 We have today Ms. Ranjani Krishnaswamy, General Manager of Marketing, Tanish Titan Company. And the context of this conversation is how non-metals are driving the next phase of growth in the country and how is the jewellery category adopting to the changes that we've seen in the last few months. So let's start with the pandemic situation in the lockdown and how has the jewellery category been affected. You know, we saw the demand was completely stalled for a couple of months. So how is the road to recovery been? So the Bali it's been an interesting journey. Little did we know when we were closed down our offices on the 12th of March that we were going to have such patchy year. It was almost like surreal. You didn't know when you were coming back. All of us thought we'll get over next month, month after. But now I think the reality is struck that we are in it for at least if not long the medium haul. And it has had its implications on the business. As you know, April was a complete washout month. We were we could not open our stores and as a retail business, that's your largest sort of source of consumer engagement and sale. We pulled up our socks and said, Akshay Tirtia is a big month for I mean, big event for us. It is it's so much at the heart of all the ritualistic trappings that jewelry has. So we said, let's go online. Let's create a big mega event through our e Akshay Tirtia. And we realized that there were about 54% of the consumers who are still intending to buy. And which is something I'll talk about during the course of our conversation that we've always known that India has many India's and it is not one India. But I think the pandemic has been so divisive in creating these many India's these many cohorts in various parts of the country. That we've come to realize that from a business standpoint, the biggest disruption and the biggest sort of assimilation that we've had to do as brands as well as businesses is to understand that the opportunity matrix is very diverse. And you have many cohorts and there are also these cohorts which are moving in and out within a time frame. Some market was an opportunity about three weeks back. It's gotten into lockdown. So it's no longer an opportunity. So you're realizing the dynamism and the diversity with which all of us have sort of optimized or had to deal with. And that's been like the biggest learning implication or opportunity in this pandemic time. When we had the entire large part of our markets down with COVID and there was absolutely that was locked down and stores were not open. We had East thriving so much so that in the month of June, they grew by 17%. There are about 100 stores that grew over their last year numbers. So this is what makes you feel that India was going through this phenomenon in various stages. Various forms in various intensities and that is sort of got down into the COVID trap in July. But they have they have come up in a big way in August, which also told you how the resurgence curve deferred in a metro scenario, vis-a-vis a non metro scenario. So I think those were some of the apparent implications of this disruption that you realize that you had to be agile and limbo and that your opportunity matrix was diverse and dynamic and you had to cope with it. There was some other large sort of trends that happened because of the COVID piece as well. There was a huge and almost immediate adoption of digitization while the adoption was very varied across consumers and especially in a category like ours where jewelry is such a touch feel thing. I mean, it has typically been an in-person informed, engaged kind of a process of buying and selling and discovery. People were very quick to adopt to the online platform. Compulsions were many, some people were buying for investment, some people were buying for wedding. We realized in nation that people were buying for milestones. There was so much of doom and gloom that we were actually having these conversations with consumers that I want to give my wife a solitaire. Can you guys help me buy it from any store that's open or buy online? So you had all those sort of very interesting discretionary purchases that were also happening. So as I was talking about this digital adoption has been the second biggest consumer as well as a change for market years because irrespective of what was your digital journey, you had to really bootstrap yourself and at the same time really gear up for this journey. So we came up with a bunch of innovations. We already had virtual try-ons, but whether it was assisted chats, book an appointment, video calling lots of things that one could start their journey and discovery online and then take it to the offline space. I think that's been the second disruption, a positive disruption that's happened. The third disruption, if you can call it so, has been around the whole trust as a factor. I think we've sort of found that consumers more so in the non-metals than metros have gravitated to brands which they can trust, have gravitated to brands which they feel will put their safety before anything else. So it's been very heartening to see our non-metals recover faster, grow more because I feel we have been able to consolidate and gain share in those markets because of some of the safety norms that we brought in and what is safety? Safety is just a manifestation of the trust that you want to sort of profess to the consumer and the trust that you want the consumer to have in you that I am the safest place for you to shop. So I think those have probably been the three big sort of implications of this pandemic for us. Great. The last thing that you mentioned about trusting your brand more, is it because of the brand that you worked on so far, the Danish brand and why particularly the non-metals, why you mentioned non-metals you saw a lot of trust coming through. So what were the key reasons for that? I think a couple of reasons. I think trust has been a very defining factor for us because we've built it over time and it's been playing itself out both in metros and non-metals to be fair. But why has it been a bigger multiplier in the non-metals is because I think in non-metals it's who is your competition. So where are you positioning yourself in the marketplace? And I think in the non-metals our positioning of trust was a bigger variance to what someone else was offering in the market. And that's why we saw a bigger swing. So let me give you a personal example and it was maybe a couple of weeks back that we were looking to, we had a family occasion and we were looking to order out. I mean, we are people from very typical backgrounds so splurging doesn't come naturally to us. But in this situation our first option was let's buy it from a 5-star because somewhere the brand Taj had a certain trust factor that you felt as a consumer