 Thank you so much. Firstly, everyone, thank you. Everyone here as well for turning up. Core belief, panel discussions are where people, our audiences turn up to die of boredom, right? Over 15 years of panel discussions, heard everything from big data and its changes for close to about eight years now. The importance and metrics of PR for 12 years now. So the only reason the topic continues is because a solution hasn't been found. So let's make this interactive and let's hope that the audience participates as well instead of going off to sleep. Okay, so thank you once again to the panelists. The topic under discussion, the agenda and the flow of the conversation is about sustainability, communication, and not about policy of sustainability as a whole, just to explain the concept. And I'd like to start with you, Nandita. In a world, please. In a world where... If you notice the moment somebody says sustainability, people immediately start working CSR. So it's an attempt to make a change in communication. Do you think the personality in a university are trained enough to be able to speak a language? Sandeep, I think that sustainability, wash, you know, is a big world. In order to communicate to a larger audience, you need to deconstruct it in the language they understand. And I think we are not able to do that. If you have to communicate with millennials, you have to talk in their language. If you don't talk in their language, they're not going to relate to it. But in my experience, I think if you do talk in their language, you know, if you talk about water, sanitation, environment, and, you know, through visuals, they're ready to engage. I don't think... I think the gap is how we are communicating. So, question here. Lit and CSR are both key networks, right? I tell the question to probably other people. So, you know, the largest, as Mr. Helper said, independent communication problem, right? Close to about 200 or so people across the nation and in general. Which means that any survey that is done, typically, at the firm, would be a representative of the entire industry. That's right. Would you agree or worry about some of the facts that there is a chronic lack of knowledge as far as an understanding of the space goals? And I'm working with Anadir that you need to speak in the language that the audience understands. The point is if the speaker does not understand the concept, it's very difficult to translate it into any language whatsoever. So, it was from that. Great. First of all, thank you everyone. It was a very good afternoon. Thank you for all the bad networks and all the questions. Interesting way to look at it. It's not the java, you know, on the other side of it that people don't understand the servicing, right? It's unfortunately the audience that you are working for, the corporates. They look at it only from that point of view, largely. And that's the missing link which large corporates probably need to look at around it. And that's how you will have an audience or people to go out and deliver your messaging. Which is what the missing link right now in the corporate world, and that needs to be fixed. Just to help me understand, I do agree as an illustrator in the DL, I do agree with, and on the fact that these are big words, right? At the end of the day, action comes at a ground level, it doesn't. As much as we may want, the cooperation from the top staffs because the people are actually being the difference happen, very often people don't understand how it comes down from the body, right? Towards that end, a question, neither idea. Can I take the LG example? LG works very strongly in the e-based space, right? The collection of e-based. I'll keep checking, individually can everybody go in? Straight, yes, could be nice. Yes, yes. Perfect, thank you. So, LG works very strongly in the e-based space. I was going to some reports yesterday to get over my stage by it, and I found a event report that says 20 billion produced and has been produced since 2017, 2 million plus tons of e-based every year. In 2017, we processed 0.036 million pounds. That's a minus 2% measure, 2 million pounds, right? Here, in the year 2017. Now, there are a lot of initiatives, exactly as Rahul said, that every company is putting initiatives into place, but how strongly are those initiatives getting communicated or communicated well enough for people to actually make a difference? Our views, just 15 mobile phones over the last 10 or 15 odd years, they still lie somewhere at home rather than being disposed of and recycled under the e-based process. Any thoughts on that? What you're saying is absolutely right, and e-based is a pressing concern for the entire industry, and a lot of government agencies and organizations are working towards it. And yes, you're right. Let's say today I'm using the air conditioner and I want to replace it. It's a task for me to, you know, probably I'm so busy that it's a task for me to call up someone and say that, you know, okay, please take back my old AC. Rather than, you know, somebody who's just coming at the right time, I will give it to him. We have been seeing that and it's quite dangerous to handle e-based like that. So what we have done recently, it was a three-month fact. We tried to incentivize people. So what we did was that during festive, we launched this initiative where, you know, you could bring in your old durables and you could get, you know, Paytm voucher and various exchange offers. So this worked as a kind of motivation and till date, I think we have collected massive whole products because people need to be educated and since this is at a very, very initial stage, so there needs to be a certain incentive as well that why somebody should come or, you know, call up a dealer and tell them that, you know, collect my old keys. So there has to be a proper education and yes, in the initial stage, it would be wrong to say that there should be good incentive programs as well. So allow me to be a little instigator