 There we go, all the enablers, all those who are powering this conclave, huge round of gratitude from the organizers, the hosts. But now it's time for someone who's really at the fountain head of all this. He's a serial entrepreneur, he's a media mogul, he's a journalist, but more than all he's an eternal optimist, all rolled into one. The founder of Exchange for Media Group, may we have him on stage right now on Ragh Batra, as he delivers the welcome address. Good afternoon, it's my honor and privilege to be here. It's a dream come true, Sneha Valki, who's our head of South in Exchange for Media, joined seven years back and have been telling Sneha that we should do more things in South and Sneha and her team have been able to put this together. So first of all, you know it's customary to thank your colleagues at the end, but up is a people business and I can say that we have in this business the best people working with us. So I'd like to congratulate Sneha, Priyanka, Akshita, Jyotsana for putting this together. Since the time we started Exchange for Media, we've been a national player, we've had an office in Calcutta for 10 years, one person though, but we came to South and we put an office 12 years back here. One of my colleagues who used to precede Sneha as the head of South as an entrepreneur now, Ajay did great work for us on circuit night. So first of all, Sneha, this is the start, I hope you do more in South, not just in Bangalore. I'd like to, you know, it's ironical, Malayalam Anurama has given us a printed diary, no iPads, but next time Sneha you should ask them for iPads, but right now I took my notes on it. But I'd like to welcome some special people, all of you are special, who come all the way and you come to listen to them, Mr. Hemant Malik, he really doesn't need an introduction. He's leading the ITC, fastest growing business, which is the FMCG business, and I've consumed their products. I can tell you, your coffee is fantastic, Sanjeev gave me a hamper and after that I started to buy it. Also I got from Anil Rajput, a big hamper, so I've consumed it, fantastic coffee. I can say that I'm trying not to eat biscuits, but I'm sure my kids like them. Mr. CBL, I can tell you that four years back our first big event, I would say one of the most successful events of exchange for media, because we had Mr. Mark Patterson, he was kind enough to allow us an opportunity to host him and we put our heart into it and we had a lovely evening. I'd like to thank Sneha for being here, Sneha is somebody who doesn't really need an introduction in the media industry. I happened to meet Mr. Karyapa for the first time, but thank you Mr. Karyapa for being here. I've had a lot of great elements in my life in more ways than one. For those of you who are wondering what, he is the president of the brand called Jockey. Somebody I met very recently and I took instant liking to him, I'm not sure he did. In fact when he entered the room I said the one person you should definitely meet is Srinni and the one person you should stay away from is me, but I'd like to welcome Mr. Amit Gupta, who is the president and CEO of the Asian and News Network. He worked with Mr. Rajesh Chandrasekhar on the investment side in media and now he's having to execute what he proposed and became part of. Thank you Amit for being here. Mr. Pradeep Devedi, Pradeep is a friend and is part of almost all our initiatives and I can say that Raj is possibly the most likable person in our business. I'd say that at least my father-in-law and my wife tell me that if you want to do something in life, be like Raj Nayak, I've heard that multiple times. But I can say somebody who can really give him competition is Pradeep. And I say that I know everybody in this business, very likable person. My friend, I had the good pleasure of working with Mohit. Mohit Joshi is here from Hawas. In fact, I remember, I think I'm part of his being called Mojo. Because I saw this Mike Myers movie, I won't go into details. All of your wealthy, so you must be trying to buy houses or invest in real estate via Amit Badwani, the young entrepreneur from Saiya State. He's here, we had a real estate consulate last night here and Amit was part of it. Thank you, Amit, for being part. I've met lots of old friends from the media whom, when we started exchanging for media, me and Naval used to meet them. Devedi, I can tell you our first relationship with Decoran started with you. I have my friend who has multiple roles, who's the president of the ad club. I'm not an expert on media or on the Indian media in South, but I know a little bit about media, the more you know, the less you know. But I can outline five trends that are happening that I've gathered from being here multiple times and on this trip. One is that the dominant player, which was Sun, is no longer the most dominant player. Still very dominant, it is 60% player in the market. But it's not the most dominant, while the market has grown, it hasn't grown. It's pretty much, it's still very dominant, I mean. But in future, there are other players that are, that may take money from Sun. So that's one big trend. Second, and you know, Deccanator and the sponsor, my content is not influenced by sponsor. Pradeep is here from a leading newspaper. Print will continue to be fairly large. I know Srinni is betting a lot of money on digital and TV. And all of that will grow on the back of new brands. For example, if you look at Bangalore, the major categories that represent Bangalore in advertising are tech, BFSI, e-commerce, and FMCG. These are broadly, and the fifth category, real estate. Now in commerce, we've added Amazon, Flipkord, Jabang. If you looked at the advertising over the last one quarter, Amazon, Flipkord, I mean, these are Bangalore headquarters, so I'm talking about them. And the real estate industry in Bangalore is possibly the least impacted relatively, I'm talking relatives. And this is because the real estate developers build brands. So they've stayed in the consumer's mind. I may also say that in Bangalore and in the southern market, the biggest market is Karnataka and within that is Bangalore. Because it's a very large urban population. So print will continue to do well. In fact, I keep saying that the print players have to put a better face. Because we are doing really well, why should we be on the back foot? We should talk about our own stories. The three other trends that I noticed is that most media brands that are national are approaching the southern market in a big way. Look at what colors is done, right? The second is, print is building a solution-oriented culture, and print is no longer print. Legacy brands and print are using TV and video platforms. Video platforms, not mostly TV