 Hello and welcome to another episode of our special series, Meeting All Odds. In this series we are honoring leaders who despite all challenges and odds thrown at us by COVID-19 are ensuring that our businesses and our economy stays healthy or as little affected as possible. So with me today is one such leader, Mr Vivek Bhargava, CEO of Dan Performance Group. Welcome to the show, Mr Bhargava. Thank you, pleasure to be here. I'll start with the first question, which I think a lot of people would be interested in knowing you are a veteran in digital space. What according to you is the most essential digital strategy that brands should adapt in these times of crisis? I think the biggest thing that brands needs to adopt is that I think take the marketing spends and rank it based on ROI they receive. So basically what happens is that instead of saying that okay, we're going to cut all marketing work at all advertising, see which are the advertising platforms and mediums that are giving them ROI. And especially digital being an auction medium, what happens is then the lesser people participate in an auction, you get rising which is superior. So something what happens is that let's say suppose you acquire H&I customer for let's say a travel vertical or H&I customer for a financial vertical, the cost of acquisition that customer would have been very, very high. Because it would go way beyond the lead price that a brand can afford, you could not actually target them. But now because of the lesser people being there in the auction, you can actually target those people who are not affordable for you and acquire them today. And when things turn around and recover, these customers will give you significant amount of revenue and profit in the long run. So I think if your media spends are going down, I think going after customers who potentially can give you small profits are the customers you should go after. So I think you need to sort of start a zero budgeting, look at all your marketing advertising spends and see what are the kind of customers you need to acquire that will give you most amount of profits. You can transition the strategy. I think you can benefit from this crisis because the best thing about digital is being an auction medium. Less of the number of people in the auction, you can suddenly get a lot more media benefits than any other medium. So these are also very unique times because the consumption is very high. Most of the people who are sitting at home and they're consuming. But we are still seeing a significant drop in the ad spends because there is no production. So what is it that brands can do considering both these things? I think one of the things that needs to be done is to work on the internal strategy. So what happens is that this is more like rather than digital marketing question, but more of a business strategy question. There's a lockdown phase. There's a recovery phase. There is a growth phase. There are a lot of important tasks that we as brand managers need to do, which basically in the college, Stephen Covey's quadrant two activities, right? They're important, but they're not urgent. So whether building a great CRM strategy or having a content platform that you need to start investing into or finding out who your best customers are, right? Peter Feder has said that 20% of customers give you 200% of your profits, right? There's also an interesting book called Velvet Robe where he says which are the kind of customers you should get into your brand. So these kinds of strategies can only happen during these kinds of crisis times, right? So if you tell me, right, then 2008, almost 70, 80% of revenues came from banking financial insurance clients. And when that industry got hit in 2008, that gave us time to come back that, okay, what is the new agency should be like? So we started focusing on between our businesses, consulting businesses, finding out what kind of content platform we should build for brands. And we had a transition in those days, it was called communicate into what I prospected today. I think today also this is a time to look at your company and seeing. So I'm doing a very interesting course of Harvard called a disruptive strategy. A professor called Professor Clay Christiansen, unfortunately passed away in Jan 2020. So just imagine, right, you're hearing him teach innovative and he wrote innovators dilemma. So one thing it tells you is that there is a job to be done and people hire your product or service to do that job. Now what happens is that if you can match what your product does to their job perfectly, then you will actually, you know, sort of replace that current product or service they use. So if you take today, a lot of agencies work on the acquisition part of the media, but we don't work enough on the making sure that we acquire the most profitable customers. Similarly, even the marketing departments focus on customer acquisition. They don't focus on how do you make your existing customers more profitable and acquire those kind of customers. So I think this is one area that we're working on how do we actually help brands acquire more profitable customers. And for this require some partnerships, etc. in the CLM space, but I think that's what we want to do. I think this is an opportunity to think of important things to be done, how you're preparing your company as a brand or an agency for the next 10 years. And then when you let a 10 year perspective, then this six months, one year, which may be challenging will suddenly not matter that much. Coming to your specific clients, you have a lot of clients in e-commerce sector. Now delivery has been hit badly. In a lot of areas there is no delivery. What