 Good afternoon everybody and thank you for joining us this afternoon to debate what the future holds for the media and entertainment industry. I'm sure there's a lot of debate going on around in the industry on the impact of COVID and how that will change things for this industry. We have an eminent panel today to debate this. We have Rana Barua, who's the CEO of Havas Group. We have Pradeep Divedi, who is the India CEO of Eros. Rohit Jain, who's the managing director of Lionsgate India. We have Rajan Balla, Chief Marketing Officer of HT Media and Ashish Sehgal, who's the Chief Growth Officer of Zee. Welcome gentlemen and sorry myself. I'm Jayil Thakkar. I'm a partner at Deloitte and lead the media and entertainment practice. Welcome gentlemen. So, you know, I just wanted to set the stage by saying that we've now been in this COVID lockdown situation for a few months and are likely to be in, you know, at least in the COVID situation for some time and there's been a lot of discussion on, you know, what the impact has been so far on the media and entertainment industry, you know, drop in advertising, you know, consumers not getting delivery of newspapers, all of that. So there has been a lot of discussion around that. So we won't visit history and do a lot of discussion on those topics, unless we want to refer to it to set some context. But rather than that, bring it back to what do we need to do in order to spur demand as the economy is coming back, what do we need to demonstrate as ROI to clients? Most of us are aware of the economic situation in the country. We also would like to discuss how consumer behavior is changing, how companies in this sector might be re-looking at strategy and business models and monetization going forward. So it's, leave it at a bit more of a future focused discussion. So with that, you know, I'm going to first delve into I think what is core to what will drive a lot of change and that is changes in consumer behavior. Now, do we, let me ask the panel and do we believe that consumer behavior will fundamentally change? Yes, we've all made changes, OTT viewing is up, TV viewing is up, you know, digital newspapers are up, but do we believe that a lot of these changes will hold? And as a result of that, what changes will come about? If I can, you know, ask the panel this specifically, Rajan, if you want to, if you want to just start off, you know, then perhaps we can go to Rohit Pradeep and anybody else who wants to join in. Yeah, thanks, Jay. Thanks for your introduction and the question. You know, I'll come to what you're saying in terms of whether fundamentally will it stay, will it change, but I think here are some of the observations and I'm going to skip what is what is already known to a lot of people, but and I'm going to stay a little more in the news media space. I think that's an important area. I think what we have seen is that news genre as a space has seen a very clear pickup during this period and not surprisingly so because it obviously started with a lot of COVID related piece which continues and I think there seems to be a long journey ahead on that. But importantly, COVID also kind of gave rise to a lot of fake news that was going on that probably dying, you know, WhatsApp messages and all kinds of things. And I think that's where what's what's happening is that the traditional media brands which are seen as a very credible kind of media brands are emerging strong in terms of the go to brands for getting credible information. Now, what's happening in consumer terms is that obviously this whole advent of online news has seen a dramatic shift and and may I say that it's actually it's actually deep frog a few years for India in terms of digital adoption and online news we've seen overall a almost a 23-24% increase in user base. We're also looking at more than 40% growth in time spent on on some of this media and and slowly and slowly steadily what's happening is that this digital consumption which is going up and the digital digital consumption may I you know clarify here is not just about not just about news as a genre and not just about e-papers in specific but it could be to do with sites, apps, OTT, notifications, podcasts, what have you. There is that seismic kind of adoption that we are seeing at the moment and my sense is that this is this over a period of time will form a part of consumer behavior which may not really you know which is only going to kind of speed up the online adoption and and how they are going to be looking at it. So from my perspective I think it will be a mixback I I do also believe that consumers have short memories you know who knows one year down the line you know we'd all be looking back and saying hey there was something called covid and there was a pandemic that hit in 2020 but I think there are certain aspects of consumer behaviors which are going to stick which they have adopted now and there are many of them I'll take a long time in explaining those but certain other aspects will slowly steadily start coming back to normal when that happens is your conjecture yeah. Thanks Rajan so Pradeep any perspective on that from you? I think I kind of agree with what Rajan just said you know the human beings have a big tenacity for having a resistance to change and I think once change is kind of imposed because of external environment and in this case the whole coronavirus situation I think the habit formation of a new nature takes an inordinately long amount of time so you know it's a bit of a spring effect and people tend to spring back to their natural state of comfort which assuming if this situation sort of eases out soon enough you will see you know people falling back to old habits but I think what is fundamentally changing and that's the nature of the human discovery and consumer behavior is that once they learn a trick a shortcut a more efficient way of doing things I think that sticks so where people will see value whether it is in consumption of news on digital platforms as Rajan pointed out or engaging with you know one another in terms of meetings in terms of making business presentations in terms of the consumption and creation of media I think those habits will tend to be longer term in nature not because they're constrained by the you know environment but primarily because they have now become shortcuts and more efficient ways of doing things so those will definitely survive I mean you know when we look at for example the OTT consumption trends as well we see a large number of people now diving deeper into the OTT content that is available beyond the first strings typically and the Ross now user typically would have come in and you know seen the initial list of movies that is there but now they're going deeper and deeper and discovering more content so we believe that a similar trend will continue to follow where if you have good content and good methodology of content discovery the content producers will actually find return returns any views let me let me first start by