here. Right? Yes, there should be a lot of things and giving a person the example that I wanted to avoid finding anybody there at all. Mama, healthcare comes with its own challenges, right? So there's a lot of things that we did and there's a lot of things that we should have done. And should have is nice, but how are we communicating to the audiences the fact that we are doing this that's accepted in years of participation in CSR in sustainability data of gamut actually went up after 2% actually, right? Before that it was strange and strait of it. So obviously making it mandatory as hell but it makes it more a question of the aptitude rather than we should do it. So while we come up on stage and allow me, and this is a question I ask of all four panelists, while we say that we shouldn't do a lot of things, we don't primarily ask grants because we need to do it and we have to do it. So the question is how are we communicating the larger goals? And I'm not talking about SDGs, I'm not talking about the capital level, how are we communicating the fact that that does win, do does win, create does win and this is the difference, not that xyz brand is putting up these dustbins in order to save the world. How are we doing that, how are we doing that? Is that something we can do? It has started I would say that you know nowadays it won't be wrong to say that we were the first brand to shift our entire lineup of air conditioners to convert it, which is a very, very energy efficient technology. And till date, today almost let's say 100 split ACs are getting sold in the market, not only energy, but across industry. So almost 65 to 70 are inverted. This transition has been done in you know, let's say in a short span of three to four years. But till date when you know people, if we ask somebody what is inverted, so the first responses are connected to the inverter. Whereas that's not the key objective of inverter technology. So you rightly said that what is the benefit of inverter technology, how we are doing it? So now we are also learning that we have to make our communication split simple and effective. And on the shop floor, we have been seeing that there are people coming in and energy efficiency is one of their, you know, key criteria while buying an air conditioner because probably environment is a concern, yes, but running first is also a concern. So if you combine these objectives and you have to understand what the consumer is looking at and what language he or she does understand and then you put in your communication. So this has been a lot, you know, a success for the entire industry, I would say. So yes, this is happening, but there's a long line. I went to the point that you're saying this right, but let's understand the audience that you're looking at it. India is largely, you know, made in the lower income group, you know, the factory is all about. How are we reaching out to the communications? Let's assume if any of the phones that you want to type in. He rightly said 15 phones in 15 years, but he don't know what to do with this. Being a, you know, from a A-class city. What happened to the interiors of India? Can as a communicator, can we go out to solutions to the corporate brand saying, okay, guys, when you buy a new phone, you have a lot of literature about how to use the phone. But there's no literature about how to recycle, where to go out and, you know, exchange your phones and have it from an environmental point of view. So as a communicator, can we take those steps to go out and educate our clients, educate the corporates, to take such initiatives which are kind of easy to implement? But a person that, you know, rural area probably would not know about these implications of, and we are all saying it, what happened in Mumbai or in the last couple of months in Mumbai or any of these cities, the kind of fog, the kinds of monsoon, which is an extended monsoon impact on the, eventually on the agricultural side of it. So that's the part of the thing or the conversation that probably as a communicator, we need to start having these dialogues with the corporates when you go and talk about it, rather than just going out and distributing the leaflets and the brochures about the subject. That's my idea. I think the government and, you know, taking the example of the equipmentizer, which, you know, sanitization, like villages where people definitely get in the open and they were trying to teach them to not do it and they set up these toilets, but people didn't start using the toilets because they were like, oh, I don't want to sit in a closed block and I'm not going to get out in an open field, but you educate them about the issues that stem from defecating out in the open and how it spreads disease, and you know, you have to get down to their level, use punctures, use actors, this that people, they look up to influencers and show them what is the problem, what is the solution and why they need to move towards it. And I think it's a joint effort from the government talking about Swachh Bahar to brands playing a role to tackle, see the government has to deal with all the problems, so they send out larger messages, but brands specific to their sectors pick up key problems like the equipmentizer taking care of all and et cetera, for example, in cleanliness. So I think, you know, together, they're playing a role to, right. So a question here, Jay. Yeah. You've incidentally also stayed abroad, studied abroad, right? Right. My next question is, and so I have a friend who's a musician, he stays in New York, right? And he participates in a lot of marathons and I have personally also seen marathons in Mumbai, the Mumbai marathons, the standard chartered marathons. When somebody's running, they are handed bottles of water exactly like these ones. In fact, Raul and I were discussing the fact that there's a lot of plastic bottles kept outside, right? And the question is, we take that bottle of water or gate raid or as the case may be, we drink from it