 Anonymous with the latest news about the advertising industry in India. The Exchange for Media Group set up in 2000 has the most credible media platforms covering the entire advertising, media and marketing domain with its highly acclaimed digital, print and on-ground assets. The Group's flagship news portal ExchangeForMedia.com reaches over 6 lakh subscribers who are the first to receive breaking news in the industry. The buzzing website not only covers the news but goes beyond the obvious to bring in a fresh point of view. Impact, the weekly news magazine from the Group is the most widely read business magazine in the advertising trade with in-depth analysis and news-based features providing perspective to key happenings in the industry. Another monthly pitch magazine provides a ringside view of events unfolding in the marketing landscape along with media and advertising. Another monthly magazine, Drilty Plus is a market leader in repartage on the real estate industry. 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BW Business World is an excellent exhibition platform that helps you showcase your services to the right audience. To be a part of our legacy, write in to us at partner-at-the-range-business-world.in. I Garan Johar, I am coming to you with Fashion Entrepreneur Fund, an initiative by India Fashion Awards to invest into your projects and help you turn your dream into reality. What is an entrepreneur? It's a person who creates a new business. Where's the most stress? We all are aware that after the pandemic, fashion industry has suffered the most. I need you all to know that you are not alone. With the goal of reaching out and supporting the fashion community, we are coming to you with the Fashion Entrepreneur Fund, an initiative by India Fashion Awards with the goal of reaching out and supporting the fashion community. Anyone from the fashion background with a business plan, a model, designer, a makeup artist, a stylist or even a fashion photographer. Here is an opportunity for your fashion dream project to come true. We are coming to you. This is your chance. Now, I would like to invite on stage Dr. Anurag Batra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief BW Business World in exchange for media to deliver the welcome address. I'll request you all to welcome him with a round of applause. I said I came fast because Priyanka has to leave and we are running late. So I'll make it fast. I tried to be like some of the news anchors. That's kidding. Okay. Good afternoon. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you to the 22nd edition of the Exchange for Media Conclave. We started E4 and 23 years back. Our first exchange for media conclave was at the ITC Saqib in, you know, South Delhi and since then we've come a long way. This year's theme is inclusive marketing, winning customers with diversity, equity and inclusion. I just want to say that exchange for media conclave is a very important landmark for us because really we became what we became because of the content we did on exchangeformedia.com and the content we did on the conclave in the initial years. I just want to say that innovation is what is driving every ecosystem including the advertising, marketing media ecosystem. Every day in every, yesterday we had the E4 and D2C award in every category and subcategories new players are being born daily. You know, there are entrepreneurs who are coming up with differentiated ideas and differentiated business propositions. There are incumbents that are learning from new entrants and as we saw that big, large companies have made a D2C push and their D2C numbers are very impressive. So really in this environment, what we need is a combination of going back to basics, thinking big, thinking on a scale, using technology in a big way but also when we talk of inclusive marketing, we're talking about how to make sure that we are genuinely in the way we build our businesses, in the way we build our brands, we are looking at diversity, equity and inclusion in a big way. In our industry, on the face of it, diversity, equity and inclusion are not issues but I can tell you that we have a long way to go. At Exchange for Media Initiative, whether it's our jury meets or it is our speakers, we try to have a 50-50 split of speakers between men and women and luckily in our industry and overall in India there is enough talent at the top. We need much more. Similarly, when it comes to inclusion in terms of specially-abled people in our own way, we've done initiatives to help them. Today we have Mr. Adam Gerhardt who is the global see of mind share going to deliver a keynote in the evening. We have Mr. Aman Gupta who is the founder of Boat and someone who inspires many people through his journey. I have met friends who were talking about him yesterday. So really this is something that they will also talk about and you will hear it in their addresses. We also will be doing the sixth edition of the Exchange for Media Influencer of the Year. We've announced this year the name. Mr. Prashant Kumar, I talked about him yesterday. He's the South Asia CEO for the Group M and you know, he's somebody we know well as a company, as individual and somebody the whole industry looks up to. This year's Goa Fest, if I may say, PK may like it and may not like it, happened only because of PK's initiative. He was calling sponsors. He was calling people. Of course other people also contributed but he's somebody who's gone beyond his own job description of building his own company but has contributed to the industry. PK will be here. CBL Srinivas was the country manager for WPP. He'll be here and Adam will be here when we do the Exchange for Media Influencer of the Year. I have a longer speech but I'll not get into that. I just want to say my apologies for starting late Priyanka. I know you had to have another cup of coffee but we look forward to your session and I'm sure you'll be able to give us something that we'll take back, think and hopefully implement in our business. So thank you so much. Please clap for all these speakers who are here. Please encourage them so they know that there is an audience that is looking forward to this. Back to you, Ravan. Thank you so much Dr. Bhattra and as Dr. Bhattra rightly pointed out, we are going to be quick for this one. The first session is fireside chat and we'll be talking about challenges of building business in a diverse yet connected world. It's an honor to invite on stage Priyanka Gill co-founder Good Clam World in conversation with Rohil Armin, senior editor, Exchange for Media and BW Business World. I'll request you all to kindly put your hands together and welcome both of them on the stage. Okay, yes. Thank you Priyanka. We had a chat outside as well. And you know, I'm also fascinated because I'm also talking to a journalist, you know, somewhere, right? And the topic we have is absolutely bang on on this forum, challenges of building business in a diverse yet connected world. You know, I mean, we are inundated with information day in and day out, the time you begin your day to the time you go to bed. You have to address and your overloaded information in this context, in this reality, building a business is not easy. And as we know, the Good Clam Group, hyper local, hyper present, I mean, it's not easy to deal with that diverse, you know, universe, the expands that it has. How do you ensure that yet you build a business that does well, has a great brand recall, has has profitability in built? I mean, how do you, how do you ensure that? Firstly, thanks for having you, Rohil and Dr. Bhatra. Thank you so much for inviting me back on the forum stage. You know, I think inclusion, diversity, building for a connected world. It's such an important thing for all of us today, because all businesses that we build are omnichannel by design, because we as human beings consume content in different ways. We still will read the newspaper. We will, of course, spend a lot of time on our phones, on social media. We will still watch television. So it's like an omnichannel approach to life. When you go to shop, we'll go and buy the Kirana store. We'll go and buy at a mall. We'll go and buy at a multi-brand retailer as well. So because we live in an omnichannel fashion, our companies, our brands, people who build for us also have to keep that in mind. And that's something that we at the Goodlamp group have been doing pretty much from day one, because the story of how we came together is actually an omnichannel story. I started life as a digital media journalist. I started a media platform called PopExo. The group co-founder and CEO of Darpan Sanghwi, he started as a brand owner with MyGlam, our other co-founder. She started as a parenting platform owner with baby Chakra Hanaya. And all of us came together to build the Goodlamp group, which is a conglomerate of beauty personal care brands, digital media platforms, and influencer marketing companies, where we reach pretty much more than half of India in any given month through the media platforms that we have. We have 60,000 points of sale where we sell offline too. So selling online offline, reaching people online offline, all of that are kind of the hallmarks of living in a hyper-connected world and building for an omnichannel audience and for an omnichannel market. You were also one of the earlier brands that looked at content to commerce, you know, and you mastered it, and that's the engine that you brought to the Goodlamp group and then the story, how it unfolded. How has the content to commerce journey been and how has it panned out over the years if you could just take us through that? You know, being a media entrepreneur is not easy and of course we have one of India's foremost media entrepreneurs who's sitting in the room right in front of us and he will attest to that. It's not easy because it's very difficult to monetize, right? Finding sponsors all the time, trying to get sponsored content, it's just not easy. But media is very good at one thing. We are very good at telling people what they should know about. We are very good at attracting audiences organically. So that is a superpower that media has, especially in a country like India. So as a media entrepreneur, that's something that I recognize. I also knew it's hard to make money, right? And the making money part of monetizing your audience is something that commerce does really well. So they know exactly how to make the products, they know exactly how to sell those products and they're big challenges reaching audiences, right? So when you put media and commerce together or when you put content and commerce together, you're literally solving for each other's big pain points. So when MyGlam and PopEx were merged in August 2020, we got down the cost of customer acquisition from MyGlam to pretty much nothing. That was the beginning of the GoodGlam Group. Based on that kind of hockey stick that we discovered through content to commerce, we raised $250 million in one year. We went and bought 11 companies and then we built the GoodGlam Group. So the GoodGlam Group story actually shows how content and commerce can come together at scale to solve each other's pain points and really build something that is of lasting value, not only for us as a group, but also for an audience. I have to ask you this. Everyone is attempting this formula, trying to understand the content to commerce and you see the mushrooming of agencies, people, companies in this space. But yet there's a secret sauce, which, I mean, you kind of use. What is that? I mean, what makes your content click and what are the ingredients that really make it sticky in that sense? You know, I've been asked many questions and this is probably the first time I've actually been asked this question. So thank you for that. There's no secret sauce to be honest. It's a matter of luck timing. It's an overnight success. Ten years in the making is how I define my journey. How I define the GoodGlam Group's journey. That one's journey, nine years journey. All of us have been doing it for such a long time. So we've literally been kind of honing our own companies and our craft to us to actually come together at that perfect moment for the formation of the GoodGlam Group. But having said that, there's something to be said for scale. So I'm also the CEO of the GoodMedia company within the group where we have PopExo, ScoopPoop, MissMalini, Tweek, BabyChakra, five of India's largest digital media platforms, so 200 million monthly active users. So when you're able to do this at scale and not only do we have media, we have the brand side where if you have around 11 million or transacting users that basically buy our products, so when you're able to put media at scale in partnership with commerce at scale, so content at scale and commerce at scale, that's actually the secret sauce. So people try doing it, but then I think the missing ingredient probably is going to be, are we doing it big enough? And are we actually doing it where we're reaching a large audience? I think that's the problem that sometimes is faced. Absolutely, and I know you named the companies at the GoodMedia company that you have PopExo, ScoopPoop, MissMalini, BabyChakra, Tweek, India, I mean there's so much and each has its own DNA. So the role is complex. So how do you navigate this complexity of the role and then the larger role of the GoodGlam group? Is it easy? I mean how do you actually manage it? I spent the first, PopExo was my first job and I was just asked what was my first job. I gave myself my first salary, so I was, I haven't had a boss before this. So I don't know any better. So for the first kind of 10 years of my career I went about kind of trying to build a media company and we had 200 people, mainly female at PopExo and really trying to understand what does it take to actually build the nuts and bolts of a company together. So I can, it's like a training ground. It was my training phase in a way. Then the GoodGlam group happened and then we bought one media platform and another media platform and suddenly people who were my competition in the media world, they were all kind of, all the teams were basically working together as the good media company and we literally took principles that work at each of the platforms and we tried to do this transfer of knowledge and experience across the platforms and the biggest thing that I think that we managed to accomplish is convince the teams that all of us are the good media company. All of us are distinct platforms. We have our points of view, but we are also still one and what we offer to the market is something very unique. Like just yesterday we were there at the launch of Booz 98 and TV. All David had to do was speak to me saying hey, can you be there? And because of that, three of India's largest digital media platforms turned up at her event and it just took one phone call to basically get it done. So this network effect of having different media companies that speak to different audiences is extremely valuable. Not only for us as a group but also for the brands that we work for. It kind of comes together as a big force, right? That's what you mean. You have also described your journey from the journalist to the current role and position you have as roller coaster. What exactly, why exactly a roller coaster? A lot of us are entrepreneurs in the room where we even if we haven't been entrepreneurs in the true sense, we've also been entrepreneurs in the jobs that we have and it's hard. There's no other way to define what you do because you're really letting go of any safety net that you might have and say I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this and I will only succeed when I succeed. For the longest time it's ups and downs. I've had investors who walked out on me. I started 2020 with my seriously investor walking out at the last moment wondering what to do, pandemic happened, everything shut down, everyone was at home, having no money not knowing how salaries would come and then suddenly in August 2020 the merger happened and then a few months later you had the Goodland Group. Seven months, right? Seven months. Literally from one point where you're wondering how are you going to do right now. I remember those days where I would zoom, my first zoom town hall was with 200 of my teammates saying, hey guys, I'm so sorry, we will not be able to pay salaries for this month and I know it's a pandemic, but you have to just basically stay by us, but the good thing was every one of those 200 people survived and they're still with us today. So I mean the roller coasters, the way it is, but I think it's also once you get used to it that's pretty much all you want to do. So I look forward to the adrenaline rush things go wrong, you go fix it so you kind of it becomes part of your DNA and that's what keeps life exciting. Absolutely. You know, so there's one perception about the Good Media Company which is that does it make content only for the internal stakeholders? How does it work with external brands? Say for example, there's another beauty product, you know, and can they work with Good Media? How does it kind of, what is this relationship internal and external like at the good media company? I think that's a great question, right? And it's also a very fair question to be honest. So we are independent media platforms at the end of the day. If Tweak doesn't want to do a particular story, they will not do it. And I can't do anything to make them do the story because they are the ones who are the content owners and they decide what happens on their brand. Similarly for Tweak, for Scoop Poop or Ms. Malini, or even the Pop X editorial team for that matter. And we work with brands across the board. I just gave an example of the Woo event that we did where we went and covered the launch of their big TV, right? So and we work with all beauty brands as well. Minstras beauty content is primarily at some point we are creating almost 200 videos for them, right? There's a very large media platform owned by a very large media conglomerate. We run it for them, right? So we work with brands across the board. There's no brand that we will not work with. We are independent companies at the end of the day. Of course we do work with our good brands and we create content for them as well but that's like any other media company would do, right? So that independence is fiercely maintained, especially at an editorial level. And even when working with brands who are not within the good brands kind of ambit, we really look out and we search for them. Most of my job today is putting together decks where we can get partnerships with other brands because monetizing is the life part of what you need to do as a company and the good media core monetizes when you work with other brands. So it's good to be back in the game. That's why it's great to be back at physical events like this. So you actually again networking with people and telling them exactly what you do. Thanks for sharing. I think there's clarity. There were questions and thanks for sharing this. Also there's a significant investments that you are making in your video and digital assets. How would it impact your current content to commerce strategy? Where are you headed? Where do you see from two years from now what is the vision that you have for your content to commerce? 