saying hopefully all our viewers who are watching this are they're all doing safe they're all safe and sound their families are well hopefully this tool shall pass but I think let me put it this way you know I there's so much of debate around the impact of COVID on human behavior I don't know whether it's a misplaced sort of way of looking at it I don't know whether human behavior fundamentally is changing if you see anything that's a barrier to information time efficiency is an inevitable change right if you look at media for example you know it's probably a medium that started from physical location not you know not a company and moved on to bioscopes and cinema then radio then TV now OTT right so these are just barriers to distribution and reach and I think technology will continue to play a role in solving for those barriers certainly I think what COVID has done is it's fast forwarded that massively you know like Rajan said I think something that might have otherwise taken you know maybe five years ten years has got fast forwarded both on the media side as well as a massive change in terms of just digitizing the economy you know I don't know whether you know demonetization could have achieved as much as what COVID has achieved in the last sort of ten weeks so certainly those agendas have got fast forwarded but I think that was an inherent evolution of human beings in terms of just solving for reach and you know the entry barriers of reach distribution the bigger impact is more in terms of just business models again because it's got fast forwarded you know our business is ready for it you know in terms of being able to adapt to it in terms of being agenda ready in terms of being PNL ready there's certainly a short term to you know short to medium term depending on how long this last impact on a PNL point of view how our business is going to sort of tactically take care of that it's also great time for innovation you know I think you know the way I keep I keep telling everybody the unlocking of the sort of the locking of the world has unlocked the minds right and I don't know because there's more time for reflection or what but these are great times for innovation you know in terms of everybody I talked to are doing stuff that they didn't really think six months back that that's the kind of stuff they've been thinking about so I think it's a lot of change in terms of how do we sort of see businesses human behavior I think is you know we undermine the human resilience yeah if you look at the quick examples China Disney World open sold out capacity day one you know up close bombing you know the day government allowed a little bit traffic is back on the roads within a day again I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing but that's how we will behave you know human interaction face to face chat all of those things you know going back to cinemas then the time comes those are things that will come naturally to us yeah so speaking speaking of that I mean that leads me to my next question and which was you know given that the country's opened up over the last few days you know are we now seeing you know clearly that was a blip in terms of behavior and therefore business for the media industry I mean are we now seeing people coming back in terms of consumption patterns and you know also advertisers have they are they looking at media differently are they changing their plans from the what was you know Rana perhaps Ashish as well as you if you can weigh in on this well I think you know so it's naturally interconnected with both the you know your first question and also the entire environment so if I just take the first question just partially to answer the question number two so you know the consumers naturally what we saw at least from a very advertising and a media and overall perspective we saw that you know they kind of got conditioned to a certain environment that got created you know whether it's free or post we can't even say because it is public time so for us now it's become a public time for many many months so I think what we saw is that they got conditioned to a certain environment we saw certain habits forming you know we can you know say that some habits became very innovative some habits became very modern and all so what we saw that the clients were naturally and most marketers and advertisers were naturally also working around those that environment that was there you know so a total lockdown environment had a certain behavior and a certain way the media was behaving and what we see now and you know these are very very early days and this which is why I think the entire conversation is about taking this entire thing forward where there's even a partial opening up or a you know gradual opening up is seeing that you know the confidence of a lot of clients coming back a lot of clients are naturally very positive we are seeing a lot of sentiments of you know spend you know coming back we can see different different figures that are being quoted in various places internally when we are seeing some of our figures we are seeing that maybe you know we have gone back to pre-covid time in terms of around 30 percent 35 percent of media spends of pre-covid time I'm not talking full time but you know the what I what the other thing I just want to make a clear point here is that you know the way we have classified essential and non-essential has also kind of dictated the conversation which may be fair may not be fair also in you know it may be it's a separate debate but the way it got termed as that there were certain things very essential and that became the reason why we were supporting or we saw a lot of advertising or conversations around it like hygiene food etc and was a certain very very strong essential became part of non-essentials you know so you know if you look at white goals if you look at electronics if you look at soft you know electronics you know there's so many things which are apart and now you need to see you'll see a lot of these you know spends coming back on mobile phones you're going to see a lot of spends coming back on most of these categories that we are seeing so to answer your question movement has started you know I'm pretty positive about what we are seeing as initial results and you know that is a good sign for us okay nashesh you want to weigh in on here yeah so you know coming in first of all good afternoon everyone and thank you for me having me here and you know coming in last year very little left to say actually I think most of the panel members have said a lot of things which I would have said also so let me figure out or find out something what different I can you know say here I agree with Roy when he said that you know it's a time capsule which actually got forwarded you know pretty much in time and the behavior which we were seeing see any human behavior is in is you know continuously changing so there is a change happening every day now that change would have taken a little more time possibly this this whole