 Hello everyone, welcome to the Business Leader Roundtable, Unlocking Digital For Growth. In the past 12 months, we all know that our lives have changed tremendously, the way we meet, the way we have fun, the way we order things, the way we collaborate and of course the way we do our business. And there is no denying the fact that digital has been at the core of this phenomenal change. It's no longer an afterthought, but the thought itself, the core thought and almost everyone is trying to find that secret sauce that unlocks the power of digital growth. But everyone is not so lucky. While some are getting it right, others are making mistakes and struggling with it and the ones who are getting it right are the winners for today and for tomorrow. Today, I have some of these winners with me here. Some of them have leveraged the power of digital and unlocked growth and they have been gracious enough to come here and share some of the learnings and experiences so that all of us could minimize our failures and maximize our chances of success. So without further ado, please allow me to introduce our first panelist, Mr. Ashut Kaseh Reddy, who is the managing director for India and Indian subcontinent for Mayura, India. The company behind the popular brand of Kopiko coffees as well as Smallkist. Welcome Mr. Ashut to the panel. Thank you, Ahmad. It's my pleasure. Next we have Mr. Oliver Mirza, who is the managing director and CU for India subcontinent for Dr. Ottaker. From sauces to dips to even your favorite peanut butter is all thanks to this company. Welcome, Mr. Oliver to the panel. Thank you very much, India. Next, we have a stalwart of the industry, Mr. Deep Malhotra, who is the chairman and MP for Oasis Group, a very large conglomerate with diverse interests including distillery, hotels, export and power. A very warm welcome to Mr. Malhotra, both senior and junior. Next, we have the dynamic and the enterprising, Mr. Anshul Agarwal, who is a partner at Mysore Deep perfumery house, the company behind India's largest selling Agar Bhatti, which is Manthan. Anshul, a very warm welcome to the panel. Thanks, Ahmad. Thank you. Pleasure being here. And we also have Mr. Rajiv Uchani, who is the director for Amar Products India, the company behind the popular collagen cream. Hello, Mr. Rajiv. Welcome to the panel. Along with that, we have two industry leaders from the world of digital joining us from Google. We have Ruchita Taneja Agarwal, who's the head for new business sales, Google India. Welcome, Ruchita. Thank you, Ahmad. Pleasure to be here. Thank you. And we have Tanveer Oberoi, who's a director for agency partnerships and sales for Google Customer Solutions. A very warm welcome, Tanveer. Thanks to meet everyone here. I'm really looking forward to the discussion. Lovely. So let's get kickstarted with our discussion. You know what they say that habits define your future. And I would love to ask everyone on the panel, what a new habit that we've picked up. And just by raising your hands, has anyone of your kids or yourself learnt anything new online, which you would have never done before? Has it happened for you guys? Took an online class, learnt something new? Wait, I'm sure almost all of us. Has anyone of you learnt a new recipe by watching a YouTube video? We have Ruchita, we have Oliver. Yes. All right. And has anyone of you taken a fitness class online? Definitely, yes. You learnt something new? Some of us, some of us. Great. So I feel in large habits change. And Tanjumar's habits have seen such a tectonic change. So have business models and then you go to business models here. So let me get in place, Anshul. And Anshul, I want to throw this question at you. All the disruption that has happened in a Black Swan event like COVID, has your business seen a kind of a change and what kind of changes have you done in your business? How has it really evolved? So, Ahmed, a lot of things have changed, especially after COVID, the whole thought process around how we market our business and how we want to present in front of customer has changed because the customer habit has changed. Now the customer is spending more time on digital means and I mean for advertising, you have to be where the customer is. You cannot advertise on an empty road. You have to advertise where the customer actually is spending his or her time. So in that terms, the advertising and marketing means has changed. The way we sell has not completely changed but slowly it's moving towards, the share of e-com in the total says getting multi-fold increase. So that is definitely a change that has happened. And even the communication that we are designing now, that communication is now being designed actually for digital. Earlier we used to design communication for TV and then digital was an additional thing on which that communication used to go. Suppose if I'm talking about a TVC of 30 seconds or 60 seconds that we used to shoot. Now we shoot TVC keeping digital in mind how will this TVC function, how will this video function in digital and then TV is sort of an add-on for it. So definitely a lot of things have changed as a company for us as a brand for us. Actually you make a big statement there saying TV is an add-on for us. Which just generally for a brand like yours seems to be a larger tectonic change. I would love to get Oliver into this discussion. Oliver would you agree with what Anshul is saying has digital now for your business also become one of the power houses to focus on? Yes, I would absolutely agree. I think we're not yet at that level that we say that digital is more important possibly than advertising. Because advertising for let's say for fun foods by Dr. Utka from Mayonnaise or Pizza Topping, Perspective or Pina Pada, it's still the mass medium to reach the masses. But this becomes more and more difficult. And when earlier we said you could run an entire strategy just on TV I think this is no longer possible. So now you still need TV for the mass to reach the masses. But then on the other hand in order to have particular outreach to reach consumers directly to speak with them to be more tailored in the approach. It is a for sure it's a need and a must to be to be on. Oliver you may. If it's not to see. Which is something that is an important point because I believe a lot of brands we feel that to reach the masses we require TV, right? And being from a digital industry, having run a large digital agency myself brands across somewhere I may not really agree that to reach the masses you have to have TV but I would love Tanveer's perspective in this. Tanveer, you see brand managing such large media spent to reach the masses. Is TV the only way to reach masses? What is your thought on that? Well, I see every media, you know, I'm a kind of functions and serves different purposes, right? We were in an era where we were at our era where print used to be one of our largest medias, right? There was radio that was emerging very fast, but TV has been consistent over the last few years, right? But that's again prior to the emergence of digital and more importantly the emergence of video on digital as well. Now most TV platforms have their own OTT players. You've got YouTube, which is the largest video platform that currently exists in the country. It has a reach which is equivalent to the largest TV channels which exist in the country as well, right? You've got a number of other video platforms that have come into the country as well. So it's no longer a limited reach game limited to one media platform only. And I think if any agency is to look at a cross media planning, they've got to look at a cross media reach impact as well. Because digital now gives you the advantage of actually looking at de-duplicated reach, right? So hence you're able to go ahead and reach out to the most effective, the most impactful customer that you're possibly looking out there in the market. So is it the question the brands need to ask themselves is, are they looking at pure reach? Are they looking at effective reach? Are they looking at de-duplicated reach? Are they looking at incremental reach? And that's where really cross media planning and the impact of digital really comes into play. So I think we need to kind of move away from our