 Let me call upon the very first speaker, the keynote address given by Mr. Chandru Kalru. Please put your hands together. It represents a legacy brand that was established almost seven decades ago and continues to be one of the leading players in the category. It's a strong market presence and it's a testament to how brand TTK has managed to build a relatable brand story over the years rooted in innovation and consumer centricity. Please welcome Mr. Chandru Kalru, managing director TTK Prestige on stage to share how TTK Prestige brand story has evolved over the years and more in this keynote session will be by him. So thank you so much for being here, please. The audience is yours. And let me also remind you TTK Prestige has also become 1.8 billion dollar company and you should give a big round of applause for that. Please thank you. Thank you for that and good morning everybody. Media for having thought it fit to call me for this keynote address and I hope it's of some use. I'm just merely going to tell our story, nothing else. Can I have the clicker please? Yeah, so as it says from pressure cookers to total kitchen solutions, a small snippet. The pressure cooker was invented by a French man called Dennis Papin and we got the pressure cooker in 1955 by importing it from Prestige of UK. So it was a French product which we got imported from UK and we were pioneers in this category. Pressure cookers didn't exist but I think the need was maximum in India at that point in time because we were energy starved. We were a poor country by any standard and here was a extremely alien product that we brought to the market which could be dangerous, which was different and we didn't have mass media advertising those days. So what we did was we spent the next three four years, actually the next 15 years, going from village to village, town to town in a van, showing a movie on 16 mm on the road and then demonstrating this product. That is how we marketed this product which today has 90 plus percent penetration in urban household in urban India and over 45 percent presence in entire country for all households. So that's that's the story of TTK Prestige with pressure cookers and we started manufacture in 1959. Used to be called TT private limited in those days TTK Prestige and we started with manufacture in old Madras road in Bangalore. What used to be next to the tin factory and now is that factory doesn't exist anymore because Bangalore outgrew us and that is where we started manufacture in 1959. Largely we were again short of aluminium, aluminium was a controlled commodity and therefore if we could get more aluminium we could make more pressure cookers. That is how it was. So we decided that we will largely concentrate on south and our the second person to bring in pressure cookers was Hawkins Cookers Limited and they were largely concentrating on the non-south. So this is how the market got polarized aside of the fact that food habits also dictated what kind of pressure cookers people used. So 1981 actually I'm sorry that's the typo like Naval said was the invention of the gasket release system or GRS that is when that innovation happened and gasket release system was a invention which was outside of what Prestige UK had done. So UK was supposed to give us all the technology at that time and all that but this was something that we did and it actually made the cooker completely safe. That was the whole idea and the articulation as Naval said in his in his opening remarks was because it was also a time when the husband bought things for his wife and therefore in that context he because he was concerned about her safety went and by goes and the dealer recommends that you buy something that keeps your wife completely safe if you love her a lot and that was the articulation. I would only like to point out that here since lots of you are marketing professionals like myself I think the agency is involvement is something I'd like to credit this with because the articulation of a safety feature instead of just saying that this is a gasket release system coming out the way it did I think was the basis of the brand strength today and I would like to credit Sadhika Peerboy who came up with that idea and got the brand to where it is today. Jo Bibi se Kare Pyaar continued for a very long time in 1993 that's when I joined the company by the way I was not existing in the company it's 29 years since I joined the company we launched sorry we launched non-stick cookware we were not pioneers we launched non-stick cookware 25 years after Nidlip we are today leaders in non-stick as well as pressure cookers but we were not the first but the difference that we brought to the table here was we didn't bring a me-too product we did not copy the product to give the same attributes we brought in a different kind of vessels we had we were the first to bring in pressure die cast Tava's in the system we were having a technical tie up the dewpond those days and three-coat system that we brought which was metal spoon friendly was a pioneering effort in making sure that non-stick cookware would last longer than what it did in those days so that's how we launched non-stick cookware and that year we also launched stainless steel cookers we were not pioneers of stainless steel pressure cookers it's interesting that today we are leaders in stainless steel pressure cookers as well Butterfly which is a south-based Chennai based company was the first to launch stainless steel pressure cookers 2001 we launched we got out of the pots and pans business that was the turning point we launched gas stoves and mixer grinders why is this important because there are very few companies which have made the transition from a non-electric to an electric system across the world in kitchen appliances somehow that transition doesn't work in people's minds if you're a pots and pans company you are known for pots and pans to get into both was the biggest marketing challenge that we had in again we went through the same innovation