 up and prepping up. It's now time to introduce our next first stand-alone speaking session on out-of-home industry needs a common voice for self-regulation. And our speaker is Mr Indrajeet Sen, CEO Indian Outdoor Advertising Association. Well, ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together to welcome Mr Indrajeet Sen, CEO Indian Outdoor Advertising Association. And it gives me great pleasure to introduce the man, CEO of Indian Outdoor Advertising Association Limited, the only national association of Indian out-of-home advertising industry, a body that Indrajeet had helped establish and presently guides in establishing best practices, industry research and analytics, updating regulatory provisions together with government bodies and other activities that promote the industry with positive perceptions among all stakeholders. Let's have a huge round of applause. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. Thanks, thanks very much. Yeah, so we're ready to go. Oh, we are ahead. Okay, so here we are. Oh, which industry needs a common voice for self-regulation? As you are all aware, I am with the IOAA, Quick Recap, body that was registered as a not-for-profit in 2007 with objective of protecting and promoting interests of outdoor advertising media companies. Since 2007, we have come a long way and the industry now at least has some semblance of being at least a partially organized industry. However, most importantly, OH media companies from across the country, Guwahati to Rajkot and Jammu to Tiruvannanthapuram are all members now about close to 300 or so and growing. Not all, mind you, but all the important ones barring one or two are members today. Revenue-wise, IOAA members would account for about 70 to 75% of the total industry revenues, which is estimated to be close to around 3,600 crores this year. At the risk of boring some of you, I will remind you of some of the statistics and the facts that has been the cause for this presentation. OH advertising media in India has some 12 to 1,400 companies or proprietorships that own or have erected anything from two or three hoardings to some companies with hundreds and even thousands of media properties. Out of this, only 12 have national or multi-regional presence, another seven that has some extensive presence within one region, and another five or so that has presence in two states. This extreme fragmentation of media ownership has given birth to one unique category of dealers in this business, the aggregator. In an effort by advertisers and agencies to try to deal with lesser number of vendors, aggregators are very, very essential. So now, let's try to implement any one common practice in this country of 1,400 plus media vendors. I think you're getting the picture. Recently, we at IOAA have been deeply engaged in trying to get digital OOH regulations adopted along global lines in our various municipalities and states. During this exercise, every research and survey report as well as detail recommendations backed by authoritative studies on regulations that we came across were authored by respective national associations of their dep, or their deputed agencies in the US, Australia, UK, Europe, South Africa, etc. And these are countries except the US where the number of OOH media companies involved are hardly a dozen or so. Point being that even they have found the need for coming together to implement regulations and practices before authorities force something unpalatable down your throat. And let's make no mistake, OOH is treated similarly in every country, ours is no exception. We face the same issues here as far as regulations are concerned. And if it is solely left to any authority anywhere to enact regulations strictly by themselves, then they will always err on the side of extreme caution. This is a fact that will never change unless that is the subject in this case, OOH media companies get together and organize studies, research, reports by institutes of higher learning, specialists of impeccable repute, and face up to the facts of these reports and then recommend those regulations based on those studies. That is the only chance there is of overcoming irrational, overcautious assumptions made by typical policymakers while framing regulations. The typical scenario in most municipalities and states start with some irrational and arbitrary size specifications for hoardings, the most common form of OOH in India. Then the owner shifts to the media companies, they take over and they then adapt innovative means to club multiple licenses and sites to create huge sizes and then other companies do the same because no one wants to be left behind. And soon the whole city is filled with boards of all kinds of sizes and at every nook and cranny. And while all this is going on, other citizens of the city observe with alarm at the rapidly deteriorating aesthetics, poor placements, hazardous construction and very soon regulators are forced to clamp down and that immediately causes all the media owners to go to court or to their political allies to regularize matters. But if you note where it all started in the first place, if the media companies had jointly developed a reasonable regulatory measure offered the same to the authorities as well as started voluntarily implementing it themselves, it would have been far, far better for both the business and the health of all the companies individually and collectively. And this doesn't stop only with regulations. A highly competitive business environment with lacks regulatory oversight always leads to commoditization of offerings. And then the only competitive advantage is prices and longer credit periods. And in market after market in India outdoor rates have not only not moved up, but have actually gone down as newer illegal sites have come up next to the one that had been asking for premium prices last year. And who is it benefiting? Over the years, it's become an accepted norm that outdoors will be paid in any time around 180 days. However, it is only when IOA came together and explained the issues clearly to the larger companies that matters started to come together. Ultimately, it has taken about four years for a standard operating process to be put in place with all the major agencies subscribing to it too. No doubt it has caused some giving away of advantages by some companies, but they did see the overall collective gain to be more attractive. I can of course go on with different examples, but is it really necessary to understand that coming together to follow reasonable and commonly accepted norms and practices establishes the industry as not only a mature one, but also one in which companies do not need to fritter their energies in rushing into a downward spiral and instead focus on developing much needed steps on branding their media, developing innovative solutions, serving advertisers better, and so many other details that can increase media share for OOH in a big way, benefiting all stakeholders. Because the fact, another fact of life is that despite all the growth talk that we've been hearing, 6% to 13%, the actual share of out of home in the media spends has been steadily reducing over the last 10 years. It is now just around 5% from heady 8% to 9% some 18 years ago when Anurag left the industry. In fact, in an effort to make it easier for companies in the North to come together, we recently formed the IOA North chapter based in Delhi. Again, the large companies are members, but please think about it. It is the smaller companies who can benefit the most from being part of a large association and they need to see