 Good evening everybody. I hope you all are doing really well and with my fingers crossed. I'm saying this that even though the pandemic is receding now. You know, it's out of habit that we've got used to doing things so much virtually like this panel is well, you know, we're doing it virtually and what has really happened over the past one and a half year is that digital has become the way of life. And it's not just the innovators and the early adopters that are turning, you know, their backs on traditional media in favor of, you know, digital platforms today. But, you know, I would say the pandemic and the lockdown of 2020 has even strong down even the diehard traditionalists, you know, into embracing digital, simply as a means to stay connected to the world outside. And digital has become a solution for everything today right means to satisfy needs which are as basic as getting our food, ordering enough food, or staying in touch with our friends and family, or you know, getting information about anything and everything that we may want to do, or, you know, accessing the goods or services that we were so used to physically accessing in the past. And not only has this changed our behaviors today as consumers, I think our expectation has also changed from how we interact with brands, and it has also changed the way we consume content today. And as consumers we expect to be interacted way, you know, interacted within a very different manner, and companies on the other hand are also recognizing this change in consumer behavior to my mind. So they are pivoting their tactics and their, you know, marketing budgets, not only in a way to communicate to the consumers but also to service them and delight them through digital and while working remotely in the current situation. And also if I look at digital marketing, I think it has evolved a lot in the past couple of years. It's also because people are changing, behaviors are changing and their expectations are really changing. And as the new normal is getting established and new behaviors are getting established, how are brands unlocking this growth? That's what we are going to talk about today. You know, we all know that, you know, social media perhaps has been the first step for many brands to get into digital. But today brands are really moving up the digital maturity curve and using many other ways of interacting with the consumers on digital. You know, be through video marketing, which has really taken off really well, you know, as opposed to text or using, you know, social media influencer marketing to be able to, you know, create content and in a way which is relatable to their potential customers or, you know, using regional marketing to drive growth because India is an agonization of, you know, distinct languages and cultures. And we all know, we've witnessed that, you know, there is a significant spike in the audience having diverse regional choices, not only in terms of their language but also their tastes in content and consumption. And to discuss this and to leverage some of these trends, you know, I have a very esteemed panel today, who I'm going to request to introduce themselves. I'll start off with you, Dr. Aditya Banerjee. Very good evening everybody. It is indeed a real pleasure to be a part of the panel. And like Rubina just not described, our lives have really changed after post COVID and how we have started looking at the entire, you know, way of doing marketing and promoting our brand and products. I'm running a startup for the last three years, the name of Sahara Evolj, we deal in electric vehicles. And we have been able to leverage digital marketing and digital platforms really well. And it helped us a lot in expanding our brand awareness and, you know, translating that to our sales. We'll discuss that further I believe. Looking forward to talking to you about, you know, the usage of digital. Gagan, if I can come to you next, if you could just quickly introduce yourself. Well, hello everybody. Good evening. I'm Gagan Sachde, Managing Director of Bodyline. We are into sports and fitness and it is a great pleasure to be here on this panel today. And, you know, listening from you and interacting with you guys would be a really great experience, I guess. And here we are talking about digital and I will also talk about my business and its growth and how things are changing and our mindset are changing in this due course of discussion. We'll have a good, good time. Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Nimrit, can you please introduce yourself very quickly. Good evening everyone. Hello, I'm Nimrit Vandari. I'm Director of Marketing and Sports, Vasanth Masala Parvati Limited. We are a spices manufacturing company operating in this domestic and international market since the last 50 years. It's a pleasure to be part of this thought working discussion and looking digital for growth. I hope we'll be having a good discussion during this session. I'm looking forward to this discussion as well. Mr. Pandav, I'll move on to you. Namaskar. Good evening everyone. I'm Director of Bharat Masala. You are a major manufacturer of spices and pasta in eastern India. In the COVID period, there were many difficult and difficult periods to develop with the social media. This is your part for me. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to straight jump into this conversation because we have such an esteemed panel without taking more time. And I'd love to know a little bit more about the impact of COVID on your business and how you're getting really future ready. And what the learnings of the past one and a half year have been because the past one and a half year you will all agree has disrupted the way we have done business across completely. I'll move on. I'll throw it on to Dr. Aditya. You want to tell me? Well, being in the product business, it was really, really hard. Those three months were, I believe, were the most critical months for the entire last three years of our journey. And we took a lot of drastic decisions during that period. And there was a lot of learning as well. That was the time when we really understood that running a product business, when we thought that it had to be run in a conventional way, when you have to give a touch and feel and without that, you're not going to sell your