quotient kind of system that we had say we said we will bring in small but very important differences each one of these came from hard customer research which we went and understood problems and brought this out now when we launched gas stoves and mixer grinders that was the time that we actually moved out of our agency after more than 25 years to the next agency from MAA to Udra now the reason I'm stating this is because we've right through this the agency has been an integral part of our business and they then came up with this new tag line which very few people know are you ready for a smarter kitchen so now we ran this line for more than 12 years and at the end of the 10th year or 11th year when we did a research almost nobody knew it it's not that we had advertised less nobody knew it so was it a failure of the agency failure of the marketing team I don't think both were true because what are you ready for a smarter kitchen did to TTK prestige was to ensure that we hard-coded innovation in the product development system because the line was coming from making smarter better products irrespective of whichever category we were getting in so unless it passed that test we wouldn't launch the product unless there was a differentiation we wouldn't launch that product in every time we ended up with are you ready for a smarter kitchen because these products were smart so while the line wasn't something that people understood or remembered we started getting noticed for being innovative being different being something else there was a certain subliminal thing that prestige so that I think helped us grow at that time from a simple marketing tagline 2003 because we wanted to develop different products we developed our a pressure cooker a new pressure cooker called prestige smart this was a completely different user interface very different from whatever was in the market and then disaster struck the product field so this was an innovation that functionally did not survive the test of the Indian cooking household and we had the biggest recall in our history of this product it was a complete disaster we had the biggest marketing campaign we had a fantastic launch campaign the product didn't do well and we recall like back even me have gone to customers homes and brought back cookers and given them their full money the company was in such dire straits at that time in 2003 that we had a turnover of 100 crores with a borrowing of 95 crores with unusable inventory of 25 crores our interest bill of over 11 percent we didn't know when our next salary bill was going to get paid from and everybody thought we were going bankrupt by the way our share price dropped to six or seven rupees at that time which means our market cap was a mere 66 crores I'm saying this because somebody said we were 1.8 billion today so that is where we stood and the market expected us to get bankrupt any day prestige bandoga that was the general refrain and if it's from prestige here after please don't buy their new products dealer said if you want us to keep your product keep it we will pay you when we want to pay you this was an incredible difficult incredibly difficult situation and that according to me was a huge turning point for us it made us it's somewhere it hurt upright as people who are working in the company the culture of the company is one of a family we were suddenly very hurt that we were being discussed in this manner in the market and we decided that we will completely take it head-on and do something that the market does not expect us to do and what we said was we will not give credit beyond our norms irrespective of what happens we will launch more new products now than ever before and we then said we will set ourselves an incredible growth objective of 30% year-on-year for the next 10 years now when I joined the company in 93 we were 72 crores in 2003 we were 116 crores so it was almost no growth and we said from there from this disaster that we are going to grow by 30% year-on-year now the interesting thing about this 30% growth story is that this objective did not come from the owners from the promoters from the manager the CEO it came from the marketing team the marketing team which was used to being told that these are our products and let us make a budget for next year now said no our budget is 30% plus now let's see how to do it and I think I must give full credit to our then CEO Mr. Ravi Chandran who supported us fully to do whatever it takes to go after that growth objective and we then from that day till today year-on-year we have launched between 75 and 150 new products every year it's never been at that pace before and it is completely unprecedented in the industry we launched exclusive franchise retail because people didn't want to give us distribution remember so we said we'll get our own stores there people said you were making glorified stores but it became a huge distribution driver for us 2006 we launched in early pressure Cookers which is the Hawkins type pressure Cookers in a simple philosophy why are we wanting to play only in after half the category who are we to decide what the customer should get they should get what they want and we must give them what they want we of course did a differentiated pressure cooker launch so it is it is something that completely catapulted us from being a very South focused company 80% of our sales in those days used to come from the South today less than 50 it comes from the South and it make made us an at first step towards becoming a national player 2007 we launched imported appliances we launched a huge the Chinese led appliances which two years back we actually I mean last year we completely put a stop to so we launched this and moved to the entire kitchen and then 2008 I think all of you know the finance financial crisis hit the Lehman Brothers crisis hit it did not affect us so much but separately sentiment was very badly affected there was a problem our response was very simple we were we must do more of whatever we are