unprecedented situation has created you know a situation where you know everything got fast forwarded and people have started to utilize a lot of media or a lot of other habits that possibly would have taken a little more time but it was always there in the offing you know it was it's not that we were not seeing these things happening there were guesstimates and estimates saying that okay this will happen in two years this will happen in five years a lot of that has happened started to happen now whether it is media consumption the form of media consumption in platforms etc or people's own or rather consumers own habit of their day-to-day life that is you know in a way being reinvented in this period and I'll add to Barwa's thing where you know he said that you know during this period a lot of essential items which you should think that you know after roti kapala makhan there is a fridge and there is a television which is always required right that has become a non-essential piece in this situation but it's only very very short term it's very very short term this is going to you know this habits will come back to obviously start spending on these kind of you know items etc in very recent I mean the movement you know the economy has to pick in the ones it kicks in government has already come up with stimulus etc so hence I believe that it will be another two to three months that we will start to trickle back to the earlier pre-covid at least kind of a scenario. So you're not seeing any fundamental shift in say advertiser thinking that look you know this is kind of open my eyes to do doing things a little differently or you know given that consumer shifted more digital etc so is that is that any signs of that happening Rana or Ashish or that's all okay yeah I'll add to that so you know yes the fundamental change which has happened to advertiser is that they are now started to look at the ROI even more deeply you know earlier a marketer would spend money more from brand and hence ROI he could not measure from that perspective now even for branding during this period they were asking you know a whole lot for their ROIs etc however yes the way media is consumed whether it is TV, television, digital, out of form those will start to shift a bit in terms of percentages you know if digital was gaining space in media landscape of an advertiser that has taken a little more presence here possibly what you would have spent two years from now he started to I think see the results right now and hence they're you know consuming more of digital medium for their marketing spend television still I'm in the core of television right now so I know how things have happened during the pre-covid area or the pre-covid scenario and now how things are again picking up today the situation is that June is better than May and it's better by 20% you know July the kind of projections which we are looking at is at least going to be 40% better than what June is and so my estimate is by October we should be back with the kind of run rate we used to have during pre-covid scenario maybe not that of last year of Tuba because that was an unprecedented month which saw a huge jump in advertising at that time and also coming to you know a lot of content which got held up during this period you know everyone will be creating a lot of lot many content you know live events will start coming back sports will look look at coming back like an IPL right now rumor is that IPL may happen in September so in all those things comes in there is a whole lot of you know eyeballs which will be available for advertiser to choose and spend more and more and please understand October seasonal time is also a time where every you know consumer product or any other any product which is selling tends to create more consumption habits in the consumer hence that that is the time when we'll have to kick back that habit into the consumer to start consuming more and more and advertising has to play that role and so we'll have to the media okay if I may just add to that I think Ashish spoke about the recovery but I think at least one of the ways in which we are looking at is there's also a little bit of shift in marketing approach that we're looking at look I think television advertising historically has been a very feature late advertising right in your 20 second 30 second slot focus is always historically being largely on focusing on the features of your product and digital marketing I think took that one step further to make it into a experience led marketing because you had slightly longer time I think these are interesting times to focus on a little more you know innovative marketing you know gamifications transactional engagement right what's in it for you sort of make it a little more topical little make it a little more transactional but also little you know a little bit of gamification and move away from sort of feature and experience because in the short term right now I don't know whether consumer really cares for the features of the experience how does it sort of fit into my day today and that's the degree of shift sort of that at least we are looking at you know you know Rana of course Rana and his team sort of guides us on our marketing those are the kind of conversations we are having Rana are you seeing that from other clients as well or is Roy the flash in the pan yeah in fact if I can now just take this again you know to a you know one one one step ahead you know what is what is coming out and you know so I'll just refer to the COVID times again which you know is not something which you realize is that you know a lot of us and and this is a universal you know we are trying to come out with a study hopefully by July which will kind of exhibit you know we're doing it in a sample size of a decent sample size which we've seen in many other countries it's called the meaningful brand study so what you will probably figure what we're trying to figure is that you know when brand sees to interact and have a meaningful connection with you or a relevance or some kind of a conversation whether it is in the most toughest times or whether it's a challenging times or the best times when you know when we are in a celebratory mode or when we are absolutely fine you know if you look at it that probably you'll realize that there's so many brands which have disappeared from the life in the last 90 days I don't want to name them but you know they've just disappeared and what if I just take it away completely would you miss them would you talk to them will you engage with them because you've suddenly become a smart human consumer and we started adopting new new new things so yeah you know so that's the scary bit but like I said we won't get into that because we want to be positive we want all the brands to come back into our lives and we want everybody to you know because the consumers are there there's so many so many people in this but what we are seeing truly and you know if I had to merge Ashish and what Rohit also said and