 Hello and welcome to another very special episode of our city's beating all odds. We all have been stranded in our houses for over four weeks now. Cases are still on a rise and major cities like Mumbai and Delhi are at least not likely to see this on any time soon. In such unprecedented times, there are leaders that are making crisis look business as usual. With me today is one such leader, Mr. Anand Chakravarti, senior vice president and MD essence. Welcome to the show Anand. Thank you for having me on the show. I've been following it and seeing a lot of the interviews you've done. It's interesting to get the perspective of different industry leaders. It always helps to hear a different perspective because the truth is that all of us are looking for answers. This is a very unpredictable situation and this is the time to learn from each other. We are looking for more answers from you. Sure, let me try. So Anand, I want to understand from you that this has been a completely unprecedented situation and this kind of crisis your industry has not seen before. Do you think this crisis will have any kind of impact on client agency relationship? Because budgets will come under pressure. There is complete economic crisis as well. So will it make your position stronger or will there be more cost cutting? What do you think, what kind of a generic impact this will have on your relationship? I think all relationships depend on how you behave and relationships of any kind, personal or professional, actually depend a lot on how you behave during a time of crisis. Because that's the most, that's the really most important part of our relationship. Look, I think we recognize, everybody recognizes that this is a crisis that has affected everybody, both the clients, obviously starting with their consumers, therefore their businesses. And clients also recognize that this has affected our business as well and our people as well. And I think at this time, we are actually supporting each other a lot. And I think that truly brings up around what I call true partnership. I think what we're doing for clients currently is obviously there are clients whose businesses have been impacted where supply chain is not in place or demand has gone down and it's unlikely that demand will come up immediately. There are certain clients where the nature of the situation actually hasn't affected demand as much, right? And therefore for them, they are actually continuing to run campaigns, albeit maybe at a slightly lower intensity because there is an opportunity in the market. And then there are clients for whom, let's say, the impact has been minimal, but they still can't spend as much because the supply chain has got impacted, they can't deliver product. So I think for each of these sets of clients, what we're doing is that obviously we are working very, very closely with them. I think more than ever now, our focus is on understanding what are the challenges at business and not just for marketing, right? Because the conversation has to move beyond brand and marketing to really understand what is happening at the business level. So for example, for clients, where let's say the supply chain has got affected or let's say they're not able to deliver product, right? While we may not have the capabilities to help that, but certainly what we can do is bring other potential clients in our kitty who have that capability currently to the table for these clients. So one of the things we're trying to do is foster a certain amount of collaboration happening across clients which you may not have considered collaborating before. And that's something we can facilitate as a team. The second area is obviously given the current situation where there are brands who can advertise, let's say for example, education brand like Vedanto, right? They're an online education brand. This is a big opportunity for them and therefore they see it. And the kind of things we're doing for them is not just looking at advertising and from a traditional perspective, but also looking at how can we use innovative solutions that are more likely to connect with consumers. So for example, news, you've seen the news genre grow significantly, right? And news channels also need positive content because they also realize that just talking about the crisis and the number of cases is not helping. People after some point of time will switch off, right? And actually you've seen that in markets like China and Korea where news went up, then it came down and only towards the end of the, let's say, cases when more positive news was there, people came back to news. So news channels are also running a lot of relevant contextual content, not about the number of cases, but also about how brands and categories are behaving. So for example, what we've done is with a series of news channels, we've partnered with them to create very interesting content to the editorial team around online education, on how online education can help students to continue their learning, even having the founder of Vedanto on the number of channels talking about the product and how they are helping. For example, Vedanto has opened up an entire product. I'm sorry to interrupt you. So I actually, I have actually got questions about each many of your prominent clients. So what I really wanted to understand right now was in general, you think that this will change your relationship, not your agency and client relationship in general, after the crisis. Do you think or it will be business as usual? No, to my mind, it depends on what you do now. So if you are able to be a great partner, look at innovative solutions, work with the client. I think then your relationship will be stronger, right? If you look at the client as only a client who's spending and not spending, and that's your relationship, then at the end of this situation, the clients will look at you and say, are you a true partner? I think all clients are looking for partners and all partners have to recognize that there are good