2021 was a fantastic year, especially if you were an entrepreneur. That was a time when investors from across the world were literally pouring money on to companies and luckily we were at the top of that cycle and we managed to raise decent watches then to weather the slightly less robust funding scenario that we are in right now. I'm trying to avoid the word winter. I will use that word in my question. So because of that we were able to put our digital media companies together and when we announced the good media core we said that we'd invest 5 million dollars in our media investments over the course of the next two years, which is exactly what we've done. We invested, we acquired tweak India at that point. We've made significant investments into video. We are on the verge of opening our first physical office after the pandemic on Monday. It's like a 15-20,000 square foot space that has five studios where three units will shoot all the time. Content not only for our media platform, sponsored content for other brands and of course for good brands as well. So we produce almost 10,000 pieces of content any given month across different medium. We have a team of 200 people who are in the good media core itself that's creating all this content. So it's very exciting to be in this environment where you get to play with different brands, where you get to play with different mediums and do it at scale. So our investments are of course significant but because of that we have 200 million monthly active users who generate over 2 billion impressions in any given month. Half of India's social media audience comes to a good media core platform in any given month which is immense reach. Absolutely. These are humongous numbers. You know you spoke about funding and let me put that that actually we call it the winter of funding and luckily enough the phase you've seen was the golden era of funding, right? But that has shifted. What is leading to this winter of funding because you know you understand the space I think I have to ask you this and is it here to stay you also refer to it as correction I also will refer to this but what is leading to it will it correct itself settle somewhere where we have the golden days back again? Look that was an aberration. It was that black swan event or a white swan event in this case that happens once in a very rare blue moon, right? What we are now is back to sanity, back to reality, right? This is the normal course of life where a strong idea a strong team will find funding and something that might be more speculative will not find funding. That is reality actually. I think we all got spoiled by that effervescence that happened at that time so now we are kind of falling back on tropes like say a funding winter but I think it is back to sanity moment the macro markets really impact how the startup funding market behaves, right? So if you see a contraction in the macro scenario suddenly you see the funds, the LPs who invest in the funds they will pull back. If LPs pull back then the funds will have to pull back so there is a lot of macro stuff happening right now so I think India anyway we are seeing corrections at the moment it has been a good run for us recently and if there is a shining star in the economic scenario right now it has to be India. We have been saying that the next three decades belong to India which is why it is extremely exciting to be in a room like this to be in India, building in India and now today building in India for the world, right? As an entrepreneur it is extremely exciting times. I think the funding cycles repeat themselves I have been through maybe one two three hyper funding cycles I have been through three really low funding cycles as a result of it so once you have done it long enough you realise it is cyclical what goes up also comes down goes up back again and you live in that hope and I think that is the definition of being an entrepreneur I think India per se as a market does not have those challenges these are external challenges that we have to absorb maybe momentarily right you know a lot of, I mean read a lot about going public and let me ask you here what is the timeline real timeline in mind for going public? this said publicly maybe not intended is that we are looking to list in the public markets in the next couple of years it really there are so many things that go into timing that right and that is one of the most important decisions you make as a company time getting the markets right for when you do want to list the macro situation has to be robust, there has to be a good strong tailwind behind us the company numbers of course have to be kind of where we want them to be which is where the path that we are on right now so there are so many kind of different things in the mix that have to kind of come to one place for us to actually have that date in mind but yeah the next couple of years is what we have said in the past and that is exactly where we are holding it to journalist, entrepreneur investor what defines you the most mother to be honest not a cliche actually I was just telling someone my son is turning 18 in the next in Jan next year and my daughter is 13 and when she is as old as pop exo the brand and she has grown up with pop exo she has only known a world where the brand existed so I think I literally do a lot of what I do is because my kids seem to get inspired by it and that would be my strongest definition and of course I speak to entrepreneur and I speak to many different things but yeah I think I guess mother I will open this forum to some questions but let me ask you one more question we all have 24 hours and you did all this in 24 hours and then you balance your life I mean how do you manage this work life balance and I also read that you don't believe in work life balance you have been reading up no I don't believe in work life balance because I do think it's a myth all of us as you said we have the same 24 hours in the day companies much larger than hours have been built in the same 24 hours people have done unimaginably large things with the same 24 hours so I think all of us I treated as a privilege and I try packing into it as much as I physically can because that's what actually drives me and what I'm doing at that moment becomes super important when I'm sitting here talking to you this is the most important thing I'm doing right now there are people who are building walls in the good lab office I could be worrying about my daughters sitting at home has she had a lunch yet I could be worrying about that as well but I choose not because I'm enjoying this conversation with you so being able to hyper focus in the moment that you're in and really give it your 100% and then quickly move on to the next thing I think once you master that it becomes easier to switch hats in the course of the day wonderful I mean that's really all of our discipline and priority you know influencer marketing is something you know so much about and you have hands-on experience of that and we recently saw threats coming up and everyone rushing to it let me ask you I mean how have you what is your opinion of people going to new platforms how does it change the influencer marketing space has threats been able to add a new value to this ecosystem you know it's a funny story so back in 2017 Nike, Puma was a large client of POPXO and they wanted to break the Limca world of records for the most number of women doing the plank at the same time so they came to us and said let's do this campaign together and as part of that they wanted 800 influencers there were no influencers back in the day 800 influencers to also take part in that campaign so at that time all we had was WhatsApp, me, my WhatsApp and two other people on their WhatsApp managed to get 800 influencers to take part in this Puma campaign and we went to Bombay we broke the world record with them that was the beginning of my influencer marketing journey I remember my tech team coming back to me saying what are you doing, like you're trying to do this on WhatsApp you can use technology to do this and that was the beginning of Plexo the influencer marketing company that you founded then and so I remember going to all the offices in the country saying hey influencer marketing is going to be a thing CIM was looking at me very skeptically what is she talking about and what is an influence and why is it going to matter and at that time I truly believed that I think you need to have this ability to really believe in what you said and what your marketing is going to be the next big thing and thankfully I was right at that point and today you see influencers are the way the brands communicate with the audiences and that's going to be the way for a very long time that's not going to change social media platforms I think will come and go Threads had the best launch of any tech product to mind right millions of people for one, two days really jumped on the platform and like what you said was homo and you got you didn't know what to do so I'm really hoping they kind of find their way like our channels grew really explosively on the threads account but now I think my content is a thing that's another distribution platform on which they have to post content now so yeah I think threads is exciting it will be interesting to see what is actually becomes of the platform itself I think they'll have to do some innovations along to keep the audiences engaged on that platform too because you again 24 hours in the day how many platforms can you use also in the ecosystem of influencer marketing I think platforms also will saturate themselves beyond a point of in terms of their offerings how would a new platform be needed you know I mean what will give rise to our next Twitter and next Instagram do you think it will be the forces outside that will dictate those terms or I strongly believe that social media started as a response to the millennial generation I guess the oldest millennial that is there I lost touch with our friends when school and college was I didn't grow up with a mobile phone that was Facebook right and Facebook basically grew out of that millennials have this impulse to want to tell the world about who they are our identity is we find identity when we express it to other people that was Instagram right now I look at my son and I look at kind of my daughter who are both kind of Gen Z and beyond they don't have these needs they grew up in a world with a mobile phone my daughter's changed three schools in the past in her schooling career so far she's in touch with all the friends she does not need a Facebook in her life to meet her friends similarly my son does not feel the need to tell the world who he is through the photograph that he's taking he just wants to connect with his friends one to one and he uses Instagram like we use WhatsApp so I think generations change the impulses and the desires of the generations change and new forms of communication technologies or social media platforms adapt to meet those changes so to your answer to your question would be whoever understands Gen Z and beyond and what does this generation want they are the ones who will innovate the next platform that actually becomes large Tiktok did it because short attention spans we couldn't concentrate too much it caught on to that short form video was born that was Tiktok right so really finding that niche in the audience demand and building it at scale that's what it is not going to be another social media platform in my estimation I see some hands going up but let me ask one question and then I'll come to you I always think that there is a third side to a discussion which is the audience a lot of people look up to you they are inspired by your success story and what is your advice to them and let me before that put the quote that I read about you that if you have an idea just take a shot just have a just having a plan doesn't make anything happen ever how much do you actually kind of you know urge them to follow this 2000 percent I have so many friends who have so many ideas and if you don't execute it it's just an idea it's just a plan and I think a lot of us gets stuck in that loop of trying to perfect the plan before we take the leap to execute it because it's scary to take that leap right planning is comfort planning is just on a piece of paper or an excel spreadsheet no risk is involved in planning the first element of risk comes and you actually take that first step and that is really scary so most people don't do that so my idea my kind of to your point advice is if you have an idea just do it it doesn't have to be 100% fully formed it can be half baked you learn while you're doing it I made 10,000 mistakes in my journey so far I'll make 10,000 more and I'm happy to make them because each mistake teaches you something and that's how you evolve success failure is not trying right as long as you're trying you are still succeeding and if you don't stop you will ultimately succeed so yeah just take the leap just do it it's okay so it's not the era of mister perfectionist or a misperfectionist let's just do it just do it I just align the resonates so alright let me come to some questions so please and can could you please also introduce yourself can we give a microphone to the gentleman please thank you thank you Rohel and Priyanka you won a fan today evening today afternoon couple of you know before the question the questions that you pointed but just a couple of points you mastered the art of handling stress and remaining young therefore okay I appreciate the point about plunging in because that's the only way you can create a world record and we have that in common I've created one as a young entrepreneur 23 years back that happened in the spur of a moment in my life I flew down with the chief minister and then you know 170 countries notice what I was doing the question I have is that point in time in your life and you decided to raise 250 million dollars okay could you just run us through where you were in that journey it was appropriate time 2021 but what exactly was that my idea of the dream what is an idea of the dream that clicked and got you that you know honestly the credit for that will go to my co-founder Darpan Sanghwi so he is one of the most dynamic human beings that I've met and I'm not just saying it for the sake of saying I do genuinely believe that so I think when we realize that pop exo and my glam can solve for cost of customer acquisition and that is the single biggest pain point of any brand that you want to build right you can get everything right you can optimize for all the cost but you have to keep spending money to acquire your next customer it's a it's a race to the bottom right it doesn't work so if you're able to solve for the biggest pain point of brand building which is CAC and you do it through content that was the first kind of light bulb that went on second was we pop exo had at that time had 60 million multi active users right and we were barely using any of that audience to scale my glam and it my glam was still kind of kind of zooming up like a hockey stick we had so much unused capacity within even the reach that pop exo has that other brands can basically be sustained by that I think those two three things happen and the first one we thought this looks like a fluke it can't be real second one so my god even two months in a row is not by the time we hit our third month into it I think the urban was firing on all cylinders and he managed to excite or capture the imagination of that whole generation of investors and of course the funders happen in tranches and maybe I think two or maybe three tranches is basically how it happened but one success basically fed into another right and we made some very aggressive moves we bought 11 companies in one year I mean every single marketing strategy professor in every business school in the world is going to tell you M&As don't work and here we are sitting on the positive end of 12 successful M&As all of them happen in the past two to three years right so it kind of bucking the try the bucking the tide in so many ways beating conventional advice that would come your way and choosing to ignore it so it was like I mean I look back at that time and I mean it was a magical time because everything going right for you does not happen often but when it does you go to double quadruple town and just literally run with it as fast as you can and recognize that moment that you are in it and really enjoy that so sorry oh okay nice to meet you wonderful thank you so much alright Ravin is here I had more questions but thank you so much my pleasure really really enjoy talking to you thanks for your time thank you so much can I request both of you to get a picture together and to show our gratitude to Rupali for of course I would like to call on stage Rupali Fernandez chief revenue officer ABP network to kindly join us on the stage to felicitate Priyanka for a valuable time here Ruhil is not in the habit of getting all these goodie bags since he is the one mostly handing them out but sure Ruhil has probably seven in his car already so that I would like to thank you guys thank you so much once again for that wonderful conversation thank you Priyanka Ruhil and of course Rupali ma'am we are moving on to our next discussion now we are talking about leveraging DEI for customer engagement and brand building and I would like to invite on stage the moderator first Vani Gupta Dandia marketing consultant I will request all of you to please welcome Vani on the stage along with you can put your hands together now it will be a good time Sarthak Nigam co-founder and chief strategy officer fashion entrepreneur of one Senior vice president chief strategy and transformation officer luminous technology is also joining us I will request you all to kindly welcome the lady on the dais with round of applause Mr Mukesh Gureya chief marketing officer for Modi Naturals joining us as well in this conversation I promise we will start serving tea and coffee just to get the energy up if I if you can all put your hands together once again for the whole panel that will be great thank you thank you so much all for being here we have a very interesting topic which is diversity equity and inclusion with respect to marketing now there's been plenty done and said on this subject but I'm hoping with this diverse panel that we have over here we'd be able to bring some new perspectives to you so let's start with what do each one of you do with regard to DEI does it even matter for your respective brands and what do you do let's start with stories on what do you do and why does it matter Raj would you like to start so for us DEI comes naturally because we're from the fashion industry and we take DEI the same way Ibrahim Maslow took it each actually I don't think fashion and DEI goes goes very well with DEI because I feel fashion is all about very very very pretty women fashion is about unachievable proportions fashion is about absolutely what do you call that porcelain glass skin and six packs exactly so where does DEI figure in fashion that used to be the case long time back now you have plus size models campaigning for Calvin Klein for Victoria's secret back in the day Victoria's secret are angels now it has body positivity and different skin care ambassadors Priyanka Chopra is one of them if we come to India we see Lakme the ramp of Lakme is being worked by different individuals some of them are trans some of them are body positivity ambassadors some of them belong to different sex so it is all changing and the thing is if you change the world changes with you and so does your consumers and fashion is all about consumption and advertisement that's it which is why we call it the luxury industry right and the way we take it at fashion entrepreneur fund at India fashion awards when we understood we need to be more inclusive we run the campaign for IFA in which we advertise that you can nominate yourself or people you know for the fashion awards and this entire campaign was called nominate yourself in this we witnessed self nominations from individuals to the level of B.B.Mohabhatra who is in New York by the way and he is a very famous designer he himself nominated them and then we have different individuals from the streets of Chinnai to Mumbai and that is how we understood okay that's the spirit of fashion which is why Armaato in India fashion awards is celebrating the spirit of fashion in you because ultimately it's subjective and we go through subjective right and the problem is that the large number of buyers unfortunately don't have the perfect bodies which you usually see on stage so if fashion has to make money then fashion has to sell to the likes of us who are fat and ugly so there is no choice but to make sure that there is adequate DEI in fashion isn't it but then again you said it yourself ugly what is ugly what is beautiful it's all relative isn't it I just googled I just googled how is Barbie changed and this is what Google says okay the first two words it says yes plump Barbie's got a new body three new bodies actually petite tall and curvy so so even Barbie isn't Barbie anymore well Barbie is still apparently Barbie but yes Barbie can also be plump because now it comes in relatable packages Barbie comes in different packages so Raj now that we are talking about fashion why don't you tell us about that story of raw mango that we were discussing earlier yes especially quoted as ugly by you right so what raw mango did raw mango created a campaign for six months in which they got their consumers they got their customers to shoot for them they went into their houses made them dress up in their clothes no makeup no backdrop nothing raw as usual which you and I are right because we are the consumers we don't have that many touch ups we don't have a professional backdrop we don't have the lights we pick those clothes up we wear them and we roam around that's what raw mango understood because ultimately if the consumer cannot relate to your product your product does not sell the same way it updated right you are beautiful that entire tree that used to have the same thing raw mango did and for six months their consumers were on their social media handles and advertisements which was brilliant because ultimately each consumer and customer thought of two things one I could be featured in their campaign because everyone wants validation that's the truth of life that's the truth of marketing isn't it right second thing they could relate I cannot relate to the person in six packs wearing that turtleneck I'm not that I'm a bulky but I can relate to another bulky man wearing the same stuff because I know that's what we all go through isn't it Neelima would you like to give it a shot at how DEI is relevant for your brand talk about your brand first let everybody know what you do and then talk about how it is relevant for you so interestingly when we talk fashion we talk women so interestingly when we talk fashion we talk women that itself is a is a problem because fashion is not about women it's for everyone at luminous while we talk about inverters batteries solar again people say it's a male industry male purchase category so where is DEI in that now this is where the major conversation comes in what is brand brand is about building business brands were built to make business last longer or for business longevity so when you build a brand which should last test of time it should also have all the DEI elements included into it and DEI to me honestly one is not about including women into your advertising or getting women consumers also to buy you for a category which is not purchased by them directly but influenced by them probably so I would say at luminous what we do is we talk about DEI in four directions one is consumer which is a community which is direct purchase and indirect influence but then second is our customers which is our distributor a lot of example we have is where we are encouraging how there are people women background coming into retail to actually retail these kind of product which makes it more a different conversation I was into a sales and marketing conference and I saw there was more than six women retailers participating into it and that was the site to see because that then things and breaks the mold towards a male dominated category number three is innovation innovation what we do today when we think about it's only male male category male domination how do you build it but I have seen the change happening when your CEO itself changes and becomes the women right so now this is the industry first move wherein in this kind of industry which is more industrial you have a women CEO which changes dynamics in terms of innovation in terms of thinking in terms of bringing diversity into conversation and we launched stem program which is about science technology engineering and maths and we said that let's talk about the program which can actually bring more and more engineers more and more R&D more and more manufacturing in the field of technology