 Please welcome Mr. Sanjay Behar, can you share his views? Thank you very much, Madam Birla, an honour to listen to you and really raising the purpose of the entire marketing fraternity. Thank you so much and we are privileged to be here along with you. Anurag, a novel congratulations, this is the seventh edition, I did note that of this award. It takes a lot to be persistent and consistent, consistently acknowledging the effort of the entire fraternity and actually raising the standard. I am actually delighted to know the hunger for the feedback that you and your team have to continuously improve the standards of such awards. Congratulations Venki for an awesome book, I did obviously read it at the preview stage and I did the forward for your book. I think it's the need of the hour, your book, I think it will really go a long way in giving some structured framework to something which is so relevant in today's era. And all of us don't we love indestructible brands and still we have brands under threat all the time. So thank you Suresh for being here, honour to be sharing the stage with you. Thank you Rahul, I think I found the keynote again to be extremely powerful and insightful that you did. Thank you all the jury colleagues who are there. I thought that I have about 10 minutes and Anurag told me a qualifier as long as you're not verbose you have your 10 minutes here. So I will really restrict myself to that and share my perspective. I think the process is pretty clear as to how we went through but I wanted to share my thoughts on today's brands and how they're getting challenged. But very quickly let me try and summarize the core essence of my thoughts there. Look I think the fundamental change that has happened is that it's no more the pace of change. I think we all are and especially in India we're very very good at handling pace of change. I think the quality of change is dramatically different in the last few years. All of us have been marketed. I think most of you would be working in influential positions within your organisations in whether it's brand marketing, advertising, communication, media. And the one difference that I see is no more the change actually doesn't worry me at all. Actually lack of change worries me if at all it is there. But what worries me is the quality and the quantum of impact this change is today having. Now and once you reflect on that it really is the environment that today's market is brand custodians and businesses are operating in. The fundamental thing is that change has always been largely predictable till about a few years back. It's changed to largely unpredictable change. You just don't know things happen despite you having a great brand, a very strongly likable brand. Think about Kodak, think about Nokia, think about FMCG, some of the stalwarts, Colgate, Hindustan Leaver, Proctor Gamble. Now by no stretch of imagination any marketer can say that these brands can be shaken up in no time. And all of these brands are either cease to exist or some of them have been truly shaken up by the way things are happening today. So that really is the point to reflect what's happening. How do we really take and embrace this environment and still continue to be relevant? There are brands which all of us swear by today don't exist and yet there are brands which we swear by and only are getting stronger by the day. So there must be some method that the successful brands are doing and there must be some learnings from brands that have ceased to exist or are struggling. And that really is the essence I think we should take from such platforms of exchange of our ideas. And I would like to thank Exchange for Media not just to create this platform but many such platforms where the community comes together and exchanges such ideas there. And just to reflect on that it's not just in a business context. Think about politics, economic environment today. A year back we did not have a world with Trump and we did not have a world with the issue of Qatar and how it's really unfolding the whole geopolitical economy of some of the strongest economic states in that region. We did not have Brexit to this extent or we probably had a stronger Brexit and now it's a weaker Brexit. The whole negotiation table of European economy has completely changed today. So there are political developments. The refugee crisis across the world was not as prevalent as this. In fact, if you really put the 10 most defining things that are happening today in the world did not exist 12 months back in anybody's imagination. But they are there. They are shaping the way the world is going to be changing. And that's what I meant by the quantum of the quality of change that we're seeing or even economic and close a home. Let's look at some of the vocabulary that Indians have today. It didn't exist demonetization as a word. At least it was never in my lexicon my vocabulary. It didn't occur. And suddenly it was possibly the most written word in the last 12 months by all of us. GST. Yes, we have heard about it. But this GST has been happening for what lies right from 2001, 2002. I have personally met up people who have been the manuscript creators of GST in 2005, 2008. And we have had meetings about recommendations from various industries I used to represent at that point of time. But it was never reality. And today we stand in a different India. Things like that. Or even things like digital or mobile payments. There are certain brands today which are going to get recognized as top... In fact, if we take the top 50 brands, I think 15 to 20 brands did not exist about five years back in India. Then the top 50 brands in this country today. Things like... Think about ATM. Think about BEAM. All these have really, really come about in absolutely. And that's the largely unpredictable change that marketeers need to be seized with. Not just marketeer, business people. I agree with Rahul that CU is eventually the custodian of the brand that we do. And hence, there is one fundamental change that we need. And that fundamental change is to move from operational agility, which we used to value as business people a lot. Saying, okay, if you're fast enough, are you fast enough? Can you adapt to the environment? Can you improve? Efficiency used to be credited in the world which had scarce resources. I think the whole paradigm has changed. I don't think fast enough is good enough. I don't think adapting is any