 joining us on this cloudy rainy afternoon in Mumbai and welcome to you from wherever you are in Bangalore and Delhi. Thank you for joining us. The third wave of COVID, as the government is saying, is probably going to hit us soon. So I hope you are all safe wherever you are. You are making all efforts to get fully vaccinated. Today's agenda is very interesting. A couple of months back, we worked with, as Raveen mentioned, India's largest media, world's largest media investment agency Group M to curate a knowledge report on what voice marketing is all about. As we have seen in the last few years, digital adoption across industries, especially in the media sector has gone up significantly. Consumers have taken up digital in a very big way, whether it is shopping on e-commerce, whether it is travel bookings or consumption of media and so on. What's happened alongside that is that usage of digital through mobile phones has evolved significantly. And some of the statistics, this report was released in June and the report, as you might have seen, says that a large 99% of internet penetration is now through mobile. Internet access is through mobile, unlike the past era where web access and mobile access used to be considered separately. Now, digital and mobile have integrated entire accesses happening through the mobile phones. Almost 500 million people are now on smartphones and there's another 400 million people who are on features phones who are yet to come online through smartphones, which means there's a very big opportunity, an opportunity that reliance through its geo and Google collaboration is eyeing to enter into the Indian market. And that obviously will change the dynamics of internet usage through the mobile phones again. We'll come more to that later during our talk. Some of the other things that the report talks about is about voice search, how it has gone up almost to 70% increase in usage of voice search, especially language search. Language is like India jumped 400%. It is natural and obvious when all of us are using our mobile phones, speaking into the phone is much faster and far more convenient than using your thumbs and fingers to type because of the volume of work we do every day. I recall 20 years back when ArchStuck, it's now more than 20 years, around 22 years now, when ArchStuck launched in India and it brought in this huge tsunami of language news TV in India. Before then, NDTV television used to be an English channel on Star TV called Star News and ArchStuck's launch led to a massive proliferation of language news television in India. One of the things we always used to talk about was how people are well-versed with talking in their own languages. They might not be so adept at writing the mother tongue, but everybody is talking in their mother tongue language or some other Indian languages very regularly. So consuming content in your own tongue is going to lead to significant growth and then post that we saw this huge wave of investment in content in language TV across news entertainment. And here we are with digital, the biggest growth in digital also in the last few years has been language content. And as you can see, it is not surprising even search is headed that way. So I have picked up 100 million queries happened on cricket in 2019, that's a huge number we are already in 2021. So I'm sure that number has grown up significantly. It has significant implications for brands, for marketers, for companies that are looking at whose future is in some way connected to how people are using mobile phones, especially how they are searching for content for mobile phones. And that is what I'm going to discuss today with my friend and the CEO of Group M India Prashant Kumar P.K. Thank you for joining us. If you can switch on your camera and join this talk. Hi P.K. Before we start, let me thank you for joining hands with us to do this. And before we get into our conversation, I'd like you to say your opening remarks. Hey, thanks Noel. Thank you so much for, you know, welcoming me. Actually, it's so great to catch up with all of you and hope, you know, all of you are doing well. Thank you for joining us on this very session with Exchange for Media and InMobil to discuss the role of voice and its role in the marketing mix. Right. I think we have all been, you know, this work from home concept has been going on for some time, right. I think we have been all living in a video and a voice world, including this, right. And many times only the voice world, because people sometimes prefer to switch off the video, right. So, voice is increasingly, I mean, we just saw what happened to Revin, suddenly his video was then voice was not there. And it is so important, right. So, yeah, so we will, I think the days packed with some fantastic speakers, their thoughts and thinking on the entire relevance of voice and how it's progressing. And there's also some interesting cases, interesting facts and insights that the report captures. We'll talk more about that, you know, during the session. It will be interesting and exciting sessions for everybody. So, once again, welcome and good to catch up. Fantastic. Thank you again. And before I start with you, I'd also like to acknowledge InMobil, their team and InMobil also contributed significantly to this entire initiative. It's a joint effort between Group