 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr. Prashant Kumar and Mr. Mohit Barman on stage. Hi, good morning everybody. I think we already started the day with some fantastic thoughts of the entire, you know, let's play as a theme. I just thought, you know, listening to the speakers and keeping to the array of speakers which we have through the day. Let's take some pause on this entire subject of, you know, building a sporting nation, right? And as Gopi Sir mentioned, I think it's due with the entire ecosystem of, you know, building sports. And if you look at in the recent years, I think India has made significant achievements. And it's not just in finding signals where we have progressed. I think Gopi Sir mentioned about us winning the Thomas Cup, right? I think Manikapatri Bhatra is back on to some fantastic performance on table tennis, right? I think we had Sudhanshu Rudrakshpatan, who was the, you know, air rifle world champion on shooting. So it's not just cricket, right? It's in many other sports. We have some fantastic medalists across Commonwealth Games and Nation Games. We have, you know, great achievement happening in Neeraj Chopra, who actually won an Olympic medal for us and continue to have remarkable performance winning a silver medal recently. So, you know, these are all great signals to see how we see performances in multiple sports arenas is actually building in the nation. And why is sports so important in the growth of a nation? It's an obvious point, right? And the obvious point is, even in many of our offices, we have a table tennis board. Now, you know, people do spend their time playing table tennis. But we also have multiple, you know, sports championships in building an organization. And that's because there is immense team work which comes in. Immense positivity that comes in. And as Akin Kuppis had mentioned, dopamine comes in building some great positivity in building not just organization, but, you know, fantastic nation. So all these signals also, you know, make us ponder to think that how is this entire business of sports shaping up, right? Because one is on sports, one is on looking at signals on how is the performance of multiple, you know, sports personalities across different tournaments and leagues. And as we look at it, we have multiple leagues in the country today, right? We obviously had the entire IPL, we had the ISL, we had the Kabadi League, we have the Cocoa League, we also had the badminton league, we have the table tennis league. We also had a tennis league, right? So multiple sports league starts coming into it. And that is where the business of sports have also started evolving. But in all of this, it will be a great pleasure for me to have the person who has been involved in the corporate world as well as also been closely associated and invested and committed in building sports in the country. So to set things rolling, let me introduce, we have an esteemed industry luminary amongst us. He is lead corporate India's chairman of Darbar India Limited, the world's largest Ayurvedic and natural healthcare company. On the sporting side, he is a promoter and chairman of KPH Dream Cricket Private Limited, which runs two successful cricket teams, Kings 11 Punjab in the IPL and Saint Lucia Kings in the Caribbean Premier League. He has had a ringside view of the sporting landscape, changes that India has witnessed and has been involved with other sports like badminton and hockey. Let's speak to Mr Mohit Burman, please. Hi Mohit. Thank you for inviting me. Good morning to everyone here. Let me ask the obvious question which many may want to start a conversation with you. You have been very much involved in the entire corporate world. You have been in the driving and shaping the entire FMCG sector and then we also see you getting into the sports world. It will be interesting to hear from you how did this entire sports aspect come in there and what was your vision and how have been the things. It's nice of you to give me such a warm introduction but my FMCG experience is not as long as Daba has been here, Daba has been around for 140 years, under fifth generation. But in the sporting arena, yes, we were one of the first pioneers and when the IPL or when the cricket league was touted by BCCI to be launched, we felt that it was an opportunity and at that time although it was a little shooting in the dark, but cricket being such an important game in India, we thought that and BCCI being the pioneers of cricket globally, we felt that something like this would be popular. We were the first ones to actually one of the first lot to bid for a team and we've been involved in IPL right from inception. I think it's the 14th or the 15th year this year. Great. That actually tells us about the intro to the journey. But when we look at specifically on IPL, it's more than a decade, it's almost one and half decades of IPL coming in. IPL has actually produced not just the sport league, it's almost an industry across the entire ecosystem. And from that angle, how do you see the entire building of, even if you look at cricket as a standalone sport, what has been the IPL aspect, many stakeholders within IPL, what has been an experience and what is your point of view on that? Well, it all sounds very rosy now, but if you go back 14, 15 years, firstly we had no idea what we were getting into. BCCI and the chairman of the IPL at that time, their marketing was amazing and they were able to get all of us in a room and convince us that a league in cricket would be hugely successful. And obviously, all the big names showed up and we were lucky to get a team, but after that, again, it wasn't so easy. The first year, we couldn't get any sponsors. I mean, anyone we went to go and meet, they just said this can't work. People go to watch cricket, they go to watch India, Pakistan, or they go to watch the ashes. Forget it, this isn't going to work. So most of the teams showed heavy losses. The central revenue also wasn't that much at that time and the auction, the player cost that was set, but in the beginning, there was a lot of debate on whether there were obviously some rich IPL owners and some not so rich and we felt that if we have an auction