I'm sure you know a lot of other clients we are seeing is that what is the conversation that I'm going to have with my consumer and how do I keep a story going with it and this will get going to become a more and more important story for a lot of clients or marketers as you know we know them is that how do I keep a relationship going so for example if Rajan has to keep a relationship going with all of us he has to keep a constant dialogue which is to be meaningful which is where you know a lot of interesting stuff he's doing on mint or what Rohit is doing with Lionsgate or you know what Ashish is doing with his brand z you see the underlying point that you will start picking up you'll see that there's something called very interesting conversation that how do I engage how do I have a meaning with this consumer whatever that audience profile be because if I'm going to just come and give him an array of conversations and choices and discussions you know he's going to shut himself down because he's already shut me you know so a very very interesting time coming up for both the clients and definitely a lot of us in the advertising media side to figure out how to keep this bridge very very engaging I think you make a great point there I mean one is obviously dealing with all this volume and keeping your message clear and targeted now you know we've seen I mean as we see some of this behavior move to digital etc and this leads me to a segue in a question we have from from one of our audience members on YouTube is do you think clients will redefine customer segments so will there be a greater relationship now from a direct to consumer standpoint you know with that we've seen you know companies like Disney you know create a direct to consumer vertical almost or you know in the US so do you think that that is now mandated from a media company strategy standpoint really if I can kind of just take on that I think this segment of one is a is a concept that is now here to say I think the concept of segment one has been spoken about for a long time people have tried to you know create approaches that then deals with very minimalistic very sharply defined set of demographics in terms of content consumption patterns content preferences time of consumption and all the other variables today for example if you look at databases and you look at validating any kind of database in a digital platform with you know people like lotume or adobe standard reference databases you will find close to thousand or 1200 variables that you can potentially play with I think increasingly what is happening is that all media vehicles that are rooted in digital may not necessarily be digital content play for example even print or television which is a linear broadcast may also need to have a very clear view of the end consumer preferences being defined in that segment of one and to be able to actually customize content for appealing to as many people as possible at the same time so the challenge is actually going to be extremely technology led to my mind to be able to actually make sure that you are investing in right proportion for maximum audience game as well as where there is individual consumption of content specifically in a notity or a digital context there you are able to give the consumer exactly what he or she wants and that will define the success and sustainability of any of the media organizations you know Jail very interesting what what you have just said Pradeep I think you know if you go back a few decades okay and I'm talking about late 90s and all of that saspi kabhi bahuti kahani garghar ki so you know every time you wanted to communicate to a set of consumers you had to create some lovely commercials and these were platforms that you would take and you will know that your reach targets are achieved and then you can sprinkle a few other platforms and you know you get to you get to wherever you wanted to get to I think one of the significant shifts that's going to happen post-covid and I and I firmly believe that that's of course pre-covid also the millennials behave very differently from from from the earlier generation in terms of you know very me kind of syndrome what's in it for me and that's what they always thought but I think what's going to happen now is and this may be true for for us for Pradeep kind of businesses for Rohit for all of them is here we have sharp focus on community building okay there are going to be emergence of communities right even COVID has actually led to community building in the area of suddenly people start cooking at home so there are food buffs that are coming into play right there are there are certain genres of OTT content that that that they want to see there are people who are going to be very interested in in in in certain other spaces so I think somewhere as marketers as we go forward defining what communities you want to play to and defining what offerings actually are relevant for those communities will become critical and and and I think that's a very significant shift as I see it from from what was a play and pray kind of strategy one point in time and it used to work to a very sharply targeted strategy great points so you know I just want to take a sideways question to that now obviously like like you said Pradeep we're trying to target content at you know down to an audience of one as well as simultaneously address you know large audiences that we might want on television will content creation practices you know how will they change I mean given that you know one obviously currently there's not a whole lot of new production going on but even when some of these shackles come off we're able to get back onto sets and and start how can content producers start thinking differently how a content producers as we know many of them are you know small medium-sized production companies etc how are they starting to think about you know how to target some of these audiences as well and similarly Rajan I think from a print standpoint are you also then addressing more and more targeted or smaller segments in order to achieve greater ROI from a print industry standpoint so I'll let Pradeep go first and then Rajan perhaps you can follow sure thanks so I think you bring out a very salient point today and while you know all of us are keen to get back on the shop floors and you know get our production started get the talent back in the scene there is obviously concern in the ecosystem there is concern on the talent front as well as the the regulatory front you know the kind of conditions that are being stipulated for us to pre-comments production and as you know sharing with the friend earlier that when we do cost assessment it will typically be three times the cost and it's not that we're unwilling to pay that cost but the question is that even if you incur that cost your ability to guarantee a completely aseptic environment which is completely clear of coronavirus and de-risk yourself both from an insurance standpoint as well as a health and safety