kind of plans are you making for them right now? At this point in time, I think too many plans cannot be made. But if you look at it, this is an opportunity. What happens is that, you know, so I've done a race car driving a few times that I've tried to learn. I'm a sucker for learning. So I learn random things. So one of the things I learned was how do you drive a race car. And one interesting thing that caught in that race car driving right that when you curve, when you come to a curve, you break hard. And then while you are on the curve, you accelerate and then acceleration gives you control and speeding up on the curve. So you actually accelerate on the curve. So if you take today, a lot of brands, COVID-19 has actually given them that break. Now when this recovery happens, the guys who can bounce back faster and have all those important things sorted out, the data sorted out, the CRM strategy sorted out, the media strategy sorted out. And they on the get go, they can start accelerating off that curve. I think other ones will actually recover faster. So just imagine you were number two in a space. Now what has happened is because everybody has break, everybody has now become equal. So somebody who had gathered this huge lead over you, right? If you're number two, number three in any space, people had, like, you know, I was talking to Suchi the other day, and she runs line road. I did a webinar with her and Michelle Gondran and some of these guys, right? She said that Mintra has got this huge lead over them, even though they're number two, but they have a huge Mintra and a lead. Now everybody's break. So they both starting at the same time. So now what happens is who accelerates faster? Otherwise, it would have been impossible to catch up with them, right? So in a way, imagine this is like almost like all the brands are going to become equal. And they all want to start off again. So somebody who had built up this unassailable lead, which would have never been able to match, suddenly you have an opportunity to be equal with them and match up with them. So I think it's very important to look at this as an opportunity that something that was unthinkable earlier of line road. Let's say beating Mintra may just not be possible today. So very interesting anecdote that you shared with us. So I would also want to understand from you that these times have affected a lot of employees in the sense that there's uncertainty about when will the business, the actual business like the offices will start. People are also worried about whether we'll be able to, how healthy will be the business to be able to retain everyone. And then some people are alone, they're just the single people living alone. So what kind of initiatives you've taken for your own employees at this point? I think one great thing about Denso is the environment that we have for our team members is phenomenal, right? 70% of the entrepreneurs, even after the sale, they come to Denso, stay back and I'll be an example of it, right? I think we've always had this long term view of team members. Even if you take Denso as globally, right? Like you meet somebody from Denso, he's been working in the company for 25 years, 30 years, 35 years. May not be possible in India that easily, but that's how our approach is. So I think one of the things we're doing is that we're putting a lot of effort on learning and training. So we have IProspect masterclass that has started off as initiative IProspect. I think even yesterday I was in IProspect, sort of a town hall, everybody's questions were answered and we had 200 plus people in that town hall on a regular basis. I think the tools that we have, whether it's Microsoft Teams, whether it's our Yammer software, our internet, I think it's working beautifully. So we've always had this work from home culture at some level or the other. And people work on weekends, people work in the night, sometimes the campaign is going live. So we've had that balance. So I think even yesterday, one of the things that Rubina said in the town hall, which was very interesting. He says, just because we are at home and we know that we are available doesn't mean that all the manager should be giving tasks on weekends. And I think it was a very sweet thing for her to say, right? Because I realized that last Friday I had fixed up a lot of video calls and Saturday I was working. In fact, what has happened is that now is there no concept of a weekend, right? You just do things, you do Zoom calls and you are suddenly working. So I think it was a very sweet thing for Rubina to think that this may be happening. It was happening with her, it's going to be happening with her team members and she was doing that. I think that having that empathy as a leader and making sure that we're all together in this. Luckily, I think that network has been, I would say, much more positive about the future and what we're doing for the team members as unfortunately as compared to some of the other networks. So I think I'm proud to actually work for Denso. These are the other networks who are going through very, very challenging times with the team members. What which sectors do you think will be most effective and will take really long to recover? I know you have some hospitality clients, not talking about your clients in particular, but in general, which are the sectors like like travel industry, hospitality industry or real estate, which in your view will take really long to recover from this crisis? I think, see, I think, you know, when basically the tide goes down, right? All the ships go down, they say rising tide places all ships. So I think this is a crisis which I don't think any industry