that it's a Tata company. They're going to make sure that if there is a process and procedure of safety I trust that they are abiding by it. So if you see in our own behaviors we have also supplemently had these trust equities that brands have built over time and we're pulling into those equities to make our own decisions as consumers. I think something like that happened for us also in small towns. When I was looking at a local jeweler who probably did not have a sanitized door mat at the entrance who did not have sanitizers at every workstation who did not have a guard who had a PE equipment and a shield who did not talk about sanitization of jewelry every hour who did not talk about cleaning the store at every hour I at once was able to see the variance between what Tanish was saying and what my local jeweler was not saying and I think that's been at some level helping us gain consumers in those markets. That's a very interesting point. Now reports indicate that there is a pent up demand for jewelry so far consumers they've shrunk their budgets they've held on to their homes. So now that the market is opening up and the wedding season is coming the festive season is coming so how are you gearing up to handle this demand? I think for one we are keeping a very close watch on the sentiment we're trying to understand where is the sentiment both in terms of what people will buy, when people will buy and in what quantum will they buy so I think it's very important to keep a close ear to the ground we're also speaking constantly we have these consumer diaries or consumer hangouts with our own consumers because we have a lion's share of our business coming from to beat customers so we're also understanding that what we are fundamentally picking up are a couple of things one that there is a pent up demand and there is a need for sanction to spend and this festival will be that sanction that people will take to spend because people have deprived themselves for a very long time and I think now they will be measured about it it's not that people are going to go out there and buy something which is heavy and big I think there is going to be this underlying thought of what is from a ritualistic perspective a ritual that you follow of buying and how do you do it within your means so there is a move towards lightweight jewelry so we have been very cognizant of that in what we will put out in the festive season we've also realized that there is going to be liquidity issues and the gold rates are paying to want like nobody's business so we are finding ways to solve the consumer problems because this is the time when brands have to reach out to consumers and say there is a desire that you want to fulfill and I as a brand I'm going to help you fulfill that desire so we have a couple of programs that are getting rolled out which allow consumers to pre-book their jewelry and pick it up at a later point in time whichever is the auspicious period when they want to pick it up we also have the gold exchange program that is getting rolled out since yesterday which allows consumers to dip into their old gold which they are not using and use that as a segue to buy new jewelry for themselves we also have buying plans we have a new Rivaashirvaad program which allows you to sort of plan your purchase through installments and be able to sort of get what you really want so I think long story short we are prepping ourselves on many fronts we are prepping ourselves on stores how safety will become very important where many more people will want to buy and the pent up demand is going to make them walk into our stores we are beefing up our digital ecosystem on how many consumers can sort of fulfill their jewelry purchase through online, through contactless selling so there are a bunch of things that we are doing both from a concept product as well as how they would realize this purchase most importantly for us it is also that this festive season is very important for us to reach out to our karigarh community and this is a means for us to be able to give livelihoods to them so we are also seeing it as a purposeful brand as a completion of the journey where everybody is able to enjoy the Diwali this year whether it is right from the karigarh for whom we are able to give not just other financial supports but also dignity and livelihood and going all the way to various consumers across various segments who will be looking for either wedding at one end or light wedding at the other end so we will have a plethora of options that's nice talking about your marketing mix that you go out to the market now for the festive season how are you segregating it from metros, non-meters what are the percentage of sales that you are expecting from net non-meters and metros is there a comparison that you can share? I would be able to share numbers with you because we are a listed company we are not allowed to share numbers at certain points in our cycle but I will say that non-meters today occupy a larger share than metros for us both in terms of number of stores as well as the size of business and we also realize that sentiment will be maybe more buoyant in non-meters than it is in metros we saw that when we did our RD in TN or Varalakshmi in Karnataka AP we did the Ganesh Chaturthi we did Janmashtami and we did Rakshabandhan so each of these local festivals have responded much better in our non-metro markets and we are realizing that maybe it is the resurgence of sentiment maybe it is a larger sort of respect for some of these festivals which we metro guys have sort of taken it in our stride maybe it's also the lack of the debt of the credit economy there we also know that the agrarian income is going to be robust this year so we do believe the festive will be very critical and very important for the non-meters as far as the media mix is concerned honestly it's still an evolving reality in terms of how the mix would play out all I can say is it will be disproportionate in its investment in digital because we are seeing a lot of digital traction even in the non-meters our metro to non-metro ratio has advanced significantly in favor of the non-meters so we will be disproportionately investing in digital but having said that the other parts of the mix are still in the mix traditional medium still there going forward what are the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for the jewelry sector and what does the ear look like for the category I think this will be a tough year because of implications of Q1 I don't think we can take that away but we are working towards a higher rate of recovery during the festive season and almost a complete recovery by Q4 I think that's what you would have read in our notes to the market as well because our recovery rates have steadily improved from me up till where we are