product is not the real case. You can generate an interest. So it is all about getting those hits, getting those influencing the market first before we actually got into the sales part. So sales, it was a huge learning that sales is not just putting a good product in the market and selling it in the market. It's an entire process of generating, creating sort of an experience around it. So we shifted to digital during that period precisely. Before that, we were doing most of our marketing through conventional mediums. And that was the time we decided that because we have nothing else to do. We were sitting at home, everybody was at home and we were a startup. We thought, what best can we do? There was a light bulb saying that, okay, let us do whatever we can do. So everybody is on Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube. Let us see whether we can make the best of it or not. We started creating a brand awareness, educating about the product. Because when you talk about one and a half years back, it was still in that phase of gaining some steam. Right now, it is pretty hot. But one and a half years back, it was still, the customer was not happy, especially the market that we catered. We were majorly present in tier two, tier three cities. What happened here was, it was running on the battery. During those three months, all we did was we tried to educate the mass. It helped us a lot in terms of generating brand awareness, generating sales queries. Because we could geotarget, wherever we were getting more interest from the customers, we could generate our dealer leads. So it helped us a lot and we could see that by spending much less from the conventional way of doing marketing, we could create much bigger output out of it. It was very, very interesting. It was a huge learning and it was a blessing in disguise I would say. And today also my team says that we had maybe worked the most during those three months. And we tried to use whatever means possible to make our brand visible into the market. Through WhatsApp, through YouTube, through these three mediums we majorly used. And it came really, really cheap in terms of when we started calculating in terms of the marketing spend that we were spending by doing exhibitions, by doing paper ads, by doing camps, free camps. It was much less than that. And we could cover much more geographically. So it was indeed a great experience. So you finally felt the power of digital. We were all forced in that situation and dipped our hands, dipped our feet in it and then actually realized how much digital can do with us. And Gagan I want to ask you also, fitness as a business pivoted very, very quickly. It was one of the first businesses to pivot during the lockdown. And I know myself from being a fitness enthusiast to going to gyms to went on to online training and all of that. But how do you see this business in the future now that things are going back? Do you still think digital is going to stay more digital? Is it going to be more physical? Is it going to be a hybrid? How are you using digital media? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. So ours was a very conventional old style retail offline stores. So we have a retail chain of stores under the name of Bodyline. And our presence in East India was very strong. And if you ask me frankly, digitally we were not very strong. And we are still not very strong as on date. We are trying very hard to adopt the measures and styles of digital marketing. But having said that for us digital marketing only meant Facebook, Insta and WhatsApp marketing. That's all we understood till this pandemic struck us. And obviously as we all know it has been a great, great learning during these one and a half years. And now we are getting ready, the teams are being set up in place. And we feel that the future is definitely digital. It's going to be strong, strong digital presence only will save businesses because there's a strong competition online rather than it is being offline right now. So having said that ways and measures are being adopted, learned and implemented. But as I see fitness, online presence, online training classes are taking quite a major share. Offline will still take some time. I'm very, very positive that offline will also flourish well along with online. And to my knowledge it will be well balanced in the due course of time. But what we understand as a retailer, as a product seller, for us offline will be our first choice. Number one, number two, since we are selling hardcore products, physical products, we have to be very, very careful with what medium of advertising we choose. A, because our products needs delivery, our products need service, our product needs interaction with customers. So being our presence on online has to be very, very polished in terms of our product presence and information and pricing. Because we have to compete with competitors across the globe, not locally. When you are online, definitely people will have a lot of choices, not only you. So all these factors have to be measured very carefully and taken care of while you present your products, while you present your brand on e-commerce sites or your own online branding and sales marketing pitch. But I understand we have got lots and lots to learn. We are just taking initial steps, I would say. Over to you. But I think that's the start, as long as you're cognizant that that's the way the consumer is moving and that's the way business will be done in the future. And you're taking note of that and trying to get ready to get into digital. I think that's the first step and it's like how you build from there and build your business on digital as you go forward. Absolutely. And I would like to know, you know, I'll move on to Sushanta and I want to know from you that, you know, how are you looking at digital advertising and what are the avenues that you are exploring in your business? Actually, as we all know, digital advertising is a kind of communication with the consumer in terms of promoting a product or a brand or sending a message to the consumer or the ending on a digital platform. So, well, this is what we understand by web advertising or digital advertising. Right. So, you know, are you, are you using digital advertising? To some extent, we have done it. In the past, we have done some