bidding with eight egotistical people in a room, it's not going to be even. So some of us had recommended they don't have an open auction but have a closed auction and the player will get whatever he deserves and it'll be all even teams. But at that time, they wanted to market and so they had us all doing an auction and they realized it might be uneven and they put up max player purse, but that max player purse was so high that if you spend that amount of money, you'd bleed. So anyway, the first year was, of course, a huge success and the second year, when we went back to going back to the sponsors, again, we had a bit of a problem. Actually, the problem with the whole IPL was that it was only a seven or eight week tournament. So during the time when IPL happens, there's a lot of traction, there's a lot of eyeballs and then suddenly for seven, eight months, it's all quiet. And then the second year when we went, yes, yes, there was a little bit of demand but the problem again happened, elections happened, we had to move it to South Africa. Again, excuse for the sponsors, South Africa is not our main market, we can't go. So another every year of losses. So this continued, this continued for many years and then on the sixth or the seventh year, then we realized that the only way to kind of break even, by then you had two or three bankruptcies, you had two or three people who had to leave the tournament and then on the seventh or eighth year, remember, two teams got barred for two years. So it was a volatile journey and on the BCC side, BCCI side also, there was a lot of upheaval but then we figured that the only way this is going to work and also in the beginning, none of us really knew how to run a team. So we were hiring people from overseas who then were coming and then filling up the management with their friends and family from overseas and in the beginning the attitude was, we didn't know, so we were all kind of being made a fool out of. But then you realized on the sixth and seventh year that you can run a good team without spending so much money, without spending so much on players. So we as a team for Job King started to spend the least on the players. So then we started to break even but then there was a catch-22 situation. We didn't spend on the players, the coach used to say, you know, you don't spend on the players, how do you expect us to win? The CEO used to come and say that, you know, how do you expect me to get sponsors when you don't win? So it was a little bit of a 360 degree catch-22 situation. Though by the way, 2014, the year we came to the finals was the year we spent the least on the players. So then on the tenth year, the media rights went up dramatically. So the central revenue basically kind of covered all the expenses that needed to be done. So it's only in the tenth year that each team started to really make money. So you can imagine in cricket if it takes ten years to make money on other spots, how long that will take? Yeah, that brings a good point. Because the perseverance and the commitment actually, you know, it's not just on the players, right? I mean, it's also the entire ecosystem. I mean, we see a lot more sports marketing professionals today in the country. And I think, especially a league like IPL also has brought in, you know, a kind of, you know, a desire for people to get into sports marketing specifically. I mean, we have, you know, multiple institutes today in the country today who's actually offering these courses as well. And we see actually, you know, youngsters actually wanted to take these kind of specializations. But, you know, the point of, even in cricket, it took a lot of time. Makes it, you know, the non-cricket side. I mean, you have been involved in batminton. You have been involved in hockey. Your family is involved in cocoa. And when you look at from the business of sports and that, as well as, you know, how we can actually stay committed for long, you know, is there any point which you have noticed which you would like to share? See, sports, see, sports has to be really inculcated, you know, from school and from the grassroots rebel. You can't just, you know, you can't just have leagues and expect, you know, people to come and watch it and people and kids to actually, you know, follow the sport or to be, or to desire to play that sport. You know, we left, historically, of course, you know, I mean, we all played sports in schools but it was never, it was never a priority for, you know, parents to actually, you know, make their children, you know, take it as, take sports as a profession. Whereas, you know, in the US, UK, it's, you know, a lot of parents push their kids to take sports as a profession. And therefore, when I studied in the, when I studied in the UK and the US, you know, we used to play a lot of sports, different sort of sports in schools. And, you know, a lot of the, then a lot of these, a lot of the students used to get sports scholarships and, you know, go overseas and, you know, get their education taken care of financially because they were good sports, they were good sports, kind of professional, not professional but sports athletes, athletes. And, but in India, it was never done that way. Even, so when, when the IPL became very popular, then every sports federation wanted to start a league, you know, without really kind of, the idea was unfortunately, you know, the dollar signs or the money, it wasn't like, you know, let's promote sport and, and, and, you know, try and get more and more kids involved in this. The idea was, let's do a league because, you know, God, PCC has making so much money, so why can't we? And you had a situation like, you know, the hockey league started and, you know, it, again, you know, they put a great board together and sold it as Hockey's our national sport and, you know, we, we as corporates, as people should, you know, kind of, you know, support it. I mean, Hockey's our national sport, please, you know, take me to two schools where they play hockey. Stop, just stop a couple of kids and ask them to give you any hockey player's names. How is it our national sport? For a sport to be very, and then again, it ran for three, four, five years and then folded up. You