of the employee standpoint is very difficult as with anything I think technology is one big solution that is coming into play and you know all of us have traditionally used green screen technologies to do some kind of scenario shooting where you know pretty much complex we have used technologies such as visual effects and post-production to finish up the movie in such a way that the overall end product looks very appealing etc and we've seen good success out of that I think two fundamental shifts that will happen is that the whole VFX ecosystem will now move much further ahead in the value chain and it will not wait for a post-production VFX to come in so essentially I mean if I was to just give for instance we have recently kind of tied up with Epic Games you know which runs Fortnite which is one of the largest e-spots that runs and they create these virtual universes so our ability to take their Unreal Engine and create a virtual universe which could be set in a modern context which could be set in a mythological context you know imagine yourself being a Keanu Reeves in a matrix kind of a universe that is exactly what is going to happen so what you're going to see is going to be a combination of the talent performing in an environment which is completely safe and secure with minimal risk to himself or herself at the same time leveraging of technology in such a way that the outcome is near real now big question would be can as you pointed out small or medium producers I've heard that as with March of Technology we have always seen that as you invest more in a particular technology paradigm the cost disproportionately start to go down whether you look at computing power whether you look at your smart phones and I think the production technologies are not anything much to that is exactly what is going to happen here as well so we believe we will have an optimum sweet spot of technology investment that will allow us to create great compelling content with the level of authenticity with the audience desires and expects and more importantly is willing to pay for I'll let Rajan take a shot at his side of the business okay my side of the business is not as entertaining as your side of the business let me give it a shot so jail I think what is going to happen and and I'm very clear about this in my head finally it is about the content that is going to define whether you will get the eyeballs or you won't get the eyeballs and then I say content it might seem like a very global statement to make but but really there is a big difference between let's say Gen Y and millennials in terms of the kind of content that they want to create okay and and I think newspapers digital newspapers for a pretty long period of time and by definition because they are what they are have really been looking at serving needs of all in some manner or the other right trying to kind of do a little bit of everything so that you know different audiences get paid I think for newspapers to really sustain themselves we will have to make the content far more relevant to the kind of segments that we are talking about over a period of time so that there is there is that connect that you build I think brands will have to also become younger in the way they present themselves brands will also have to start connecting with the millennials in a very different way versus they used to earlier and I think what is also changing in the ecosystem and we should forget that the content can be platform agnostic so a print plus digital is the way a company like ours would view the entire ecosystem now how do you take consumers from print on to digital platforms from digital back on print platforms and technology sitting right in the middle actually today can be a big enabler of how those transitions are going to happen so everything can be covered in a 24 page newspaper but you know what content can become complimentary in terms of how the two come together so I think eventually it is going to be all about that and and I do I am an optimist and I think newspapers have a long runway in this country and they will continue to be but I think they will have to do it in conjunction with very smart strategies on print plus digital together so speaking of that print plus digital and you know I mean we've talked about you know the industries talked about digital and you know the the coming monster of digital and eating up existing businesses and all of that but you know monetization remains a problem now if this pace of digitization accelerates because of things like COVID etc you know are we looking at a crisis in the industry where you know where monetization is a problem on digital and will that continue to be the case and how do you then monetize all these all these digital eyeballs any any have we have we seen any innovation have we seen any practices today that we think can become a best practice for the industry to to emulate and then you know grow so at least over the last couple of years we've seen on the country monetization for digital improve drastically and that will only continue to sort of improve on account of many reasons right look I think digital payments is becoming more and more prevalent in India thanks to the number of payment methodologies that are available today for the longest time the country was caught up between net banking and credit card low penetration I think some of those bottlenecks are going away right so and the kind of stuff that I think geofacebook all of those consolidations will continue to do will only improve their agenda so I think that's so one bottleneck was really the you know just the digital payment ecosystem and I think that's certainly dramatically different today where it was compared to two years back and I certainly you know like to believe two years from now it will only be significantly stronger I think with probably one of the benchmark countries in terms of just digital payment ecosystem for a country with very very low net banking credit card penetration the second is just you know in terms of the models to pay right and that ecosystem is evolving right whether you do you have a monthly subscription do you have a daily transaction do you in a country like India in emerging markets do you work with telcos for wholesale distribution I think those are methods that are still evolving and they'll continue to evolve for couple of years but but I certainly think digital ecosystem today from our monetization point of view is significantly better than what it was couple of years back I think couple of years back this was still almost like a case study right if you get where the digital numbers so S what for example if I'm not wrong 2016 or 17 which is not too long back I don't think India had what more than 78 million total subscribers on digital ecosystem today my understanding is give or take that number is between 25 to 30 million and and at the pace we're growing this should be comfortably over 50 million in the next two to three years so you know I think on that