digital advertising in the past through some agencies. Promote our new products and also for our new product campaigns and all. We have done it in the past. So, how was your experience when you tried it? We are yet to yield or see the returns from it or to evaluate the ROIs on what we had spent on such campaigns and all. We are not very clear to be very frank. And I must candidly confess that well, in a certain way, it did cater to a certain segment of target audience, but I don't know whether it has really really tangible benefits for the company. I think what you say is true unless one, you know, you're convinced that there is tangible benefits and I personally believe that there is a lot of benefit. But yes, you know, as a business owner, you have to be convinced that there is tangible benefit to obviously scale your marketing on that medium. And Tanbir, I want to ask you. But I would like to also add a few things. We are in the spice domain as you know and we are having consumers and customers spread across all villages in India and India, whom we sell our products and all. And well, you see now digital literacy is also not that good or not that predictable in the villages and all. So digital literacy has to be improved and the infrastructure in terms of broadband internet and all in the rural villages have to be strengthened and the state has to do something about it to strengthen the infrastructure in villages and all so that we can have a better product outreach. Absolutely, absolutely agree with you. And I mean, you know, would you like to share what is your view on it because as a digital market here hardcore digital market here I believe I have a lot of hope. And I also believe that, you know, and we're also seeing it in the numbers that, you know, it's really scaling up in digital scaling up not just in the metros but beyond the metros as well. And a lot of businesses are, you know, leveraging this for the benefit of, you know, this expanding audience for the benefit of their business. What is your experience been what is it you know you work with a large set of brands so what is your experience been is there any interesting stories you'd like to share with us. Thanks for the question firstly Rubina, I'll kind of divide my answer into two parts first to address what doesn't raise and second to address what Mr partner is right. I think it's critical for any media platform right for any advertiser if you're using a media platform to very clearly define what are the business objectives and marketing objectives, you'd like to achieve via the usage of a media platform whether it be digital print TV outdoors it doesn't matter. You need to be able to define that out clearly. In most cases, ROI is not measured right if there's a misalignment on what the business objectives and the marketing objectives of your campaign or your usage of the platform is so I would urge. Now whether that is your business objective could be sales your business object marketing objective could be awareness of your brand because you're just launching a new brand. Your marketing objective could be reach which could be in tier two tier three tier one cities as well. Or your business objective could be just to gain insights about you know the different diaspora that exists across the country because digital gives you that right and we've utilized that amply. So I think that's number one to answer the point that Gagan was making as well to Mr pandas point I think it doesn't matter in terms of what price point necessarily your product comes at right the reality is the consumer is purchasing whether he commerce a 10 rupee product and is also purchasing a 10,000 20,000 30,000 rupee product as well if not more right what's critical however to know is which consumer is going ahead and purchasing it and how can you reach out most effectively to that consumer so let me give you a few data points Mr Pandan this may be helpful for you right what growth you will see on digital going forward will come from Bharat. Your tier one cities are saturated now they're done with right your numbers are roughly around 650 million or going up to roughly around 800 million of internet put internet population right out of 1.2 billion population so you've already got 70% of that population covered which basically includes Bharat as well. However, if you reach out to Bharat in English, you will not get a conversion because 73% of content that is consumed online happens in vernacular language in the country as in 2021, which basically means if you're reaching out to let's say a population sitting in UP Bihar that belt the Hindi speaking belt, you rather go ahead and speak to them in the language that they understand most and hence your conversations the content that you advertise on needs to be in their language in the content they tend to consume. I think most mistakes are made where we go ahead and tend to use the same format irrespective of whom you're going ahead and advertising when I see Akash nodding his head because he's got a fairly large reach as a brand as well right. If you go ahead and advertise in a certain language in South India, it may not work. You know you've got to be differential and digital gives you that power. So I would strongly urge Mr partner saying that hey the population is already there. What you need to find out is what is the population doing on digital are they listening to music. Are they watching Bollywood. Are they watching cricket. Will they watch the World Cup match today. Are they doing that and are you present on that. If you do that, you will get your conversions you will get your brand of else. That's the power of digital so a little bit of self education as a group for all of us we are all learning constantly as well. All of us are learning constantly as well. I think only helps us utilize the platform. I can just come in and add a little bit to what we were saying right. If I can just share for Mr Panda and everyone else right. In terms of the internet penetration numbers also you know the 700 million number that we spoke about almost 45% of that now is in rural India. You know we are talking about your three cities and that's where the internet penetration has reached out of you know this almost roughly 300 million people who are in rural India accessing the internet they are