traditional media planning methodology because the world is evolved, the number of screens have evolved, it becomes smaller. I'm actually taking the small on my mobile phone at this point of time. So the fact is it's no longer the age of 52 inch and 36 inch and 14 screens, right? That's a luxury. But most of us prefer to go ahead and use a smaller screen to actually interact. Okay, then we make this point to define the kind of reach, okay? And that's an important consideration for brands today. Let me get Achyut's perspective on this. Achyut, how are you really reaching your customers over the past 12 months? Has the model changed, how you're looking at marketing sales? Is that taking an impact for the better? Yeah. See, first of all, even before COVID, there has been a change that has been going on. But the COVID time, the pandemic accelerated that change. The way the consumers are viewing, shopping, eating, searching, reading, everything is going through a lot of change. In the past, if you had one mass reach TV kind of an approach, you were able to reach and be happy that you have advertised and you are seeing an impact. I think we look at it in a different way now. For example, during one of our recent launches, we were still in a distribution build mode, whereas we had better distribution in few cities. So we chose digital first as an approach to reach those cities while we were building for a bigger reach. And once we had the bigger reach, obviously we looked at multiple, you know, looking at both TV and digital as the way forward to build both in terms of reach, but also frequency and like what Tanvi was saying, unduplicated reach. So it's no single recipe that could be followed depending on where the brand is and how it is moving. Digital has a significant role to play and we ourselves have been learning on this. And the last six months has been an accelerated learning for us. I see a lot of opportunities to build brands through digital first approach, which in my view did not exist about three, five years ago. It was a complex model. And when I say that I'm not just talking about only reaching and communicating, but also in terms of making your product available through digital commerce or e-commerce. So when you see a mix of both, digital first approach works for brands depending on what your ambition is for that brand. Interesting, you mentioned this word digital first. We've been hearing a lot about it. Right. We've also been hearing digital only, not just digital first. And you know, I would love to come back to Oliver, Oliver with such a vast portfolio of brands you have. Is digital first or digital only a consideration for you? It's actually a good question. I would say not yet. Because, you know, the previous speaker also just made a comment that you digital only or digital first, and then you could distribute the product also through digital channels. Yeah, the idea of course is great. But the question is, what is the chef of the product? So if you keep in mind the chef of the product, sometimes it's just only, let's say six weeks, or sometimes it's maximum eight weeks when it comes to cakes or waffles, and it becomes a challenge in order to reach those channels. So then from a distribution perspective, the digital only would not work. But that does not mean that the digital strategy would not work, but that means that the distribution through digital, that alone would not work. So you would still need other means of distribution, which is then the traditional backbone of India, which is the Kerala stores or modern trade. But I believe so we have some products where the shelf is just two months. And when the products are smaller, when the categories are smaller, I think then you would also not need or it makes no sense to go on TV. Then I would, I can imagine digital only is doable. And we have one or two such categories and we will try. But we have not reached there yet. But we will try it because we see that digital has become much more relevant and much more important. It's actually changing the lives of everyone of you, of me, of all of us right now and in the future. It's going to be even changing our lives even more. And we need to adapt to it. And I think for a classical advertiser or classical branded company like Dr. Utka, possibly we are still too much on that old platform of, okay, we need to be on TV and going on digital is like walking on ice. It's a little bit of unfamiliar terrain, but we will go there. Lovely, lovely. I think it's important that you mention that that's the future and that's something that. The future is already here. The problem is the future is already here. So we are not fast enough. That's the challenge. We need to be much faster, but it's like walking on ice. Nice perspective and I'm sure possibly Ruchita could add a bit to it. And I'm sure that a lot of brands might feel that getting on to digital is like walking on thin ice right now. Ruchita, what is your perspective? How can brands like Dr. Utka and others ease their journey to become more actively embracing digital and really growing on digital? Is there something that Google provides and what is your experience? Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I actually like to come in with a few examples, kind of really bring home the point that you're asking, right? So we had many companies and brands who were in a similar boat as what Mr. Cassidy described, they had a new brand launch or what let's say Oliver is describing that they had a traditional platform and traditional capabilities and they understand that the future is here, but walking on ice is never easy. So we've actually worked with quite a few brands in the last one and a half years where the times were so uncertain and dynamic. Like for example, there was this beverage company which all of a sudden because of strict lockdown had their sales really plummet. And this was a time when the marketing team had really prepared for launch of a new brand and it's a seasonal brand. So any sales that you lose, you lose for the year, right? It's not something that you can regain. And so we worked with that brand and we said, how can we kind of reach out to newer customers who are still spending, who still have an appetite to experiment with new products and how can we build a brand awareness, but also take it down all the way to purchase. The whole customer decision path to purchase is also something that we wanted to build a full funnel strategy on. So that was one example. The other example, to Oliver's point, there are a lot of these retail brands which were earlier, let's say only present through an offline mode. And all of a sudden that offline mode was no longer accessible by the consumers because of lockdowns. So kind of really helping some of these brands to digitize and open their digital storefront, if I can call it. That was an area that we also stepped in and helped and enabled them to kind of have an online channel. And in fact, one company which is in the gift space, actually we were able to, within the first one month of enabling their online, we were able to match, get them 50% of their sales to online. And it was at a much more cost efficient manner than they were looking at earlier. Because also one of the things that we realized with many companies was that working capital also became, you had to spend your working capital more prudently because you couldn't be spending your marketing dollars and not looking at measuring ROI. So also there was a focus on achieving marketing objectives, but there was also a focus at the same time to optimize for your spend. And that's where the power of digital, the power of targeting, the power of personalization, the power of measurement that really kind of came in. And so frankly, the areas that Google can step in and help can be many fold depending on the objective that a brand or a company is looking for. If you're looking at a brand launched and there's a different type of support. If you're looking at transitioning to digital commerce, then there's a different kind of support. If you're looking at a conversion-based or like an outcome, action-based outcome, then there's a different approach. But those are some of the ways that we've kind of helped with