 Good evening everyone. This is, I would call because I'm the moderator, interesting panel but it is an interesting panel because we are discussing live sports and marketing. We were discussing ice breaking session, we were watching that last over, right, the match, the super over, yes. So, marketeers are finding sporting platforms all the more attractive, you know. And with the coming of premier leagues and sporting leagues, it has become the playground for brands. So, I want to start straight away in the interest of time, Masai, that what explains this interest in sporting platforms from policy bazaar, bazaar perspective. What is that thing that creates that interest for marketeers? So, to be honest, it's not a new trend that marketeers find, cricketer or sports, a very lucrative and interesting platform to advertise on. It's been since time without beginning, I guess. You know that where, you know, you put your brand out there on a live sporting event and you get the maximum eyeballs. It's not a trend in India, it's an international trend. People have used multiple, be it NBA, be it Super Bowl. Everyone uses live sports as a platform to advertise and build a brand. But the question here is that why are people, why are marketeers continuing to invest? Like we were discussing outside, you know, we wish there was a cricket match every single day. Cricket match every single day, yes. Because nothing else gives you the kind of eyeballs that you would ever want to achieve. So, for keeping, to be honest, keeping our brand in mind, it's a difficult category, fintech and inshore tech. It's a very, very difficult category for someone to explain or to build a trust to invest in a lending product or an insurance product. So it's a very difficult category to explain, unlike a category which is bought on a daily, no one wants to buy an insurance product. No one thinks about, wakes up in the morning thinking about a lending product or an insurance product. So it takes so much more task to communicate the right message and also put it in the right platform. And nothing better than a platform like live sports. And also, also fact that amongst all sports, cricket is the only sport which is very lucrative and conducive for advertising. I think it's made for advertising, somewhere I feel that, you know, you have like 50 overs or 20 overs exactly after six balls. There are breaks and then there is an also that, also the worry of attention span that, you know, a viewer might move out. That's also not there. You know, if there is an ad break, he has to stay because the next tour is going to be played. And then you have crunch matches like two tiebreakers back to back. And then, you know, it just takes the attention, so attention span is not a problem at all. Also, because the length of the matches are so big that you have a critical mass of audience, you know, it's actually coming back on the matches again and again. So it's kind of very conducive and single largest. So two things which work, which is television, which is single largest, reach medium in the country and also cricket, which is the single most watched sporting event in the country. So it just kind of, you know, and if you have the right budgets, if you want to invest, if you invest smartly, I really like what Baidu's does with cricket, like, you know, consistently they keep, you know, advertising on cricket and that kind of, you know, builds a recall. That's what you want. Build trust, build recall, and then have a great product when you're pretty much home. Aditya, your thoughts on this. What explains that unshakable faith in this live sporting platform? So see what Sai mentioned completely agree. It is not about live sports or cricket. If you look at other options, the ad breaks are anything between 8 minutes to 10 minutes. We all make a 30-second or 40-second, we eventually end up airing a 20-second. Right? So if it's an 8-minute break, you're talking about 24-25 sports. You are one of them, yeah? You might be sandwiched between multiple sports. You might be somewhere, 14th, sometimes 27th. Unlike in cricket, it's either an exclusive break or a top ad or a bottom ad. There are two or three ads. So the ebb and flow of audiences is actually practically zero. That works. Two, the content which is available, which is of entertaining nature, is becoming very regressive. Yeah? While this is unpredictable content, people love to see what's going to happen. Exactly what happened today, back-to-back, two super overs. I was just cursing, hope this should have been on a weekend. I would have got more downloads. So the beauty of sports is unpredictability, ebb and flow is very less, and advertising becomes sort of a solo break or a one or two brands, which will then give you the attention span, which will give you the reach and which will give you that credibility if you're doing it over a long period of time. So the cliffhanger moment in a cricketing life spotting is far more interesting than a soap, you say. You want to add something? Yeah, so exactly what it was saying. I know I wish it was on a weekend, because by the virtue of being an online brand, and I think you'll also agree to it, that the measurability becomes extremely effective. So I've seen that whenever we advertise the product, which is a free credit score, I'm sure all of