 straight into our next keynote speaker. Right here we have with us Mr. Varun Alag, co-founder and CEO Mama Earth, driven by the purpose and passion Varun Alag co-founded Ponasa Consumer Private Limited in 2016 with over 10 plus years of leadership excellence in sales and marketing. Sales and marketing roles with world renowned FMCG brands. Varun has mastered the art of building a brand and making it profitable. He will be joining us on his special address on how is technology disrupting the FMCG industry. I'm sure all of you are curious to know more about it. I'm gonna bring him right on screen, but don't forget to send in us your questions for Varun as well. A very warm welcome to you. Hi, hi everyone, Varun the scientist. Hey, thank you, Kyati for those kind words and introducing me. So happy to be here and sharing some of the learnings that we have had from our journey. Like Kyati said, I think I've spent about 10 years on the side of traditional FMCG brands and where the learnings which are present have been decoded over the last four to five decades. And they're sort of present there and that's what we were learning while we were a part of these ecosystems of Unilever, Coca-Cola, et cetera. And moving from there to this journey of building a digital-first brand has been phenomenal. It has been a great unlearning experience and as well as an amazing and very insightful learning experience for me personally. And I'll probably share some of those learnings today. And for me, it's really about imagining if I was to start this same business 10 years ago versus me starting this business when we did in 2016, and what are the large differences in 2006 versus 2016 strategy that would have been there? And most of those differences have been driven by technology, which is what I'm gonna talk about in this address. And so the number one thing that I would wanna talk about here is the democratization of media. There is, again, imagining let's say 2006 if we were to start this brand, the kind of media options that were available and the per unit cost of those media options was very high. You had to do a print advertising or you had to do a television spot. And the cost per unit of that media is very high as well as how that media reaches your specific consumer. And there was no real control over that targeting. You could talk it by geography and to some extent by a certain age cohorts. But that's about it, right? Most of your hands, media money will go based into spillage. Technology has democratized media. We were hearing our panelists in the last session talk about programmatic, talk about targeting, talk about now smart targeting solutions from Facebook and Google ecosystems through which you can actually reach out to absolutely relevant consumers. And you can, the unit cost that you spend on some of these pieces is far lower compared to what the traditional media solutions used to offer. So I think that is the one big piece that has happened. And it has helped us, for example, when we were starting at Mama, for us we wanted to reach out to evolved parents who were looking for better, safer, natural solution for their kids. And actively searching things like that. So for us using digital media, we could reach out specifically to this cohort without burning or using large amount of investments. So I think that is the first thing that has happened. The second big thing that technology and especially e-commerce as a distribution channel has been able to do for us is completely disrupt the largest moat which the industry had, which is numerical distribution, right? 10 years back, again, if I was doing this in 2006, then you would probably start from wherever you live. So you'll probably start from a good girl or a deli. You would be present in that cluster. You'd probably try and expand into another city in a year or so. And that's probably in the first three years you would do six metros and try to do it like that. And now all of that, and that's not the... And hence, reaching or matching some of the large distribution setups which have been created over the last four decades, it was almost impossible in that mode. But today, sitting out of one city with a warehouse just in Delhi, you have the ability to reach out to 30,000 pin codes across the country, which give you the reach of any deeply penetrated numerical distribution brand which exists in the country. Especially if you're priced at a slight premium, then it reaches out to almost everyone who are your serviceable audience, which takes away the headache of saying that, okay, you have to find and you have to work with constraints of working in this market only. Then you can actually open yourself up to finding the right consumers who are looking for the propositions wherever they are because you have ability to fulfill. So that barrier of deep distribution has been taken down by technology. So that's the second big thing of how technology is disrupting FMCG as a channel. We today, from our own website, service almost 11,000 pin codes in a month. And that is the kind of scale you can sort of reach just through your own channel. Imagine if we put together our own channel plus Amazon and then I kind of flip cart, that scale would be immensely high. I think the third thing that is a big change around brands and storytelling is that even 10 years ago, when we used to be in marketing ecosystems, the number one driver for a brand purchase almost always used to be word of mouth, right? Second could be your television media or your in-store advertising, et cetera, whenever you used to do what is driving road for you. But there was no way or a structural way to actually get that word of mouth to spread, right? Now, with social media, which is really built on that principle of spreading stories, right? That that's what you like to do on that media. You've got an avenue where if your story is worth spreading, then you have a medium through which it can be spread to a million people. And you can actually get that word of mouth to work for you and you can design it to work for you. So that's the third big thing in my view, technology has done, which has made brand building and spreading brand stories and hence building purposeful brands and far more easier than it was about 10 years back. And I think another thing that is clearly happening is consumers as a cookie. Then 10 years back for us consumers were pen profiles. We used to sort of create, okay, Sudha is a housewife who's 25-year-old, lives in XYZ and used to define our consumer in psychological or demographic manner. But now that segmentation could actually, there could be millions of such cohorts that can actually exist for you. And you don't need to worry about, just, okay, this is the one cohort that I'm targeting. And you can actually create a strategy which is far more personalized to the thousands of different cohorts that you actually potentially can serve. And that is what technology has been able