some of our brands. Because honestly, the transition, as I think Mr. Cassidy also mentioned and we've all been talking about it. The future has been pre-pwned by at least a few years. And the consumer is behaving very differently and should start at the conversation with that. So we all have to be preparing ourselves to be where the customer is and aligning our communication strategy and marketing strategy to be there in the consumer journey. Which is very well put, the future is here. And you mentioned about measurement, you mentioned about targeting. You also mentioned about personalization when someone really looks at a digital strategy. I would love to take Mr. Deep Malhotra and Gaurav Malhotra's perspective. Sir, has your brand embraced digital in the past 12 months? And to what degree are you really leveraging digital? Sir, I would like to say something on that. That since we are in a, you can say, in a product category, which cannot be made available on the digital stream, we are into alcohol. So we manufacture whiskey, we manufacture liquor. So legally it is not allowed to be made available in India. So it becomes even a bigger challenge. All those, you can say, thoughts of social media might be applying to other services. But when it comes to liquor industry, when it comes to, you can say, alcoholic industry or alcoholic beverage industry. So the same thing stops applying to our industry. So for us, yes, we are aware of the fact that digital is a very, you can say, fast and it is a very important role in our marketing campaign. But still because, see, if someone has to do a marketing for an iPhone or something like that or TV. So he has the option of going and converting that into the sale. Whereas for us, we don't have the option of converting that into the sale. So to be very frank, we will always have a negative ROI, negative ROI for whatever social media spend we might have social media or any kind of online media. So, but what is what it can help that it can help put my brand in people's mind. I am aware of that. But it is still going to be a very slow and a long road for me for the product category I am in. Okay. So Gaurav, you mentioned about negative ROI in terms of after reaching consumer. And that's an important point you make. I would definitely love Ruchita's perspective on this. But in just a moment and before that, I would also love to see Mr. Rajiv's perspective on how digital has really impacted his industry because I believe that his vertical has seen tremendous growth leveraging digital. Absolutely. Mr. Rajiv, what do you think of this? Mr. Rajiv, if you don't mind, I will talk in Hindi. Sir, I believe that digital plays an important role. I would like to say that there are still a lot of people who are in the offline market right now. Because of the pandemic, it has been very affected. The future is going on digitally. I am very much in that. But for that, there are many mediums. Google, Facebook, Insta, these are the mediums that you can go to for a digital. For digital, sir, if you think of the offline market as the first time, that's not the case. So it's going on digitally. And our company is trying to take it on digital as soon as possible. E-commerce platform has its product availability. Everything is easily available. Because today's youth is going on digital. So our perspective is to take it on digital as soon as possible. You have given a very important message that everything is going on and you will also take it. Let me just get into Ruchita because Ruchita, Mr. Gaurav Malhotra mentioned about, for his category, can he really leverage the power of digital? Or will it be a negative RO iPhone? So how do you tackle such a kind of a brand proposition? So in fact, what he said is exactly what we hear from many brands. And your concern is absolutely fair. And I'll also use a little bit of Hindi and English in between. It's absolutely fair because it's your category where you can't sell online. But I can also tell you there are many brands who haven't yet come on the online commerce. Their product is still your restriction because of the category. But there are many other products that are still not digitally ready. Oliver also spoke about it that they also as a brand and as a company have to be fully digitally ready. But again, there are many solutions that are available that can drive more traffic to your offline channels, to your offline stores. There are solutions that we have where you can drive more consumers to a local outlet. You can direct them that this is the outlet where your product is available. But an important difference that we've seen frankly in the last one and a half years more, we were seeing it before that as well, is that whole perception that used to be there earlier, that a customer that's coming on search translates to sales. And if you don't have an e-commerce platform, then you can't leverage search. Or let's say the other perception that has always existed is that if you want to create an awareness for your brand, then YouTube is perhaps the only way. What we are now seeing is that the overlap of customers moving from search to YouTube and vice versa is so much now. The overlap actually as we see it between search and YouTube is 80%. So customers are not only searching for a product that they're looking for, but oftentimes they actually look at something on YouTube to find out how that product is to be used, find out how the other customer's experiences have been, what the review is, and then kind of go back and look at what should they be looking at, other comparable brands. So clearly the whole customer journey now has multiple touchpoints. It's no longer a linear journey. And I think that's an important point for any brand to keep in mind, even if you're not looking at investing your entire marketing budget into digital. But I think what's important to know is that your customer, whether it's the India one customer or whether it's the India two customer, whenever they decide to look for a product or whenever they're inspired by looking at something that dropped up when they were watching something, digital is definitely a medium that they're accessing for either research or for finding out what other customers are saying or for finding out what the comparisons are and if your brand is missing from action. When the consumer is trying to look for this, then clearly you are outside of the consideration set. And discovery is definitely an element that can be focused on for a brand like OSS. Perhaps I could say that, are you there? Are you making your customers aware? Are you catching them at a discovery phase? But frankly, I would also that in their case, if you were to look at the entire marketing funnel, I would say even mid funnel. There are specific steps that your brand can take lower funnel can of course, the action can happen offline, but definitely there are enough and more solutions that can be spoken about and tested. And that's the other beauty about digital, right? You can test it before you commit full hog into it. You can run a few tests, see whether the results are coming in and then you can decide to invest further into it. That's the other beauty about digital. You mentioned a thing which said that customer journey is no longer linear, right? And that's because behaviors have changed so much, the way we consume information, the way we discover products. I would love Tanveer's perspective on this. Tanveer, you work closely with so many advertisers across verticals and big advertising companies like GroupM. Have you seen consumer behavior change drastically? Is there anything that has really surprised you? Well, I think that's a very broad question. I'll address it with perspective for the last two years because there's a certain amount of, I think, recency bias that takes in as a result of COVID, right? And the whole pandemic that we've been in. I think the best indicator of how a consumer really is consuming the internet or is consuming products is on the search patterns of an individual, right? Of a set of customers. Now, I think the one thing that's very drastically changed is the search patterns over the last two years, one because of a reasonable amount of internet consumption increase, the