sitting now a lion's shed of our recoveries happening with our existing customers but we are also seeing a lot of new customers coming as I was telling you so it will be a tough year but the recovery has been faster than we have expected and we want that to continue so if I were very optimistic I would say that I would want the festive to be as good as last year and definitely a complete recovery by Q4 challenges will largely be on sentiment how does the sentiment recover how do the postpones weddings because Q1 this year was a big wedding season and all those weddings have gotten postponed some of them have come to Q3 and Q4 some of them have moved to Q1 of next year so how are we able to optimize the purchase on those weddings because wedding purchase is usually a six to seven month process how are we able to manage ourselves in the volatility of cold rates I don't think it's just COVID it's also the volatility of cold rates which are being that want here so how do we manage ourselves there and the other big challenge for us will be how do we try and continuously identify the challenges that the consumers are facing and be ready with options for them whether it's pent up demand whether it's lipstick effect, revenge buying very rational investment buyer or whether it is the planned wedding buyer who's looking to see how what is the best time to buy for me because of all this that's happening around so I think the biggest challenge is going to be to understand that there are a lot of cohorts and we need to be catering to all of them and we need to be I know N is equal to 1 is a very big statement to make I am not going to make that statement but how do we customize ourselves to these cohorts and be able to personalize our offering to them both in product as well as in service because we are also in the service business now lastly I was just curious to know when you initially mentioned during the lockdown period there was this demand from the east side and the entire country was silent so just wanted to know some of the key insights or key consumer behavior changes that you are interested in see the reality of the east was very different at that point in time they were not yet significant red flags on the Covid curve and what was happening was that it was also a lagoon season at that point in time Q1 is typically a big lagoon season in the east so I think the team in the east came back to us and said that we think we are ready to have a normal Q1 can you guys support us on this and therefore we designed special communication package and there was the only part of the country where we were ready to invest because we were also trying to conserve cash in Q1 that was the right thing to do we didn't know how the year will go on so it was always the right thing to do is to conserve cash and conserve and optimally look at your working capital so we looked at east as a specific market we invested for wedding in that market with both in terms of making our stores ready from a safety procedure perspective talking to our consumers about safety talking specifically to the wedding demand that was happening creating programs for us to capture the wedding demand invest in the inventory in the east so that they were able to capitalize on the wedding demand so we almost looked at it as a separate cohort and gave it gave it its all and with the help of a great retail team and a fantastic cooperation from our associates there we were able to secure a good Q1 so I think if I were to step back and understand your large question that why do certain parts of the market of India behave differently I think one their COVID realities are different they were probably being insulated at various points in time as compared to the metros I think there is a greater reverence for festivities and festivals as I was talking to you about and therefore maybe non metros have performed very differently basic bounce backs have been much better so if it is a function of the severity of the problem or the nimbleness which the administrations have probably solved the problem or communities have solved the problem that's another thing actually also consumptions have become localized earlier if people were traveling to metros to sort of do a wedding purchase or to buy for a big occasion now that's not possible so a lot of consumption is happening within the town or city that you are living in and you are not even thinking of going out you know and largely I think a bit of migration back to your own hometowns has also fueled this demand I was talking to one of our retail guys in the south and he said a lot of up country Hyderabad is doing well because a lot of IT industry has said go work from where you are and people have gone back to their hometowns and sort of their incomes have not come down because they are still in the same companies that they were in so there is this whole redistribution of disposable income which has happened from metros to non metros maybe that has also contributed it's just a hypothesis I think it needs to play itself out with some numbers but seems to be anecdotally a hypothesis to gun for yeah and much reliable one hope for I guess now last question you have various plans to punish river Abir and Mia so going forward which are the brands which you think will drive the growth going forward or are you looking at the next coming season I think each of these brands has a specific job to be done or tasks to do so Tanish has the overall canopy and it's been the most democratic brand because we want to be seen as a national local seller so we want to be able to cater to a variety of needs and it also talks to the younger consumer and it's been a business which should see a very good season as you spoke about in terms of pent-up demand because it speaks to a very different demographic and psychographic Zoya speaks to a very relatively insulated demographic psychographic because it talks to a sort of high-value customer or a customer who's sort of financially more secure and I think that person has been relatively less affected by the financial vagaries of Covid so each of these brands has a task to do and we're all trying our best to make sure that we have optimal offerings for the consumer so this season is going to be important for all these brands and it's important that the brands sort of prep themselves for what this consumer is looking for and some of those will be around thrift, around safety around best programs to be able to buy and a very interesting assortment that makes it worth spending their savings on Okay, great I hope these brands do well and the coming season does well for everybody, all of us and everybody is safe so thank you so much for spending time out and sharing insights on Pundit, it was a pleasure talking to you Thank you, thank you so much, thanks everybody