to sort of do to us. So as a brand, you don't create one specific cohort and say, okay, this is my consumer. And you create multiple such cohorts. And you say, this is the kind of consumer who will react to this kind of messaging. This is the kind of consumer who will react to this kind of messaging and hence create funnels accordingly. That's the big change in difference that has sort of been bottomed because of technology. I think another big thing that technology has done and disrupted for this industry is price. So we'll all remember the potlour's framework where there are four P's of marketing that is proposition, place, pack and price. And in most of the times, price used to be a silent lever. And in a marketing strategy, you would only talk about price when you're launching a product and hence you're getting your pricing strategy right. But then you would put it out and sort of forget it. And in between, there might be some times in office, etc, when you run price promos and get some loyalty updates going. But with technology and with presence on multiple platform, consumer are getting into habit of actually checking for deals on four to five different platforms. And they're not looking for cheaper stuff but they are clearly value seeking. And they are, in fact, we say millenials are the largest deal hunting generation that there ever was. And hence price has actually become an active lever. How you gamify price, how you make them feel that they've gotten a deal here has actually become an active play which brands will need to do. Something that was not happening in the earlier times. So 10 years back, that wasn't the case. And another thing that I believe and probably the last thing that I talk about from a perspective of the big trends which are changing and is the power of data. Earlier at best, what one would get in terms of brand data and sales data and what very, very top line metrics, right? You would, on sales data, you would probably get volumes by geography or by sub-segments. And in case of brand data, you would probably reach out to about 1500 odd people as a sample and try to create a national picture out of that 1500 sample as to how the world sort of operates, right? Today, especially with DDC brands, we've got information for millions of consumers and where we know how they are buying, what they are buying, how they are buying is evolving. So that they are able to serve them in a much better manner. And we are able to show them content which is far more relevant to them. And we are able to share offers which are far more relevant to them rather than us pre and pre strategy which is what usually used to happen in a traditional environment. And hence, clearly the more data that you have in the longer term and as a brand, it strengthens your ability to win. And the more data that you have as a brand, it strengthens your ability to innovate and more importantly, deliver on-trend innovations which are loved by our consumers because you understand them and hence are innovating in the direction that they would like you to innovate. So data is clearly going to add significant power to brands which are driven by technology and digital first. So these five then is what I'd say are the big insights of how technology is disrupting FMCG, democratizing media and unparalleled reach because of e-commerce and stories about spreading and getting spread through socials and consumers as a cookie and hence millions of segments which can be created and pricing becoming an active lever rather than a passive lever and data giving you power to personalize like there was never existing before. And thank you so much for hearing me out and I've made this quick and simple so that we can use it in all of our businesses. And thank you so much for the team to give me this opportunity. Thank you, Arun. It was lovely hearing you on but we have a lot of questions from our audiences. Particularly about Mama Earth, its marketing strategy and so much more. So I'm gonna quickly try and take as many we can in the next 10 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes that we have for your session. So first question comes about the COVID pandemic. So what kind of change has the COVID-19 pandemic brought to your business and marketing strategies and what key emerging trends do you expect in the near future? So honestly, when it started, like all businesses, we were extremely worried. Revenues suddenly fell from 100 to 20 in the month of April. And that said, we very early on started seeing trends and which was seeming extremely favorable to us. So the trend that when people are not going to step out and they're also going to be a little afraid of stepping out to stores to buy and there is a lockdown going when e-commerce is clearly going to thrive. We could clearly see trends that as people were spending time at home, they were saving a couple of hours from travel and most of that time was getting invested in watching content online because of which the engagement of content watching was increasing. And finally, when these people are there watching content and they also see communications that will help convert. We could also see a lot of conservative approach from our competitors who were taking a step back because their largest channels were impacted. All of this put together, we decided that we wanted to see this as an opportunity and hence we've been extremely aggressive during this period and in terms of communicating about our brand purpose in terms of ensuring that our innovation funnel continues. And we even latched onto some of the more innovative trends and ingredients like, for example, vitamin C which is known for immunity was something which was being searched for by a lot of consumers and we innovated around that range. So I think we have used this as a major opportunity. Of course, and that has led to significant growth for us over pre-COVID period. We are all more than two times during the lockdown itself over what we were in pre-COVID. And we of course had to also change a few strategies on supply chain perspective. For example, localized are manufacturing a lot more. Increase our spokes when it comes to distribution and a number of almost two new warehouses were opened during the lockdown period itself to ensure that if one was getting impacted because of lockdown, there was others from which we could service our consumers. So I think overall, it has actually been a boon for us. We have seen a lot of tier three and beyond consumers who have come and gotten associated with us during this period. And I believe most of this habit which has been created and of buying online, discovering online, being able to see and read things about the product that you're buying, being able to see and read reviews about the products that you're buying are things which make your shopping far more powerful and hence they will sustain and not go away even after the vaccine sort of comes into play. Absolutely. So