this light of day very, very quickly. We of course look forward to the day when our industry can also organize themselves like print or TV or even radio broadcasters. Thanks very much for the opportunity to be here with you and I look forward to some questions because there should be some. Yeah, any questions please? Any questions anyone? Yeah, please. Yeah, that is okay. For the benefit of those who did not hear the question, I think is talking about what I think about research coming into the industry. That this is one of those issues that are pending again, the collective will of the industry to come together because end of the day, it's the media companies that have to pay for and subscribe to that, to the research. Okay, once the research is in place, then agencies and advertisers will gladly use it. But you have to first realize what the research is all about. One of the basic parts of media research is a thing called site rating. Okay, without a site rating, you cannot determine the viewability and therefore you cannot determine what kind of traffic is going to be seeing it and you cannot arrive at a reach out of frequency. So if you have to get into the site rating, every company may need to face the facts and sacrifice some of their poorer sites and gain more from the rest. Are we willing to do that? So far, the answer that I've got from across the country, including our own members, unfortunately, is that they're not all ready to do it. Some are, most are not. Till they come together and talk about the subject of today's discussion, self-regulation, nothing is going to move forward. Have I answered your question? Yeah. Hi. Sir, at the outset, thank you for that wonderful introduction about the present state of scenario in OOH industry. Now, in the previous panel discussion, one of the key points that were highlighted was about collaborative growth between different media industries. And we wanted to understand that what would be pure guidance. For instance, at Chennai airport, we have a patent pending solution for OOH industry. And we've been trying hard for the last four months or to find collaborative partners in other airports across India. So through a concerted effort, what would be your guidance to find the right collaborative partners across the country? See, that is a, what you're asking for is a specific business advice. But what I would rather tell you is that, you know, we heard so much about digital OOH. This entire conference is going to be about digital OOH. You know how many places digital OOH is permitted in India? There are about some six or seven cities. Rest are not. Okay. The rest are myopic enough not even to consider digital OOH on the main roads. They say digital OOH, oh, this is going to be terrible. It's going to create all kinds of people piling on. And therefore, we will limit that only to locations where it can look away from the roads. Okay. So indoor OOH is all, I mean, indoor digital is all right. Outdoor digital is not all right. In fact, our last couple of, you know, months have been going in trying to convince municipality after municipality and the Bombay municipality may be ready, but the police aren't yet. Okay. And we do not have any indigenous research of our own. We have to only depend upon research and studies that have been done abroad and see to what extent that relates to India for that to be applicable, which is what was bringing me to say that unless we decide to get together and we decide to, through an association, go to, you know, an impeccable institution to do that research in the similar way that it has been done in these other countries and in an environment which is relevant to India, would we ever convince our, you know, national highway authority of India, which has the most draconian rules as far as outdoor, I mean, advertising on roads is concerned, forget about digital. I mean, even conventional is terrible and to be done away immediately as far as they are concerned. Okay. So without the industry coming together, and of course, it'll mean self-regulation. Of course, it'll mean that you have to do away with your 160 feet by 240 feet hoardings. But we have to be prepared to do that. I mean, if we are not prepared to do that, then all our discussions on digital OOH and how far it will take us and how good it will be, will all remain in this hall and all good intentions and your money will stay invested. Yeah? Anything more? Yeah, please. Hi, Indrajit. I'm Pramod. Okay. Yeah. Indrajit, good. It was, you explained that we should have a common voice for self-regulation and we should be self-regulated as a community, OOH community. But I'm worried really, you know, while we are talking measurement, research, it cannot happen. And one of the panelists before really repeated a couple of times that we are not ready. Why we are not ready? Because first of all, we have to go to the roots really, you know, how the cities are going to regulate it first, until unless the city, the city boss, or we have a common policy across the country, or not across the country, across the state, until unless that happens, how we can do that? I mean, that's a big challenge. And how IOAA is going to handle that or to tackle that? Can you please explain a bit on that? IOAA has already taken it up. See the only government authority that is anywhere close to regulating outdoor advertising is the Ministry of Urban Development because they oversee municipalities and municipalities have the mandate for out-of-home advertising. So IOAA has already taken it upon itself to be in close touch with the Ministry of Urban Development to develop guidelines and a model code for outdoor regulations nationally. It's going to take, again, it's going to take a bit of a time because we need to, you know, that lobby scenario has to be done and there has to be enough presence seen and enough support seen across the country for the Ministry to realize that, yes, it is worth taking a look at and only then will that thing get moving. However, there have been some small gains in terms of there have been municipalities across the country, important ones like Mumbai, certain other cities where our proposals on digital and our proposals on the overall situation have been accepted. Smart cities administrations nationally have been very open to our regulations and things like that. We're talking about IoT being a backbone for smart cities, etc., etc. We have been trying to point out that out-of-home is one of the best ways that a smart city backbone can be actually made visible to people at the levels where it can be, it's on the road, where it can be seen, where it can be used. If you do not have a smart bus shelter which has a display, which is showing when the next bus is coming or and, you know, being also open to a two-way communication in terms of seeking emergency services, etc., we'll never see that happening. Now, all this is now beginning to get accepted. Obviously, we need more support at the back end to go and stand up and say that, listen, we do represent a huge part of the country, so therefore please listen to us. Thank you so much and I think we're going to be out of time. Thank you so much. All right. Well, thank you so much, Mr. Sen, for your lovely words of encouragement and every single detail that your talk entailed. I would request you to please stay on stage as I invite Mr. Pramod Bhandula to give away the memento. Executive Chairman J.C. Decox, Advertising India Private Limited. Let's have a huge round of applause, please, ladies and gentlemen. Request you to please take center stage for your photograph.