times and bad times, but you have to be a partner during all of them. That's how I see it. So I actually wanted to speak to you about many of your clients because you have such big brands with you. So for instance, something like Flipkart, the delivery has taken a complete hit. What kind of solutions are you offering them right now? So look, difficult to talk about exact solutions because these are all WIP and it'll be unfair to talk about stuff that they're going to do. But obviously we are looking at ways that for example, let's look at, let's be fair, each of these businesses is also looking at solutions internally, right? Because the nature of the current crisis is that everything is not going to go from not being okay to okay on day one. It'll be a gradual process, right? And in that gradual, the first thing we're doing is we are bringing to the table a lot of learnings from across the world. So we are working very closely with our teams in China and Korea and now from other markets in Europe, which are opening up, who are continuously feeding us with data of how consumers are reacting to different categories in the post-lockdown scenario. So what this gives them is also a sense of what are the kind of potential consumer behaviors that are likely to be seen in the coming, let's say, days, months and weeks. The second thing we are doing and which we are beginning to do is also is trying to look at can we actually look at different data points and track different data points to estimate what we call the return of demand, right? Because again, what we've seen in multiple countries is that just because the lockdown gets lifted doesn't mean that consumers on day one of the lockdown getting lifted go back to originally being a no. There is a gradual shift and therefore what we call is the consumer confidence index or a recovery index as we call it. We are trying to estimate for different categories, including e-commerce, when is that likely to happen? So what this gives the, what we're trying to help the client with is one, information from markets which are already in the next stage, which is post-lockdown and insights from there that they can build into their product, into their marketing plans, et cetera. The second thing we're doing is working towards creating, like I said, a recovery index which will help predict to a large extent when will a certain degree of demand start coming back for categories other than the essentials and therefore when is the right time to start advertising itself, right? So that's how we're looking at it for a category like e-commerce. You also have one of the biggest digital player Google as your client and by all metrics, in digital consumption has increased in these four weeks because everyone is at home. A lot of people have more free time to their hands. What kind of impact does that on Google business in general? So I think for Google look at the end of the day to be fair, this is an opportunity, right? I think what Google is seeing is a lot of interesting data that they are seeing is how more and more consumers are coming online. How more consumers are searching in languages now. Language search has gone up. So Google has just shared a report with the industry which talks about how the volume of language searches have gone up significantly because people who were first initially adverse to searching on Google browsers now in this situation are actually using it and they're using the language options to actually search. And that seems like a very interesting trend because certainly it's going to be something that's going to continue for a period of time. Obviously products like Google Pay there's no question about the utility now, right? Everybody wants contactless payment, right? And Google Pay certainly will obviously see great growth and there's no question about it. Not only it's utility for now, but what is happening is that a lot of people who are not using these products for quite some time, now the situation has kind of pushed them to use these products. And as they see the fantastic convenience of being able to pay directly from your bank account using your Google Pay UPI app, they will stick with it. And therefore for Google, again, this is an opportunity, right? Obviously it's an opportunity for categories where they are already seeing consumers adapting to their products in even larger numbers, right? And therefore for them actually this entire, let's say lockdown while it has it's very negative repercussions. There is like I said, a positive side for it where they're seeing adoption of their products becoming more wider and deeper in India. So you also have clients like Britannia and Z5, which Britannia is an essential service. It doesn't really matter whether it's lockdown or whatever, people are still consuming it. Z5 is another product which must have seen immense increase in worship during these periods. So what kind of strategies are you making for these clients? This is again a fantastic time for Z5, right? Because we managed the subscription business for Z5 and they had built a large number of shows which were already ready in their pipeline and because they have a calendar which is planned well ahead in advance. So they've been launching new shows and new seasons of existing shows every month. And the opportunity obviously is again great for them because consumers are at home, television has currently old content, no fresh content, but Z5 has a library of original content that many consumers haven't seen before and many existing consumers are getting to see new seasons being launched. So we've been running campaigns for them for their different shows, just like we were doing in the months before the lockdown. And definitely their business has definitely seen a good upside in terms of let's say, number of subscribers who are willing to pay to watch content on a platform like Z5. And across the world, I think it's a very similar insight that subscription platforms and OTT platforms in general have gained during