count things are certainly changing how much of that change that's common because of covid is temporary or permanent you know difficult to say because right now obviously you know linear is struggling on account of not having fresh programming all of that so digital is gaining but you know that's all a factor of how long with covid how long with covid last if this is a six to ten month phenomena you know digital is obviously gaining if this unfortunately turns into a 12 to 24 month phenomena everybody is going to be loser because eventually will come a time they won't be ability to pay the only winner will probably be free to air and you know back to dd free dish yeah yeah no so I think I think you know that's an interesting point but you know I just want get some more get some more debate going on this so yes you know India's ecosystem and infrastructure for digital payments is improving but are there you know so the Indian viewer or the Indian consumer is always there's often said that oh Indian consumers don't pay for content right we've become too used to the free stuff which is why we see so many freemium models etc is that changing in your view so you know let me ask say Pradeep and then followed by Archie I mean you guys also have a viewer you know comparison of the Indian consumer vis-a-vis the the overseas viewer so it'd be interesting to get your perspective on that thanks so clearly you know the the compelling nature of content is what will get a subscriber or a consumer be willing to pay and then obviously there is the question of what is the elasticity in your business model to be able to price the product at a level that you believe is affordable and scale it up over a period of time in our experience what we have seen and as Rohit also pointed out there is a combination of a b2b and a b2c model you really want to get large audiences to experience your product so you are perhaps willing to take out a more aggregated view of whether a telco partnership or an e-commerce partnership etc to have your product reaching out on a paid basis to a larger number of subscribers and you know just to add on to what Rohit said the number of paid subscribers actually is already in excess of about 60 million across all of the paid platforms and if you look at the registered subscribers on premium model it actually runs into close to 400 million in India even if you take out the duplication more importantly what is happening is that as you move forward in this ecosystem the compelling content that you have is typically around discovery of content that you've already created the whole ecosystem today and you know we don't have anybody from the theatrical ecosystem in the uh in the panel today but they would vouch to the fact that covid has really impacted them bad because you know they have to socially distance seating etc etc but parallelly the whole ecosystem of new releases going straight to OTT is a wonderful debate that's happening in the industry is there merit and value in being able to take brilliant new straight-off-the-shelf content on to OTT platform and monetize it effectively it is easy to do the latter but underwriting the sorry easy to do the former but underwriting the latter is really the challenge and I think today people are confident that they can not only recover their investments and marketing budget but also make a good case and it's not just in India I mean you look at universal's troll world tour example they actually made more money by just putting it on a streaming platform than what they had hoped to make in the theatrical window in the first six months so clearly that value equation is changing and there are many ways to extract that value digital payment ecosystem is one large b2b partnerships is another but ultimately a strong b2c connect based on value delivered for the product offer is what will determine long-term customer intimacy from my mind which is like you know at our end and a lot of the premium streamers end the effort is to gain the affinity of that audience on a paying basis on a sustainable level and give them value for it you have to delight the consumer and there is really no substitute that's a mantra that remains valid whether you have covered or you don't have covered I'll give others an opportunity to add to this thanks to me so let me add here firstly you know when you said you know the consumer are not used to paying for the content I think it's a wrong statement because consumer has been paying for the content for last couple of decades uh in cable operators and your dts place I think they pay for access but yeah so correct so they're the only mindset the way the consumer looked at it was that they're paying for the access for the content but in reality they were actually paying for the content now that mindset has come to change so with the digital coming and offering products directly to the consumer in fact in a similar mindset actually when details got launched and your you know cable operator your details came directly to your home to say that you know here is the access to my dish which is you know and you have your own dish now you don't need to go to the cable operator hence you're going to get all the content you want through this once he established the access point with the consumer or whether it was a cable operator or the dth player then came what is the kind of you know bookcase you would like to choose and that's where exactly consumer is choosing the content and paying for the same you know there are you know right from the beginning there were packages which was 100 bucks or maybe a 75 bucks right in the beginning 10 years back which has grown up to about 200 odd you know per per capita and it used to be dth guy used to charge us about 250 bucks for the you know normal sd connection which has grown to about almost a thousand bucks today so you know the per capita consumption or you know payment by the consumer has been growing over a period of time however there is a lot more content which has started to be you know offered to the consumer now comes the access to the consumer directly as per his choice through digital whether it is ott or any other kind of digital medium content he wants to whether it's newspapers or etc etc they are getting you know offered to be consumed in any form and hence they have been given a choice whether to consume that also free by a lot of players and there is a you know otty players etc who are giving them an option to you know be behind the paywall and start paying for the content they have been offering to them so even if you see today only in India now you have a reward model you know like in other part of the world especially in us etc the only and not paywall is the streaming content which you're getting okay otherwise almost everything is behind the paywall very few otty platforms are offering a what this thing however here in this country as the netflix and amazon almost all players are you know at least the indian players are providing you or giving a