and bring women forefront and we launched a campaign actually during women's day that was women in energy campaign I don't know how many of you would have seen where we said that it is about bringing them to the forefront to having conversations towards technology shaping manufacturing and diversity towards that of course there are various programs on DEI happens because the fourth dimension is employer wherein you make inclusive decision making inclusive discussions so it's a vast field to me brand building cannot be concluded without these four dimensions of brand and where in DEI actually sits at the center of conversations towards business, towards brand, towards distribution, towards consumer and towards innovation you talk about the brand being designed for different kinds of consumers and the fact that women are influencers I also found this interesting statistic I'm sure this is widely known that most cars still are only designed for male bodies cars are still even this day and age are not adequately designed for women's bodies and one would think now in this age that that would have changed but apparently that is not so because obviously the ones who are actually making the cars the ones who are testing cars are predominantly men which is why cars are designed for men so coming to you Mukesh would you like to tell us a little about how so Mukesh one of Mukesh biggest brands is an olive oil brand called Olive am I right about that so tell us how DEI is relevant to you or what is it that you do to make it an advantage sure thanks Vani for that question so as a food FMCG player I would say when I heard the term inclusive marketing I said this term doesn't exist for us as an industrial as a brand what I mean by that is that inclusive marketing is not a separate marketing strategy for us it's the way of our how the default marketing works for us oil is consumed in India in every household every individual consume oil so clearly the representation of marketing in our advertising in our communication the representation of people has to be from the diverse set of people belonging to different region gender age group socioeconomic strata it has to be it has to be there I mean it's non-negotiable you cannot deny that so DEI as a topic or as a principle I would say fall very naturally fit very naturally into our brand strategy or our brand ecosystem of the content that we create now typically a couple of things a couple of steps that we take is that when I'm doing a brand campaign I'll not have a single language campaign across the pan India network and I think that's the basic I mean foundational principle that a lot of FMCG players have that because I'll not run a Hindi language or English language campaign in a Telugu market because these people have a lot of cultural sensibilities so maybe I'll have my campaign in six to seven languages where I have my market it would be Bengali so all those regional languages are being taken care of even in terms of representation now because these principles are are very I would say very touchy topics the brands are more transparent these days in the information age the consumer is extremely aware we take very very focused sort of say a nuance in terms of how we're representing the women in our communication we don't want to stereotype that women is shown in the kitchen and the husband is shown in the office those kind of stereotypes we're trying to break in the kind of TVC or the communication we're trying to create we work with a lot of influence of marketing and I think Raj was touching upon that influence of marketing why this entire influence of marketing became so successful is just because of the fact because there are people you can relate to it if I would have one celebrity talking about a cooking oil I'll say okay maybe this will not work for me because I don't have that kind of lifestyle but when I see Rohan, Rahman or Reina or Sinha using those products I feel okay this lifestyle is something that I can afford or I'm having I can relate to it so hence this product will also work for me so that is the reason why influence of marketing work for us and in our influence of marketing we take very particular conscious choice to represent all language culture or regional the women as well as the male in the representation so that's couple of 2-3 points we take deeply care of not to hurt any cultural sensibilities as well and as I said because it comes very naturally to us we have been doing this for many years it's not something that we have started doing in last couple of years it comes very naturally and organic to us one of the things that I have seen in my own career is that you know a lot of our the agencies the partners that we work with are not necessarily you know the right bunch or the right mix of people it's not just in our own offices it's not just our team makeup but also the makeup of all the partners that go towards building that brand and that gets reflected the lack of DEI or the lack of diversity in teams gets reflected in what you put out as a brand not just in terms of communication like I was just reading you know even in terms of the product design so I'll give you a little anecdote from my own days at Kuru Kure there was a time and it's not a blanket statement it's not as though we didn't ever have women but there was a time when in the agency there were predominantly men we had a CSD who was a guy and we did do some fascinating creatives we did do a lot of good work but there were occasions when I felt I was the only woman in the room I had a bunch of brand managers all men I had a boss who was a guy I had the CEO who was a man and I had the agency which were all men and scripts were being discussed in the room where there was this little nuance of a gharwala you know a landlord asking a woman for the gharwala now without going into the details of what the story was I found it extremely offensive you know as a single woman in the room as to why should the gharwala have to be called to make decisions I mean does this woman not have adequate brains to be able to make a decision by herself why does she need the approval of the gharwala and who is the gharwala you know so some things like these you can't you can't pull out the oddity of it unless you have a diverse team like if I want a you know a voice on the table that script would have gone through and it would have been made exactly as it were first presented so I think a lot of what we think at one time DEI was considered a nice to have you must have you know a team that is made up of diverse people because it's the right thing to do but it has real implications on business but since I'm on this which is this little bit about sometimes you mentioned this term virtue signalling you know you see a lot of brands on instagram sometimes I'm wondering why is everybody on this on this feed why is everybody looking plus size you know why is everybody looking dark or why it seems like they've consciously picked up a lot of models with skin problems now I think there is a problem there as well it's not sometimes brands tend to go the other way so talk to us a little about this Raj about virtue signalling when I say virtue signalling the first thing I can think of is a brand present in a first world or a second world country advertising that we should be just we should be right and we should be sustainable while at the same time they have sweatshops in Bangladesh, Vietnam many of the clothing brands they have 14 year old 9 year old kids working in small labour camps in Dhaka exporting it all in Spain the people who are wearing it are using the right hashtags about equality that's not how it should go is the quality not there for those kids in Dhaka why because they're brown or because they belong to a third world country or they are not rich enough at the same time if you see it like that one way you have a clothing label promoting plus size people promoting dark skin people promoting different races different variations of individuals at the same time that a very label is producing a large amount of waste which we regularly face with fast fashion so ultimately because of this DEI marketing the brands sometimes confuse with everything woke is with everything woke with wokeism and they misinterpret the real message which is in the crux of it they highlight more on what should be done rather than what they actually are doing because at the end of the day your consumer is not a fool when he or she is associating themselves to the brand they think about it, they read about it the better interpretation of this would be the way dove did it now dove also used body positivity dove also marketed different racial people different racial differences they had the black models they have the white models, they have the brown models they have the obese healthy individuals while at the same time they had the thinner variations of people but their motto was not that it is all okay their motto was every skin is beautiful everyone is beautiful it's not about your me regular does not need to be ugly regular can be beautiful as well because at the end of the day we are all consumers right you know another story that I am reminded of I worked with a woman entrepreneur on feminine hygiene products and we were talking about sanitary napkins and period underwear do you know most of the period brands are headed by men even in the D2C world and a lot of the brands the big brands that we see are also predominantly men which is why a lot of the kind of advertising you see a lot of the kind of products that we see what we women use are not necessarily comfortable for us and you know we used to have this joke even in Unilever bulk of Unilever's consumers and this is true for most FMCG companies are all women and that is not what you see you know in the offices certainly not in the sales team certainly not in the shop floor it's changing yes it is changing and everybody is becoming more aware of it and of course there is a broader issue which is that you don't have as many women applying for jobs as well that too has to change plus women drop off after maternity etc but the point being made is that products that are offered by men can't adequately speak to a woman's needs because unless you've used it and unless you know how to relate with it it's difficult with whatever number of consumer interviews you do you have to try the product yourself you know in many ways a brand manager is supposed to be an embodiment of that brand also can I half of your designer garments are produced by gay guys half of your designers they're men though they have a different sexual preference but they're men who is their largest consumer base who wears their outfits so you're right of course but to a point because at the end those are also men that tailor is a man that designer is also a man the seller is also a man but the consumer is also a female so this this thing itself is very subjective and dynamic from industry to industry and region to region ultimately it's all about are you able to understand whom are you selling and is it relevant to them or not and this relevance is a big thing because when we say brands are built to last test of time if they are relevant so this bit this reminds me one story from my side also we were designing I was thinking about one of my past experiences about refrigerator and most of the tech durable R&D these functions and companies are led by men and when you're designing refrigerator refrigerator is not just about cooling technology digital UI user interface it's also about space how much space and what is the space management around it and given to left to just one way of thinking you would just design space which is very much three shelf and then there is 40% going into freezer and then 60% remaining into vegetable area whereas majority of the uses is vegetable area and less of this but with the changes in the organization and you rightly said a lot of things are changing there are people bringing in different kind of people different gender different young and new segments also coming in at the same time to design the product today if you look at the refrigerator market you will find 30% freezer and 70% refrigerator within that also understanding there is lipstick area there is curd making area so these are all coming in because there is diversity and inclusion in actually designing technology which can make life better for anyone so I want to shift the focus discussion a little from one is DEI we talked a lot about representation of women but the other is also just because we are all marketing is also the representation of other functions and making because you know delivering to the consumer or making the organization a consumer first organization that isn't the prerogative or the responsibility of the marketing department alone that must sit with the entire organization and very often I found that actually the best ideas even for innovation the best product ideas the best marketing ideas also come from departments outside of marketing how many of us even feel open enough and secure enough to be able to welcome that kind of thinking would any of you like to share anecdotes on that yes I mean we are extremely right so sometimes as a marketer we also take this as a pain point because there is an internal joke with us that everyone knows about marketing more than the marketers do everyone has a point of view that your TVC should look like this or your communication should look like this but yes having said that what we have done is that obviously you cannot have pretty much the entire 200 people in the organization contribute to the idea there is obviously a representation from each department which you have maybe a sounding board you can use that a sounding board so while the core idea or the ideation will be done by the marketing team but that also goes through those different supply chain those kind of different department heads and sometimes in those meetings and you have that regular rhythm to these meetings and sometimes a good idea can actually come from those people because maybe they sometimes the salespeople work more closer to the consumer and maybe what we as a marketer sometimes fail or like that maybe we are largely discussing with our advertising and media agency we do not or sometimes lack that connect with the consumers the sales guy who is talking to a retailer who is talking to a distributor can have various interesting insights and sometimes they will come across those insights and then the marketer can take from there and weave that story around those insights but yes that is very important to have those insights at least on the table and that is where the inclusivity comes through the picture that even in your organization if you have a seat for your sales or distributor distribution supply chain team to have a say in your marketing communication. Thank you for that Mukesh. You know what and I was I agree with Mukesh but I was also thinking that marketing takes too much of burden about brand right because they feel that they are the owners of the brand but brand is business it's because of brand the business is running so I personally feel that you know marketing brand is too important an asset to be left to a function which is only marketing to me the brand is with the customers with your own employers employees with your consumers and then there are many other things which is happening in your stakeholders and shareholder world where your brand image and reputation is also getting created so lot of time different functions and their inclusion into the brand has always added lot of value depending on what programs what what kind of forums have we created actually to feed inputs not just casually but more formally to actually make those changes into the brand I have one example we were doing recently IPL so luminous was the front sponsor for principle sponsor for Rajasthan Royals and while marketing team was thinking we will do this we will do TV we will do this social media that's what marketing would think about how do you make the brand look best in the media but then sales was thinking about how do I get the revenues and how do I get the distributors and distributors more committed towards the business during the season time service was thinking about what do I do during this time when the brand is maximum visible sales would want to push more and there will be more number of service calls right so now the same thing and they also went into preparation and HR was thinking about how do I get the entire organization rally towards brand being visible within the organization during the time right from plant to manufacturing to supply chain to logistics everyone was that how do I make them look brand luminous Neelima you have certainly won a lot of brownie points within the organization I hope the CEO gets to hear this I have already transformation marketing has entered into many other people but look this is what is to me transforming brands and business wherein you bring diverse function experiences into just making one campaign which is IPL which is front end campaign and I can understand Vani with Pepsi so many campaigns on cricket but look at the rallying around which happens around that one campaign that is to me the true example of DEI wherein everyone comes together to just make it have any questions from the audience we have about 10-12 minutes yes please thank you for the wonderful discussion pan quite interesting I would say Vaniya in fact full points to you that you are a modulator in fact sometimes I felt that you are a family less than not a modulator question to you Vani because you know having spent about 36 years into the marketing world both in this country and overseas I am a bit confused for this discussion because what what seemed to be happening or by the direction in which we are going is that DEI seemed to be focused only in a male-female divide which you will agree as a marketer is not the case I don't think anybody in this room knows automobiles better than I do because I have spent 20 years in the international automobile field before I came here back to India so what I would say is when I would just like to answer a small question that you had talked about designing cars keeping in mind both the man and the woman's body you see what happens is when you are who drives it's a question of driving a car the question is that the driver whether it's a male-female or somebody in between needs to be comfortable and be able to reach out the controls properly in the modern technology that you have in any car worth its name the seats and the control panels are entirely and fully adjustable to the requirements of a driver so the question and so much so I don't know whether that technology is coming to this country or not but the better cars in the Middle East and abroad what a heating system in the seats where in those days where the lady needs a bit of heating that's what is available to her even in the places in the Middle East where it is scorching heat all around you have the air conditioner running in the car but you also have heated seats so that the lady is comfortable so therefore I do not think that I would fully agree with comments that I am so glad to hear that I am sure you are absolutely right but the broader point being made was without any offence to the entire auto industry I hope the entire auto industry doesn't come after me but I was just reading off what I saw from the net and from my own experience I have some friends who are fairly short and a lot of times in fact even with me I find that it's not always very easy to reach the accelerator and the brake Point well taken every car under the sun from a Ford to a Ferrari that's what we were dealing with there I am so glad that this discussion has sparked off this if we can make an iota of a change in the auto industry because of this little discussion there is quite some time in fact what actually makes me sad I won't say it is because that's a rather strong word is that when people write articles they write it with a very biopic point of view they don't do a research property so whoever has written the article because of which you whoever is 90% of the time the guardian doesn't properly research they add an article on veganism by the way being vegan gets the carbon footprint higher not lower because you have the mass produced I think we must salvage this discussion you will get the guardian out following you that I thought you were going to talk about DEI being more than just men and women and being there I certainly agree with you I think the car's discussion we should keep aside because you and I should have a discussion outside the room specifically on the auto industry she is threatening me to meet her outside as a marketing again I'll come back to some broader aspects where me and my wife use things in our daily lives so there is an aspect which is called social listening or for that matter consumer listening consumer listening has now transformed to social listening because we have the internet world which has come on board it has always been there in the form of actually panels which observe people's behavior and so on and so forth it is nothing new right anything is the media must change from a physical to a social to an electronic media now how does any company decide on what is going to be product design they go in for extensive research on how exactly should be built so that the customer buys it now if I am a fridge manufacturer I have to be absolutely out of my senses in case I do not make a design which is going to be appealing to the primary decision maker which is the lady of the house so therefore anybody who says that they have not been taken into account is wrong and the other thing is that I do not find it of much significance I won't say any that the lady or a man is there in running a particular department or it is a skill that you are running so therefore any marketer worth is sold cannot put his or her personal views alone in the decision making it has to be an outcome of research process 100% agree with you I mean one would argue by exactly your logic that you cannot be a dog in order to produce products for a pet