhi often. On Thursday, we have our largest marketing event in Delhi called the Indian Marketing Award. So if any of you plan to travel to Delhi next week, do look out for the calendar and the list of activities. And 11th December is the impact person of the year in Bombay. So anybody planning to be in Bombay soon, we look forward to hosting you there. Thank you and enjoy yourself at the bar.