comfortable nature of us now utilizing tech in our day-to-day, the awareness of a larger age group with respect to the internet and the usages behind it. And three broad patterns really indicated how consumers are shifting, right? So number one, I'd say is that in the last two years, one very drastic change was a pattern which we call the shock change, right? What I mean by shock change in terms of search pattern was this was a sudden change which resulted in people looking for either products or for services or for commodities which they would probably not do in their regular life. So let me give you an example. Think of the number of times all of us on the screen have searched for masks or sanitizers or gloves. Is this normal? Absolutely not, right? Yes, maybe for the medical professionals, but not for the normal consumer. So this was a shock change that really came in, right? The second piece that we kind of observe was something which we call the step change, right? Which was basically a set of searches or a behavior that started coming into play which probably will sustain, right? Because now it's gradually becoming a habit. So for example, e-learning. You started the service. Did I lose you there? Just for two seconds. So what I was saying is for example, you started this conversation by actually asking how many of you picked up anything online in the last two years? E-learning is a step change behavior. Gaming. The time my son spends on online gaming is ridiculous, right? Online shopping is now a behavior. So this is probably going to stay. And finally I think the most drastic of them all was the speed up, right? As a result of us becoming habitual to the internet and habitual to certain usage, there were certain aspects which will stay for life now. For example, digital payments. We don't hesitate now making a payment straight away for using Google Pay because it's become a habit for us. So these are some pattern changes that we saw which eventually dictates where the consumer is moving to and hence, way as marketers need to move to as well because that's where the consumer has reached a very valid point. Reached the point or reached the behavior which will impact the consumer the most and where you will find that most relevant. Right. So true, Tanvi. Tanvi, so I'm going to remember this as shock changes, step changes and speed up changes. So you spoke about it. Right. Yes. But what really impacts all these changes from a brand perspective is spends, especially your digital spends. Has there been any change on that that you can share? There's been a rapid change around that. Not surprisingly. I think as platforms as well, all the digital platforms have actually gone ahead and evolved very, very quickly. Number one, the digital consumption is actually just skyrocketed. We're at last quarter, it was slightly over 600 million internet users expected to be around a billion by 2025, probably faster the rate we're going at right now. Our smartphones are going to be around 800 million plus by the time we hit 2023, probably faster the rate we're going at. The fact of the matter is accessibility, screen types, consumption habits, awareness has increased and it's but obvious if the time is being spent on the digital. Tanvi, you're going on mute. You just unmute yourself. Yeah. Okay. Tanvi, we lost you at, you know how the spends are increasing just last five years. Yeah. So as a result of the screen time as well as the number of, you know, the users that we have on the internet being so high, not surprisingly, brands have also started moving their money towards the media which is most relevant to them. And as it becomes sharper, as accessibility increases, not surprising across sectors, it's no longer limited to the few that we used to hear probably three years back. It's cut across, right? Business models are rewarded. They're digital first business models. Just think about the number of D2C businesses that have launched. Think about the number of EdTech businesses that have launched. Think about the number of FinTech businesses that have launched. Understandably, these are all digital first and hence media monies as well moving towards digital. Totally. Totally, Tanvi. I would love Anshun's perspective on this point on spends on digital increasing. Have you also experienced that Anshun? Yes. Definitely, Amit. That is something that a brand cannot ignore right now and more than that, there's also a homo factor that, it should not happen that other brands are there and we are left behind. As a brand, we always want to be the first in that race of taking that first move advantage. That is what we did when it came to online selling. We were one of the first brands to start online selling. We were one of the first brands to take brand ambassadors on board. And now when it comes to digital advertising, again we want to be one of the first brands to register our brand there in customers mind because whatever comes first on digital, the whole brand perception that a customer develops around that brand is tremendous. So we have seen the reason why digital first brands or D2C FMCG brands have been so successful because there was no one out there and they just made their mark at the right time. It was about being at the right place at the right time. So the more delay we do in getting there, we'll be left behind. So for that, again, we have to make digital as a sizable percentage of our marketing budget, whatever we have. And every year it is not that we can go all out in one year. So it's a step-by-step process wherein it is x percentage in the first year and then we increase that x percentage the next year because we are getting results. So slowly and steadily as a brand, we move there wherein the total percentage of digital in our total marketing budget is increasing every year. So that is for sure happening. Anshul also tell me, has going on digital help you understand your customer and your consumer better? Yes, definitely. The whole mechanism of getting reviews of products, it works beautifully online. I mean, we calculated the amount of feedback that we get for sales is 16x online as compared to what we get from offline sales because an online customer repeatedly gets emails to give reviews and ratings to products and we get really good insights from there. I mean, we analyze all the reviews. There's a team that analyzes all the reviews and we get good insights as in which fragrances the customer is liking. Earlier we used to get these insights only from our distributors or only from our sales team. Now we are getting this insight directly from the customer. So that is a big thing. I mean, as a brand, you get connected to customer directly and that can happen only in digital. So that is, I believe, a very big thing. Thank you for that, Anshul. Oliver, would you agree with Anshul and has Dr. Rottaker also gone closer to customers leveraging digital in any manner? Yes, I would agree with Anshul. So of course, we are also on digital channels or e-com channels. In fact, before the pre-COVID levels, the importance of the e-com channel was about 3%. It has gone at the peak, it was about 10% of the sales. That means 90% is still not e-com, but you can see the positive side is 10% was already e-com so it's quite strong. And I would also agree with Anshul that you get a lot of insights when it comes to reviews whether we are our own seller. So we also started being our own seller on Amazon, but it has its limitations because we are foreign direct investment. So only the products that we manufacture ourselves we can sell, but we are also present through Amazon itself or to Flipkart or to BigBasket. And we study the reviews, but it is a question of mindset and we need to change our mindsets. So last year, for example, we launched before the lockdown, I think in December 2019 or January 2020, we launched a product on all nature of peanut butter and some other part was not stable. Because there's no emulsifier in it and no stabilizer, there was an oil separation happening which is normal in the product. But somehow the old pattern to look at this is to look at the consumer database, how many people have called up and how many people really complained and it is just a different mindset to start