but the larger point being made while I completely agree with you I mean of course the larger point being made was yes you have got to understand the consumers requirements you must understand the consumer their relationship with the product category you must understand the insights relevant to that product you must understand all of that so in fact in levers for example we used to have a rule that if you joined a brand new then you couldn't speak in meetings unless you have done 100 hours of consumer work unless you understood the consumer and you know the consumers life in and out which we considered equivalent to 100 hours of consumer work you are not allowed to speak in meetings was the rule at my time so I 100% agree with you but the point being made at large was that by and large if the brand custodians if the company custodians haven't used the product or don't are not very close to the product category like in this case a refrigerator which refrigerator company which is entirely men will never understand unless they do the kind of consumer research that in the puristic sense that you are talking about should be done what we are saying is perhaps it still isn't perhaps a lot of what the dominant understanding or the dominant obsession in the organization might be gets reflected in the product like Nilima was saying it's true how many men would know you know even in this room that I keep lipsticks in the fridge that just maybe adding a bosh bosh LG has a huge fan of Samsung now LG has Samsung has so the point being made is that today there still is adequate ground to cover that I think nobody in this room would disagree with there isn't adequate ground still to cover in DEI and of course DEI is not about gender and that's what I was saying so that's what we were discussing that DEI is about employers it's about customers it's about consumers community innovations and then there is gender then he talked about regional then there is languages there are many aspects of it and ultimately it's about staying relevant to the consumer a brand loses it's relevant it's not making any sense to the consumer like Gillett what are the the only thing I'm trying to say is in case you are saying Vani that DEI is an evolving process 200% there yes the question is every aspect of marketing every aspect of life is an evolving process absolutely what people are saying today is that the world today knows 17% one 7% of the total knowledge of the viewers in my opinion they don't even know 7 so the question here is that once you know the more you know you realize how less you know so the fact here is that it like any other field DEI is also an evolving field right but what I took a bit of you know I mean it triggered me is that our discussion was going in a male female divide which can never be the question in my opinion I would like to give us some examples of what this discussion could have been about we would like to bring that as I said before marketing is a very very scientific process right and I agree with Mukesh when he says that every person under the sun I would have used what every trauma you can have I will not but the question here is that every person under the sun thinks that he is capable of doing marketing input the question is again as I repeat marketing implementation is not what the is the mindset of the head of marketing or the marketing department it is a scientific process and information that is being used to take out a campaign is based on a scientific research which is not to do with 20-30 people based on many case studies and market service simple as that you know how what is it if you have been in leverage you would be knowing they are at least 40 to 50 genies which are done to arrive at issues forget about I am sure which is why Unilever is where it is no and then the issues raised are then quantified by extensive research so that is the way to do it and that information which is called out by these things are used in marketing decisions it has nothing to do with the lady out there or the man out there who is head of marketing is a woman or man it is a scientific process clearly sir we with all respect to your opinion is there anybody else in the room who would like to bring a different perspective to this why I agree points that I have been discussed on stage my name is Aubrey from the LorraineMusic.ai and I respect the gentleman's point of view as well though very highly you know debated in a nutshell let me tell you there is no clear answer I think any all points are valid my humble observation and you have taken Unilever example I have been involved in Unilever as well and his journey as an entrepreneur on the entrepreneurial side and for example Doug was handled by a lady brand manager and believe it or not the sales guys found it up to sell it to the distributor there were men who didn't understand what the product was they compared it to the soap it was not a soap it was a cream and so they went through the skincare dermatologist route to sell it and then finally found the success that we are seeing today number one so therefore understanding the customer the customer discovery is very important that's the brand manager's role and I found that very well being done even by a male brand manager because having said about talked about the hundred hours the male brand manager has to go through the whole process of group focus studies studying women across you know cities and other brand I will tell you which I handle in J&J was a female I mean it was a tampon and while it's successful in the west in India in the country napkins are used by over 70% tampon penetration is just 1.7% so again it's a cultural issue it's a very cultural issue it all depends on the geography etc sorry I can talk about ice creams as well but that's a non-gender issue I think the point being made is that we've got to discover let me tell you one more point I'm a guy who's in the technology I've been a next banker in banking we had 65% of staff being ladies and I'm looking for ladies in two areas technology and sales I've spoken to Prava Narasimhan ex-leavers who's now CEO of Colgate she has the same problem you see how many people get into sales as women they're not encouraged primarily after college same thing with technology you go to the IITs that's also because the sales environments are not very conducive very true very true where does a woman go and pee if you're out on a sales pitch there aren't any adequately clean so the problem is not as simple as just women not applying for jobs Pani I want to take objection to what my friends said I also use dub it may not look like that's the only point I wanted to make it's getting too heavy sir I have an observation to your point which is just to mention I was handling condoms in the beginning of my career and look what you read and what you do is very different things right and having worked into these industries and categories there was time when and I totally relate to what Vani was talking to when we were doing advertising on condoms I was just out of college right and we were into brand management while I knew my customer while I knew my consumers but then there was no conversation about where is the female into this what about her pleasure what about her satisfaction today what you see condom industry which has travelled to an extent today you see female pleasure we introduce female condoms now so look this all goes through to a journey of understanding who is the customer what do they want is the brand willing to change innovate towards that customer need change the behavior change the advertising change the product packaging everything learning and unlearning and learning and unlearning then only new product and innovations comes into but look from outside it's very simplified process but I have gone through that change in retail to just put a simple display into the retail counters in pharma counters they would refuse to do so today you see a long way you say now go there and you see the products are widely distributed and displayed so it's a journey but DEI again what I would say is it's not about gender it is not about geography and it's more about including multiple options and perspectives while you're building brand to take the changing consumer need and changing market environment and include that into the plan I think that is what money is it's not about gender it's about the diverse perspectives and which is diverse perspectives is also about inter-functional perspectives and sometimes those perspectives are not relevant as an organization as a brand you should be willing to take it learn, absorb and discard what's not relevant and keep building the brand yeah I am just adding to the question sir was mentioning that clearly the head of the department has to be a merit based selection not just a gender based selection what it brings I mean DEI brings the inclusivity there's a process of collecting the data but there's also what decision has to be made through the data but typically what happens is that clearly a marketing decision or advertising decision is done through a deep consumer research but when those points come into your table if the decision making is like-minded people 2, 3 men sitting I'm just taking men as an example it's a placeholder they will discard couple of smaller nuances or insights which have been very big for the female audience but maybe they would not they couldn't have understand the sensitivity like for example the condom example she was mentioning if a brand manager maybe might be only talking to the male users for a condom brand which would have been a wrong consumer set to do the research on so those sensibility could have been brought there correct yeah yeah research being flawed is a marketing problem and for all marketing problems please come to me and solve all your marketing problems and on that note I think we can end this very very very still have a minute scintillating discussion we have a minute but we will give that a miss thank you Raj unless anyone else has a very very interesting vehement agreement or disagreement we will leave this discussion at this interesting point and on that note I also want to say I think condom haven't fundamentally changed by the way it's just advertising they have changed a lot condom the product itself hasn't fundamentally changed a lot oh my gosh then I'm buying the wrong kind of condom okay thank you talk to Nilima thank you everyone can I request you all to get a picture together please let's get a picture together and stay back on the stage for a bit we've got some Mr. Tarun Noomath managing director India needs to kindly help us this is where you actually help me out in welcoming the gentleman on the dais with a round of applause thank you so much alright with this we'll move on to our next panel discussion DEI for business growth challenges and opportunities I would like to invite on stage Mr. Vishesh Sharma CMO Bajaj financial securities to join us for the conversation and I'll request all of you to join me in welcoming the gentleman on the dais that was loud very kind of you all Mr. Narayana Devnathan group chief strategic advisor Densu India also joining us for this conversation follow me Roy CMO Joy Personal Care and the moderator Aditi Mishra CEO Loadstar U.M it's going to be a fantastic conversation I'm absolutely sure on that and I'll request you all to kindly welcome them with a proper round of applause for this one I love that OCD is coming into play even before the conversation starts fantastic over to you so thank you, thank you E4M team for having us here this is a topic very close to my heart for multiple reasons the first of course I think as a woman it is something that has been in lot of discussion recently like we discussed as a group as well and also because I think more and more as we see the world around us we are finding people who are diverse we are finding lives which are very diverse from the way we have lived in the past and perhaps as we go ahead it will become only more and more different, you know so we thought it's an interesting topic for us to sort of wrap our minds around and I think the first question that I would like to ask our panelists is you know what does DEI really mean because there is a very in a way definition where most of the people think that it's just about men versus women and if we have solved that it should be solved for DEI does that really mean that and let me start with you Narayan as the chief strategy officer maybe what's your view on what does DEI really mean thank you Aditi I'm actually going to take off my dentsu hat for a minute there is another hat that I've been wearing for the last one year I've been in the social sector I've functioned as the chief strategy officer for the National Foundation of India and I've immersed myself very deeply into the social impact sector and I'm almost militant now about this topic I'm going to say some uncomfortable things it almost feels like we are so, so shallow in our industry over here with how we approach this perspective this topic exactly like you said we look at the surface level and we go on and we believe it's enough to frame the policy and put out some one day for change kind of initiatives and be done with it even just within the country that we live in right now we aim so much of what the West puts down as DEI initiatives and policies and frameworks and perspectives geographic diversity, neurolinguistic diversity socioeconomic diversity and in the past I would have loved for something like the Nizali Chamber of Commerce to have a voice here right now today but we're all probably of the same color orientation perspective framework over here and sometimes I wonder if we spend enough time even looking at whether we have enough self-awareness or how we are approaching this and then get to the question of how do we actually frame the question what do we mean by diversity what do we mean by equity which is about principles of fairness regardless of where you are on the diversity spectrum and about inclusiveness which is probably the one letter that we pay the least attention to so maybe we just need to take a really hard look at ourselves in the first place to see if we even are aware of the spectrum that diversity is about the true meaning of what equity can bring to the table and what do we actually do about being inclusive sorry I didn't mean to make people uncomfortable right off the bat but actually I didn't intend to do that No, that's perfect Narayan because I do strongly feel in another area I think as a mother that I want to talk about is also the diversity in learning you know our educational system is designed in a way which sort of rewards only one kind of learning and that's possibly not going to hold us well in the future so when we start looking at diversity and therefore how do we build solutions which bring in equity which allow us to include people in growth for everyone it is going to be very important for us to be able to identify and sort of address these things follow me let me go to you and ask this question because you know as a brand custodian in a way you have been looking at different aspects of diversity trying to identify groups or cohorts who are different who have needs which are different and then try to create solutions with them how has that worked out for you so I'm so glad that you started off with this question about diversity since 2015 onwards we have been working in our communication and internally keeping diversity at the core but like Narayan said I think we all have a very myopic view about diversity and from a brand perspective especially from a skincare brand perspective men women we are the largest subset it's a huge large number to be addressed while in the course of journey from 2015 onwards I think I happened to work on a campaign with acid attack survivors why I wouldn't get much into the details because we have time constraint because we were a skincare brand and we wanted to address one extra layer of skincare rather than oily sensitive and dry skin and that's when we figured out the acid attack and the burn victim when I worked there I was working with a lot of NGOs and I realized that every year around 500 to 700 cases are registered and around 200 to 250 are the ones who survive that is a very small number for representation as such but the question is do we need to represent it is it important until unless the number of such diversity group is big it does not get the focus of often media also brands and at the same time is it enough to talk or is it enough to do something for them in terms of your product or service offerings as well that was a big question and how do you take that forward so that made us think that diversity just not we can't only focus on diversity where the group is huge and they need a representation even smaller groups at various size combination need representation second point what he touched upon is when you look at equity and inclusiveness I think the biggest problem is while addressing that we often work from a space of sympathy and not empathy because the moment you work from a space of empathy it will require a lot of self-actualization it requires a lot of listening and therefore coming up with solution it cannot operate as a society as brands as media representatives XYZ if you were talking of diversity inclusiveness equity you can't operate from a space of sympathy that's when it gets into a very studio space you have to be empathetic enough to understand listen address the issue if you can and as a brand I also feel not necessary that I will be representing all of it but the ones that I want to represent and talk about should be strong enough and should be inculcated at the core of business and should be able to try and you know I should be able to manifest it through my product my services, my communication and everything that I do around it perfect I love this sympathy versus empathy and I'm going to circle back to it but before we go there I want to ask Vishesh a question Vishesh you represent a category which is typically in all our minds you know very male you know if you want to think about money then dad will tell you brother will tell you that it's taking care of finances and that sector I mean that's one side of it which is how the consumer thinks today if we have a banking conclave you know any financial conclave you go there and it's all men there is very little diversity even within those men so tell us a bit about your sector you know how are you looking at DEI is that important is that relevant what should be done so good evening to you my co-panelist and the audience I hope you're having an insightful evening the problem of being asked to speak in the end is that your co-panelist have already covered the ground and you're left with nothing to add to what they've already said fortunately or unfortunately that's what happens with me every panel you know I'm asked in the end you know but this time I asked Chad GPT so that is something which no one has covered so far so I was just you know while coming I asked Chad GPT you know what according to you is DII what do you understand of DII so Chad GPT responded since I am an artificial intelligence I'm supposed to have no views on DII but I can share the information which I believe is relevant and what Chad GPT said that DII is not just a moral responsibility problem being at the leadership level in our corporate sector we tend to think of it as a moral responsibility rather than just think of it as a business ecosystem which we need to build though things are changing I'm not saying you know it's still relevant but things are changing at a very slow pace okay so coming back to our industry fortunately or unfortunately you know that's the harsh truth that in financial world you'll see a lot more mail the products even being paced by mail to the mail even all the insurance ads which you see talk about you know how he would have left probably a bigger insurance for kids and family and everything so see when you look at DII you cannot just talk about having the token representation that okay if I'll just have couple of women in my team I'll just fulfill the responsibility DII is looking at the whole ecosystem which also includes probably let's say people with physical disabilities you know nobody talks about them I mean at least I have not seen any brochure any marketing material promoting any insurance policy or any product specifically for the physically disabled you know class similarly you know transgenders you know I haven't come across anyone selling anything to offer them so when you look at diversity when you look at inclusivity it has to be both from within the company and to your consumer also that's when you look at the whole ecosystem and that's probably very far-fetched thought right now but at least let's start talking about it so that you know the sooner we reach there the better yeah these are my two cents thank you so I like your bought up chat GPT the hot button for a lot of us nowadays but it's interesting that you know we somehow think that technology will solve all issues and while technology could be a route to help us enable people who come from you know diverse backgrounds who come from very different kind of opportunity spaces but it will not give us a solution unless we as people I would say both in terms of business and as a society sort of take some steps I thought I'll share an interesting trivia with all of you which might yet surprise you you know when we start talking about the EI we do a study with Gen Z and one would assume that Gen Z is very awake they're very aware very savvy we were doing a study with Gen Z where Gen Z women were asking their colleagues in terms of a question which was about how many of you would want to earn more than your partner yeah this is women who are doing MBA so you can already imagine that they are very exclusive set and they're talking to colleagues who are also doing MBA and almost 80% of the women in that group said we would not like to earn more than our partner so this sort of made us step back and think about the fact that DEI is not just a point that we raise in discussions like this it's a very deep