this period of time and that impact is likely to last even post the lockdown opening up because certain avenues of entertainment are going to be blocked for consumers for some time. Let's say going out to a mall, going out to a restaurant. Consumers are not going to be comfortable doing that with their families for some time and therefore they're likely to want to stay at home and when you're at home, what is the entertainment that you can create for your family, right? So you can cook a fantastic meal, maybe you can start ordering food from outside at some point of time, but yes, and therefore this is perhaps now another inflection point where we will see this habit continuing for the days ahead. So that's been good for Z5. For Britannia, of course, essential biscuits. I think I'm sure that you went to the grocery shop as well, you would have picked up biscuits for your kids because that's like almost has to be the case. Have they increased advertising or have they maintained a low profile? So I think that like I said, the challenges for some businesses is that, one is that the fact is that demand does go up for certain categories which are essential, right? So the fact is that even without a certain amount of advertising, people were still picking up biscuit packets whenever they went to the grocery stores, et cetera, right? Because you go to the grocery store and now only once a week maybe. So when you go, you pick up as many essentials as possible and biscuits is definitely one of those. So keeping that in mind, one, that demand was anyway going up, but two, the other challenge that a lot of the essential companies have is that production is shut down because of the lockdown. And therefore you are unable to produce more products and therefore you have to balance it off because you have to have enough of stocks in the market to advertise, right? Because one is demand is increasing as people are picking up essentials and if you don't have enough stocks in the market and you advertise, it's not going to work for you. So that's the reason why you won't see that all of all brands in the CPG space are necessarily advertising because of this concern as well, right? Now with the lockdown opening up, you'll see Britannia factories opening up slowly and then as they bring more stocks in the market, they start advertising as well. So again, the challenge is very different. So that's the thing about this whole situation, right? It's not black or white. Different companies, even if there is consumer defund, have different challenges. And therefore, we're almost, all categories have got affected in some way or the other. These are very challenging times and you still have dealing with your clients. How are you keeping the morale of your employees high? I mean, how are you making them work in these crisis? Look, we are going into week seven of work from home actually work remotely managed in Gropan. We started a week earlier from the national lockdown. So look, I'll tell you the first thing that really surprised me is that how well young people in our organizations adapted to working online. I think that one of the good parts of our essence is that we've always been working using Google Hangouts as a, you know, so we work on the G Suite. So Google Hangouts is something that we normally work with both with our local teams in India as well as with our regional and global teams. But I think people adapted really, really well. And, you know, that was fantastic to see. Over the first couple of weeks, you know, we saw people adapting really quickly, work was happening, et cetera. I think over a period of time, naturally, you know, as people spend so much time at home, four weeks, five weeks, what does see a dropping engagement, right? And, you know, people are tired, they may not be as focused sitting at home. But what we had done by then is we'd already created what we call as an engagement calendar. So every week, we have a team of what we call them, the pirates in essence. And their job is to actually focus on keeping the morale of the teams high. And this is even during normal times. It's not just COVID. I mean, this is a team which is there in every single office of ours across India. And the pirates' job was to come up with ideas of how we can keep our teams engaged every week. So everything from a music concert to a quiz contest, to housey, housey life, you know, to, you know, obviously we've invited a lot of speakers to come and speak to our teams about different topics. So every week there's something new happening. This week, in fact, tomorrow we have a talent show happening online where we've invited people with any kind of talent. You can sing, you can dance, you can mimic, whatever you can do. Fantastic, fantastic participation. I mean, everybody needs a break, right? So we've seen that, you know, teams love it. A lot of stuff happening where we are getting teams to share photographs of them working at home, photographs of their pet. We encourage people to keep their video on during meetings. And we are fine with, you know, this noise and disturbance in the background. That's fine. That's okay. That's how it is going to be at home. And I think this is really, really helpful. I think that's one part is engagement. The second part is obviously a lot of communication with teams, so doing town halls with your teams. That's been really, really important because it's also important during this period of time to keep the lines of communication open and, you know, be very, very transparent with your teams on what's happening, et cetera. Because otherwise, sitting at home, young people will get stressed out and say, hey, what's happening? So a lot of communication happening within this time, largely through video calls and some amount of written, and that has again helped for our teams to actually get, you know, ensure that they're up to date on what's happening, and we're continuously communicating with them. And then there's this unique set of, it's a smaller tribe of