is going to similarly benefit from it, right? Barring a few gaming or some things other than that, I would say the long-term impact is going to be on consumption. And then you have less money for consumption, all industries get affected. So there will be some industry that will get affected in the short run. The short run industries could be hospitality, travel to a great extent. I think even auto will get affected or save, you know, so there will be some industry that will get affected in the short run. But I think if you take long run, a lot of industries will get affected by it. You know, I'm an angel investor in 10, 12 different companies. Even an online education company that I funded is actually now not able to sell courses. I would have thought that in the lockdown, online education will just go through the roof and sell so much per se. It's not happening because what is happening is that somebody told me that in India, you don't sell education, you sell jobs. So people are not sure if they're going to get a job or not sure if they're going to keep their job. They're not investing in online education. So the thing is that I think a lot of millennials, a lot of Gen Z have seen good times where they were spending on experiences. They were spending and savings was not a criteria. It was not a very critical component of their life. So I think that is going to create some kind of behavioral shift. Which is not good for the country. It makes the country more stable. But I think the consumption will reduce a little bit. But again, you know, I've been surprised in the past. We were doing a webinar where I asked a question deep kalra. And she said that people are still booking travel. So I said, like, you know, there are always these optimist people in this world. They are saying that, okay, we are allowing free cancellation, but people are booking travel. So they were booking travel for like 14 of April. It's like, you know, lockdown. So I think there is a, there is this world we live in. There are a lot of optimistic people. And sometimes what happens is that that things allows us to bounce back faster. So these just, you know, like, just imagine, like China, Wuhan came out of the lockdown and people walked in and bought $3 million worth of Ames bags and shoes, right? So even a lot of it, like, you know, there's also, you know, there is a lot that we're controlling. There's a lot that we want to do. So, you know, it may happen that, you know, that the recovery may be much faster and people go with a vengeance for consumption. Like, there is no tomorrow. We also want to celebrate it, you know, in a way that they might do those little things that bring joy to them because this lockdown is almost like living in a prison. So, coming back to digital space, the consumption has increased. And a lot of people who are not earlier, for instance, somebody like my mother-in-law was almost 80. She was so used to our newspaper. Now, even she's consuming newspaper on digital. So do you see that the patterns, you know, the way people consume digital will also change in these 30, 40 days. I don't know how wrong the lockdown will continue. But do you think people will be more digitally evolved after this lockdown? I think they will be. Because I think they say that it takes 21 days to 28 days to form a habit, right? So once you form a habit, then you don't go back. So in fact, you ask me, digital came to India after 2008 to 2009. Because what happened was, lands didn't have enough money to spend on television and print. And then when they got the money's back, they didn't go back to print and television the same way. They started spending signal money on digital. So I think the same thing people are realizing that digital can allow you to work from home. So I think you take the next five years, 10 years, I can almost guarantee you that if you had an average of 100 square feet per employee, you end up having 50 square feet of employee because some of the people will be working from home. So automatically they will be less requirement of commercial space. These people have realized that we don't need someone's space, right? So immediately I see there is a long-term behavioral change in that similarly. So actually I have invested in this company called Empowergy. They basically teach elderly people how to use technology. So you've got 200 plus videos and four languages, a small plot for the CEO of the company called Aparna Thakkar. But the thing is that she's seeing a huge spike on the usage of the video. A lot of the entity now stuck at home. They have to order online. They have to learn how to use WhatsApp. They've learned how to use Skype or any of the Zoom software, et cetera. So I think there's a very clear spike in that. And I think once they start using it, right? Once they see their grandchild on a video and talk to their grandchild and the grandchild can send a heart to them, et cetera, right? They're not going to go back to a phone call. Let's get this straight. So they will want to do a video call thereafter. So I have a feeling that, you know, and the reason I actually invested in this company was a personal experience that I can share with you. My father learned computers when he was in the 70s. He passed away, you know, five years ago when he was 86. The thing is, he had the last 10 years of his life, which was wonderful. He saw YouTube, he saw movies, he's listening to music. He did the PASNA courses online. My mother never learned computers. So although I wanted to spend time with her, I would go and meet her as often as I could. But I think she had not as fulfilling life as my father did. So I think technology is a great enabler to have