platforms, which the advertisers and consumers are using. Third, it's happening in every part of India, so it's southern marketism. More and more clients are looking at solutions, experiential, a bundled offering. They're not just looking at pure print or pure television. They're looking at a solution oriented. Digital, digital is the fastest growing. I won't deny that, because the base is small. And the beauty in southern India is, I know in digital Facebook and Google and Facebook in that order are pretty much 85% of the marketplace. But in the southern India, the digital players are growing very fast. And there I say the next exchange for media conclave, apart from the brands that are partnered, will be sponsored by an Amazon Flipkart. Because they'll have a huge advertising-led model now. They want to recover all the money they spend on media. And last, but not the least, which is the most important thing, and I alluded to it by saying that the real estate has stayed a large advertiser. Because real estate brands got created many years. So the new Indian brands, which are local, regional, will, in this competitive landscape, increase their spends. They may not be huge spends in terms of absolute volumes. But when all these brands spend more than they used to, it will become a large value proposition for media owners. These are broadly the trends. The Indian news ecosystem in the south is expanding. Asiannet is, of course, taking the lead there. Almost every player is making a unique offering in the news television space. Because also, we are talking about news products almost 10 months before elections. So all the news products in southern India are geared up to make sure they do unique programming and are able to take unique offering. So southern media marketplace is poised to grow bigger as the impact of GST and demonetization become lesser and lesser. And the compliances from large brands become better. I think the growth in consumers' appetite for going back to some of these products and services, and hence brands like ITC. Spending more in these local markets will accentuate, and that will mean a growth for the Indian media, the Indian language media, based in south and especially in Karnataka and Bangalore. I hope we are at the forefront of creating solutions that help this ecosystem grow. I'm going to talk briefly about what are our new initiatives. In exchange for media, the three initiatives that I will talk about, which I'll immediate. One is our Indian marketing awards. Mr. Anand Kripalu, who is based in this city, was a chairperson of our Indian marketing. And had jury members who are equally prominent and know about brands and have built businesses on the back of brands. So that's on 7th December at the Leela Gurgaon. We have the India brand conclave in the day. And we have the Indian marketing awards in the evening. This is the 13th year of the Impact Person of the Year. On 11th December at ITC Pareil, we have our Impact Person of the Year. It's been a nominee in the past and I'm sure he'll be a winner with the kind of work he's doing for Group M in this marketplace. We have the Impact Person of the Year on the 11th December. It's a Monday. And I promise you that the Impact Person of the Year this year will be bigger than it ever has been. In terms of the kind of brand owners present, the kind of scale we will do it. It's a television quality event this year. Last but not the least, the exchange for media news broadcast awards are very dear to me. Personally, I think the news ecosystem is very important. I've said that there is a fight for the soul of this country happening in the past. And people like Srinay are in the room. People like Mojo, you know, brand owners like Mr. Karyapa. I think we have to make sure that the Indian news broadcasting ecosystem becomes more mature, is able to do more in-depth reporting and is not necessarily as sensational as it is. I know we all like spicy food. So there is a fight for the soul of this country happening. The news broadcasting ecosystem is at the forefront of making sure that the Indian public at large makes opinions on issues, on initiatives that the government takes. So we have our Indian News Broadcast Awards, which is the ninth edition this year. On 10th February at the Radisson Noida, we do it there because it's next to the news ecosystem. And the first February is the jury. Srinay has been part of the jury. In fact, I remember either he was the chair or he was part of the jury, which gave Arnab Goswami his first award seven years back. So, you know, we did pick up winners early on. This was seven years back. So I just want to say these are some of the exchange for media initiatives that I want to talk about. You know, I spend all my time in business world. When Mr. Karyapa came to me, I said, you know, I'm not running the event, but I'll put in a word I did that we stay on time. But I want to tell you, I talked about print owners don't do a good job at telling their own stories. But in business world, when we acquired it four years back, it was just a print product. We still have a long way to go, maybe another six to eight months we'll be where we want. But we've grown the print product. We built a site which does between 15 to 20 million traffic every month and growing fast. We built a community's business because clients look at solutions. And we build a very large experiential and solutions space. Our latest issue has record advertising. It's a 280 page issue. We're doing a 200 page issue, almost every issue with about 40 to 60 pages of ads. So I do want to talk about the business world. And I think we do very little in business world in the southern marketplace except what we do for the tech company over the next six months we will increase our engagement with everyone that has to deal with business world wanted to welcome you to the first edition of the exchange for media conclave south. We plan to take away, we are not mind readers Rini, but we are going to take it to Calcutta and Chinnai and other cities. We believe that the action is in the states and in the next level cities as we call them. In fact, our vision, mine and Naval's vision is to take the exchange for media conclave to at least top 40 cities in the country, talk about local brand because the growth for media and growth for the business ecosystem will come from these local brand. Thank you for being here and I look forward to learning something about media advertising communication today. God bless you. I guess it is we who learn from you and it was one welcome address. It felt like the keynote, but that's also for the insights shared and really very heartwarming to hear the note on the print media in particular. Thank you so much, Mr. Anurag Bhattra.