M and InMobil, this voice marketing effort report. As I begin, PK, let me ask you, you know, before I get into what the report is about and perhaps some people have already seen this already. Let me ask you why this report being done. Naturally, as I mentioned at the start, voice is going at a fast pace. It is something that a lot of brands, companies are looking at. Why did Group M decide to get into this area? Yeah, great. I think as you mentioned, you know, Group M in association with our research partner, InMobil, as well as the exchange familiar, we unveiled the voice box report. Essentially, it captures some of the emerging marketing trends, especially in the voice technology, right? And, you know, it also allows us to understand how some of these technology can help brands, you know, utilize them and use them for better outcomes and therefore good results. The report captures the consumer's focus towards voice each passing day as well as how it is influencing the consumer behavior in a very large extent. The voice technology has emerged to be consumers go to preference. You know, if you look at some of the mobile activities which we do, whether it is ordering the food, we just saw the video, right, getting directions, making reservations, you know, booking the travels, and many things, you know, those kind of utility apps. I think voice is becoming more and more go to preference for consumers. So all of these trends, I think, is also helping us to understand how it can play a great role in the marketing framework and how brands can actually utilize this. In fact, many of the Indian internet fast internet users are fast adopting this, you know, source tool, and they are finding the leverage and the relevance of regional language and therefore finding comfort in that, right? A group of our vision is to help all brands find their voice for what the future entails with the development in technology. We feel that voice is a marketing tool as its dimensions and complexities when it comes to bring the gap between the brand and consumers. I think the solutions around marketing to voice is very diverse, as it can be used in multiple ways to target both urban and rural audiences, right? And while we see that, you know, in the urban market, you know, the audience is already captured, you know, these kind of trends much faster, it is also fast evolving into the rural market, right? And, you know, many of these trends are captured in the voice report, and we feel that some of the trends can be very useful for the brands, for the marketers, and the entire report is one of the steps in that direction. Fantastic. Before I dive back into voice, let me pull back a little bit and go to a broader level conversation. COVID has, as we've all seen, given a massive push to digital adoption among consumers and companies alike. And a lot of these trends were already in the play. What COVID has done in the last 14-15 months is perhaps something that might have anyway happened over a three-four year time period. Companies are very deeply impacted. Overnight, they've had to adapt. Companies that were sitting on the fence have had to kind of jump in and figure out ways of working this out. According to you, what are the three key trends you've seen which are very important for brands to understand in terms of what's happened in the last 15 months, because once COVID goes away, the adoption of digital is only going to increase, the penetration is only going to increase further. We are not going to go back to the pre-COVID era when it comes to digital, right? So what are the three-four things that you've seen as Group M and what do you think brands should understand and prepare their future strategy accordingly? It's a very significantly important question. At the same time, a question that colors a lot of it. As you rightly mentioned, anyways, there was a trend as well as the evolution of digital that the market has been witnessing. And what COVID has really done is to make people do this faster, experiment things as consumers, experiment things in different forms. And it has also therefore accelerated the utility of many of the technology aspects in our daily life, right? So given the context that we're almost closer to 600 million active mobile users, almost 500 million smartphone users, all of this, as you mentioned, Navan earlier in your narrative, that already there is almost as equal to 300% to 700% increase in the voice search in the country, right? And these are all actually allowing one of the trends as voice, voice also convenience, right? So this is actually a convenient enabled technology which is helping people. So definitely one of the trends we're seeing is the entire voice technology is one of the key trends which we should watch out for, right? There are many more aspects which comes in, I think, if you look at the entire framework of e-com, if you look at the entire framework of AI, machine learning, augmented reality, I think as a practice the entire influential marketing as such has come in as a trend which is helping marketers to find relevance for, you know, as well as connecting to consumers. And many of this, many marketers are experimenting, they are seriously, you know, applying it into the marketing framework. But it is also, you know, being used into the entire business operations, right? The