accessing it on mobile. So the other element other than vernacular is also that is the content that you're putting out there is it mobile compatible. Do we present our big screen creative asset on the small screen because then that experience for the consumer is also broken. The other data point that I want to also bring in is if you talk about this 300 million rural consumer, one third of it is already online commerce. Which means the Bharat is now not only getting comfortable with internet, but they're also have the trust of you know actually going and converting that into commerce and you know we see this in our digital payment numbers, UPI numbers, we see it in so many other different ways that it's telling us that our consumer is learning faster than us. And I think that's the piece that we have to all recognize and you know humbly recognize that you know we have to be learning at the same pace as our consumers are learning because they seem to be learning and adopting technology faster than all of us. So, absolutely agree with you, Richard on that and I want to ask you, you know, a similar category, do you agree with what Tanveer and Richard are saying or you think there are some, you know, you have another view. No, what Tanveer and Richard are saying is right. But yes, what Mr. Panda said the same concern. Yeah, digital presence is very high nowadays, but something like ours is still in the beginning stages of spending on digital. And we as we have just started learning how to spend on digital. What are the activities we should do, what type of budget we should spend. And then that is why this session, we wanted to understand like what should be the strategy and how we should take forward these digital marketing. I'm glad, you know, at least you're thinking about it like I said, the first step is to start thinking about it and understanding that the consumers are there and the consumers that you are looking for today, not just urban consumers but people who are also living, you know, in tier two, tier three cities are using digital as perhaps their first, you know, choice in mediums is there and then the consumer is there as marketers and as business owners, you know, all of us have to start thinking how to reach out to them. So I'm glad that's on your mind. You know, moving on next, you know, Gagan, would you like to share, I'm just curious to learn like would there be any one aspect of your business where you're planning to adopt digital advertising completely, you know, because you said that, you know, you earlier said that there is, you know, offline will always be large, of course I agree offline will be large but you also said that it will be the largest part. Why do you think offline will be still the largest part and why not digital. Love to hear it, you know, what do you think are obstacles that you face and what are some of the challenges that you may face, you know, before considering digital, you know, what, why is it that you would think that offline works better still for you. Rubina, to be very frank, I am very much aware that online will be the next big thing for us also, the whole world is moving towards that. But having said that I am not really prepared or rather educated as to which medium to choose from. You know, when you, when you guys talk about digital, it's a very broad spectrum thing you are talking about. You know, I do understand that. Now, which medium on digital has to be chosen is still to be learned by me. So once I get to know whether my product is good on YouTube, or is it good on Facebook, social media, Insta and all that, or is it good on a different platform. Again, again, the kind of age group I'm talking about, you know, my age group, the best buyers are 40 plus for me. We have seen in our retail industry 40 plus people have money, they have decision power, they buy the most. Now, those people, which is for them, which is the best medium. Be my product for my product, which is the best medium and see if, let's say, if from people like Tanveer and you guys also guide us and tell us that now for us, this would be the next, the best medium to choose from. Then, again, we will have to start working on as to what will be the content. Should we simply post products with prices or should we simply start with the level of educating the customers first, talking about the products and their benefits first, and then come on to the sales level. So it's a long story to understand. So I am really confused. I absolutely understand, you know, your dilemma that of course, you know, it is digital itself has become very vast and like what to do, what, which is right for your business and how to kind of nurture your potential customers from, you know, the awareness and then a straight into the sales and with relevant contextual content that you have to do all the time can be overwhelming before you start. But yes, it is perhaps, you know, people like us, we try to make it sound overly complicated, but I promise you not it's not that complicated. No, I will share an experience here. I want to share an experience here. As a business entrepreneur, people pitched us as agencies to market for us on digital. And we chose that to our knowledge, we chose the best person and then they would come and ask you what would be your Spencer, I would say okay let's do 50,000 rupees a month. Now, that 50,000 they are spending they're doing, you know, likes and this and that what what they're buying orders, but is that actually helping me. And as somebody just said that ROI is still to be understood, whether that particular medium actually work for us or is it something else which is working. So that's what we have to understand and learn. Yeah, totally. Akash, welcome to the panel. I know you joined in a little bit late and perhaps you've heard some of the, you know, interesting conversation that we're hearing. I mean, what's your view, how is digital is digital working for you in the first place. I, are you thinking about digital do you think it works for you as it working for you, are you considering. What are your thoughts around it. Yeah, first of all, my apologies for being late today. And yeah definitely digital is one thing that it's there are two options we are doing it or we are not doing it, but one thing is for sure that everybody knows this behind