rooted societal thing sometimes we don't understand from that our view on certain topics is coming and that's why I want to go back to what follow me referred sympathy versus empathy we all make the right sounds we all say yes of course we should do this but are we really moving in that direction and how do we check whether brands are really looking at this probably Vishesh it will happen when we start seeing whether brands are looking at it as a business imperative following you've done some initiatives like you were mentioning asset attack what is the impact on business that you see how do you justify it or how do you sort of align community of marketers to say that look this is not just a good thing moral thing but this is also a relevant thing from a business point of view so I'll take this opportunity to tell you that as I said we've been doing multiple campaigns one such is with asset attack survivors then I truly believe it's not one but many that you do so the last one for example in this in the same breath is what we did with an IPL association we associated with KKR nitriders and the campaign that I launched at that point of time was called being equal now there was this very big question why are you associating with IPL your end consumer as female I looked at it from a business perspective I'll just give you three reasons why I was doing that and then you can circle back that you know what was the manifestation of the brand so far so A we are in the FMCG sector and it's a skincare brand there are three different forms of sales modern trade, this general trade and e-commerce and joy personal care is a brand which is a challenger brand in this space there is yet a lot of people to know just like whether a man or a woman in India today I still believe the awareness of joy has to write so I was at the cusp of that so while I was taking the sponsorship of KKR nitriders and focusing on West Bengal as a market it allowed me to associate with my business partner in a very stronger way because the entire ecosystem of sales and distribution is dominated by me and that helped me get a lot of leverage into doing various activities that entail my trade partners to associate with me to support with me because they are men they are watching cricket now when I was taking the spots on TV they are very high GRP and high TVR it allowed me to get the awareness factor of the brand much ahead of the curve because obviously it's one of the highest properties in the country that helped me to take off the index of awareness the campaign that I had designed was called being equal where in it where we showcase the three important cricketers and the narrative of the creator was why is it that when the women play there isn't the celebration much that our game doesn't have as much noise as your game we are two players in our country but when it comes to the field the kind of celebration that you see around when men play and women play there is a huge difference why is it that and the narrative was not a man versus woman again it was done in a manner where it is the conditioning of the society which has not made us appreciate sports in general for women why is it and we left that last two years we have after the top of my recall of joy has gone more than 48% I have been able to have a growth in each of my segment of e-commerce modern trade and GT the penetration level with my dealer distributors has gone up to 35% because they recognize me more and the last thing that I felt was why shouldn't we democratize sports we are going into a zone where we have to get out of democratic targeting to psychographic targeting when I have a property which is giving me a 40% split of women viewers at the same time it is giving me an 18% 18 minutes of stickiness which is not a bad bet so therefore when I take being a woman's brand I take up IPL and I have circled it back to why did I do this apart from DEI this is how the DEI decision of mine has helped me in the business decision it had 3-4 legs which I could cover through one association the campaign spoke of being equal and as love could have it in the next 5 months BCCI announced WPL and there was an equal pay announcement I don't know whether we have been able to do this because of our campaign but we definitely had a role to play in the chatter at that point of time absolutely so I think that's sort of giving us a lesson somewhere that if brands can think about DEI not from a sympathy view but in terms of really what could it mean in the world and how could it change things I think if they pick it up as a promise there is potential in terms of driving business as well talking back to you you spoke about a larger platform in terms of looking at social sector and how do you see this whole area coming alive in the social sector because it's again a topic everybody talks about we are already woke about it but is it really making any changes at the grassroots level actually connect back to business as well absolutely I think between me and the Vishesh they covered a few points on the spectrum of evolution if you will of how as industry in our industry alone as industry we are evolving so from complete ignorance whether willful or otherwise we went to representation hopefully beyond the token representation that Vishesh was hoping for to empathy but we need to push a lot further a lot harder because ultimately without people who have lived experiences from which the solutions will come we cannot best be superficial about it like one of the panellists in the previous session was saying as a man I never use lipstick and I don't know that I had to use lipstick I need to store it in the fridge only a woman can know that in the same way only a person who has survived an acid attack or is a burned victim would know what skin care routines are needed for someone like that I don't have a disability so I don't know if I will stumble across this threshold over here but the more we bring people with the lived experiences into our teams better equity even for business growth because then it's not sympathy it's not empathy it's from lived realities that we are then able to spot business opportunities and I'll connect it back to the social sector I mean one of the big, big lacunae in the social sector having worked in it for the last year is the lack of resources I mean the passion the purpose and the will can take things that far but the resources that industry has if we were to commit a fraction of those resources to social progress we'd be somewhere else when we talk about innovation there's no innovation shortage in the world but there is progress shortage and if only we could look at business through the lens of delivering progress it's something that then so we are now very actively saying we have to evolve from what Benjamin Franklin said in the 1800s saying you know do well by doing good to actually now you have to do well by doing right it's far tougher to do what is right but if you can commit to it then what you'll actually see is growth can happen because you will deliver social impact it's not an addendum it's not an accessory, it's not a side effect you deliver social impact you will deliver growth as well that's the focus we are looking to move towards as well so I want to go back to what you said in the middle that you know do we then get people with different experiences as a part of our team and does that then help us build a vision for the future which is not based on you know what I have heard but something which has been lived and therefore more real Vishesh I want to ask your point of view on this I think technology can actually enable a lot of this today we have become comfortable working across locations we have become comfortable working with people from different countries yeah and quite often there are times you never meet the person in reality in physical terms but you know the person because you are engaging with them you are possibly seeing how they live their lives and what is the opportunity there for us to create shared experiences which could help us drive this agenda further so see fundamentally my you know I have a problem with how DII is being spoken about in general so just taking cue from what Paula mentioned that you know BCCI said now henceforth women will also get the same pay as men okay and we were happy we have achieved DII but was it just about why do we pitch it as man versus woman every time every time we talk about DII we just say you know men are getting this women should get this the moment they feel we have got this okay it's done I would have been more happy if BCCI would have promoted you know some sort of tournaments for physically disabled some sort of tournaments for you know promotion for transenders they should have done those sort of things also okay secondly you know coming to technologies side of it while of course earlier there were challenges that probably you know you can't reach out to different places if you have to work you have to be in metro cities or probably big cities and you know not everyone could come to those sort of places and that's why a lot of people from our social strata could not connect with those opportunities and this I do not just mean women I also mean people from different cast and create people from different far off areas if someone from northeast okay typically they don't get that kind of acceptance you know what you usually get so in a virtual world and probably pandemic gave that lead to us that you know we can create those hybrid hybrid work ecosystem where in people from different cast create probably can come and join the mainstream you know just to start secondly apart from this you know if you look at how the innovations are happening you know how products are being proposed say for example I'll just give you in India while you look at financial products okay they are mostly in a certain way to a certain community or people in general but just quote an example in muslims they typically do not invest in products which have interest income okay now just a very very small example to highlight a bigger picture but nobody is thinking of creating the kind of products which will help them take care of their religious beliefs as well as you know also make sure that they can invest okay that's why a lot of you know this is not just a random theory but because I speak to a lot of people for my consumer you know research related stuff a lot of muslims do not participate in stock market because of this particular reason now technology can help us create those kind of products which will probably you know like how we have integrated with US stocks you know there are platforms I won't name them right now but there are platforms which help us invest in stock US stocks can we create some sort of ecosystem so that people you know can invest in those kind of products let's say from Middle East and those and technology can definitely make it possible so you know these are different ways these are different innovative we have to look at to cater to everyone's need and but before all of this we need to have that mindset that DII is not just about man versus woman it's about taking everyone along building for everyone providing for everyone that's probably would be the right start I would say thank you thank you Vishesh and now we have run out of time on this exciting topic so I hope as a panel we've managed to get you all thinking what DII really means you know should we widen the definition and perhaps also like Narayan said look inwards you know what is our perspective as a human being what are we looking at and how can we then connect it to what we do and make business solutions look at business ways of working which will make it meaningful in the long term and not just a stigma thank you all for a great discussion thank you thank you so much I'll request you all to take a picture together and as we are doing that I'll request Mr. Atul Gandhi Senior Vice President Sales YCOM 18 sports to kindly help us show our gratitude to all the speakers for that fabulous session I'm sure you all enjoyed that conversation as much as we did let's have round of applause for all of them you all stay back on the stage for a bit just one minute not a problem I'm used to being ignored like that story of my life Mr. Gandhi if you can do the honors thank you so much it's time we move on to our keynote address connected TV bringing India together I would like to request all of you to kindly join me in welcoming Simran Chane Gaglani AVP brand solutions YCOM 18 sports with a huge round of applause on the stage hi thank you everybody I'm just waiting for my clicker but why we wait such interesting conversation about diversity in India such a diverse country but if there are any two things that bring India together it's IPL and Big Boss and thankfully I represent Geo Cinema and Geo Cinema has both so today we'll talk about a little bit about IPL though can I get the clicker so of course lot of conversation about diversity equity inclusiveness however I will first talk a little bit about another D which is digital and the digital revolution that's happening in the country today and specifically what's happening on connected TV the reason why we thought it's important to talk about it is because really what we've seen on IPL this time has been a huge game changer for us and I think you know as marketers entrepreneurs who are constantly thinking about ways to reach out to a premium audience to a diverse audience so it's important to know what you can do on a platform like Geo Cinema on connected TV so first highlight of course like I said we had a huge revolution on digital on Geo Cinema this year 449 million users unique users had been reached on IPL we exited IPL with a 95 million daily active user base I mean that's actually larger than some a few of the countries of Europe put together so at a daily active user level that's the number we exited at and at a monthly level we are at 275 million monthly active users but more interestingly while of course you know I think IPL viewership since we made IPL free for anybody to watch this year whether they are on mobile or connected TV or on the web we always knew that we are going to do game changing numbers but I think the one thing that kind of you know surprisingly surprised us as well and kind of exceeded our estimates as well was the number that we were able to achieve on the connected TV universe so on Geo Cinema for IPL 2023 we had 126 million users, unique users watching which actually is ahead of all industry estimates actually Google was actually estimating this number to get this audience to get to this number in 2025 but our platform has shown that it's possible to achieve this number given a few levers if you can apply those as well right and I think the whole connection with diversity equity etc will come when we talk about you know some of those levers but the biggest one of course for us on achieving this number has been some of the strategic partnerships that we did strike with you know OEM operators and also with partners like a Google TV, Geo Xiaomi etc right so Geo Cinema was available on all of these connected TV platforms leading to that spike in the number right and interestingly actually if you put this as a like to like comparison connected TV versus high definition TV the connected TV audience today in the country especially on IPL was 4x the high def audience and that's the number that we have seen of course the number here has been you know calculated by minusing the OH number that HD has also reported the reason why we thought you know we should do that is because I mean all of us have seen IPL in a bar or in an outside environment right and we know that consumption of the tournament in either a bar, restaurant, airport railway station scenario is probably a little more passive compared to the way you would consume it at home and we thought you know probably it's not really the right comparison even you're watching at home with your family or friends you're far more involved and far more engaged with the tournament as well right so the right apples to apples comparison actually is to see at a household level and at household level actually Geo Cinema reached you know CTV on Geo Cinema and IPL reached about 30 million households high def television reached about 7.5 million households so that's sort of you know the index between both the H and you know like I mentioned in the beginning the reason why we were able to do this and so much of the conversation today has been about diversity and I think some of the folks that were present here also touched upon you know why are we discussing diversity only as a factor of gender and as Geo Cinema we completely agree diversity in a country like India is also such a factor of language it's a factor of interest it's a factor of devices and I think the reason why we were able to do what we did on IPL this year was because we a serviced multiple languages for the first time ever IPL was available to view in 12 different languages to users in fact much to our delight and I'm sure a lot of you would have probably even noticed the Punjabi and Bhojpuri language feeds actually kind of went viral because a lot of people were watching you know obviously it was the first time they were watching the game in these two languages so many of the people were retweeting Ravi Kishan's quotes who was on the commentary panel so many of the people were retweeting you know how the Punjabi commentators were talking about it so bringing together the entire piece of language diversity and servicing probably those underserved markets by having language feeds for the first time ever we also had four interest feeds so if you are a fantasy fan you were you know if you are really a casual consumer of IPL and didn't really want to watch every single match we had a feed featuring Sanya Mirza which was more geared towards a casual IPL consumer we had an insider feed which featured you know some of the biggest stars of cricket names like Brett Lee, names like Anil Kumbley that feed was geared more towards the core cricket consumers servicing the absolutely passionate cricket consumers and of course the fanatics feed which was for the first time ever imagine if a Mumbai Bangalore game is on and you are a Bangalore fan you can choose to actually watch commentary by fellow Bangalore fans and obviously the banter that goes on in that sort of a scenario is very very different from the slightly more uptight and professional commentary that you would otherwise have all become used to seeing for the last 30-35 years so these were innovations that we did for our connected TV viewers for the first time ever IPL was available to watch on 4K so high definition you could be present in any of the metros and watch it in high def we had a few other features like hype mode and multi-cam also available for connected TV viewers so again for the first time ever if you really want to hear what's going on behind the stumps when Dhoni is wicket keeping you could actually watch the stump and really if you were lucky enough and you were watching the match at the right moment you could probably hear what Dhoni is saying to his bowler across the other side of the wicket so some of these innovations the good thing is digital allows you to do it allows you to service diverse audiences in a very very meaningful way and get your message to them in an environment where they are very very engaged with what they are watching and because of this whatever your audience is our belief is that you can find them on connected TV today we are at about 90% share of the smart TV market in the country and our internal estimates are projecting that where we are at 126 million users today next year IPL we will be at about 200 million users on connected TV only imagine I mean there is a huge shift actually that's happening in the country you know in terms of consumer behaviour where people in not just the top 6 metros but probably the top 100 million plus towns are shifting towards consuming a large tent pole you know tournament like an IPL on the connected TV universe and of course the huge plus point of being present on something like this is the 100% measurability that you have with doing a digital campaign as against you know any other medium right so on a parting note this was a very very quick one we just wanted to kind of come and quickly touch base with everybody here for marketers and entrepreneurs you know while of course you need to think about how are you going to service your diverse audiences and how are you going to bring in the principles of inclusion and equity into your campaigns really nothing can take away from scale and the beauty of a platform like IPL meeting geo cinema is that you can service all of your diverse requirements you know through multiple sort of touch points that we can provide for you and your brand so you know me and my colleagues are here we look forward to you know maybe catching up with some of you and sharing some more details if you would want but yeah I just wanted to leave you on this note so thank you I'll request you to stay back on the stage for just one more minute as I invite on stage Mr. Gunjan Nagpal Vice President and Head of Sales Fashion Entrepreneur fun to help us felicitate you for that fabulous all right before we move forward I would like to once again thank our partners for making this possible co-powered by partner ABP news rake apko aage innovation partner the fashion entrepreneur fun innovation partner the fashion entrepreneur fund is an initiative by India Fashion Awards FEF has been conceptualized to create a supportive and collaborative fashion and lifestyle ecosystem we have some audio visuals from our partners before we move forward can we have it on the screen please we don't have to give any knowledge and we don't have to think what is journalism the meaning of journalism is to gather the right information and tell the truth the importance of journalism maybe not to get out of this era just to show the truth the truth that is ahead of you that's why it won't be prime time at 9 o'clock this is your time with Mr. Vinder Padyal public interest from 17 July to 9 o'clock on ABP news ABP