you would have seen, I've seen people coming on the site, and I've seen in our span around 10,000, 15,000 people who have actually taken credit score in the span of 15 minutes, and then in the span of one hour, around 20, 25,000. So in the span of one hour, when there were around three spots or two spots. So that is the kind of impact and measurability that by the virtue of being online when you're able to do it. And also there is so much data that is available to us that even if we have limited spends, we can go back and analyze which series to put more money on, which series to put less money on, which series might give us the right bank for the buck, not from the view of the TVRs or GRPs, but purely our own data. So that brings back the trust more on the platform. Tell me if I ask you that there's an unfair advantage to Cricket and Bollywood always, and is that also working in favor of sporting platform, especially Cricket I mean to say, or is it also the fact that you can have far more elements to play with in a live scenario or sporting scenario that works for the game? I think there's nothing much apart from, so news is also as good as entertainment these days. So if you leave that apart, there's nothing much apart in television to advertise beyond Cricket and Bollywood. Other than that, I would rate Cricket in sporting events slightly more higher because you get much more stickiness to this medium than any other. Sorry, what was the last second point? The number of elements you can play with in a sporting game. Also of course, live sport means someone is actually glued to you and some of the work that brands can do, which is integration within the television, within the live sporting event, it's unparalleled. It's beyond just spot-wise. So that kind of really helps immerse the consumer and the brand together. And something which I think we haven't done successfully, but I think Baijus have done it quite well. So how do you see the scope of having a lot more elements in this genre of advertising as compared to other platforms? I think we are forgetting one big thing over here, which is the broadcaster. Today's task force, the way they manage and the way they cover Cricket Match also adds to a lot of incremental opportunity for brands. He's not showing the Cricket Match on one singular channel. He's showing it across 12 to 14 channels. Earlier we used to have dub content. Now he's having live feeds going, commentaries happening in the respective language. So if you're looking at a Bengali feed, because I don't understand Hindi or I don't understand English, I can watch that Bengali feed and the commentators are your ex-Bengali cricketers. The amount of packaging which happens around Cricket, the pre-shows and the post-shows, the amount of analysis which happens, now all this thing adds to the experience which is just not going to happen when you're talking about Bollywood or movies because it's just a three and a half hours of movie with one and a half hour of advertising and if you have the money, you will get the first spot. If you don't have the money or incremental money, you will get the 25th spot. So it's also about the opportunity which has been created by the broadcaster and all the measurability which goes behind that. Someone was asking me that, is TV or television a dying medium? What's your view on that? My response was till the time there is live sports, television won't die. So that is the power of live sports. If you have to sum up the impact, the measurability power of it, after your association with the live sporting platform, can you take a little bit through what has been the impact and how policy bazaar has benefited from it? A little bit of a back story. So a quick back story which is always, if you have to invest in Cricket or any sporting event, budgets are always a concern. You have limited budgets and while we love to have a Cricket match every day, but there are limited budgets. So it's extremely important that how does one invest wisely when you don't have unlimited budgets. So what we've seen is that we started investing very small. I remember 2014 is when I joined and that's when we started. The focus was on starting building the brand and that's when the first 2014 was, 2015 was the World Cup in Australia. And at that point of time, you know, limited budgets and we said, you know, we want to be on Cricket, we want to build the trust and how do we do that? And we took the baby steps and we became a broadcast sponsor on Cricket World Cup but we did only high definition because the budgets did not allow us to be on standard definition. But at that point of time, the high definition, the base was around not even 5 million. It was less than that, like 2.5 to 5 million households. That was the base of high definition at that point of time. But it gave great results. Also because at that point of time, our base was low but we also saw that we could easily measure. Like for example, and then we started constantly investing in Cricket because we could see the impact. Now we've gone to the level of data analytics that I can tell you, not looking at the TVR numbers that how will ICC Seven Nation Tournament perform in terms of impact for me and what should be the right price for it. Within that, the cuts of, you know, how would a high definition perform? How