thinking why do I have to ask the distributor or why do I need to look at the consumer statistic of somebody calling me or do I just look into the Amazon database and see what reviews I get. So that is the question of mindset we all need to change our mindset towards digital thinking, which I think a lot of people have not done and I would say we are on that journey but we have not reached the destination. If at all there is a destination, probably there is no destination, this is the journey which never ends and we just need to get the act together. That's what I'm saying. I think we're not yet ready but we acknowledge that we have to get ready and we are on the way. And yes, what Anshul says, I absolutely agree with that. Lovely to know that you're on the journey. Anshut, are you also on this journey and has different digital sales channel been implemented by your business to increase sales in any manner and how has that really impacted? Yeah, absolutely. I think both the speakers, Anshul and Oliver made some very good points. In our case, the way we looked at this is digital offers you certain opportunities to pick and choose and even try some products before you go broader. So we have taken this approach of identifying few brands which we always wanted to bring in from our parent company in Indonesia but we were not too sure whether we should go broader and how the response would be. So the approach we have taken is the, as I said, the digital first approach with some of these products and we could pick and choose the market where we wanted to launch. No need to go all India, you can choose one or two metros or 10 lakh less population towns. So we have tried out and we have seen that it gives us a phenomenal opportunity to understand what the consumers are, how they are reacting to this offer and what needs to be fine tuned before we go broader and invest big bucks of an all India distribution and things like that. So we are seeing and if I may use the word a nice way to do a very cost effective test marketing of your product which is a very new perspective because end of the day for confectionery and biscuits these are mass distributed products. Before you go mass if there is a way you can be 100% sure I think why would you not get on to the journey and embrace it. I think we have seen that as an additional advantage that we are seeing. Of course, the fact remains that people still have a lot of questions whether it is effective whether I can use it for this I think everything depends on what's the brand offer what's your ambition and how do you go about doing it in a very cost effective way and some of it is also going to be learning on the fly. One should not hesitate to get on to the journey and learn on the fly. Great Achyutri. Really great Oliver's point on being on this journey for digital and that's hard thing to know. I would love Rajiv perspective Rajiv in your experience in your experiences that you said on digital that we are all going and you have also gone to the brand because of this your sales have increased or you are e-commerce or marketing your websites till now your voice is working till now till now your voice is working I can't hear you are you getting voice? I am saying till now we are working on print electronic on both mediums the future is digital so I think the future is digital so other way we have e-commerce platform and our website we are going to work on all this and on that because with all these things you will get a lot of growth in business and the offline medium with that the network is working all the youth all these things all the purchases we have our Amazon Flipkart Snapsee the first person to search here small, big, any product you are on digital medium as you know you have to expand gradually and 100% growth will come and are you doing digital marketing till now? we are starting at the initial stage our team is doing and in 1-2 months we will get a lot of digital from all mediums is there anything which is stopping you from coming to digital from the beginning? no sir, nothing like that there is no stopping it is a traditional thought traditional thought we have to remove this thought very well put Rajeev very well put then a lot of growth can be unlocked yes, yes Deep, Mr. Deep Malhotra Mr. Gaurav Malhotra, are you impressed with Rajeev's words? I would like to request all the panelists to suggest that looking at today's youth how many percent should be spent on digital media the total budget that is to do a good job how many percent should be spent on it? this is a very difficult question and no one can better than Tanveer Tanveer would you like to share that brands because you see so many brands across categories what is the percentage of the total marketing budget that brands are putting on digital and this may vary from a large brand can you share a bit more I think it depends I think it is a very valid question for any marketer or any business head to ask because eventually they want that money to work for them as brands as well so it differs very drastically across categories as I had mentioned a lot of the digital first brands are obviously very skewed extremely skewed, app brands are very skewed understandably because it is a digital first brand 60-70% depending on the kind of brand and this could be a cross pin tech T2C etc when we go more towards the traditional brands specifically so if you look at let's say retail it could be in the region of around 20% if you look at CPG which is your FMCG products it could range again there are certain brands as low as 10% but we have also seen a number of brands especially the newer brands and you would know this as a brand their digital spends were reasonably high which is in the excess of around 25-30% as well so it actually differs my recommendation for any new brand to come in is is to first start with a certain amount of test budgets in some test markets see the impact it drives for you we are very confident and I speak on behalf of Ruchita and me we are very confident that it works provided so go ahead and utilise the right platforms so for example in his case it's probably YouTube is the most relevant platform because of certain policies etc and as long as they meet those policies YouTube is probably the most relevant platform for certain other brands where you have the option to go down the search route and the display route etc as well there is an ample opportunity for you to go ahead and index and divers set up products as well so I would say it ranges honestly it's a very broad question but offline we'd be happy to connect with the voices group and actually understand what their needs are so as to help them come on both the digital journey as well I think that would be lovely Gaurav please go ahead one more thing I would like to say that since our brand we are allowed a certain extent of advocacy and retirement so for us to do that it is fine we are doing our all season risky ad on TV and all that we are also doing a very small amount on social network and on social media but what I am trying to ask you that how long would it be valid for me to you can say come to a point that it will start showing me the ROI part since I would not be having it immediately so if I want to sell a TV iPhone like I said earlier the result would be immediate now for me to divert my customer from my chair to the nearest liquor shop and getting him to pick my bottle so it is going to be a very big long road with lots of ups and downs and after that after that picking up one bottle would I be there okay social media has made one bottle of sale example I am just giving an example so for me it becomes very tough to you can say access social media and to access the social spending and if many companies are saying that they are spending 20% of their budgeting so it makes it very difficult for me to decide what to spend and what not to spend and what not to spend Gaurav you I think ask this question on behalf of a lot of brands how do I get ROI from digital how do I know if there is an incremental sale especially if I am not selling online how is it because of digital here I would love to get in Ruchita's perspective Ruchita you spoke about measurement briefly when you are talking about measurement