business shifts are happening using some of these technologies. In fact, it is very soon we will see an ecosystem in India where, you know, many of these technologies are being more put to use to ensure we recruit more consumers for brands as well as being engaged with these, you know, these consumers, right? You know, this has voiced and more because of the relevance of the voice we're talking. This will be a situation where, you know, the voice to access service on the internet. You know, we will see soon many, many organizations putting that to use in their business and the devices and as a concept how quickly the technology, you know, will evolve to make it a regular behavior, right? Many of this is evolving faster. We are seeing this already as one of the, you know, fast evolving space for marketers to try out as well as engage with consumers. And this is a continuous journey. Fantastic. Very important points there. I wish we had time to delve into each of them in detail, but perhaps that's for another day. What we've also seen PK with digital is digital is working at multi levels, right? There are companies, FMCG companies, for instance, that have adopted to e-commerce that have had to adopt e-commerce overnight. There are new brands which are in legacy industry, so to say, which are launched only online. There are digital first brands. We have seen so many of them that have come up in the last few months or perhaps the last two years. There is, you know, adoption of e-commerce that has been such an important aspect. And e-commerce is one area where, you know, the game has changed for companies across sectors. There is no industry which is not touched by e-commerce. And I know that WPP also has a very significant e-commerce practice. Tell me the changing landscape of how digital is being consumed by or being used by consumers and its impact on brands, obviously cannot leave the agency ecosystem untouched. Agencies have also had to kind of acquire skills very fast, have had to adopt very fast, unless you want to really become a relic of the past. What you have seen is that, you know, naturally agencies and brands have to go where consumers are going. What are the two or three things that you think the agency today needs to do? Or what are your learnings as a leader from the last 15 months of how your future is looking like over the next, you know, three, four years for an agency, advertising agency? I think these are exciting times. These are truly once in a lifetime experience which is seeing, you know, over the last so many generations. We have never seen a situation like this where the pandemic has come and influenced, you know, every level across and from livelihood to, you know, to building a future, everything has, you know, taken a different pattern and helped people to, you know, reach out the entire aspect, right? Any industry, I mean, health tech, of course, health care, wellness, etc., is a given. But the technology aspect into this is obviously making it more and more, you know, more and more faster, more and more convenient, more and more useful for people to work on, right? This is, again, a very vast subject. I think, as I mentioned earlier, there are lots of trends that are coming in. You know, I mentioned about the AI, AR, voice, programmatic aspect, which is now, you know, it's not any more new personalization, which continues to be relevant, you know, different formats, video marketing aspect, you know, shoppable content, you know, we talked about Ecom, there are T2C platforms, marketers that are actually working on influence of marketing and so on. I mean, imagine, you know, five years back, we probably did not have any of these, you know, any of these terminologies being used in the conversation, right? And that's all come in, especially in the last, you know, eight to 10 months. You know, again, as an ecosystem from an agency perspective, you know, our job, you know, for a purposeful communication for our clients is to enable our clients, to lead our clients, right? We need to be, you know, a couple of steps ahead, right? And being a leader, the responsibility comes on to shape the market in that order, right? So a lot more emphasis on how technology can be used becomes a key priority for all of us, right? A lot more emphasis on how we can help each other by developing each other, training each other, you know, learning becomes a key priority for all of us, right? I think it's also important to experience and in order to experience in this world, which is evolving, you've got to experiment. So taking some risks, you know, experimenting a few things, you know, actually, you know, earning a space for yourself to do a few mistakes if that is okay. However, you know, learning of those mistakes and using that and applying that to build for all of this becomes extremely critical. I think it's important to keep a close watch on the consumer base, understand what's happening in their life, deeply get insights on them, listen to them, hear them out, know what's going on. This is a scenario where, you know, in our country, we have a mixture of, you know, a mixture of aspects like lockdowns, which are happening in multiple geographies in different forms. So we have been tested in a continuous manner. So we genuinely feel that in all of this, the enablement of technology, the