had, you had the, you had the badminton league which was, again, became popular. It's very important that, you know, a sport can only become popular if, if, if there are some icons that, that, you know, everyone can look up to. And luckily we had a couple of badminton icons so you did get a lot of audience to come in. It was hugely popular. But then again, there were the people, the, the federation that did the badminton league, another federation came and said that we are the right federation. They sued this federation, that federation sued that federation. I mean, as a franchise owner, what the hell? I mean, I don't know what's going on myself. So the problem is that even our federation's, you know, are controlled by, you know, politicians, bureaucrats, you know, and not, and those federation's need, you know, sports people to actually, you know, give a direction where to go. Not just, you know, not just people who want to maximize, you know, the sport as a, as a, as a business or a revenue. Yeah, I think you made, you know, fantastic point, especially on the fact that sometimes, you know, we say that sports is all about stars. Right? I mean, if you have some great icons playing, people see that. Right? But I think, you know, a league like IPL also gave us an opportunity to create many more stars. Right? Now, what I'm getting into is, you know, we've got the women's IPL coming. Right? And I think there again, you know, to support not just the entire league, but I think as a sport itself, you know, the commitment that the ecosystem or the stakeholders of the ecosystem puts in in creating, you know, stars out of multiple sports, which brings into the question of, well, how do you see the future of non-cricut sports? Right? Before we get into the women's, you know, sports, but non-cricut sports shaping up. Well, I mean, it's, you know, it's been a, it's been a dramatic change as, as the esteemed speaker, you know, said before I came on the dias. I mean, sports is, I mean, has gradually, you know, taken center stage in a country like ours where, you know, the largest populist country hardly have any, you know, as I said, sports icons globally. So I think it's, I think with the whole IPL and with the other sports leagues, you know, have actually put a little bit of interest as well as now corporates, you know, are spending money, you know, I know for us as a corporate, we are putting some of our CSR money into developing different sports and giving, you know, the tier two, tier three, you know, villages an opportunity to play sports. So I think we are heading towards the right direction. I mean, we're still a long way away because if you look at sporting nation, you look at the Olympics, you know, half the medals are basically gymnastics, you know, aquatics and those sort of sports. We don't have any, we don't have any Indian, you know, in, in playing in, or, you know, in those sports. So, you know, we, of course, you know, we, as someone mentioned earlier, we did well in the, you said we did, we got a couple of medals in the Commonwealth Games, you know, we've got one or two in the, in the Olympics. But if you look at, you know, the population we have, the, you know, the, the kind of level that we, we should be, the amount of more medals or the type of people we should be producing in terms of competing in, in these sporting. We're still very far away and, you know, I appreciate that, you know, we're heading towards the right direction, but I think it'll take some time. Great. So I have a last question to ask. I almost ended the next question, which is, what do you, what is your opinion on IPL women's league? No, I think, I think, you know, it's the right time to do it. I think if you look at what's happening globally, there is, you know, more demand and to watch, you know, women's sports. I mean, if you look at a similar, similar sort of tournament, they've started in the UK, which is hundreds. They have a women's match as well as, you know, the men's match. So I think it's the right time and, you know, and kudos to BCCI that they've actually, you know, done the media rights before people, they've asked people to come and bid for franchises. So it gives everyone a kind of, you know, some, some sort of direction on what side of, on how the business can shape up. So I mean, as, as, as a, as a team, as Punjab you know, we will, you know, of course bid for one. Let's see, you know, you know, how it goes in terms of the auction. All the best to that, Mohit. Thank you. And many thanks. But before we thank the audience, any questions from the audience? Yeah, that is one. Well, you know, I mean, I, I've, I've actually really felt proud that some of the, some of our, you know, sort of Indian sports have become very popular. Like, I mean, Kabaddi, if you look at Kabaddi, I mean, none of us before the league would have happened would have actually, of course, all of us played in school, but none of us, you know, knew any player's names. And, you know, it's given an opportunity even for a game, you know, which is, you know, so, so like, so Indian and so in our grassroots that, you know, players from those, from that sport is now earning so much. So, you know, as a family, we've, we've, we've started the Cocoa League. We had our first season last year. So I think, I think more Indian sports will, will, will actually pave the way for our country. Great. I think there are no other questions. Thank you so much. We shall be taking rest of the questions online, offline. Thank you so much for putting up that interesting conversation before all of us. Mr Kumar and we have ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together and thank our speakers here on stage, Mr Kumar and Mr Barman. And I would request Ms Priyanka Bhodoriya to kindly join us on stage. She is Associate Director for Exchange for Media Group to kindly felicitate both of these gentlemen with our token of appreciation. Thank you so much for sparing our time and joining us here at the inaugural edition of Let's Play Sports Marketing Summit. A big round of applause. Please give it up for Mr Prashant Kumar, CEO of South Asia Group M and Mr Mohit Barman, Chairman of Dabur India Limited. Thank you very much.