would a standard definition perform? How will combination perform? How will bilateral series between India-South Africa and India-Australia perform? And how their price and what will be the impact on my site and should I pay that price or not? And all this decisioning is based on pure data and the power of investing in all the sporting events for so long. So how would a Asia-Cup perform versus a Seven Nation Tournament perform? So all this has done two things. One is help, increase of faith in Cricket, invest wisely and also definitely increase the market share. I'm sure if it was not for live sports, the recall of Policy Bazaar and Paisa Bazaar would never be so high. And we clock what, around 40 million monthly users for Paisa Bazaar and 30 million for Policy Bazaar. And it's a testimony and we were what, a six-year-old company for Paisa and an eight to ten-year-old company for Policy Bazaar. So it just builds trust and traffic and helps you invest wisely. So Ateetha, your impact story through sporting association. Can you tell us a little bit about the impact it helped you create and the numbers, a little bit of metric side of it. So as I mentioned, nobody knew us as we launched the product in India and then eventually slowly and gradually people started accepting e-learning as a concept. But today after four years of consistently investing behind live sports, what we see is that the friction of selling a e-learning concept month on month is coming down. Earlier, about two years ago, for example, we used to take about 90 minutes to convince a parent, explain them about the product and then eventually sell it. 90 minutes in a day with traveling time and you know how all the cities have been dug up. We are the fourth congested city. Bangalore is the number one congested city. Time taken to reach from one place to the other place is also 90 minutes. Yeah, finalists mostly that's what we're waiting for. Today if I look at it, that same 90 minutes has come down to about 70 minutes and now if I just extrapolate this across 3,000 salespeople, I'm getting more number of man hours to be on the ground and sell. Overall sales have gone up because time taken to convert the sales have come down and that's primarily happened because of the overall coverage and the visibility of the brand. So that's the number one impact and apart from that it's very clearly demonstrated in our data points which is our own data exactly what every tech company has. On match days, total number of download goes up anything between 2x to 10x depending upon the match. World Cup matches, the big World Cup matches 8x, 10x, 12x jump on the baseline of that particular day. Bilateral series depending upon which teams are playing, the uplift is different. India-Australia was a 5x, India-Bangladesh was 1.2x but it's still better than regular advertising. So we're primarily focusing on within sports cricket. But what about the other leagues that are coming up and getting good viewership? Are you also seeing an opportunity halves that also helped you consolidate the brand? I think cricket pretty much exhausts about it but having said that we have looked at other sports as well. But largely PKL. My only concern and PKL has been growing year on year and I think it's the second largest sporting event in India at the moment. But other sports according to me are not rightly priced for the kind of visibility they're giving right now. I'm very very excited about the women's World Cup which is going to come. I think if it's rightly priced it's going to be very very interesting and hoping India does well then. The last World Cup we were late into it but we took the semifinal and the way it was priced it did really well for us. But I think the pricing is a slight challenge for other sports but again you have premium brands for it. It doesn't work much for us but there are premium brands who look at Austrian Open or French Open or they look at badminton or other sports or golfing events where we are a very mass brand and we look at we want maximum eyeballs at the lowest cost possible. So if that is the objective then we kind of want to like focus on the platforms and the sporting events which will deliver that for us. So for Baijus how important are non cricket leagues I mean how do you see an opportunity in that? There is an immense opportunity it's only a question about how well we understand those sports. So now for example this year there is Olympics that is there is also Euro 2020. Most of us don't know that the Euro Cup is happening this year. Last year also was a big sporting year year before last was also a big sporting year with FIFA World Cup in Russia. So the opportunities are multiple it's also about how well you know the sport. As marketers as Indians we probably don't know how to use other sports. Having said that slowly and gradually football is taking shape. If you look at the ratings of what the domestic football league does in Kerala. Domestic football league does in West Bengal it is higher or at par with the World Cup cricket ratings in Kerala and West Bengal. It is much much higher than any of the bilateral series. So there is a great opportunity and then you have the opportunity to only take that market or look at those teams. So again knowing the sport and how to use that sport for your benefit as a