enablement of the, you know, adopting to different solutions and trying out every time actually helps to build in the newer solutions to make it more impactful. So we are in a continuous journey right now. We are still not in a, we can't even use the word post COVID yet, right? So this journey is more learning. We've got to really get into it. It is an exciting time. I think these are all newer things for people to learn and adopt to. So yes, these are a few things which we're doing within ourselves. We are also very concerned about how we can help our people as well as, you know, get diverse thinking and get diverse thoughts within it so that we build a stronger team to challenge ourselves, right? So these are a few things now, you know, which are currently. I think Mary rightly said the other day I was having a similar conversation with Amant Malik of ITC and two things he said stuck to me. One was that how they created a training program for the leadership team on digital because the youngsters know much more than some of the leadership team members do in terms of their adaptability and their usage, the skill level on digital. And the other thing he said to me which you also kind of reinforces about allowing your team pushing them to make mistakes, doing it, even if they make mistakes because digital is so new for everyone that you the only way to learn is by going out sort of, you know, experimenting. Let me go back to our topic of discussion today, which is voice here. And, you know, I know individual aspects of the report we have done, as well as the key aspects will be discussed in the sessions that follow this conversation. But I wanted to specifically talk to you about regionalization of voice. So what are the trends? Have you seen some of those are mentioned in the report but what's your sense on that because India is such a vast heterogeneous country across every sphere of our life now, you know, language has taken over, whether it is media or you know, consumer goods, language is the primary driving force of consumption. And what are the trends you've seen when it comes to language in the voice space. And just like, you know, how we keep saying that we probably not just one country we are a combination multiple countries, essentially because there are multiple languages, and you know, multiple culture, and you know, it's important to understand how the technology again is getting enabled here. I think the Indian Internet uses a fast adopting the search tool and finding comfort in regional languages. The engagement in local language is a fun way to communicate and even learn, right. We're also seeing already that some of the big tech companies and voice platform companies like Alex, Google and Geo. They are supporting regional languages, right. In fact, you know, the language is probably the faster way to get to the, you know, the heart of the country. So therefore, it could be a secret success for many brands. Many of us are observing this brands marketers, you know the entire system to this change in the consumer behavior. And I think there are multiple options and solutions that are emerging. Many of them you will see as examples in the in today's agenda and some of the cases that are and insides are also captured in the report. Fantastic. I've been already sent messages to wrap up the session since the other speakers are waiting. So before we go one last question, PK, I assume there's a lot of work on clients that is happening at Group M when it comes to voice. What are the initiatives Group M is specifically taken and how are you evangelizing, you know, voice as an ecosystem. I think, you know, it's a very interesting space. We feel it's a fantastic trend where many marketers can get, you know, larger impact and very useful to the effort they're putting for the brand growth. And the entire convenience of voice. We at WPP Mumbai campus we have rolled out an experiential voice lab that actually welcomed, you know, all clients and partners to come and experience the power of voice. In fact, that's a space which I would, you know, normally should also come over and see and experience that and it's a fantastic thing for again learning, you know, learning experience. We're also helping some of the world's biggest brands by using interactive voice ads to engage with the consumers on an increasingly in increasing scale, but actively evangelizing voice, you know, and the emerging tech by running cascading workshops, knowledge, different knowledge sessions from different experts. In fact, one of the example is the entire schematic voice technology was used to implement an interactive voice that campaign on the Ghana platform with over 250,000, you know, voice engagement in India. I'm sure you will hear, many of this case studies through the rest of the day. Fantastic. With that, let me thank you again for joining us thank you for collaborating with us to bring to curate this initiative. I hope we're able to meet physically sometime very soon and this entire episode is behind us. Back to you, Robin, and I look forward to the rest of the sessions, like all of us. Yeah, I would also like to thank the entire euphonium team and movie team for helping us together to put the report. And I wish everybody all the best and take care, you know, wish you good health and have a fantastic day. Thank you.