news ABP news now I Karan Johar I am coming to you with fashion entrepreneur fund an initiative by India Fashion Awards to invest into your projects and help you turn your dream into reality what is an entrepreneur it's a person who creates a new business we all aware that after the pandemic fashion industry has suffered the most I need you all to know that you are not alone with the goal of reaching out and supporting the fashion community we are coming to you with the fashion entrepreneur fund an initiative by India Fashion Awards with the goal of reaching out and supporting the fashion community anyone from the fashion background with the business plan a model, designer stylist or even a fashion photographer there is an opportunity for your fashion dream project to come true we are coming to you this is your chance it's time for a fabulous keynote address we're talking about good growth and it's truly an honour to invite on stage Mr. Adam Gerhard global CEO, mind share I'll request you all to kindly welcome him with a humongous round of applause screen starts working but please give Mr. Adam Gerhard a big round of applause he's the global CEO for mind share and he spent almost two decades with this organization also Mr. Amin Lakhane and Mr. Bishank Kumar and many senior colleagues from the group are there from the WPP group of our head so welcome to you so Adam is a big guy the world's largest media services company so really we are honoured and delighted that Adam is there please give him a big round of applause he should feel welcome thank you certainly I didn't warrant three rounds of applause but I appreciate it you did have it a moment ago can everyone hear me good I'll set now alright thank you sorry for that thank you first and foremost for having me I love being here and while I've written speeches for people at E4M I've never had the honour of actually presenting at one so for me I'm humbled to be here with you as we think about growth in the future there's no question there are compounding pressures facing every single business out there no matter what sector you're in no matter what category you're in but the very idea of growth is being called into question on a daily basis more and more it's about how we reconcile the needs of numerous stakeholders whether you're the consumer whether you are the environment or the ecosystem whether you're the media owner whether you're an agency partner most of all and more importantly these days whether you are actually a shareholder the needs of all of those stakeholders are often at odds so how do we in the future start to reconcile those and become more inclusive more equitable in the way in which we approach growth so to do that we have to reimagine the way in which we view growth in the future perfect growth used to be driven by geography moving into new markets reaching new audiences it was as simple as that I don't need to tell anyone in this room that it was the fundamental on which all good businesses grew and thrived but in an age and an era dominated by the platforms that ecosystem has radically changed and evolved platforms today have completely broken down the sales funnel they've collapsed it entirely and they've given new power to consumers to define themselves to create to shape other people's influences and to change the very world around them that has changed the very nature of growth everything is faster and moving with a velocity we've never seen before it's also required more transparency from brands more authenticity from businesses and it's empowered consumers to take control in ways that we haven't seen before platforms these days have all of the control and the power and they're enabling that for the consumers as well so the challenge really is businesses have to adapt in today's world they're either being born from platform ecosystems or they're evolving into platform ecosystems take for example IHG versus booking.com or Ford versus Tesla one is being born into this new era and one has to transform radically and that's because the rules of growth have fundamentally changed they've given rise to new economies new routes to market and consumers are now calling all of the shots it's why businesses today are failing at a faster rate than ever before so how do we need to start to think about it in the future well first of all you probably questioning whether or not growth fundamentally has changed you need to look no further than these three charts first of all the time between innovation is radically down to less than five years the second is margin volatility is up 3x versus what it ever has been historically and third and arguably most importantly the connection between scale and profitability has virtually disappeared growth is fundamentally different in every way and shape so what do we do about it and how do we think about it growth has not only changed but in the future not all growth has created equal and that may sound provocative and it's intended to be because everyone will define growth differently based on their business and their objectives for some D to C is far more important than brick and mortar for others short-term sales and conversion is more important than long-term equity and yet still some will prioritize brand and lifetime value over the immediate quarters results those tensions are constantly at odds so how do we start to reconcile those in a meaningful way growth has to be defined for every single business and as we start to think about it what it means is that growth actually as we evolve can have unintended consequences in three primary ways the first is if we're not careful it can radically erode trust between consumers and businesses either by misuse of data poor experiences bad media inventory the list goes on and on the second we can encourage short-termism at the expense of long-term that one needs no explanation the third one though is it can have detrimental consequences to society or the world around us this is the single biggest threat when it comes to things like DEI or the world and the ecosystem around us we need to adapt but in the age of good growth using media and marketing with intention can actually benefit all stakeholders in that ecosystem consumer stakeholder shareholder whether you are the ecosystem or the society around us all of those can be brought to bear and really there's three ways one is it can create lasting and enduring connections the second is it can create trust and long-term most of all actually acting with intent can create support of the world around us whether it's the environment whether it's DEI whether it's responsible journalism all of those are critical foundations to new apertures of growth so as we start to think about using media and marketing with intention it allows us to actually resolve some of those tensions that we face as marketers, brands and businesses in the future some of the things that all of us face it can resolve a tension that creates growth that lives beyond a single moment meaning it's enduring growth that is good growth it can resolve the tension between demand generation and long-term brand building in other words it can live beyond a single sale it's sustainable it can resolve the tension between what's happening in platform ecosystems and how we think about CLV in the long run in other words it can be much more diverse good growth in the future is all three of those it is enduring, sustainable and diverse but we have to work at it and that is the challenge in reconciling all three of those tensions so good growth in the future as we start to think about its very redefinition and the way in which it manifests itself for businesses in the new platform ecosystem economy it can actually satiate all of the stakeholders for our clients and their businesses and its diverse and sustainable growth for consumers more responsive brands and businesses that are actually investing in them and showing up authentically the way that they want to be represented for the industry it creates a more sustainable ecosystem whether your media owner whether your agency whether you're the consumer at the receiving end and most importantly for all of us in here it creates growth that is more meaningful to all of us as individuals so as we think about the future I just want to leave you with one or two thoughts we have to intentionally think of growth in a very different way we are all architects of growth but what it means for each one of us will be radically different depending on the space in which we play and the emphasis with which we put on those four areas so when we think of good growth and not just growth it allows us to resolve all four of those tensions for all four of those constituents that essentially becomes the era of good growth now that can seem like a very ambiguous concept for many because the notion of growth doesn't need much explanation but I've just shown you how it can actually mean different things to different constituents depending on where you sit in the ecosystem what we wanted to do is actually show you how that comes to life through a couple of examples and a couple of case studies so I think with that I just wanted to leave you with the notion that all of us today is being redefined and every single day it's being questioned whether you are consumer, stakeholder, shareholder investor, you name it the challenge is how do we actually find growth that is enduring, diverse and sustainable to support all of our businesses in the future thanks now we're going to share some examples that doesn't seem so esoteric applause I know you are a certain that you share with Mr. Laghani so they are meticulous people but I think you pulled it off and I'll take up from where you left Adam why don't you sit there let me come to the theme of the session which is good growth, theme of the conclave and let me also start by congratulating you for Mindshare was named the media network of the year 2023, it's a big deal considering the kind of competition you have so now you already outlined what is changing in the consumer landscape, how technology is changing, how platforms are taking control how the greater economy is playing its bit in this but give us a sense of being the largest player in the media services play working with a diverse set of clients right from very marquee brand names and businesses that have been around for many years and start-ups in technology then collaborating with media platforms to deliver solutions tell us how are media agencies especially your own agency is changing itself to be relevant you are a leader, you continue to be leader in India so clearly you are doing something to be able to get the client's attention time and money first of all thank you for the nod to our canwin, I think that speaks to where the industry is going actually if we take a step back and start to look at the trends and the ecosystem in which we are operating we have to understand the macro environment first where media and marketing used to all be about scale that scale eventually evolved into precision it was about reaching the appropriate number of individuals with as minimal waste as possible and it isn't one versus the other but it's an evolution that scale to precision eventually evolved into permission how do we actually talk to consumers in a meaningful way without being intrusive or disruptive the interesting thing though is that we've gone from scale to precision to permission to now prediction where the future is actually not going to be defined by any one of those verse three it's going to be defined by the businesses the brands, the agencies, the consultants who can actually predict meaningful outcomes for businesses better than anyone else and you do that by understanding consumers in an incredibly insightful way by understanding culture by understanding them through the lens of DEI and I think it means for us as an agency the ecosystem that we play in means that the services that we offer the capabilities that we bring to bear are incredibly different and all the time they're evolving and I know we have a couple of examples and I thought the first one to probably share around this is one called Impact Index it's the second video and it's really illustrative of how we're using things like artificial intelligence and machine learning to reach and support diverse communities who may be marginalized because we aren't talking to them in a meaningful way so if we could play that let's see the video the startup and our client Tyson Foods who had pledged to invest more of their media dollars into diverse publishers we developed an AI based tool to assess the human safety of our digital media we specifically trained it to understand bias media depictions of the black community because we know such depictions have negative repercussions on the community as a whole we called this tool the Impact Index it works like this the Impact Index combs articles in our media mix and across the web assessing and quantifying their human impact on the black community it makes domain level decisions on page level data ranking individual news articles on a scale from positive impact to neutral, negative and finally toxic impact on the black community we can then optimize our media spend toward positive impact source allowing our media dollars to do the most good right away the Impact Index uncovered startling insights it found many local news sites with negative news pertaining to the black community meanwhile lifestyle sites boosted positive stories but often with limited impact using this tool we adjusted our investment and increased Tyson's media volume on positive impact sites by 20% and we doubled the amount of brand engagements versus historical benchmarks we paid media and AI we began creating a safer internet for the black community increasing brand performance along the way thank you I wish we can do this in India practically very few news media may qualify to get advertising on impact but APP may qualify and that's not a plug I really as a viewer say that but that's very good you know at an exchange for media conclave talking to a former mind share CEO I said if media agency started putting I said at the conclave PKU was there that if they started putting pressure on the news publishers news broadcasters on the kind of content they put out in impact then you can save the world you can save our country so to say but I'm glad you're doing this in the US and it's something it's based on AI which means it's entirely scalable right now and one of the things that we are if we're really honest amongst ourselves the ability for AI to transform news and journalism is going to change radically when it means every day influencers all of a sudden have access to tools that can produce content at rapid scale without the need to fact check without the need to have credible sources for anything of the sort we need to have more means for checking journalism and the integrity of what's being published out there and this is just one of the steps in doing it again the kind of content you support at the end of the day it's about personalization about really the positive impact of the kind of content and then the messaging the writing on that content now let me come back to the team we've been talking about good growth you started talking about how to win customers with diversity equity and inclusion now again in mindshare you've been at the forefront of fostering diversity and inclusion with initiatives such as the inclusion private marketplace give us a sense of what is the inclusion private marketplace so it's very similar to this what we've done is essentially work with some of the leading publishers around the world to create and source inventory that allows us to redirect investment dollars into publications that can support and champion underrepresented voices so in America it was creating a private marketplace that supported black voices in Australia we did it for indigenous people in the UK we created a private marketplace that supported LGBTQ rights and so we're redirecting dollars away from the big publishers that would otherwise just capture those dollars and aren't necessarily advancing the ecosystem by supporting those marginalized groups so we're investing directly with clients money into spaces and places that champion underrepresented communities Fantastic I think that if it happens in India it will definitely create a certain kind of impact you talked about in your presentation about the role of data given sites and right just now you talked about the role of artificial intelligence in making the kind of decisions you're making media tell us as an agency as a services player what are the broader aspects of the business that are getting reshaped in terms of the services you offer how is it you alluded in my first as an answer to my first but how are you broadening the base of services that you're offering at MindShare yeah so I think first of all it really centers around the notion that data is in everything that we do increasingly it is the the liquid gold that will fuel everything and we fundamentally believe that the planners, the strategists and the innovators of tomorrow are being born out of the data strategists today those data strategists will have unique insights to allow us to connect with consumers in more meaningful ways and that means that we have to be the best masters of our clients data our own data, third party data whatever the case may be and what that's doing is allowing us to we are having moving well beyond media and I'll give you just one example we work with an auto client in another market and we had been doing some modeling for the client in COVID and the client came to us and said your models are actually more predictive of our sales even during this tumultuous time we were forecasting to within a 3% delta of their sales despite chip shortages despite supply chain issues they said we actually want to use your models not our own in how we forecast and source rubber for our tires and so all of a sudden the decisions that we were making around media seeped into marketing that marketing seeped into sales that sales seeped into brand and all of a sudden we were having conversation with the CFO not the CMO and the CFO was coming to us saying how much can I move off the line at the highest margin based on the chips that I have available how many tires do I need to buy how much rubber do I need to source from a raw goods material sourcing and I think that really speaks to where we are trying to go as an agency much more much broader much more strategic in terms of upstream consulting and capabilities pushing into commerce pushing into martech deployment pushing into data and analytics and I think the convergence of media marketing analytics customer experience commerce all of those things mean that agencies have to have a much broader more diverse range of services fantastic and I can knowing what your business is doing here I believe what you are saying and I know what you are doing now Adam this is not your first trip to India of course you made your first trip to Bangalore you come here multiple times both Delhi and Bombay what has changed about India in the last couple of years which is to use significant and what has changed specifically in the media marketplace and tell the audience how has in your view you are an insider outsider I mean you are a course you are the global CEO but you don't run the India Ops in the sense Delhi how has the India operations kept pace with that so I think there is two big things first of all there is what is happening from a cultural standpoint and then there is what is happening from a business standpoint if I think of the culture of what is happening here the last trip that I had was pre-COVID probably four or five years ago and what I am seeing now is there is an energy that I haven't experienced before and I have been here a dozen times in the last couple of years and that energy I think is creating a velocity that we haven't seen that I haven't seen in coming here and there is no question that India is poised for greatness the growth the GDP alone is outpacing the global GDP by 2 to 3x the ad expenditure market is outpacing the global ad expenditure market by 2 to 3x it is poised to overtake many of the world's largest economies in a matter of years not decades and I think you can feel that energy you can feel that optimism and certainly from my side it feels like India is on the cusp of breaking new ground and new territory and that is permeating every sense of the world the second thing from a business perspective is exactly what I was just describing when I came here four years ago it was conversations with CMOs used to be how many GRPs do I need to have on air each week talk to me about the different states that I need to go into how do I reach new audiences now I can tell you we've met with the biggest auto manufacturer here we've met with two of the largest CPG companies here start-up DTC companies and every single one of them is asking about transformation business transformation and growth transformation the conversation has radically evolved into not just being about media but being about how we help support an accelerated growth agenda and I think that speaks to the first point around the trajectory and the velocity of what's starting to happen so would it be fair to say that your offering is much more than a media services offering and it is becoming if I may say comparable or better than management consultants who've been trying to get into marketing services you said it, I didn't have to so give us a sense of because clearly over the last six to eight years the last consulting groups have tried to come into this very important area of marketing services and you still stayed on top of your game so tell us what has made that happen you already talked about technology you talked that you moved into commerce I think a big part of it first of all we welcome that competition it keeps us on our toes and it forces us to keep evolving and when you're the number one in the market like we are it means that we have to not just look at incremental improvements but huge step changes in what we're doing and when I think about the