brand is also equally important. Between agencies and the marketers none of us have much idea. And then channels also the broadcasters are also not too sure in terms of how to market it because it's always jammed between two cricket series. So then it's a leftover conversation if there is some savings available of a cricket match has got washed out take that money and put it over there. So it's a piecemeal conversation it's a very tactical conversation it's not strategic in nature the way brands are looking at cricket is much more strategic. But it's a matter of time slowly and gradually things will take shape. And again I would completely give the credit to star sports for the way they have started marketing even non cricket. There's another concern I mean I may be wrong but the rise of sporting leagues and all is there is over exposure now. You know there are too many opportunities and platforms. Is that a concern also now in this which was so called newer domain. Will that become a concern is this a concern already. What is it like. No I don't think so I think the more such platform because if you look at today's overall television industry scenario apart from sports and news and some few movie channels. It's not a very healthy it's not delivering the right numbers. So the more focus is there are more leagues and they are if they package it well the way he's been saying that they package it well and they promote it well and they strategically put it out there. I think this is only going to help television as a medium and also help marketers. I don't think it will. There'll be overexposure. Not a fair of. No it's not a question of overexposure. There are 30 days in a month on an average. Yeah there are about 700 or 750 channels which are showing content 24 by 7. Cricket is happening what four days five days in a month which is India cricket and 4550 days now 55 odd days which is three hours in the evening. So where is the overexposure. It is not about overexposure for sports to become big for every brand to leverage it. It's also about the players. We need to have superstars emerging in every sport. Today most of the teams are not a great buy because if you look at Sri Lanka as a cricket team there are no superstars five years of five years ago you had two of the biggest names in Sri Lanka. Bangladesh you don't have big guys. Pakistan let's not talk about it. South Africa is in shambles. So there are only two or three cricketing nations which has superstars. So as marketeers every morning I wake up and say please make more superstars superstars will drive eyeballs and eyeballs will then drive business. And you say one day one match every day right. That's what you wanted right. Because we have like what Manoj 30 news channels 50 news channels as Bach will report whatever it is you have some like 30 40 GC channels everybody's showing the same content. This is one channel showing three hours of entertaining content. So absolutely no overexposure and we should have more such content for businesses to grow. So as we move on from here also in the interest of time. What do you think in the marketing mix how important would the sporting pie become say few years down the line. How important would it remain also or where would it go. It will remain the largest. I told you it will remain the largest. I don't know any other answer. It is our percentage of the money spent on cricket is only increased year on year. So it will remain this way because the other donors are not helping themselves. No I agree because see again the ecosystem needs to work. You have a great broadcaster who's doing everything sports. As I said you need to have superstars in football in tennis in cricket. Yeah today we don't we will all watch Olympics. When PV Sidhu is playing a quarterfinal or semifinal or final match all of us will tune in. Twitter will go bananas wishing or all the best go India women go India all that thing will happen. But if we have such six or seven or 10 such superstars we will start following that sport. Hockey is not been doing well because there aren't any superstars. So it's the channel or the broadcaster is the super or the key players who drive the eyeballs and then the overall infrastructure. If all these three things go well hand in hand this is just going to grow exponentially. Exactly look at the way they built PKL like there are superstars in within PKL. I'm sure people who are following it remember the names of people who are coming from the teams. So it's really how they how a broadcaster also backs the content. This is my final question. Since you practice and evangelize post-marketing is there science to win the best practices according to you. What are the best practices for sports market here according to you if you have to just sum up one or two points. I think one thing extremely important is consistency. If you want to be on sports want to build your brand on sports consistency is extremely important. You can't take one or two series and then kind of you know think that you know it will do wonder for the brand. People who watch sports they kind of are passionate about that particular sport and also it gives you incremental audience. So one is you have to be consistent. We present on sports to be able to achieve a certain goal that you have in mind. And also do not worry