and we throw it into the crowd, right? Because at that point in time, we are not collecting bottles. We're running for the environment. We're running for sea turtles. We're running for penguins. We're running for wildlife. A lot of huge- Right, right. That makes sense to satiate our, shall I say, satiate our mind, what it does for the rest of the world is different. So are people actually ready for the change because you can't on one hand say that you're running for the environment? Right. And on the other hand... You know, the change is taking place and it's a gradual change. If you look at it from a business perspective, you know, take Coca-Cola, for example, they have recently launched bottles that are made from recycled plastic from the oceans. So it's not that brands are not doing it. Now, if you think about their current bottle production, there's many companies that supply bottles to Coca-Cola and other brands like Gatorade, et cetera. So for them to just shut factory overnight and start a new factory that produces a new kind of bottle that is biodegradable, that can be... So there's plastic that can't be recycled and there's plastic that can be recycled. So, you know, taking Germany, for example, I was at a mall this summer and I was in a grocery store this summer and in the store, they have a machine where you bring your recycling, where you bring your empty plastic bottles, you put it in the machine, it goes in one by one and the machine at the end of putting 20 bottles gives you three or four euros. So now they have people on the streets of Germany and there's a name for them. I think they're called Hans Samas. They just walk around the city looking for empty plastic bottles, like, you know, so they can just collect them, go to these places, put in these machines and get some euros out of it. So I think that change is happening and with more awareness about the problems of plastic, you know, you've all seen the sea turtles photo being trapped in that thing. It's absolutely sad and shocking. I think brands are making an effort and people are also making an effort and it's a gradual change where all business units need to adapt and come up with a new technology that is biodegradable, reusable and does not harm the environment. I think it's equally important to, you know, communicate to the audience who matters the most in this subject. So larger part of the conversations remains within the room like it's happened and it's a fantastic, fascinating discussion to be done on a panel like what we are doing it. But in the real time, how many of us are really out in the street or in our offices taking those efforts? I know for sure, many of our offices, if you go to a printer where you have, you'll see hundreds of papers just lying out there. Do really think about it as a communicator, also before printing a single piece of paper, it's impacting an environment and this is what the conversation, larger part of an organization are doing it. Just to add to that, that when we talk about sustainability and issues related to the environment, we always talk about someone else. We don't talk about it as a user or a consumer ourselves. Once we start doing that as a user, you know, if I'm going to drink half a bottle of this water, I'm going to throw that half, then collectively there are 200 people, look at the impact that's going to create. So it has to start with myself first and that awareness has to grow. The good part is that people are ready to talk about sustainability, they're getting conscious about it. But I think the narrative has to be, like we discussed, you have to humanize the narrative that if I am trying to make a difference, is it impacting someone and is there evidence that I'm doing good and then only people will be convinced because brands can talk about their individual, you know, whatever that they are doing. But it has to be collective action and when as consumers you start demanding, brands also reciprocate. So on the human level, a question to loop in the audience and move out the straysies, we're primarily at a networking event, right? Can anybody who does not use business cards, raise hands here? Well, you have one. I forget. I'm kind of ruling myself out here. But now anybody else, the change needs to happen within the room is something that I think all of us are advocating because we sit on panel discussions and like we said, we talk about the importance of big data, which is lovely. But the point is, what are we doing about it ourselves? Right? And so in fact, the point that Jay you made, I was having dinner with the head honcho at a global packaging manufacturer. And he said, Sanit, we have all the solutions under the sun as far as sustainable packaging is concerned. The challenge is that global players across FMCG, various sectors in fact, I won't go into the sectors, is not something they are willing to incur, right? So that's a lot of, we will take part in this initiative and I will, both of you can, if I may, Nanda, portrayed works with multiple organizations, right? I won't take names because certain ones are nice. But, as well. But some of them work with portrayed Anand Pradesh, some work in Jharkhand, some work in Russia. Now it's lovely to have these tactical initiatives. But how is it translating into larger change? So for example, you made the point very well there, sorry. There are people doing a lot of I was speaking to one person and he said, do not be able to connect the dots, right? And as the leaders, our job is to connect the dots. So where are we getting there? It's important to acknowledge the failure before we can find the solution. You know, so just to the 2% increase in cost, there's many studies and it's your job, our job as communicators to educate brands. That many studies have shown that meaningful brands and what is a meaningful brand? A meaningful brand is someone that has a positive impact on society or the environment or consumers. Meaningful brands outperform the market, stock market