 We will now be proceeding forward to invite our next speaker of the day here. Siddharth Bhutalia is the chief marketing officer of AirAsia India, a joint venture between Tata Suns and AirAsia Investment. Siddharth has been an editorial panel member and published author in various industry publications and international marketing journals and is a futuristic and seasoned speaker on travel and tourism, marketing strategy and digital ecosystems at seminars across the world. He will be speaking on the topic delivering economic value through data, digitalization and personalization. So kindly, please let's welcome put your hands up in the air together for Siddharth Bhutalia chief marketing officer, AirAsia India. Welcome, sir. Thank you so much and Good afternoon, everyone. I know it's always tough to take the post-lunch session. I don't have any videos or any explosive content to share with you, but I'm going to try and keep it as engaging as possible and open it up to questions after we finish. I wanted to talk about this topic of looking at delivering economic value through data and digitalization and personalization in the context of digital marketing and a lot of the discussions that we've had in the first half of today's session. Let me start by saying, I mean, what a pleasure it is to be back with an audience like this in the room. I think one of the panel members in the last session also expressed that it kind of underscores the importance of personal collections even when we're at the epicenter of trying to celebrate digital excellence, there's a lot that goes into one-to-one relations and personal relations. And when we're looking at digital, when we're often looking at binary and data metrics, it's important to remember what we're trying to actually get to at the end of the day, and it's these kinds of personal collections that have the most impact. Now, the past year and a half have been marked across the world by a vast variety of obvious changes in macroeconomic drivers. In the day-to-day that we spend in digital, we often tend to look at the micro, we often tend to look at metrics. But it's important to step back, I think, at this juncture and look at the context in which we're operating now, and what is the promise that that holds for the future? If you look at the relationship between organizations and brands, it's not that that has changed fundamentally. The fundamentals of the relationships have not changed. A lot of the trends, however, that we have seen which were chugging along slowly, have got accentuated in immense space in the last year and a half. In markets like ours, emerging markets, etc., the unique thing which has happened is that a lot of these trends have been driven by a younger and a more diverse consumer demographic. It's again another thing which was happening slowly, but it's got significantly accentuated. I can cite examples from my industry, right? Aviation. If you look at the demographic, the flying demographic that was there earlier versus the past year, the most resilient age group has been the 20 to 29 age group. In a period when all other age groups flying fell by about 42%, the 20 to 29 age group fell only 16%. Now, each of these demographics have very unique characteristics, and it's not just that age group. At the same time as the age groups, there have been a lot of other things which have happened. You've had a lot of first-time travelers coming. You've had a lot of movement from train travel and a lack of the traditional corporate travel to a new demographic. And that new demographic is bringing new data into the ecosystem. And it's very important to look at how these demographics are engaging with brands and what we can do and what promise that holds for the future. If you look at this period of intensive change, what's happened for all of us I think in the last couple of years at an individual level and at an organization level, is there's been a massive impact at a personal level as well as as organizations. And each of us is defined by the experiences that we've had in our lives. Those experiences tend to reshape your identities. It does the same thing to brands. It does the same thing to organizations. But what it does at an individual level, and if you look at travel in that context, it's one of the most inspiring experiences that people typically have that change your world view. For some people, travel is about creating a lifelong memory. For some people, travel is about connecting with other individuals, families, friends. We've seen a lot of increase in VFR in the past year. Now, as the world is emerging again, what is happening is you're seeing a move from discretionary expenditure moving from transactional to experiences. It's another one of those macro shifts that were happening that have got accelerated. You had a lot of transactional exchanges of goods which were happening. And we're moving back into the experience economy, which has been around. It's not a new phenomenon. It's been around since the 20s. I mean, for about 20 years. But that's something that has got accelerated significantly. And as that experience economy comes in, there's a need for a much deeper understanding of the consumer journey. Because what you're looking for is not transactional anymore. You're looking at all the touchpoints in the consumer journey that will be able to drive loyalty, will be able to drive revenue that will create ultimately a differentiated brand identity. And each of those touchpoints has digitization