conversations that we are having the biggest difference is the consultants had very senior level relationships they're struggling to push down into execution whereas we came from a place where every single dollar we invested was scrutinized day in and day out we were held to account for every single penny that we invested on behalf of our clients ROI was looked at on a daily if not hourly basis we have earned their trust, their confidence and that is enabling us to push up in a much more productive way while they struggle to push down beautiful Adam thank you for being real I also want to say your group made lots of acquisitions in the last 8 odd years over the next 12 to 18 months do you see you making more acquisitions in India I would certainly like to think so if I think about partnerships not even acquisitions the number of partnerships that we are striking with AI and ML and analytics companies that are based here is at a pace that we have never seen before and I talked a little bit about the Volvo example and even the Tyson example those are being brought about by partners that are here in India that enable more predictive analytics in the future so I think whether it is acquisition whether it is partnerships I can't say right now but there's no question there will be more investment coming into the market in some capacity you know media innovation is the core of what you offer and you want to show us an example whatever you talked about shall we see that so Rajya can we have the example which is from India the first video about it some of you may have seen it I hope so I would love it of course people would have seen it millions of young girls like Sanya are subjected to beauty stereotypes every day which can impact their self esteem a dove study proved that the biggest test Indian girls face in their school years is the beauty test with Indians being the youngest to reach mobile maturity globally these beauty tests have found their way into conversations online family and followers dove wanted to make the online audience more mindful of their words when speaking to young girls so we turned the very medium used to body shame them into their first line of defence using the predictive AI technology present in smart keyboards we identified users who are typing body shaming comments and delivered a thought provoking message to them before they pressed send to build this real time intervention we analyzed 61 million body shaming interactions across the internet and identified three broad forms of body shaming colour, hair and size a contextual message was crafted for each of these forms thumb stopping beauty biases at the moment of truth clicking on these messages took users to the dove self esteem project a learning hub that offers tools and resources in less than a month this innovation organically delivered dove's message to millions of people who were caught in the act of conducting their next beauty test dove media journals took notice and helped us garner over 854 million impressions and 130,000 euros in earned VR as beauty tests across the country reduced the brand love grew this unique intervention directly influenced millions of interactions with young girls literally stopping beauty tests one conversation at a time fantastic again great use of technology yeah I mean for us that one is technology but it is inclusive in every single way and that for us is the very definition of good growth brand uplift sales uplift and new consumers being spoken to in more meaningful ways beautiful now of course mindshare is a global network and each unit in each country is very strong rooted in the culture understanding of business nuances give us an example of how you could use your scale and your global nature of network to make an impact for the client in every market yeah so I think this goes back to the culture the culture point understanding consumers intimately in market but more and more part of what is involved in our own evolution of becoming more consultative in nature and offering a broader range of services is also being more agnostic working with a broader range of partners and being more open and receptive to who we work with and how we partner there's an amazing example that we have in a video that I think we should probably play the video and then I can show it but it really speaks to our ability to scale ideas across a network to bring in conjunction with other partners it was an idea that from start to finish took 72 hours and it won the Grand Prix at Cannes so if you're alright we'll play this is the third video turn your back this turn your back on the media ground we at Cannes and as Adam says it's a great example of how you know the network this is not what I look like right now the filter should be illegal a new beauty trend going viral on tiktok what's the filter called again? bold glamour there's practically no way to tell that I've got a filter on I can move about unlike traditional beauty filters every pixel on your face is regenerated the beautification filter can cause psychological distress and I worry about how this impacts young girls confidence our backs against digital distortion we all are necessary it's really important that you turn your back it's the same as in Paris all the families we know all the kids out here let's watch and listen that is all over tiktok right now I'm turning my back to digital distortion turn your back turn your back I'm going to go one better than turning my back on this I think these filters are here to hurt us and I think it's time to turn your back on them I don't like it either you know why? because it doesn't look like you there we go so I think as I was saying you talk about scale and how we operate in the future there was a call that went out between Ogilvy and Mindshare within 24 hours we had 200 ideas from 50 countries around the world within 24 hours it was whittled down to the final two one of which came from Spain one of which came from London within another 24 hours of that client had approved it we had been on air and live in six markets with social influencers and live at the Oscars thank you Adam that's the power of collaboration speaking collaboration that's a great example but today's world is all about we talked about partnerships earlier and however big you may be as an agency or a network you still need the power of collaboration to multiply the impact and bring in the creativity through cross-pollination give us an example of what your agency has done in the last few months to be able to harness the power of partnerships yeah I think this is where technology itself has a fundamental role to play obviously for us we're 10,000 people and we're part of an organization as group M that is 40,000 people and we're part of WPP that is 110,000 people we have to be able to harness through technology the skill sets, the talent, the passion of all of those individuals but we have to do it in a meaningful way and it's really difficult in an organization of that scale to actually do it in a tangible way I think it comes down to the way in which we operate through our relationships and that sort of thing but also our values and for us values are so critical to how we operate and we went through an exercise about 18 months ago during the heart of COVID when people were feeling particularly challenged and we said our values that we had stood for for over a decade might need to be refreshed and so we worked not to identify what I believed in or our leadership team believed in but our people believed in because that is what enables us to mobilize and galvanize an organization of 10,000 people and so we tasked a number of individuals from all of our markets around the world to put forward what they thought our organizational values should be moving forward and where we netted out was around three things energy, empathy and impact and those are the three things that we live by day in and day out energy is the drive to keep us going it's the passion to put forward ideas impact is about not just being creative or being innovative in what we do but having meaningful business results for our clients and for consumers that we are serving and empathy was something at the time the world needed more of and still does we're all moving far too fast to be able to operate in the way in which we did we need to and then we need to another side to go and actually with our will be doing some of the same stuff and while lift our head up and ask how the person next to us is doing and those three values underscore everything we do and in moments like this when you have to source ideas from around the world and you can be live in 72 hours it speaks to those values being lived and breathed every single day network. What is the advice to people in the room? People from the advertising backgrounds, from media planning backgrounds, people who own brands, are building businesses, start-up founders. Is there a piece of advice for them from you? I think for for me it's certainly always always stay hungry and keep learning. We find that actually the answer is usually out there and if you listen more than you speak you'll be able to find it. And the Dove example that we just looked at is a really good example. We asked people what they thought we should do to address this issue of toxicity when it comes to social media and how young girls are being influenced. And that answer came through in hundreds of ways from our own network. So I would say listen listen to your consumers and in a world where they are in ultimate control because of platform enablement and what I was talking about at the very beginning. I think that is the biggest way that we can thrive and succeed in the future. Thank you so much Adam. Please give Adam Jarad a big round of applause. If there are any questions from the audience we can in short one not be very short one. Yes can you get the mic to him? He talked about Doves who I know you may have got excited again but thoroughly excited. I've worked with Leavers on the launch so it's a baby brand now look how big it's become. I picked up on one point that you mentioned that you have been working the recent trip you've worked on met with the consumers customers brands startups as well and the common thing you found is that they're looking for results and the key subject on this one is good growth. My question as an agency with this shift towards results for growth young hungry startup founders look for growth from a giant that is mind-share would you be looking at fees that are result oriented for the customer the potential customer would you be looking at that because that is a big thing the cost of customer acquisition the cost of growth how would you look at that in the future as you go about partnering with startups like us and many in the room. Yeah a hundred percent you know the the irony of our industry was it was it was predicated and founded on hours and the number of bodies that you scoped and paid those days are gone agencies were never incentivized as a direct result of that to be more efficient to be more productive I think that era has gone we need we need to find ways where we are incentivized based on the performance and the business results of our clients and we have many clients that we are moving towards where we have shared incentives we even have some clients in parts of the world where it's a hundred percent outcomes based that however does require true partnership at a level that most clients aren't prepared for and that's the single biggest challenge when you're going to do that you have to lock arms. Thank you Adam I don't think we'll take any more questions please give Adam Gerard a big round of applause and Srinni is also here Srinni is also clapping and also Mr. Aman Gupta the founder of what Amal built a company which is very large started in due to D2C but is now Omni Channel and Aman makes appearances at events like this after he gets paid two three million dollars thank you for giving us a discount in being there so please give Adam a big round of applause I think he answered the question very honestly the fees are clients only pay fees when they get value nobody pays money to anyone if they don't get value so if clients continue to pay one the businesses are growing second there is a correlation between the services and the growth of the business so really and luckily Mindshare has done very well Maruti is a big account from the biggest account and as Amin said to me that it's not just about the size it's the prestige with the Maruti account you know the legacy it's in the largest auto maker so Mindshare is done well Group M is done well and I'm sure they will continue to do well I hope next time you're here in India you speak at our conference there's a thing between the both the screen but for that for apologies and we'll get on with the exchange for media influencer of the in the D2C Tycoon of the year. Dr. Bhattra can I request you to help us solicitate the gentleman for being so kind and joining us today here ladies and gentlemen Mr. Adam Jarat. Now I would like to invite Nazia Alvi Rahman editor exchange for media to be the host for our next segment E4M influencer of the year award I'll request all of you to kindly welcome the lady on the stage with a round of applause. Adam I'm so sorry for what for the glitch I I don't even know how to apologize to you for that so you know we've had a not so good start of the session but I hope from here we'll pick it up this is the pinnacle moment of our day where we've been you know waiting for and you know this is perhaps the first time that we decided to announce the reveal the influencer of the year in advance. Navalin Anurag had their own reasons but my reason was sheer convenience because I knew the minute the word will be out I'll not have to think about audiences I'll not have to send invites this hall will be jam-packed without effortlessly and that's what you see you know we had to call for more chairs and that's the pull Prasanth Kumar has in this industry and we I'm so thrilled so honored that you know we have Prasanth as influencer of the year so because we wanted Adam to speak at Conkli we have put this event very very short very tight notice you know within two and a half three weeks in last two weeks I've reached out to many people to speak about Prasanth and I I don't know how you will react to some but I was so overwhelmed when I saw all those unedited long videos that came to me and if I had not edited them we would have to look for a theater to release it it would have gone into three hours would have been a full feature film and that's that's the kind of and people had so much to say about you and my apologies to all of them who spoke and now you will see that I've mercilessly chopped it but you know I had no choice I have tried to retain the sentiment and I'm sure PK with his high IQ and EQ will get it in few words also that so I should not do much talking now and we should run the AV Prasanth Kumar or PK as he's fondly known the CEO of Group M South Asia with the exchange for media influencer of the year award 2022 ever since PK took over the reins Group M has gone from strength to strength winning accounts awards and accolades he has also ruled out new initiatives at Group M like fine cast and geo granularity as a homage to this exemplary leader friends and colleagues have shared their views on PK and what sets him apart as an influencer here's what they have to say hello my son Prasanth you're one a very great award the country that is a E4M company as the Institute of Award for those who influence the personnel of the company to do the work it's indeed a very great award and I think very few have achieved that award and I'm very glad that my son Prasanth Kumar has achieved this deal I'm very happy about it I'm delighted to hear that a good friend PK is being recognized as the influencer of the year by exchange for media congratulations PK if anyone deserves this recognition I believe it is PK a perfect gentleman a person who looks at clients interest a person who knows the entire world of media very intimately and makes a big difference to the interest of all the stakeholders PK congratulations and may God bless you thank you many congratulations PK a truly well-deserved water I have known PK for several years now and I must mention that one quality of his that draws people to him is his passion towards every task he undertakes we it is immense contribution towards Group M success in India or his efforts own in towards the industry at large by working for prestigious bodies like the advertising agency association of India and many I'm sure we are all aware about his professional achievements but you all know that PK enjoys playing a game or two of football so when I met him recently he had his leg in a cast due to the game itself PK I hope the leg is fine now if not the football skills but on a serious note despite all that he was still attending industry events such is his level of commitment with leaders such as PK at the helm Group M and the overall media and entertainment sector surely has a very bright future I'm extremely happy today for getting this prestigious award makes us all happy as a brand Kalyan Jewelers he has been working for this brand along with us for the past two decades and I have seen how passionate he is and the commitment which he has to the work which he does it's really amazing really heads off and more to come congratulations Prashant and God bless him I'm really delighted that my good friend and colleague Prashant Kumar of PK is being awarded the exchange for media influencer for the year he's a true organization man he cares equally for his people his clients his partners in he is a man he's a leader who kind of roads up his sleeves he can get into any kind of situation when needed and he can also steer clear at times he is Sachin Tendulkar of India media industry somebody who's grown extremely fast started playing the big league very early really wish him all the very best because I'm sure his best is yet to come I've never seen him lose his cool in the last eight nine years that I've known him within the first two rings he will always pick up your call and I'm really amazed I really wonder does this man ever sleep so he's always on I would say always there for you amazing to see you get the second mission and having been a partner with you on the journey on media with PNG for the past few years I can tell you that this is very very well deserved recognition I'm very very happy for you thanks for everything that you've done to bring the team together and really step up media for us here at PNG India. Aadis congratulations PK for winning this prestigious award I feel always honored to work with you and you have created a huge legacy in the industry your genuineness your can-do attitude and your humility always impresses me I wish to work with you for much longer than this and all the very best enjoy the moment you're a huge inspiration to a number of us and you probably know that I think what I find absolutely amazing is your ability to focus and give so much attention to around 20 different things all at once I don't know how you do it it's fantastic I've worked with PK for what about 14 years no one and I mean just no one can work as hard as PK he doesn't give up he competes till the last ball one of the things I admire the most about PK is his sheer doggedness and persistence he just will not give out the heart of gold I mean it's rare to see leaders who can have both and PK is definitely one of them I have seen him personally get involved in medical cases he doesn't just check in for a perfunctory update you know why so and so doing if a colleague is in a hospital or something he wants the detail so I make sure I've read up the medical report because if I say there was an angioplasty he will want to know which artery he will want to know what medication that person has been prescribed and PK will then go out of his way to make sure that the best possible care the whatever is possible and beyond the operative work with PK being and beyond can be done for anything whether it comes to a business challenge whether it comes to doing things for people every discussion every meeting with him is like a master class in itself simply outstanding how he can see things the way nobody else can it is so apparent that PK cares for all of us in the organization and his own unique way shows that to us in so many ways we were going into a pitch and PK was with us while everybody was stressing about the content they had or whether they were well-prepared or whether the deck looked really good he only had one thing to say to us be humble and be true to the client's objectives and priorities one thing I always appreciate with PK is how he think five steps ahead because a remarkable individual and one of the few people that I've ever known who can create a vision translate that into a mission and lead a successful execution and that too from the trenches I have found a close friend in him and both of us value this relationship beyond the workers that we put together and what comes to mind about his commitment is he managed a commitment of up to be in his own town and I think this commitment runs across whether it is to our clients whether it is to our colleagues whether it has to his friends and family he values relationships so much that he's always ready to go to extra might which is why he has a special place in everyone's heart growing up Prashant was an incredibly naughty child so now we know that naughty children can also become extremely successful people in life I think his success mantra if I had to kind of put it in my own experiences he's one of those rare breeds was kind of got sqeq and IQ in equal measures and that sets him apart so very happy to learn that my little brother is being honored as the influencer of the year in our family Prashant is the product of family with all his accomplishments he's no longer that little brother Prashant is a bundle of fun he really cares in a world of copies I would say he's an origin having a brother like you is better than a thousand new friends you are an affordable person you are a cook at it nothing can stop you are the lock star