by 134% in disease. The average rate that your sector is going at being a meaningful brand helps you outperform that I will drain by more than double. So, you know, you might be spending 2% more on your packages but you're missing out on a more than double growth rate that you could be reaching out to your audiences with my say, we are a positive company. This is our new plastic model and it's reusable and recyclable. It does not go to the oceans, et cetera, or it dissolves, or these might have been dissolving but there are many solutions as you said. So it's communicating that it is in your business goals, interests, to invest in these technologies and of course you have to paint the long-term vision to them which can be the challenge sometimes because it's 2% cost today but more than double the business tomorrow. Exactly, so the communication has to be turned into whether we like it or not. The business of business is profit. So the first thing is to acknowledge that tax and then figure out how we can get in SDGs into that aspect, right? Just to add to that, you spoke about the larger picture. We're working in a lot of locations. What we're doing is creating models. So if you're working in Bundelkhand and it's a draft-prone area, idea is to recharge the well-bought bodies and all-during water harvesting. This is an example that you're creating. When you start communicating it at a larger level, you're inspiring people to do that in many more villages, right? So you have to have evidence also that this will scale it up, right? In terms of brands, we work with a brand that, what really global works with a brand that manufactures beer and it takes 75 liters of water for one pint of beer. We never realize that. And most people drink beer, maybe you don't even realize that. But if they're told that this is the impact of it, right? And even the manufacturer's trying to reduce the number of liters in production of one can. So I think, like I said earlier, you need to give evidence and you need to give impact for people to actually realize that they can make a difference if they participate. And I think that narrative is missing somewhere. Really, what she's saying about this, that's true in terms of, as a communicator, that you're talking about. Other members also spoke about it. Corporates are taking initiative to a what extent that's more important now. And how do you reach out to your communication with the right audience? That's another point of view. As we were talking about, 2% is a conversation that we're having in the larger part of the corporate and in the universe, at least in India. Can there be a proposition where we say, okay, maybe a 20 basis point or a 30 basis point of that 2% will be spent only on the environmental awareness is a food for thought. And then we'll take a couple of minutes, keeping in line with the fact that we started a little late. We'll take a couple of minutes extra for audience questions. Last question here. Is the translation, Nita, is the translation actually happening at a ground level? Because again, we have these conferences, we have these discussions, right? But eventually as an erstwhile corporate communicator and you're a corporate communicator yourself, and I say corporate communicator vis-a-vis agency, right? It's the agency that actually communicates on behalf. We're the ones that claim the messaging, right? So how do we train our agency partners better? And that would be a learning for me as well as an agency one. But how do we train our agency partners better to speak the language from a brand perspective rather than just sticking to initiatives and going down at a ground level and as all of us here said, speaking the language that the people understand. How do we go about doing that? For that, Sandeep, the basic principle is that whenever you design something, so let's say I would talk about our inverter transition when we decided to shift our entire lineup to inverter, we invited everyone, be it our creative agency, be it our PR agency, be it our any other partner, too. So we had a common meeting again and again to understand what has been the key benefits of doing it. And in fact, to an end consumer also, so somebody would say, why should I pay 4,000 rupees extra to buy an air conditioner? Because as a customer, you would always go for something which is more cost effective. But somebody at a shop floor, at that promoter, when he tries to explain the consumer that once you buy this air conditioner, this would save your running cost, which is a recurring cost. So it has to be translated in a very, very simple language because everybody understands very simple language. Jargons are good probably for certain campaigns and on-air things. But yes, you have to translate the real benefit into very, very simple language and you have to include everyone in this transition. And I'm sure that people are aware. He was talking about overseas experience. I was reading yesterday that in Urisite has happened that you bring plastic and they are giving food. So it is happening. Look at the school students. So one of my colleagues, she's saying that she gets very upset that she wants her seven-year-old son to burst crackers because we have been doing that for years. And he says, no, mama, it's not good for the environment. I won't do it. So yes, it is happening. I'm very, very sure about it. And if we are remain committed and as she's saying that, everybody has to do their own bed. We were having a meeting with the NGO at their office and there we got the glasses with half filled water. He said that in our office, I see a lot of people, they just leave the water. So why to waste it? So give them half filled glasses and if required, we put in the bottles, they can pour it. So these are very simple things, but I can see that the change is happening. I'm sorry to intervene. Just to remind, we just have one minute left. We can't take questions. We can take, here we can do it offline later. Thank you, everyone.