about you. A lot of times you know it's not in your control. At times you feel that no you're done putting a lot of money. The series does not do well. It's not in your control. So you one should not fear that you know you burn so much money and the result the series is not series tanked or in there not qualify. So therefore it is a waste money waste of money but one should not fear. If you have if you're investing money like that then you will not be able to build a brand with the help of sports. So it is high risk high return. So what is the takeaway so far been you know for your association with the sporting. What would you say what is the thing you want to share here. No no just have courage and patience. It takes a lot of courage to invest in a sporting event or a live event. And once you have invested the money just have the patience and the perseverance. It some will some things will not work but most of the things will work. And if you are then doing it consistently you will see that it's like a sip. It's like a sip investment markets go up markets come down over a four or five years period you will double your money. Same way with cricket do it for four or five years at the end of five years you will double everything. Some matches will do well some matches will not do well. I'm a good on time I have I can take liberty of asking two questions. Yes please yes raise your hands you can ask. Yes one yeah we can hear you. T20 how many number of spots are good enough for a one day match. Okay so let's let's look at T20 so there are 40 overs so 40 breaks on an average 15 wickets will fall. Yeah so there are 55 breaks. Now 55 breaks it all depends upon what is your exposure's frequency are looking at are you looking at a 6 plus 7 plus. So on an average most consistent advertisers they will look at a spot every eighth occasion. So there are 55 60 opportunities in a T20 match assuming 40 overs and 15 16 wickets. You're talking about 60 break 55 60 breaks divide by eight so eight to 10 spots eight to nine spots would do the trick. And similar way you need to look at it for ODIs but if you move to a test match then plan for four days because fifth day any which ways is a wash out. Yes one one sorry sorry sorry we will give more yes please ask yes. Like star sports is doing a great job in terms of packaging its sports and especially IPL coming down the line. How do you think with hotstar also doing that job for the major cricket series being covered there and a lot of people now they claiming a reach of 400 million plus and TV doing a reach of around 650 million types in the overall audiences the difference seems to be going down by their own quoted numbers. How do you think TV to digital in this case especially sports will happen for you guys and how will you take it. So I think what what hotstar has done is that the audience that were being missed by television is being captured by hotstar. So it's an incremental audience that is I'm sure there will be overlap audience as well but it's an incremental audience that is coming to you. If and if your question is on packaging or on my question is if you have those many money and you have distributed between TV and hotstar. Yeah so I think if there is a choice between TV and hotstar I would personally take TV but I think one should think about if you think about incremental audience because that is a similar audience that comes it is it should always be TV plus hotstar ideally because it is it is like right now we were watching on hotstar. I'm an audience so but if I was on if I was at home I would have been watching on TV. So it's always incremental audience so television got missed out say one individual. So it's always incremental audience that is coming to you. It is if budgets allow it should definitely be TV plus hotstar but then you do then you need to be smart that how much impression you need to buy on hotstar. If you're doing a broadcast sponsorship already on television then should I should you also do a broadcast like a complete sponsorship there or buy some impressions so that you're just present there. Then it becomes a how smartly you buy but I think put together TV and hotstar reaches to the maximum possible eyeballs. Last words from your side. But any like like he said you know every eight spot not just in this question but every eight spot can be should be the right way of looking at how what percentage how should you divide the money. How do you divide like what percentage should you put on TV versus hotstar. If you have bases of data if you have any science on it again it depends. So let me give a live example if when we were on World Cup with the broadcast sponsor on the World Cup on television. So our strategy was pretty simple that the we will take all in will take India and key non India matches which are on the weekdays and will not take weekends because weekends pretty much my audience is at home. So I would say the percentage wise it will be like this 20 percent on hotstar but it was a smart buy because already burning a lot of money on on on the being a broadcast sponsor on TV. So there is no specific thumb rule of 60 40 or 50 50 or 70 30. It depends on the budget you have and very how committed more. All right. Thank you. I have the queue that is over. Thank you so much for this lovely discussion. Thanks.