doing the brand investments only went up they didn't come down we didn't take a conservative view and we set all investments must be consistent and even higher than before interest increase incidentally our brand investments in either a good year or a bad year in percentage terms has been no different across these years 2013 10 years after 2003 we ended up with 27% CAG so that is exactly what happened at the end of 2013 and in 2013 we did our next survey which is where we realized that are you ready for a smarter kitchen is not recalled and but we said what is the customer doing and then we found a very interesting insight which was that a wife would love it if her husband would help her in the kitchen right was a very very simple insight and and we said can we use that insight to bring back Joe baby's a career in that context and from since then Joe baby's a career has come back and how so we got in Abhishek and Ashwarya to actually kickstart that campaign and we were back on track and 2015 we started a whole new efficiency building exercise for the company we were at 11% EBITDA at that time in 2015 we are today at 16% EBITDA which means more than 50% increase in profitability we have de-risked our factories we don't have only one single location producing any particular product category we have at least two we've de-risked our channel base we have the most wide portfolio of channel partners today 2020 of course we all know this COVID hit and then this accelerated so many things for us 30% of our revenues were coming from China we took an extremely emotional decision when China decided to be an aggressor in Arunachal and then in Ladakh and we said whatever it takes we will move the supply chain to India and stop imports from China and we did it today we make everything in India we bought a few components but everything is in India and what we could and we dropped the line we said it's okay there are others who will give it but we will not do it and we are very proud of this decision it was an emotional decision we turned out to make business sense over a period of time I think it was a test of our character in COVID when COVID hit in the first lockdown we made two or three promises to ourselves we will not sack a single employee we will not cut salary of a single person we will pay all our vendors on time during the lockdown even if it means a huge drawdown on cash we are of course debt-free we have cash in the bank and it it helped us reinstate and communicate and articulate the culture of the company to all our partners to all we call them stakeholders and I think COVID was a great opportunity for us also COVID was a great opportunity because people were spending time at home they were there no other place to go but to the kitchen because they were eating much more than they normally do and suddenly everyone was helping out and we got a huge increase in our share of wallet because people were sitting at home and we said we will build for the future we've had huge capex capacity expansions in this period 2022 last year we ended up with 2700 crores we are an industry leader the next player in our industry is less than half our size the less next player is less than almost half of our profitability we have now committed ourselves to a journey of 5000 crores so I'd like to end this with some highlights of what the lessons were the first thing is that marketing should not look at being a support function in the company marketing must have a business approach for the company it can lead strategize and actually give direction to the company if you decide to do so and this I think we have proved beyond doubt marketing today in our company anchors product development is the first and last point for new product ideas and the second highlight is it's important to protect and nurture your culture and articulate your culture to all your stakeholders protect them it's important that people respect what who they are working for the year of 2003 is an incredible year because not only did the company and its employees come together there is an incredible fact that we are very proud of that was the only year in the history of our company where attrition was zero not a single person left the company and I think that is because of the culture and values of the company I think the direction that it is not the lady of the house alone who has to do the heavy lifting in the kitchen in fact I don't know whether you noticed cooking has no gender is a very big thought that we want to actually promote we want to say that everyone has a role to play in the house and this is something that we want to communicate so that is why you now see that line Joe be we say career more often to other things like Joe up no say career who prestige a guy say career in car so these are some of the things that we are doing last thing is I think the resilience of the company I can't call our brand timeless that would be arrogant but I think it's important that resilience of the people who are there in the company the commitment to make the company resilient and sustainable is critical and a consistency of approach innovation differentiation and value creation have been consistently followed been followed across the years that we are speaking of and finally all this for creating value for every single stakeholder whether it's the customer whether it's the channel partner whether it's the vendor whether it's the shareholder I think the value creation has to be obvious to everybody and continues to happen thank you very much that was our little story thank you so much I'm sure they have questions and they would love to interact but we'll take it later because of the time I'll request you to stay back a little bit for a while sir Chandra sir a while a while on stage please thank you so much I request super city G executive vice president or star sports please to come on stage and hand him over the momento please thank you it can be a little more louder the first session the first speaker come on thank you