the it's a necessity that cannot be ruled out. Now the thing is where you have limited budgets. So since the decades there has been a chunk like this percentage will go in the TVC is this percentage will go in the print this will go on air radio. Now push out from which portion selling that amount out and investing in digital and then is it working more than the traditional where we have shared it out from. So that statistically and like quantitatively has to be justified. And somehow I feel as what can we rightly said about the customization. So one thing that customization and happen the in a best manner is only in digital for example if I have a I've spent huge amounts of money on a brand ambassador but that's for a Hindi speaking belt. I can't can't use that if I'm launching my brand in a Southern India state. So that is there my that portion of the TVC goes wasted. So that is where digital comes in and I believe definitely a quarter of the ad budgets. So if it's in digital, then that should do wonders for sure. And we are definitely have already started it. The only issue is to first convince ourselves through some case studies as to knowing going there is important and very necessary but when to go that is an iceberg that we need to just break and there where we need help of experts like you. And how do we break that iceberg. I was just going to step in, Rubina, you know, I can I can safely say that between Ruchita me and the large Google team that we have here in India. We would love to read out a simpler story on digital for you. It isn't as complicated as it sounds. It's just that it's grown so fast that you hear of so many new entities right that makes it confusing. So the beauty of this platform is that there's an ability that you can pretty much plan for whole of digital using a common repository so you do not need to go to such so many entities that's the beauty of this platform. So gosh gone other days of single media planning. Right. I mean, in today's day and age we would go crazy if we do single media planning just imagine I'm sure you already do. Besides the team at Google calling you up I'm sure you get hundreds of media calls every day right it's impossible for you and Dagan and etc to go ahead and manage this right so now it's the time of cross media planning where you do it together that's the you give Ruchita and my team a business objective, a marketing objective. Is it reach? Is it sales? Is it tier one? Is it tattoo? And let us come back to you with a consolidated cross media plan which deduplicates this field right so that your money is eventually used in the most effective of manner and digital gives you that part. I've worked on the TV side I've worked on the radio side in my career and trust me it's been an evolution for me in learning as well. And just like that just as it was simplified for me we'd love to simplify it even for you alongside our partners. So that's definitely something I can help you out with and Ruchita and I can definitely help you out. So that'd be what I'm really hearing from everybody is that I think well I can safely say I haven't asked everybody but I think there's consensus that their intent is to be on digital. While there are I mean different people have different constraints one is obviously the complexity that I think people folks like us you know who've been in digital have sort of maybe built it we need to simplify it for people to be able to come on very very you know in a simple easy manner make it easy for them. So I think one is that also there is I think some challenge around having the right content put on digital so having the right assets etc put on digital so that's really what I'm hearing you know at the moment. And I just want to go around and ask you know all of you Akash, Nermit, Kagan, Aditya and Mr. Panda that you know I'm sure all of you do some part of your marketing spends which are digital and I'll start with you Akash. Tell me what is it that you do in digital, you know, besides social media, you're not left to hear that. And how is that, you know, what's your experience been with that. Okay, so the biggest what we've done was during the elections we had a big digital we did it with the news channel on their digital platform and the response was so much that it was directed to our website and we were not equipped with so our website crashed. So the response was there but there was not enough preparedness at your end. Yeah, because I was we were just absolutely. I was 100% sure that not more than 1 million people will come but it was 15x of that. So that was one and then we started doing it. We do it paid we do banners, but it has all been like it's not a very structured format it's not constant. So, and sometimes when we feel that if I have to take out a budget. I know it's not realistic because it's very small. But I just do it because I want to be there I want to say I'm going digital I wanted to answer your question today that is what I was doing. So if this thing comes from experts like you, this is the X amount so I think that would be more better for the brand, it would be more in terms of visibility would be better. And it would enable us to gain as confidence to keep doing it in a major media shareholder of the spending pattern. Understood so help in planning your budget so that they deliver better for you on digital is your ask. Fair point. Number that I want to ask you that besides you know again social media social media does everything and e-com is also doing a lot of things these days. Go to the e-com channels with them and start selling but what have you done on digital? Have you experimented with digital? What has your experience been? Actually, honestly, we do understand that digital is a new way of connecting and engaging with the customers. It represents a new way of doing business. As you said we are selling e-commerce stores as well as we are doing some market places like Amazon and Flipkart also. Over there our prime objective of selling online is customer awareness, customer connect. We are also using some digital platform like Salesforce management app for our sales team also. Which empower our team to? Gagan, I want to ask you that you know like I started off saying that video platforms today have become very very large. Whether they are long form, short form, video