in the family we are so proud of you and your achievements I'm pretty sure you will let you more and more sky's the limit for you because always a people first person whether it be in the professional space or in the personal space with friends and family great going and wishing you many many people to come PK can we have you on stage and can we all give him a standing ovation please I'll also like to invite Mr. Dr. Anurag Bhattra chairman editor in chief business world in exchange for media Mr. Nava Lahooja co-founder exchange for media Mr. CVL Srinivas country head WPP Mr. Aman Gupta founder board and Mr. Adam Garrett global CEO mind share please join us on stage. Srinivas sir can you please read the citation for us. Oh this is a real honor to get to the PK citation. Okay Prashant Kumar Group MCO South Asia leadership is all about translating a vision into reality and Prashant Kumar or PK as he's fondly known embodies this idea in its truest sense today with great pride and joy we confer the exchange for media influencer of the award 2022 upon Prashant Kumar Group MCO South Asia. Despite being one of the tallest leaders in the industry with over 25 years of experience across domains Kumar is known for his humility his willingness to take risks is a true inspiration for many of us in the industry. Group M has excelled on many counts in PK's taking over as a CEO of South Asia in 2019 with him at the helm the agency has won several major business accounts awards and accolades including the network of the year title at the E4M media ace awards under his guidance group M for the second year running led the industry into new business wins and retentions as per convergence global new business barometer Fi 2022 report leading from the front Kumar has also rolled out new initiatives at group M like fine cast and geo granularity to name a few before group M PK was the CEO of mind share for South Asia and even in that role his contributions were outstanding he oversaw mind shares rapid expansion leading the agency to the top while winning numerous global awards PK ensured mind share India set a record for the maximum number of new business wins in a single market and created a tradition of bagging external accolades including a glass lion at can and a grand prix at walk one of the most respected names in the media domain PK dawns several hats he's currently the president of the advertising agencies association of India it has been an absolute honor for exchange for media and we hope to get many more opportunities to raise a toast to PK and his extraordinary achievements we've had this tradition that you know a previous year winner would always give the trove citation read the citation and give it to the current winner so CVL has been our winner in 2017 for influencer of the year I request the man of the PK to come and say a few words and novel have put me on me a complete surprise with my dad coming in the first few days yeah it's quite I had actually I knew that I'll have to talk to all of you and thank you and a lot of gratitude for that but right now it's a bundle of emotions to get my family my friends my colleagues everybody together the only person who was not there was my dog but yeah I'm actually very very truly overwhelmed by the kind words and the heartfelt recognition that you have bestowed upon me this evening right what I just witnessed can be made of you know as I said earlier bundle of emotions flowing and made me realize how much fortunate I am right you know knowing each other is not an easy task even if you spend 50 years you may not know right but I think I am very very fortunate to have fantastic friends and colleagues you know knowing each other has been a journey and I have equally and more enjoyed this so far and I'm sure I'm gonna do that more especially when heart is full words a few but first and foremost I would like to extend my sincere thanks to our novel nazi and the esteemed jury behind the forum influencer of the year award for this incredible honor I'm humbled to stand among such distinguished colleagues and visionary leaders who have revolutionized industry and inspired and parallel growth I also want to take this moment to congratulate the past recipients of this precious award whose contributions have paid the way for professors like me she knew with a second and that's been an inspiration as well reflecting on the past has subconsciously motivated me while the present continues to inspire me reinvent and rediscover I really anticipate the countless energetic opportunities and challenges that lie ahead in the future this platform on which I stand sharing my thoughts with all of you is a true asset that I learned and so testament to the invaluable knowledge and wisdom that each one of you has graciously imparted to me amongst many things there are three aspects that hold a special place in my heart and that too was only through my learning with interact with many of our friends and colleagues first being a leader means embracing responsibility and accountability actively participating in shaping the ecosystem our collective achievements are a result of the harmonious interplay of every element within our ecosystem second while we all play significant roles within our respective organizations being an observer and a contributed demands giving our best to propel the industry forward in the right direction it is imperative that we embody and reflect the values we have learned practicing selflessness and dedication so that together we can elevate the industry to new heights of growth and finally understanding that we are not alone but rather part of a relay where we receive the bait and then pass it to others the people our colleagues the wider industry are the gems we run alongside making the journey a truly wonderful experience I firmly believe that vision determination and a willingness to take the risk are indispensable qualities for any leader throughout my journey I've run endlessly striven to embody these qualities knowing deep within that there is always more ground to cover I am eager to celebrate even more achievements and milestones that we collectively we built in the coming days today I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to numerous individuals who have played a pivotal role in my journey while it would take an eternity to thank each and every one of you I'm mindful of the time so please bear with me to every client who has interested me with their projects business and allowed me to collaborate closely with them I extend my sincere thanks your support and the opportunities provide to me have been invaluable and my drive to excel remains unwavering to my partners when I'm incomplete without you our collaborations our results I've been countless learning experiences and unfortunate unforgettable moments the win-win proposition that I've discovered through our partnerships is a precious learning and I'm grateful to each of you I also extend my gratitude to the various industry bodies I've had the privilege to work with as well as my colleagues within our industry we've constantly offered their guidance and support always timing for the best I've cherished our collaboration and the way we have collectively contributed shaping the industry as I look back on my journey I'm over well with gratitude my bosses mentors colleagues and friends who have guided and supported me along the way your wisdom belief in their abilities and unwavering support have been instrumental in my personal and professional growth tonight I'm fortunate to have some of them here Srinni I must mention you specifically at this moment somebody who took me to the organization almost 20 years back of course the number of beers the number of you know drinks have always been an inspiration in getting the best out of me but your constant push for excellence has brought me brought out the best in me many times and I'm truly grateful for your presence in my life to all my bosses including Mark, Ashu, Vikram, Sam, Lakshmi, Divya, Srinivas, Lloyd and Partha each one of them have been like a coach at different phases of my life and each of them has played a critical role in shaping me into the person I am today to my colleagues at Groupon and my leadership team that made me walk taller every moment of course that's not the reason for the broken leg I extend my deepest thanks for your unwavering commitment and exceptional support throughout this journey together we are not only one prestigious business accounts and industry awards but more importantly we have built lasting relationships and made a meaningful impact in our industry it is your hard work creativity and collaboration that are propelled us to new heights and it enabled us to achieve remarkable success I would be remiss if I didn't express my heartfelt gratitude to my family Seema my wife we have celebrated our careers in a marriage for almost the same number of years we have been my strongest pillar and I thank you for being my side every moment to my children Nakul and Dave thank you for being an integral part of my life although I must explain to my second one what this award means he thinks the YouTube influence is an award but I have to tell him of course you know Sophie my dog as I mentioned I should not miss it I had friends messaging me and I they said I hope you don't forget Sophie right and to my father who my affectionately called Papu's thank you for everything that you've done my life especially to those constant well wishes for any important meeting that I go to my brothers and their families who have always been a source of inspiration and I'm grateful to the entire support throughout from my birth my eldest brother I call him upward it is constant push to dream and be a better professional which has always made me to be at it finally to my closest friend my childhood friend some of them you saw him here your constant encouragement and grounding me you know grounding presence every time right so every six months we catch up when it's very easy in an industry like this to fly off this is ground me back again thank you each and every one of you this award is not just a testament to my individual efforts but also celebration of the collective achievements of the teams that have been fortunate to be a part of it serves as a reminder of the incredible potential within our industry and the power of collaboration innovation it has continued to push boundaries shape the future and create a lasting impact together once again thank you for this incredible honor I'm deeply humbled and grateful thank you so much we now have that gala end to our event today we have the celebrity shark and co-founder of boat and CMO Mr. Aman Gupta with us he will do a quick fireside chat with the Mr. Anurag Batra now PK congratulations the only thing I missed was you're not thanking Roger Federer who pick I'm on his Facebook he post very rarely but he posted the day Roger Federer hung his boots so I know how passionate he's about tennis especially Roger Federer now coming to Mr. Aman Gupta please give Mr. Aman Gupta a big round of applause he's a poster boy for startups he's a poster boy for investing he's a poster boy for the D2C ecosystem yesterday at the exchange for media D2C awards he was a winner of the D2C Tycoon of the Earth we're celebrating and giving the award today to him which is supposed to happen yesterday but Aman is here and now so I'm on very brief conversation first of all Aman the amount of speaking engagements the request you get you're on Shark Tank you're investing in companies so glad to be here first and congrats again for the award time so I sleep a lot and I love sleeping I don't put alarms before waking up I wake up whenever you know Hindi correct no so you know it's a very different journey it's not that I don't like it I love it also but I have to manage it I don't like you can't say no to media right you you you love them or hate them you cannot ignore them thank you Aman definitely you are in demand and for the right reasons when you built a company in a sustainable manner you're profitable you're growing the return on capital employed in your cases possibly higher than a lot of companies that are very successful so Aman what makes both the unique company it is in terms of the numbers it does the scale up it has been able to do in four years what is the unique DNA I think when we started we did not have the luxury of investments none of these investors invested in us because you know there was a telecom mobile manufacturer hangover which was happening in the country so they all ignored us and they thought that you know we will also die soon so unfortunately we were not you know we had to struggle our way we had to use very jugadu ways of saving money I worked out of a cafe social I I did not have you know big teams I used to work with very junior guys and when I was working in Harman I had like six six people who were reporting into me and then they had their layers and and I when I joined when I started bought I could not afford any one of them in that I could not even afford a media agency marketing agency and there was a performance marketing performance marketing or AMS Amazon ad but chaldeh chaldeh at that time pay to me my boy agency never like Pachaza Rupees like in a my home and my wife never like he could do any secret that we had and I went to YouTube and I learned how performance marketing and Amazon ads work and I did not even have that much money in fact so when you don't have money you know you have you have to innovate you have to do jugadu you have to do the things yourself and you have to learn it right Mira sample when I used to go to show someone first when I was in JBL I didn't even go but when the company started then my product is that you see the heart is full of money he comes in that he sells sari he sells sari he does it like this see he is doing good he is doing good so I would take a speaker like this and keep it and see how good it is I would go and sample it myself there was like those were the times and I and I still miss and I love those times so for both you know it's you know I am a charter accountant so ROI is in my blood and my co-founder is a Gujarati so you know that lethal combination is there is what I feel where we look at ROI in everything right and if you look at what is happening in the startup world today finally people are realizing that profitability is important right gone are those glorious days of burning money and I'm very happy that the ecosystem is changing and people finally are looking at profitability as a as an important metric which was which was getting lost in transit earlier I'm not saying losses are I might also make loss maybe this year maybe next year but the DNA has to be profitability so I think that is that is changing because you're launching new categories and the scale at which you're operating how many you told me that story about going to Khan market and buying your own products you remember you told me that story right tell our audience why you did that and how did it give you confidence it's a mercury audio video you know you know board you know salesman attitude style you know you know you know you know the god I went again, I said keep it, there is a lot going on in the market, there is a lot of demand, you are not keeping it, it is your loss. So he kept our goods. And once the goods come in the Khan market, then the South XGK, this market, they also think, so I told them, keep it in the Khan market. Then when they kept it, we spread in the market. So that was the story. There is a very upmarket retail location and he is basically saying that they won't keep his products. So he made his wife and mother go out on different days and asked for his product. And that's how he convinced the retailer to keep his product and then it kind of became. He heard the story three times, sir. Even in Hindi and English. Now let me ask you, you are the co-founder of the business, but you love being the CMO. We've talked about it. Give a sense to this community. Why you are so passionate about building your brand yourself, that DNA, and the special sauce you bring to marketing both products. Sir, one day when I was starting, someone told me that I was keeping a celebrity. He said that if you keep a celebrity, then you have to spend 6 to 8 times the amount of money. You know, put it in the media. And we kept 50 lakhs of celebrity and we didn't put any money in the media. Correct. At that time, Facebook and Instagram were doing very well. My engagement was very good. So we bought a post from it. We said that you will put 10 posts on us. I think that itself was a media for us. And we used to use his picture on Amazon, Flipkart, Packaging, everywhere. We used as much as we could. And then people were looking at the pages and buying our products. So we used it rather than putting media. So I think marketing keeps changing in my opinion. Like every few years, I feel that marketers will not call me again. So I think marketers keep changing and evolving. And if you don't keep up with the times, I think you will die. So I personally feel in my company also the average of marketing is 23. I think the people who grow up as big marketers, if you don't listen to the younger guys, they also become redundant. And they start giving these old world ways of doing marketing, which may or may not be relevant in today's world. So I may be wrong here, but I personally don't. I still feel I'm not the marketing head. My 22 to 25 year olds are actually my marketing heads and I report into them. In fact, I challenge, and when they come up with these ideas, I am the first one to be a critic because I don't know what they're doing. But when they do what they're doing, it's just the new audiences relate more to them. So like when Instagram was not happening and Facebook was hot, these guys said, Insta karo. So I said Insta on karega. I'm the same in Facebook, but then Insta happened. And now probably Snapchat is bigger than Insta for some of the audiences. So they move faster than people like us. That generation is very different. So I feel that I can hire a good CEO, which we hired. I can hire a CEO, which also we've hired. But I think marketing may, I haven't found anybody who can take this role. So I feel, it's a very important thing for our brand that we don't lose the pulse of the brand. And that's why I want to be the marketing head till the time I don't find that guy. Good. My last question before the D2C tycoon. D2C yesterday at the awards while a lot of new companies, new founders, almost 80 founders got awarded a lot of mainstream companies. Hershey's for example, I'm giving chocolate as a category. A lot of existing large companies have jumped on the D2C bandwagon. While D2C companies are going omni channel, they're going through physical retail. So is D2C here to stay? Obviously, D2C does not have any industry. Now it's becoming omni channel and I think it's getting converged. The old school companies are coming to D2C and they are increasing the CACs. It's so difficult to buy a keyword and the new age companies are going offline. I think it is getting converged. And if you look at, you go to Amazon today, try to buy a shampoo. I don't do shampoo. I told you before. Why do you talk about shampoo? Sorry. I forget. So if you buy, try to buy something, it becomes, it's so difficult because these big guys are spending more money than what we have. And you know, the CACs are going up and all that. So I think the lines are blurring. Thank you. Give a big round of applause to Aman Gupta for founding board and growing board is our D2C tycoon of the year. He was supposed to get this yesterday, but he's just come back from France. He's gone with the prime minister to France and he's just come back from that and then he was in Chennai. So I am scared of this word tycoon. Can we have Mr. Naval Ahuja and Mr. CVL Srinivasan. Adam, can you also join us on stage for two minutes and give this award to Aman. The E4M D2C tycoon of the year award goes to Aman Gupta co-founder and CMO Boat Lifestyle. Aman Gupta is the co-founder and CMO of Boat Lifestyle. He holds a postgraduate. Naval sir, if I can request you for the closing remarks. Yesterday, the D2C conference and awards were in the bigger hall and there was a bar at the back. So people had the opportunity of standing at the back and drinking while listening to paying attention to what was going on on stage. I will not take long congratulations Aman and many congratulations to Prashant Kumar. When you look at PK and the award he's won, enough and more has been said. I don't think I have the capability to add anything more to all that has been said. But I'll carry on from Anurag's tennis analogy and I'm sure most of us grew up watching tennis. There was an era where really, really top competitive guys who were really go-getters on stage would win one grand slam, two, three, four. But somewhere it would fizzle out and then came Pete Sampras, who was humble, who was down to earth. But he created, he broke and created so many records and he came to be associated with this term called nice guys can win. And win big, win long and we all know what Pete Sampras accomplished. So in many ways, when I hear all of those things said about PK, it reminds me of that analogy with Pete Sampras, that nice guys. You don't have to be cutthroat, you don't have to be ultra competitive only. You don't have to kind of stand or bypass somebody else stand on somebody else's shoulder to win in business or in life. And PK I think is a fantastic example of that. So well deserving award PK, congratulations again. Thank you to all the speakers who've been here today. Adam, thanks for making it busy schedule, but you pointed out that you wanted your presentation played. We made sure that it not play. So it's a setup. Apologies again for what happened. The bar is open. Kindly join us and enjoy and celebrate PK's win. Thank you. Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen to all the partners, everybody involved from Exchange for Media and of course all the audiences here. We conclude Exchange for Media Conclave 2023. We'll see you hopefully in the next one. Till then, enjoy the drinks and the dinner fun.