a very, very fulfilling life. And I think in a way this will force some of the elderly people to use technology. But if you take a 10-year, 20-year perspective, in a way they'll be glad they learn because they'll have the next 10, 15 years of fulfilling life compared to having not learned technology. With my personal experience, I'm in a way, the positive of this could be that a lot of silverhead people will come up with knowledge of technology which will help them for the next 10, 20, 30 years of their life per se. Sir, before we close, I would want to know from you that in the situation that you've been in for the last 21, 30 days now, I'm sure one of its kinds that you've not experienced before. How has it involved you as an individual or maybe a professional? What are the things that you've never thought you would do and you're doing now? So, you know, honestly, Najab, I have had this very clear philosophy about life that happiness is a muscle, that you need to work on it every day. And happiness brings you success. And I think this 21, 30 days that actually proved it to me that this philosophy absolutely works because I've never been happier. I am as happy as I was earlier or happier. I am doing all the things as a discipline that I used to earlier, working on the muscle and building on it every day. And I just feel that I think I thought that this would affect me, right? But I am still smiling. I'm still laughing. And, you know, when I talk to my friend also, he's like, how can you be so happy? And I just, in fact, I'm giving a talk on happiness is a muscle as a topic to a group of people on Sunday. And this is like a talk that I'm doing now with them. But I generally believe that I think the way to live your life is to throw a discipline, not goals. Instead of setting a goal that you want to lose weight or be the Indian number one in table tennis, whatever exercise that I may have, I'd rather have disciplines that I will do this every day. I may not have alcohol. I will eat this. I will exercise. So when you set these disciplines, then automatically you will achieve your goals. Other than saying I want to do this goal. Secondly, I think happiness has to be worked on every day. Whether it's through meditation, through generosity, through a lot of these things. And when he said that, I never thought I'll be spending 10 hours a day doing video calls. I never thought I'd be doing an online course in Harvard and doing assignments like a homework. There are 400 people in the cohort and I'm working with all of them and we're doing calls and assignments together. So I would never thought that this kind of learning was possible. Listening to a person who died three months ago, right? That person means I'm unfortunately never got a chance to know him, but I just feel I know him. He's teaching me, the best guy in the world to teach you innovation. He's the guy teaching you innovation. So all these things were impossible to imagine, but I think productivity wise, I never thought I'll be so productive. We are doing a pitch today. 20 of our CEOs have come together and had brainstorming sessions on what to be done. We are working on sales meetings. Like I did a pitch with a client of mine, which was like a new client at 9.30pm in the night. So I was talking to him and he says, what are you doing? He goes through the night late. I said, where are you going? So at 9.30pm, I did a sales pitch. I never thought I'll go and I'll do a sales pitch at 9.30pm. I thought most of the pictures are put on hold. I did not know the pictures are still on. Everything is continuing. Because it has to, right? Each and 15 days they thought of putting in a hold, but now that it has been extended, people have started. Yeah, not only that, I think what is happening is as they were realizing, that this is suppose you had to pull into the strength of Dan Ray. The 25, 26 CEOs, we have 4,000 people plus in digital. If you want to get the best guys into a room, physically would have been impossible. But now the video call, you can actually access a lot better talent. So for groups like us, which are large and have amazing talent in different locations, actually this lockdown is actually beneficial for us to demonstrate our capabilities. So in fact, I feel that this way of pitching, we are putting a better foot forward for our partners and actually giving them a better solution than what we could have given them in a normal day. Because only a few people will fly down, right? So now what is happening is I think this is benefiting us. Our pitches are more collaborative. Our pitches are superior in terms of the talent we are getting on board. And I think the solution of coming up with a client is superior than what it would have been otherwise. Because I think we have more attention span or senior management going into the pitch. So I feel that this is going to benefit us and help us win. Some of the pitches would have been more difficult to win in a non-lockdown stage. I hope you are playing your table tennis as well. Yeah, I think that's the only thing I'm missing the most. Table tennis is one thing that I'm missing the most. Because I was just talking to one of my friends. She's my table tennis partner called Moon Moon Mukherjee. And we were discussing, is there an online course that I can do? I think that's one thing that I'm missing the most. I'm not playing table tennis. Now let's hope that this coronavirus thing gets over soon. And we are all out of this lockdown and you are able to follow your passion again. Sir, I want to close by saying be at home, stay safe, stay healthy. And thank you very much for speaking to us. My pleasure, Nasia. Awesome as always. Thank you.