consumer an offer of free content through otty as well so there is a choice for consumer in this country which is a beautiful thing because unlike any other part of the world you know there are very limited choices a consumer has he's he's been given a choice to pay either less or more here is the choice even in the tv or a linear format where you have a free dish where you can consume content completely free of cost and there is a premium content available through dth and cable operators and for that hence he's paying and with this nto coming in in 2019 it was made very clear to the consumer that was whatever you want to see you just pay for that and start consuming that content hence consumer in today's mind and today's consumer in his mind is actually has started to pay for the content coming to and i'll touch upon also what we just mentioned about you know theoretical reviews and the movies getting released on digital now directly or on the platform this is another beautiful business model which has developed thanks to kovat it possibly would have never come into any studios mind you know that to start launching their movies etc on the otty platform unless and until commissioned directly by some of the otty guys right now what will happen is that the market will expand it's not going to eat away with the theater releases is theater releases are still going to be there once you know theater's open the tech that people will still go to theater you know today people are not going to theater for just watching movie it's a complete experience in itself even if it's a single theater you know a single screen theater forget the multiplexes obviously multiplexes is a complete experience on its own however there is a large number of consumer who is also wanting to watch a more and more content you know which is provided to him at his own access point which is possibly at his home or wherever his access point is through his digital you know handset etc etc so that market has suddenly emerged so what will happen is there will be more and more jobs for studio makers or more and more content which will be created which will be possibly now targeted towards that consumer which is want to just consume that directly on to the otty otty will have another business model by having you know creating a t-word model also right now everybody is working on a sword model but you possibly can have a t-word model same thing can go on to dth you know tata sky and all these guys has been fighting for the gts who has that technology to show consumer what they want to see i mean pay for the movie and watch it on their business they will also start to suddenly actually have that kind of an option or an offering for the consumer so i think the ecosystem is evolving and it is evolving for the better good thanks so i think i'm going to go to some related i think we have about 10 minutes left and so i just want to take some audience questions you know i think i think one of the questions is that do you see the rural market or the hindi heartland you know we've also seen a few channels again go back to free dish yes you know is that driven by you know the growing you know a lot of the government programs and targeted spending coming from there etc migrants etc what do you think is driving and do you think that market will continue to grow and you know rana do you think this is now you know a lot of advertisers now looking at this market a lot more seriously say than they love were doing two years ago or i think they were always looking at the market so i think the you know whether you you know stated between urban rural the point is that you know you also know the reality of the country if you divide it into any sec also we know where the entire you know the class and the masses are coming from so the penetration as a challenge continues and whether it's a power brand or whether it's a large brand whether it's a f in cg brand whether it's you know most of the programming that we're talking you know everybody will like to get what we call as the value of the value chain right at the top you get a certain number but when you need to get into india it's the penetration which is by such large you know many international brands come to our country because they get so excited with the the dynamics of the numbers and the penetration and the population and then then they suddenly get rattled at how do we do it you know what do we do so i think that will continue that it will never never you know what medium will finally get to them you know whether it will be a medium which we are familiar with or it's a newer medium whether it's tiktok which is now caught them by storm you know it depends on what kind of conversation and i agree with everybody that like i keep saying that you know it's the content which will drive what form of content whether it will be engaging whether it will be short form whether it will be you know movie form whether it will be fun but you know that rural or you can call it the semi urban which is now becoming higher in the pyramid chain for most marketers i think you know the numbers are definitely lying out there if i'm going to go for a massively volume business and value naturally will come because you know just to answer one quick one you know for the earlier conversation i definitely am you know we see a shift of you know people you know reaching out to the wallets to pay a bit more for better content and a better programming and better you know kind of forms of engagement so you would see that also happening so you know in in all i think you know it's good for it's good for us that you know because you know like like i keep saying you know it's not going to change automatically but you know the point is that the consumers that are emerging and i think rajan did that's upon it there is a new form of consumers what we call as the younger or the millennials and all you know they are going to be a bit more different with the way we have seen the country behave in the last many years and you know what the the poet is actually has demonstrated that bit that there is definitely if you see your own house or any houses where there's a family and you've got children and you will see that there are two different worlds operating in one same house and you know coming from an advertising background for the last 90 days has been not an insight for me but it's completely made it clear to me that you know uh there are two different worlds parallely working right now in our country also very very quick point i'm not going to believe it on this but i think with the migrants going back it's it's obviously not clear whether they're going to come back they're not going to come back but you know in in millions as they are going back to their hometowns in ut vihar and all of these locations uh rural uh is is uh you know for certain categories uh may just look up even better than what what we've seen yes and speaking of uh you know speaking of two different households etc i wanted to ask was the