personalization how do brands measure in this case how can you be more confident about ROI yeah absolutely so in fact first of all I want to acknowledge what Otter said that it is going to be a long road I definitely agree it is going to be a road I don't think it is going to be a long road necessarily and what I can actually tell him is that there are many milestones that can be measured to make sure that the journey is going to be fruitful at the end so let's say when one word to a brand like this if they were to start with a brand awareness campaign like we were saying in their category specific category there are certain policies that have to be adhered to but let's say they are already doing some surrogacy ads on TV if one word to start their journey with that there are lots of metrics like ad recall brand lift surveys brand lift considerations so all of those measurements can be interspersed on that journey to kind of show to both Mr. Deep and similar brands or not and you know I'd like to just borrow again what Mr. Cassidy was saying digital is actually that one powerful medium that allows you to test and that's what we would encourage that you know start small define what success looks like at the beginning of the journey the success will not it would not be right to measure success by sales to begin with right because first your brand has to be known to the consumer then it has to show up in the consideration set right the customer has to be inspired to want to look at your ad right and there are different formats of ads that we have there are skippable ads those which kind of also show you that is the customer interested in your brand is that leading to conversion metrics or website visit or looking at the content right is the customer seeing the entire ad completely so I think there are milestones that one will have to build in the plan those milestones will have to be agreed and you know if those milestones are delivering results then you know again on behalf of you know our entire team I can commit that you know the end result of sales will also happen and you know we worked with many brands in fact even in their space frankly very you know in the spirit space as well we worked with some brands where you know we worked with surrogate content that they've created and you know that has really helped them in you know achieving sales metrics that they want to drive but it's a journey one has to plan it like a full-fledged journey and the way I'd like to actually conclude this is that even when let's say brands traditional brands have looked at traditional media work for them I don't think traditional media also would have given them an experience that they put in an ad one day whether it's a weekend whether it's print whether it's anything else and it gave results the next day right even on traditional media it is a journey and therefore in that context digital is no different and one has to be mindful of that when one begins the journey but it's important to you know be committed to the journey because you can't like leave it in between because then what you're doing is you're actually leaving a customer half way there and therefore measuring the impact of what you would originally spent is going to be very difficult in fact you know if I can just also say that you know we've also worked to only run an awareness campaign or a consideration campaign or an action campaign in isolation the results or the conversions of that are limited whereas the impact can be increased many fold if the you know the campaigns are a blend of everything you know it covers a full funnel from awareness consideration to action the results get increased many many fold Richita staying committed to the journey is important Thank you very much from the perspective on this one especially from a brand perspective actually have you stayed true to the journey and what is your experience in measuring ROI So I would totally agree with Richita here and as Gaurav's concern was will my marketing spend convert into sales I mean that issue exists with traditional media also it never happens that for a traditional brand like ours and black has been there for 30 years so if when we started advertising I mean that directly doesn't you know convert into sales the whole journey of this advertising be it digital be it offline is a very long journey and it's a perception that you're building for your brand when a customer sees your brand 10 times digital or on TV he you know builds a certain perception in his mind so it is very difficult to even correlate sales directly with traditional media also right the one way of measuring that ROI is that probably in one of the states or in one of the regions of one state I do only digital where I am entering as a new territory and suppose if there's another state which is again a new territory for me and I go with the this traditional media I spent Anshil I think we've lost you just wait for a moment for Anshil to come back there was a very interesting perspective in the meanwhile would you like to add a bit to the ROI discussion which is happening you know so I think Ruchita kind of summarized that beautifully right there's so many factors that go ahead and define ROI and Mr Malhotra's question was very valid number one if you want any media platform to work firstly you need to align with that media platform as to what does ROI mean right otherwise it's going to be Chinese whispers right so let's kind of align on what does ROI mean to that particular brand and this ROI could be different as Ruchita rightly pointed out at different stages as well initially it could be creating your brand on a platform how do you test it you do a brand list and you possibly get an idea in terms of how your recall is how the stickiness of your brand is and so on and these are all surveys available online which you can use your time and you go ahead and run a campaign if ROI for you means footfall into a store then you go ahead and do a sales lift survey when you actually try and figure out whether your campaigns are converting to footfall going down into a store if your ROI is to actually go ahead and uplift a specific market then you try and do a mixed market test which is what Achyut was kind of eluding to earlier as well right which is basically compare the market compare it with one digital media versus another traditional media see what's the impact between the two as well so I think it's a very broad terminology when we actually say ROI is it eventual sales then you go for a sales lift as well there are ample number of methods that now exist out there in the market that can help you quantify your ROI as well the question is one whether you defined it out with your partner in this case maybe Google or any other partner and secondly have you agreed on when you will deploy those methods you know those methods as well to check for the measurement and I think that's what I kind of re-emphasize on and try and help brands focus towards so that we eventually have a win-win relationship with everyone Win-win is what we all need Achyut would you like to add to your point I lost you while you were trying to complete that yeah I was just saying that the challenge that exists in digital for a lot of brand traditional brand like ours and Mr. Manavutra is that you know it is difficult to say that that spend has converted into a sale that challenge exists with the traditional media also and this whole exercise of branding and marketing is a very long term exercise where you build a perception for your brand be it you're doing it offline it's just that now that things are shifting to digital and you want your campaigns to be more efficient you want to do it online so that was my whole point very well put Achyut would you like to add to that in terms of just measuring success on digital and how does your brand do that I think both Tanbir and Ruchita made some very good points in terms of what's your brand's priority is and when it in our case when we were launching a brand for the first time in a select market we were going after awareness because for us mass awareness within that territory was our priority so we have said the objectives accordingly and work with in this case with Google to deliver that