young people who actually live alone. And we call them the Flying Solo Team. So these are young people who haven't been able to go home during the lockdown and are staying on their own. Some of them have, some of them have flatmates, some of them don't even have flatmates. So for this group, we identified them, we've created a buddy system. So somebody who checks in with them every day, somebody who checks with them on weekends. And teams have done fantastic things, you know, on their birthdays, they've sent them cakes where delivery was possible. They've all come on the call and sang happy birthday to them. And I think honestly, while as a team, as a leadership team, we're doing stuff, but the teams themselves are constantly thinking of new ways to ensure that their teams are engaged. And that's been fantastic to watch. So I think it's a great learning. I think it's a great learning that if you put people in a situation which is challenging, people will find a way to get out of it. They will be innovative, they will be disruptive, and you'll be surprised at the talent that's been lying latent in your teams, which all comes out during this period of time, right? And that's been wonderful to watch. So it's really been an eye-opener for a lot of us as well as leaders, that the things that we assume that, you know, if people work from home, they want to work. It's impossible to keep somebody engaged if they're sitting at home. I think all of those beliefs have been pretty much shattered and there's so much more confident about what our teams are able to do working remotely during this time. And before we close, I also want to understand from you how has this lockdown changed you as an individual or as a professional? Because I'm sure you must have, must never have been in this kind of situation ever before where you're locked in a house for more than four weeks. How has this evolved you as an individual? What are the things that you value or you see have changed in you? So I'll tell you what, I think one of the first, I think one of the first things is that I think is just having greater belief. I think a lot of the things that one believed could not happen, have actually happened during this period of time. And I think sometimes you just have to keep an open mind to the possibilities. So definitely it's opened my mind a lot more in terms of what is possible to do in situations like this which one may think is not but can actually happen, right? And I think, you know, both from seeing how our teams work to seeing how we've done work for clients despite not being in office. And I think sometimes the barriers to doing things are in your mind and I think a lot of that is opened up for me, right? I think the second thing is, you know, being a lot more empathetic and learning to keep that at the back of your mind constantly, right? Sometimes one gets so caught up in work and talking about work that you don't realize or you forget the fact that, hey, this is not just a financial crisis, it's actually a health and humanitarian crisis. It's a human crisis, right? And I think, you know, being consciously more empathetic is really, really important during these times, not just talking about work, learning to have a conversation with your teams about what's happening on their personal front, what's, you know, how are things at home and being genuinely invested in them and wherever possible, helping them out is something that certainly I can see, I'm doing that automatically a lot more which I can consciously see is improving. I think the last piece is I think resilience. I think after seventh week of, you know, working from home, you know, I find myself, I used to always think, maybe I'm a pessimist, but actually I recognize that actually I'm a bit, I'm quite optimistic, right? And that has really emerged during this period of time that despite, you know, what you see on television, despite what you see in all the webinars and all the, you know, meetings and online talks that you attend, I think I've actually, I have actually become a lot more optimistic generally, right, which maybe I wasn't, maybe I used to be a little more pessimistic before, but I think seeing things around you and seeing how people are managing, people are being able to do things that one demo imagined in such circumstances has been fantastic. And I think lastly, I think I have been become very, very thankful for what I have, right? My mantra, let's say my, what I tell my team always is that for us, it's an adjustment of lifestyle only. For most people, it's an adjustment of life. And we are truly the fortunate ones and we should recognize that and cherish that, right? Because I think in a world which is driven by so much of consumerism and especially in India where we've seen an acceleration of consumerism, I think these seven weeks have possibly for many people and not just me, I'm sure, as I talk to friends and colleagues, that's really made us all realize that, you know, we're truly fortunate. And I think possibly a lot of us will reprioritize things for ourselves, right? That what is true priority and what is not. And I'd certainly see myself already doing it and thinking about it a lot. Thank you so much, Anand. And I just realized that I said it four weeks. I don't know where, where was I? I just realized it's been seven weeks. See, I've lost count of time also. All of us have, all of us have. Even I had to check the calendar the day before yesterday and I was saying week six or week eight and I realized, hey, this is the beginning of week seven. So yeah, it's been a long time. And I think it will probably continue for maybe week eight and week nine as well, right? No idea how long it will continue. I just hope that we all will continue to be safe and this crisis gets over as soon as it can and each one of us healthy and safe. Thank you so much, Anand, for speaking to us. Thank you. And for your time. We wish you all the best. Stay at home, stay safe. Thank you very much. Same to you. Take care.