another question which I'm sure a lot of new brands that are coming up, want to hear from you is that how difficult for you was to rise in such a competitive market which already has brands like HUL, et cetera. Also, of course, it's a comparative market, no doubt. And that said, if you understand your consumers well and if you can read the trends that are sort of in the market properly. So for example, clearly clean label and looking for more natural ingredient-based products and it's a large trend that is there in the market. It has been there honestly since Patanjali. A lot of players have tried, large players have also tried to write that trend. We clearly recognize that trend. We recognize there was a need for delivery of these products through e-commerce as a channel and that channel was going to grow extensively. We recognize that as a trend and we recognize that the communication inside the millennials trust other millennials more than they trust brands. And how do you sort of create a communication strategy around that? So I mean, combination of all of that, friend, there'll always be space for creating new brands in the market. And there'll always be new brands who will come and disrupt the older ones because the consumers are changing, right? And we see that in every category, every decade, there are challenger brands that will keep rising. And we believe we'll create multiple such challenger brands over the next decade. Right, so there is one more question about the new age technology, but we'll come to that in just a bit. I wanna ask you first about, you already touched upon it, but maybe you can elaborate on this, that our audience is asking, can you please take us through the marketing strategy for Mama Earth? According to you, what kind of message should be put out by brands considering these sensitive times? So honestly, I think our strategy, even before COVID was the same, it just resonated really well during this time, right? So we are a company which believes that this century belongs to buy-based brands and it belongs to purpose-based brands. And people, consumers, buy into your wife and consumers buy into your brand because they believe that when they are seen with the brands that they believe in, it says something about them. And that's why they buy into brands. So that is why from the beginning, we've been very clear that we wanna tell a purposeful story, which is our story in the product level it is all about. So for Mama, that story is about goodness inside and that's how we summarize that story. But on a product level, it's all about there is goodness inside the product, right? There is no toxins in the product and hence there is goodness inside. On a process level, we are a plastic-positive brand. We recycle more than we consume. When we've got an initiative called Plant Goodness where every time we order from our website, your order gets linked to a tree that we have planted. And you can actually see the picture of that tree, see the geolocation of that tree where it is planted. So every time you're making a choice of buying a Mama product, you're not just doing good to yourself but you're doing good to the world, right? So it's good for me, good for we. Now, when there are things like that, you can create around your brand friend. That's the world that you can invite a lot of consumers into which is what consumers are looking forward to. And so honestly, that's the biggest thing that we believe has worked for us. Creating the right brand construct, creating the right brand story and then using all relevant kind of communication mediums to take that message out. So medium, we won't talk in just a bit because we have a question about that as well. But I wanna come back to asking you about that are you deploying any new age technology at present and how has it helped enhance your business efficiency? One of our audience asked. I mean, I don't know how to define new age technology because I mean, new age could mean last five years which means everything that a Facebook or a Google ecosystem has developed from or new age could also mean something that has come in the last six months and which could be how you're using a UPI extensively or how you're using messenger gen extensively or how you're using some of the CRM technologies in a better manner. So I think our view is technology is evolving and as long as a brand or as a company, you're aware and paranoid about ensuring that you will reach your consumer or you will use the best technology that exists to provide the best experience to your consumers and you will keep evolving on that path. And of course we are using a lot of these technologies that we talked about. We are more than 85% online business even today and that uses a lot of these tools and technologies including all kind of media targeting. Right. So now coming to the medium. So how has social media been helpful in engaging with your consumers and which platform has yielded maximum results for the brand? So from a social media perspective, I'd say, you know, so there is community building on social media and if you look at that, I think Instagram is currently the platform where you have the best organic reach and hence from a social community building perspective and really that's the platform which has worked best for us. And then from a paid performance advertising and using social media as an advertising medium perspective and we believe Facebook is still one of the best funders which is available because of the size and a doubt that ecosystem provides. And so that's where that fund has worked best for us. Right. And when it comes to influencers and using them to sort of tell your story or talk about something new that you have done and we do that across platforms and wherever the reach of the influencers or storytelling of the influences is strong and we partner with them across platforms. So I think that's how other three ways in which we're using social media and what the channels are. Brilliant. I think such great points coming in. I think this interaction with the audience was brilliant because we spoke about purpose-driven marketing. The brand has to have a purpose. The story needs to be given out in that same sync with that purpose. Also at the same time, talking about how we can, you know, inculcate technology in it and target better to our audiences, creating community through social media. I think it was a brilliant conversation, Varun. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. And if you have little more time, you can join our online conversation. I'm sure audiences would love to interact with you a lot more. We are on Twitter using our hashtag India Brand Conclave. So saying this for our audiences as well. If you have more questions for Varun, go ahead and tweet and use the hashtag so we can converse more online. Thank you, Varun, for your time and effort here. Thank you so much. Thank you, Kati. Thank you for having me. Take care.