so the written on investment on a campaign to campaign is something which I would hesitate to do that because you know we are not here only for a short period of time business gets built especially brands get built over multiple campaigns multiple years but certainly as long as you are in the direction of improving from your previous campaign on your brand metrics and thereby your sales I think we are on the right journey so our approach has always been to look at the creative to look at what has been the investment to look at how the brand is progressing and so far so good I think but the real challenge for someone who is taking the plunge for the first time I think start small I think learn keep learning and improving and get the necessary confidence and your own playbook in other words let me put it that way every brand can have their own playbook of how to do and that's a mix which will work for your brand and for your market to deliver on your goals very well put Achyut I think keeping a playbook keeping on evolving your strategy thinking long term I think are all very very valid points Oliver would you like to add some points to what Achyut just mentioned and would be interesting to know as to how Dr. Adkar also looks at ROI from digital marketing what is your parameter there good question on ROI first we need to say what is ROI from a traditional media approach that is also a big question Mark if ROI only means somebody picking up your product so we measuring of course ROI as a company as a business then our role is to build value in the heads of the consumer and become the preferred brand it doesn't really matter whether you do that through the traditional approach or you do that through any approach that's the ultimate goal ultimate goal for us is not only EBITDA but yes I think adding on to Achyut is I think you just need to go on for all these people like we need to go but you just have to do it there's no other option and holding on to something which is familiar is great but I think the big question Mark is are we ready for the change and then we need to embrace the change it's about agility it's about adopting the change and moving ahead and seeing this change in a way it's a change from the traditional approach to the digital approach seeing that change as an opportunity not as a burden and seeing that as and adopting accordingly keeping your ROI whatever the focus is keeping that core in focus and doing that and not doing that too slowly I believe when somebody says if you're a newcomer maybe start limited but I think one point is limited which is important don't make it limited in terms of agility do it with full agility so the limitation should not be with the speed it might be with the money but not the speed the speed must be full very well put Mr. Wally if I could just add a point there if you don't mind I think the one piece that we tend to forget which is about peeling this onion a little further we jump straight to ROI but we forget the input metrics for this ROI to work out so let me give you a couple of examples this is a question I have for the remaining panelists as well are you aware that currently 90% of internet users in the country 90% of internet users in the country prefer to use their local language to search and carry out an online task a person sitting in Tamil Nadu sitting in Bengal, sitting in a Sam sitting in Punjab prefer to use their local language to go ahead and search and consume content as well however how many of the brands over here actually have their creatives in local languages as well most brands still believe that a creative in English tends to work brilliantly but the fact is if you want stickiness and then you want ROI out of your creative one make a good creative secondly make it in the language which people consume and understand it best secondly for sales how many brands over here have actually tested their respective mobile pages to ensure that they actually load on type it's a free audit that Google provides have they actually tested this so you know ROI is an end result in order for that end result to work out you've got to have those input metrics and that hygiene in place so that ROI to really translate into what you're looking at and that's what I think Ruchita was also alluding to it's a journey, it is a road to be not denying that but at the end of the day there are milestones along that road as well and you've got to go ahead and cross every milestone before you reach your end destination right so I would just urge most brands to look at ROI from that lens a little internal and then external and will you mention about very rightly so about vernacular content and how people are going up what is the perspective on voice and video the other two ways that we normally talk about is that also a very important component of a brand strategy today no absolutely see the fact of the matter is the next emergence that we're seeing in the internet across the country is what Ruchita alluded to was as India too or what we also call Bharat your next growth that you will actually see will be at the back of Bharat what does Bharat basically mean these are Indic readers Indian language readers they are mobile only users do not necessarily have the benefit of using specifically a laptop or a computer screen and a mobile they're probably one screen users a lot of them are also 2G users and 3G users as well who are very very eager to go ahead and use new form of content and what we've actually seen is the emergence of smartphones becoming cheaper and the number of smartphones increasing and data prices having gone south as a result of geo the fact of the matter is that video consumption patterns have also increased and hence what you can write or communicate what you would try and communicate through a text if you can communicate by a video why not because eventually seeing is believing so you use the power in terms of video and hence you see an emergence of a number of OTT platforms across the country content on YouTube with a number of content providers and so on so it's never ending so is video the next frontier absolutely the second part is as you are rightly asked is the voice piece now the fact of the matter is when you look at consumption patterns as well it's about convenience when you're using any platform if you can do something with on the back of voice and be conversational why would you want to go ahead and do that on the back of just using your fingers to type out a message so it's very logical as well what initially was a slow mover but in the result of assistant playing a massive role on all our android phones voice has become pretty much now a default right kids use it right because it's easier because of the lack the education issue that we have in this country as well voice usage becomes extremely easy you don't need to go ahead and type it out in the language that may be a bit difficult for you to consume so there are very indians and that cusp which has got which makes it easy for voice usage at this point of time and not surprisingly both these two medias are actually spiralling, rocketing up right now at this point of time Important points there I'm going to go back to Anshil because I remember Anshil you spoke about when you're making videos for your brand today earlier when you used to make TVCs now you're keeping digital in mind and short of on that can you share a bit more of that before that I would like to add on what Tanveer said about vernacular languages and we by our experience my experience I can share that when we launched the you know a pack of our Z Black Agrabati in seven different languages though it was an operational challenge from point of view but then it gave us very good results because the acceptability of the product increases and now our pack comes in seven different languages the main product the top brand that we have it comes in different languages for different states especially for South India you have to have four different languages and what he rightly very rightly mentioned that you know as a brand generally we develop website for desktop but we have seen that 70% of our customers are consuming our website from their android mobile phones so that is again a very big point that