more relevant anymore. Because the change is very different. How much can a yellow-black cab, which was a lifeline of Bombay, adapt to a threat that Ola or Uber is giving? Is it about adaptation? No, it is not about that at all. They just can't. It's not about efficiency. It's not about fast. It's a different business model. So the businesses need to and brands need to understand. It's not about operational agility anymore. There is no premium to that. It's about strategic agility. Do we have courage as business leaders to change our strategy and be agile in our strategy? And agility is not an organization capability. Agility is a mindset. It's about saying that I, as the leader of a business, stood there and committed to a strategy, and I'm ready to change it because the world keeps changing so rapidly, or something happened which we didn't predict. Do we have really courage to take that on and change our strategy? So we need to base our strategy on things that do not change. And unfortunately, we are basing. Most of us make this mistake, including us, have done it in the past. We base our strategy on things that keep changing. And what keeps changing? Let me just give you that. And think about your own organization and your spheres. We base our strategy on business models, our processes, our customer preferences, product technologies, competition. All these are things which decide what my strategy has to be. And any and all of them can change. What doesn't change is our people, purpose, values, spirit, brands, fixed assets, retail, offices. These are the things that don't change. Now, can we just totally transition from where we are basing our strategy to a completely new way of looking at where my vision has to be really positioned? And that's really the change that really is required. And as brand custodian, I have only one message. I think as brand custodian, you're also the customer custodians of the organization. And customer custodians, and that's what I think Rahul was making a point, are the ones who are the closest to the customer in terms of mirroring exactly how the behaviors are changing or are influencing to change those behaviors. It is our responsibility to get the customer in the boardroom. It's our responsibility that every board decision or top leadership decision that takes place has to pass through if at all it was more important. I think it's today. It has to go through the filter of your consciousness of having taken the environment into the content because you're the closest to the customer. And things don't happen while we may say that suddenly this is a disruption which has happened. They don't happen so fast. Kodak actually patented the technology of digital camera in 1975. 1975, 20 years before anybody took up that technology, they had a patent. Motorola was the first company to make wireless and they had a 15-year head start over any other player, even Nokia, to have registered wireless technology, experimented it, made phones before Nokia even thought of making mobile phones. But then things changed so rapidly. So all these things have been persisting. Is natural organic as a proposition in FMCG new to this industry? There have been players, Dabers, Marikos, Leavers, Ayush Brand has been there for a decade. And then comes Patanjali. Somebody has to be accountable in these organizations as brand marketing custodians as to what are the learnings out of this experience. I think that's the point I really wanted to leave you with and some contrast. People talked about, I think Venki also spoke about, I think Panel spoke about, there is a threat and there is an opportunity. And I fully believe in that. I think in marketing industry, we need eternal optimists. We need realists. VUCA is a term that actually comes as a scary term. It's saying volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, that's the environment. And we take a lot of pride. Man, we are really, really braving it up. But that's one facet of the point. The way I think I would like urge each one of you to look at the VUCA is a completely new VUCA. I think, yes, it is volatile, but it's vibrant. Yes, it's uncertain, but it's unreal opportunity today. It never happened there. It's complex, but it's crazy. It's ambiguous, but it's an astounding opportunity today. I think so there are massive contexts. If you really start seeing vibrant, crazy, unreal, astounding, that's the way you start defining VUCA. It all seems, oh my God, there's so much more that we all can do as brand custodians, marketing, and business leaders there. The whole world has moved from disruption to disruption. I think Deepika spoke about this whole thing of destroying and then recreating. I think that's the important thing, challenge every day, destroy and create. It's not disruption, it's disruption and disruption. I think that's the new normal that is coming up. I already talked about this whole point of operational to strategic agility. That's the new normal I think that we are getting into in today's world. Look, if everything seems under control, I believe that we are not going fast enough. Let the chaos persist. It persists and we keep running faster. If it is under control, there is some problem with the organization. This is what I can tell you, some problem with the brand as it exists today. So I think that's all that I wanted to share. The process has been pretty much well elaborated. Stage one, stage two, stage three. I must compliment again the team for putting together Sonya and the entire team here. All of these people have put a lot of effort to really make this a very objective process. I was very fortunate to have jury colleagues from such diverse backgrounds with superb and a great amount of insights from various industries really coming in and raising the quality of the selection process there. I must appreciate in a college the 300 entries getting shortlisted to 150 and we got into the process at the stage when they were about, I think, 150 entries. Two then shortlisted them to 50. And you all made, whosoever is representing various brands here, you all made our process very enjoyable. Left us with a lot of learning for ourselves in our own organizations it was quite strong actually case for 150 brands. So I must appreciate and acknowledge all the 150 nominees who are there and I must congratulate the 50 who are going to be winning now. Thank you very much and look forward to the winners.