launch of uh and the success of a lot of the retro content like rama and etc was it a big surprise to to you guys not really uh so you know nostalgic sorry then it behooves the question if it wasn't then why haven't we exploited library before like this so you see a lot of uh channels have exploited something like this where we put a lot of nostalgic content in our afternoon time but because of uh you know so much talk about happening over the fresh content which continues to come on you know what happened in the big boss what's happening in you know sari gama pa or you know which singer is winning on in sari gama pa or dancing here dance or you know kbc questions so you know the talk has always been around uh the the uh you know fresh content but there has been always uh a content which is being exposed to the consumer in different time bands of television uh hence there was not much talk now when there was no other content which was getting fresh and there was no talk happening around the fresh content these not nostalgic content became the prime consumption for a consumer you know and it started to have that presence because people really wanted to go back and see whatever they used to love earlier and then they got exposed to those content during this period when they had no other fresh content to view i think that took the precedence and it also started to get talked about sorry go ahead yeah yeah so uh that's the uh you know the that's why i would say yes the content was always available to the consumer it's because the that became the choice of today in the covid scenario it saw a lot of rating you know backing it up and as well as there was a lot of uh talk happening around yeah you were adding something no no i i was just saying and this is a hypothesis it may may or may not be true but you know if you recall when raman used to happen in um decades back there used to be almost uh and nobody on the streets because it was all family viewing yeah and the family dispersed into their own platforms but what covid days was bring the families back again together and one of the big drivers of some of this content getting consumed back again is also you know that whole watching the whole piece together um which which which you know which has started you know we started the debate about saying does the consumer behavior change right the reality is it doesn't because in times of you know in in troubling times you tend to go back to your roots and basics right uh you go back to your raman you go back to your ludo you go back to you and actually you go back to your cooking uh you know that's what keeping everybody occupied today you want to go back to your home the whole migration process i was about to come to that you know what Rohit is saying it's actually in if you look at the consumer insight maybe many years later it's going to be fascinating because a lot of advertising stories will or or let me just put it communication stories will come out of this year because it's actually going back to basics a lot of us have gone back to basics you know fundamentally people have gone home you know this somebody said roti kapata makhan it's gone back to that you know i'm you know it's very simple you know that's why you know i'm coming from a very strong advertising medium my point is which i keep telling most of my clients don't stop talking to your consumers while i understand there is no sales happening i understand there's a big challenge but you must keep the relationship going on with your you know the consumers don't go out of their mind don't go out because you know if the consumers walk out of this and forget you it's going to be a massive challenge to go back into their life again because they've kind of you know they've gone back to basics like rohith is saying yeah i agree with praveen if you have any controversial thing to say but i think the other reality is the content of 80s and early 90s was probably the best content they've been had it was very progressive and you know it thrived on positivity and hope right i think there is a bit of a combination sorry rohith i'm interrupting please no good so i just want to add that you know the two questions are kind of interlink the whole move towards discovering markets beyond the metros has been a phenomenon which has been an extreme sort of focus over the last decade i think the regional print media organizations such as you know vaskar jagran ht have done a brilliant job of actually capturing on that sentiment and i think it is time the other medium sort of caught on to the fact that there is not only a huge demand for content but there is also propensity and willingness to consume and pay for it so that's point one second is this whole mythological you know things like ramayana etc running we have to look at it not from a you know religious content perspective but more from a social cultural ethos of a country as a whole i think there are these universal stories that have been passed on in generations and i think as you move to the hinterland india or so-called interior india which to my mind is actually the real india because they are also wanting to aspire to all the things that are global and all the things that are universal and yet they want to remain rooted in your own cultural ethos that they have seen over a period of time so what is basically going to happen is that we will find new ways of retelling the same stories ramayana may not necessarily be told in a you know ram ravan religious context but may be told as a fight between good and evil manifesting itself in a new story format which is based in current scenario and i think as filmmakers us and a lot of other studios are looking at these compelling stories to create content that then links back to india and i would just sort of differ to a segue to a small example here if you look at parasyte which one the best international not just international but the global best movie award quintessential korean story set in soul and the storyline language everything is very typically korean and yet there are universal values in that movie that a person whether in beryli or in berlin or in bermagam can relate to because the aspirations of you know desire to grow desire to be successful uh jealousy aspirations all of those are universal values and as content creators whether on you know entertainment side or on news side if we stay true to the core of what our brand promises to our audiences i think we will have a a sure short path to sustainability and profitability go ahead or no go that's the way i look at i think on that uh on that hopeful note uh you know two cheers to prosperity coming for all of us i want to thank all the panelists i think we've uh hit four o'clock and our time is up so uh thank you rana thank you pradeet thank you rajan ashish Rohit uh appreciate you guys coming here and having a discussion i hope the viewers aren't useful and uh thanks very much thank you thank everybody thanks exchange of media thank you so much thanks everyone