generally brands do miss out and even the ads that we are shooting these days so a month and a half back we shot an ad with Dhoni for our Z Black 3 in one Agrabati and we were surprised to see that his retro look went viral the very same day and this is the power of internet you know anything can go viral really fast as a traditional brand we never imagined that our brand things associated to it's a photo shoot or video shoot can go viral on internet it can start trending on twitter so I think that really helps so this time instead of shooting a 60 second ad we have done five ads of 10 seconds each because we want to keep that momentum in digital because the attention span of customer is very low in digital even in traditional media he has so many options of channels that he will change it really very fast so you want to capture that your whole essence around your product and brand in just 10 to 15 seconds and that is the main challenge that you have to give the message also you have to show your brand also you have to show your product also so it is easier in digital where you can you know actually you have a lot of parameters to play with and you can select like Ruchita talked about skippable ads and different kinds of ads so yes definitely having your media designed according to digital is helping and the same you can use in traditional media as well very insightful points Anshul there you know so I am going to come back to some of the challenges where Mr. Malhotra shared about ROI and we had you know Ruchita, Tanveer and Anshul as well as it should share their perspective on that Gaurav and Mr. Malhotra are there any other challenges that as a brand is a stumbling block for you to get on to digital is a major challenges and yes I agree by all the expert of the panel that even the TV media or any kind of media is a long journey we have been advertising for the last three years and after advertising and you need to have the right product it is not only advertising yes we do agree with that advertising or marketing is not a wonder is that we can have it and everything will be alright no we absolutely agree you need to have the right product for the right category the product needs to be approved by the consumer who is going to be who is going to be in my category who is going to drink that bottle absolutely my brand ambassador Sanjeev sir so even after seeing Sanjeev sir he approved it once or twice so it is not if you are not liking the brand so I absolutely agree with everyone but the thing is that yes we are very much ready for that part of the digital spend and digital media but when we meet any new people we can say any agency so it creates a lot of confusion rather than simplifying it so it creates a lot of confusion I think you might speak for a lot of other brands so let me have my last question to Ruchita brands which are confused as to how to go about digital I am sure that everyone in the is very aligned that digital is here absolutely to take that journey but there are certain apprehensions that we may always not have the beauty of this forum to come and candidly discuss anything so how can Google help such brands ease their digital strategy so thank you for that in fact I just want to come in with some very interesting stats that I don't know if the panellists have heard of this so just kind of talking a little further about what the need was to mentioning in terms of the trend of video etc 95% of the content that is consumed on the mobile is video 45% of the digital commerce shoppers that have come about in the last 18 months have come from rural India and most of them have come in their local language so clearly the stats over there are very staggering and interesting stats which just came out 2 weeks ago all of us would tend to think that it is really the younger generation that is adapting to digital commerce more easily because of their comfort with digital interestingly in the first 8 months of this year Indians 45 years and above have actually embraced digital commerce at a higher growth rate than they have ever done so clearly that barrier of digital is transcending all age brackets so I think that is the other thing that I want to mention is the learning curve and that is really where my team and I come in and we team support the agencies because the other challenge that Mr Malhotra didn't talk about really is something that we hear a lot is the challenge of readiness of the teams whether it is the in-house marketing teams, whether it is the readiness of the agency teams because it is a relatively new space the expertise that is required to really make sure that your campaigns are delivering the returns that you are expecting in a cost efficient manner and that you are optimizing for the outcomes whatever your outcomes that you have defined is this whole need for training and need for building that experience and expertise and that is really where the me and my team come in. We do invest a lot of our time in actually enabling teams whether it is the teams of advertiser or whether it is teams of agencies as well to really help them not only understand the basics of digital but really also give them that experiential knowledge that can help the brands really reap the benefits of the dollars that they spend there. That is really where the power of digital comes home because we can say what we want to say. It can always be termed as a sales peak but we have to always at the end of the day deliver the results as well and that is really what our team focuses on. Results results results and that is a note that we are coming to the end of this very insightful discussion but I am not going to leave you guys without knowing your one line mantra for success or your one line advice to other brands which are there so just in one line if you can see what your mantra is I think that will be very insightful so possibly Anshun can we have your one line mantra. I would say that you can love digital for its efficiencies or hate digital for its complications but you cannot definitely ignore digital. Love or hate but cannot ignore. Anshun what would your one line mantra be for brands? I think that digital is there and it is never too late get on to the journey learn keep optimizing and I am sure you will get to a stage where probably you will have digital first approach. Lovely never too late Oliver what about you? Do it would be my mantra just do it. Just do it. Rajiv, what is your mantra which you want to say which is your success you are on mute on mute you are on mute I would say keep on doing the right direction and whatever you do there will be something like the traditional bunch if you have to go for a digital time the traditional approach if you want to work on a modern approach then you will be able to grow. Lovely love the spirit the routine will continue you have to take your business to a new dimension you have to go to digital I want to think about it. Great your thinking is great new thinking what is your mantra what is your one line success mantra we should learn new strokes in the digital stream but definitely stick to basic stick to basic sure can we what would be your one line advice to brands and what is your mantra well I'd say that help us help you develop that unrelenting drive to break the status quo and we'll help you innovate and hand over you in this digital journey very well help us help you and Ruchita what would your one line mantra I would say embrace the future embrace the future digital is the future just embrace the future lovely embrace the future and not embrace digital because digital is the future and digital is also today so thank you so much to all of you this was very insightful and I'm sure a lot of brands would learn from our experiences and help them accelerate further I'll leave you with my one line mantra for digital and for building brands and I say it's a marathon not a sprint so stay vested write the journey and you'll see success at the end of the by thank you so much, thank you to the panelists thank you to all the experts, thank you thank you very much for doing it so beautifully for all your effort and doing it so beautifully with all the panelists thank you very much thank you Oliver, thank you everyone thank you thank you