platforms are like really gaining traction because a lot of users are there. Have you experimented on paid advertising other than social media or e-com? Have you gone on to any of the video platforms experimented there? Frankly speaking, we have yet to experiment the video platforms. Until date, as far as digital marketing is concerned, we have been spending some amount of money, a very minimum share. And that was on social media marketing, the Facebook, Instagram and all. And we have done Google AdWords and stuff like that. But not to a great extent because as you understand that we have been very conventional, old style print and electronic media advertisers. So today, although I would say that almost 10% of my spend has gone into digital but 90% still remains on outdoor and print media and other stuff. But as far as video platforms are concerned, we are yet to try one. Sure. And you know, I'm just curious, I'm going to just press on this a little bit more. You know, obviously, you know, everybody today in today's world cares a lot about profitability and ROI, etc. And also especially when it's marketing spends, you know, everybody is very, very cautious that their marketing spends deliver. So how do you track or how do you measure the effectiveness of your marketing spends? You know, see, if you ask me frankly, it's not very, you know, it's not possible for us to measure vis-a-vis the spend. But, you know, we only understand by the number of calls our sales team received. You know, the numbers which are flashed or advertised as a number of calls you get, number of inquiries you generate out of that or emails you get or the number of hits you get on your own website. So relatively, print has worked the best for us till date or the second best would be SMS marketing. That's how we have been doing. When we do a digital marketing, it's very difficult to measure. It's very, very difficult to measure. But still, you know, we have you rather, you know, we have used this tool for branding more rather than selling. So that's, that's how I would like to put it, you know, we have used digital marketing for more of a branding exercise rather than selling exercise. Although, from the profitability point of view, I would love to have conversions from digital marketing and, you know, and we will turn into profit. That would be the best way to look forward. And that's how what we want to do in future. But as you, as I said that, no, video we have been trying. So, you know, Ruchita, I want to come to you and ask you, do you think digital can provide better measureability? How can brands leverage that? What's your view? Thank you for the question. Thank you for your candid experience with digital and your apprehensions. I think this is something that you know, we actually hear from a lot of advertisers. So you're not alone. You know, in this experience and these questions. So I'll maybe want to try and, you know, pick up a little bit of how the conversation has been saying that digital can be easily made. You know, there is a need to make digital easy. So maybe the way I would say is that all the branding solutions that digital paid digital marketing offers. It's very possible for, you know, as the media had said, you know, for the need in my teams to actually draw parallels for you with regards to TV. So just as you measure TV, you reach frequency, brand lift, you know, looking at how the awareness index increases, you know, at recall increases. The same actually can be delivered on brand on digital media as well. So I would actually kind of go back and also answer Akash's question that how should you start? I would say start back because if you're familiar and comfortable with how TV delivers to the metrics that you are familiar with, start off with that. I think digital can do that as powerfully if not more. Now coming to performance would be not the question that, you know, Gagan was talking about in the queue specifically asked me. I think on performance, you know, whether it's video platforms, whether it's display, you know, maybe a parallel in your, you know, comparable this thing I would like to say is think of your newspaper ads as a display or a search placement, right? So that's a parallel to look at. And the power of digital is not only can we kind of give you results in terms of leads, but we can actually help you measure the journey. From the engagement of the ad, all the way to sales and not just that leads, right? So there is a very seamless way to measure all the way from, you know, how many leads have you got is have those leads been quality leads. So digital also gives you the power to say that, you know, if this lead has been more, you know, in quality, then the engine can learn from itself and start turning out more quality leads for you. So that's the, you know, other advantage. The second advantage with actually performance and the other thing is that you're playing at place or out of home place. Where is in digital, what you end up paying for is only something that has given you results. So even from a cost efficiency point of view, you know, so there is the advantage of measurement, there is the advantage of cost efficiency. And the third advantage is the insights that the tool or the machine learning kind of incorporates in itself to get, you know, higher quality views, whether it's a branding objective that you're chasing or a conversion objective that you're chasing. And I think those are, you know, some areas that, you know, maybe we can help you discover and uncover about digital and I totally agree that the initial initiation for all of us. You know, whether it's Rubina, Tanir or us, even when we kind of got into it, it took us, you know, we had to educate ourselves, we had to experience it and it had to, you know, deliver results for us to really believe in it, right, because seeing is believing at the end of the day. So we have to experience it and that's when the belief comes in and we are very happy to handle, you know, your companies and that and you know, I also kind of refer back to what Dr. Banerjee had said at the beginning of the conversation, right, where he had said that he's actually being able to very effectively learn along the way and use for his business when, you know, COVID hit. And maybe I could actually, you know, I'd love to hear Dr. Banerjee's views that you know, have you seen the power of digital in delivering performance for you and being able to measure it. So what happened actually was I was in the same kind of dilemma as my other, you know, counterparts are in terms of how to optimize and how to utilize digital medium, wherein we can somewhere quantify the outcome of it. You know, you can keep spending on it, but if you cannot quantify what you actually want out of it, then it does not make a lot of sense for a business. You know, for a business idea to culminate into a reality. It so happened then that because I got those three months, I did a digital marketing course myself and online digital marketing course for free. Right, because I so I what I personally feel is that till you do not know, you do not know what you're dealing with, you need to understand the tools first. You do not know how to use the tools. It doesn't matter how much you try to explain me how to use that I would not understand, because I have never known how to use it. You know, so I have to have a little bit of idea as to how to use it. Just because I have a hammer does not mean that, you know, I have to be a, say, a Smith, but I need to know to that. Okay, there is a hammer and this is what it can do. So just to have that much idea, I did a proper three months course to understand that. And that is where I became very, very confident that whatever money we are spending and since we are a starter and in startups, you know, there's always a cash flow concept. So you'll have to very wisely see that where to spend how much money to get how much results that is always a proportional relationship. What to spend, how to spend where to spend and how much business can you expect out of it. Right, so we were actually struggling at that point in time because we were going to launch a new brand to reach out to the maximum maximum eyeballs. So we very confidently were expanding in terms of distribution network. We are presenting about 20 states, 400 plus distributors of ours. Right, we have a service network of 600 plus service partners. But that is one part of the story. If my customer does not know, not today, say, if I'm just giving you a case, you know, when I benefited your customer can just log in to a platform wherein he can click and see. Okay, this is where I can get my electric vehicle from. If I need a service, this is where I can get my service from. These are the reviews. These are the possible service challenges that I'm going to face. So your customer can make a much more informed decision. Isn't it? So this is where it helped us a lot. So with the kind of business model that we were running when we thought that we were getting into manufacturing, we put up a platform which will be in sort of an online offline hybrid. Moving ahead, Ola gave me a brilliant example of how you can use digital medium efficiently without even having a single dealer point. Ola, you know, booked 100,000 vehicles only through digital platform. So that's the power of digital. At the end of the day, what are you looking for? And without even having that entire infrastructure, now Ola has 100,000 vehicles sold in a matter of months. So that is where we thought why can't we use that because we are at a much more advantage. We now have 400 display centers wherein our customer can actually go and experience the vehicle. So we said, okay, let us get into a hybrid model. Let us do a booking online and let the customer go and experience. And if they book online, they get say an X amount as a special discount. So, you know, you've got to give those fringe benefits to initially attract the customer onto your platform. So gradually, again, I mean, last day also, you know, when we were discussing, I said that it has to be case specific. It has to be business specific because it cannot be one solution for all. It will always be the kind of business or product you're dealing with. But personally speaking, initially, we thought now whatever we spend directly or indirectly, when I say indirectly, even whatever contents we make, say we shoot a vehicle or say we do a... So recently, we did a strategic tie up with the manufacturing facility. We did a nice shoot of that. So we created a content out of it. Instead of putting it onto, say, news or XYZ, which we also do, but simultaneously, we are very, very active on the digital platform. So we'll put it on YouTube. We'll put it on our WhatsApp. We'll populate it as much as possible so that our network comes to know, okay, now they have done another joint venture. Okay, so there is something new happening. So communication has become much more easier. So if I have to send an information from me to my entire network, today it can happen, not only my network, also to my customers. It is very, very easy if I use a digital platform and you spend much less. That is the best part. So you don't need to, so tomorrow if I want to announce that, okay, say for this, from this date to this date, if you do a booking, you get an additional discount of 5000. Now, there are a few ways I could have done that. I could have gone on to a newspaper and given a quarter page ad to do that. That would have restricted me to most of the locations, you know, and that's why I do not know how much conversion I'm going to get. Because digital also gives me the advantage of geotagging, of segregating, of segmenting my critique. That is the biggest advantage. So I can directly target my audience who I really want to sell the product. Who is my influencer? Who is my customer? I can target that. That is the biggest advantage of digital. And like Rajithra rightly said, and Tanveer was also explaining the same fact, that your efficiency goes up by notches. Here it's a two way street. Digital, the advantage of digital is it's a two way street. It is not only that you are putting out something there in the market. You're also getting feedbacks from the market simultaneously. So on all our digital platforms, we have been getting feedbacks of, okay, you need to improve this. Okay, then here we are not getting service. So that's a huge input for the company itself to grow further. Comparisons. Sir, why is this car so expensive? And it is coming directly. It is coming from a primary source. So I'm saving on a lot of market survey costs, which I do not need to do now. Because it is happening automatically. And a lot of informed decisions can be made on the part of the company. Because we have a lot of information, which can now be quantified. We can put it in buckets that, okay, this way it's not south. There are four zones. So that is how we do business. So we'll split it in each east-west north-south. So these out of these zones, these are the states wherein we are getting the maximum. It becomes so easy to plan. You can plan your supplies better. You can plan your inventories better. You can plan everything better. And business is all about planning and execution. I think that is where I'll rest my case. Thank you. I think you made the case very well for digital. And I hope some of the other panelists, they have got inspiration from your own, the way you are using and leveraging digital. I know we're running short on time, but I just want to quickly get a view from Mr. Panda and ask him that, what is your ask from the platforms? What should platforms do to make life simpler for you to help you, you know, adopt this digital journey? Well, as I said, we're already into e-commerce. When we are not at all at that point of time, we're not at all into web advertising and all. We forward into e-commerce. And that also did help us in spreading the brand awareness. We got a lot of feedbacks from the consumers. We were on Amazon platform. So we got a lot of customer feedbacks and all. Then we try to understand and realize the relation down upon us that yes, the power of digital is really happening. And we have to leverage this digital technology for our web advertising and our web marketing also. So we started believing in this digital kind of thing, being a practicable solution for advertising and marketing needs. So we are now in the process of implementing ERP and CRM for our marketing and our brand awareness needs. And maybe within a year it is going to be materialized. Now we are already taking the help of an agency who have very good skill sets in this digital technology platforms. So they will do it for us. So we hope that, well, digital transformation is taking place and by 2050, 70% of marketing is going to be done on digital platforms. So with that kind of speculation, we think we have to work more and more on digital platforms for success for reaching out to the consumer, as I said, in a large way. I just have one thing to say. I think it will be much sooner that 70% of all the marketing will be on digital. That's my personal view. But with that, I'll just go to Nimit once again and ask him that what is his ask of the platforms as parting thoughts? How can platforms help brands adopt their digital journey? Yeah, actually, I was saying that we are present on two of the mediums like social media. We are doing on the market basis, e-commerce and all. But still digital is a very huge place. And we have just touched a few of the avenues. There is still a large chunk of avenues which we have not still explored. So yes, we are definitely willing to explore these avenues, but still a sizable part of our teaching is elderly people, especially female. Hence, besides digital media, conventional media is still important part for us. Hence, we cannot completely ignore this media as well. And this media, generally conventional media, it's up our major parts of media spans. So we have to continue with conventional spans also. So we just need to understand how much we should span on digital and how much we should increase span on digital gradually. Absolutely. I understand your point of view. Can I just come in and share an example with you? This is an example from Darbar Homemade, which is like a competitor in a way to the spices, this thing. So they make these pre-mix, this thing. So what they had done sometime back with us is they had actually done content packs with us. So to your point, you're absolutely right. If your customer segment is, you know, our women who are interested in cooking, one of the interesting phenomena that has happened in the last one and a half years is that a lot of Indians, actually not just Indians in India, but you know Indians globally as well, are coming to YouTube to check out recipe videos. And you know what Darbar did very effectively is actually, you know, did these content pack, you know, paid marketing where they were able to see a double impact on their ad recall. So, you know, so for example, even if, you know, you are wanting to address a niche customer segment and you want to address them when they are in the space of thinking about cooking, then also, you know, there are some very interesting solutions that are now available and you know, obviously, like I think we discussed earlier as well, you know, it has to be customized for your company. It has to be blended in like a multimedia, you know, auto media mix plan that the news spoke about earlier. But there are now possibilities that exist. And I think, you know, as brands and as advertisers, I think it would be lovely to, you know, hear about all these options that are now available. Absolutely. Thanks for sharing that, Rachita. It's an interesting way of integrating your brand in the content story itself. But I think we're running out of time. So I'm just going to summarize the whole panel by saying that, yes, you know, we heard the brands, we understand, you know, there are challenges, you know, that you face while you look at digital media, whether it's the complexity of the media, how to plan for it, how to use the content, how to address the right target audience on digital. These are some things which are running in your mind, but at the same point in time, you know, it's heartening to know that, you know, all of you are thinking of digital and going beyond just being on social media and e-commerce channels. And, you know, I think the takeout for the platforms is to see how they can work with brands, partner with them to simplify this journey for them and help them adopt digital and scale their businesses. Because digital is here, the consumers are here, and they are looking to interact with brands and services on the medium of their choice. You know, with that, I'd like to end this panel. Thank you for a very interesting and candid conversation. I really enjoyed hosting this panel, and I hope you had a good time, too. Thank you.