or data at the back end of it. If you look at these younger, diverse experience economy consumers, as I said, they exhibit certain characteristics, right? They are more resilient, which we've seen. They're more socially aware. They're more connected. They're more digitally engaged. You take the example of our social media. While the flying demographic fell by about 50% in the past year, our social media engagement went up three times. So we revamped our entire systems. We invested in online reputation management metrics. We launched a new website and mobile applications. We revamped our booking engine, all those systems. We've reached now global benchmarks of resolution times and response times on social media because we realize that that's where people are moving. And that, as I said, is another acceleration of something that should have been done a long time ago. Apart from India, the seven other geographies where Ayrigia India operates have actually closed their contact centers and are operating only on a chatbot. So we have an AI-powered conversational transactional chatbot. They can fulfill 97% of what people typically were doing at contact centers earlier, right? What are these experience economy consumers looking for? They're looking for new service offerings. The speed at which these new norms have come into play has not just enabled and empowered innovation. But in all of our lives, it has almost necessitated it. It is critical that we relook at fundamental business models and the way in which we do business to survive in the future. If you have the aptitude today and you have the confidence to invest in digital infrastructures and to scale, then you're primed to pivot for what the future will bring and that's where the economic value will be. If you look at classical or neoclassical economic models, what they said is that organizations effectively derive a comparative advantage versus other organizations or geographies, countries, et cetera. From the ownership of certain assets, those used to be factors of production, human assets, capital assets, et cetera, or intellectual assets, technology, innovation. If you see the context of the last panel discussion that happened on data privacy and personalization, I was fascinated by some of the things that were being said on that. A lot of what is happening now is that, especially in times of crisis, you look at inequalities that come to the fore, whether it's economic inequalities or industry inequalities, which bring much more larger macroeconomic changes along with it, like the disruption of the gig economy, which was seeing a massive increase, or the consolidation that is happening in a lot of the industries because of the scale that is required, even to power AI, for example, you need scale to be able to monetize the AI and the investments that you're doing over there. But ultimately, what is running at the back of this is data. And if you need to remain relevant in the long run, like we were talking about data privacy and the implications of consumers owning their data and what they will do with that, it is imperative that you are responsible with that data because what will derive that comparative advantage in the future is actually how you deal with that data. And so there's a new kind of asset, which is a moral asset. If you can have the ownership of that moral asset, then you have a comparative advantage over other organizations because the other factors are much easily fungible, right? If you measure that morality, it's essentially in the manner in which we engage with stakeholders, with consumers, with markets, with competitors who are also stakeholders in our ecosystem, and with the community at large. So if you take the example of data, the increased regulation that has happened in the past year and a half, has afforded a wealth of new data that firms are not necessarily using at an adequate amount, if you look at, again, airlines, where, for example, with the PNR earlier when a booking came in, you had multiple passengers, one mobile number. Today with health and contact declaration forms, you have mobile numbers and email addresses, contact details at a pin code level and address details of where you're traveling to for every single passenger. Now, there is personal information, sensitive personal information. What becomes important tomorrow as this sharing of this data becomes a necessity for consumers in the new ecosystem is how a firm is going to deal with that, because tomorrow the power is in the hands of the individual and they are going to trust their data with organizations or brands that are not going to exploit that data for commercial value or competitive advantage, but to hand that value back to the consumer. And that is the crux of what personalization is. If you can take that data to deliver a better consumer experience, rather than try to take that data to move a transaction or increase a conversion, then you stand to gain a long-term benefit from that. The relationship of trust between the consumer and the brand is what lowers the transaction costs in the long-term. It lowers the cost of acquisition. All the intangible resources that the consumer spends on gathering information, time, money, the entire need for intermediaries in the ecosystem is because there is data arbitration. Once you have the data and the consumer trusts you with that data, then that need is gone. All of that extra resources that are being spent on these various things are handed back to the two entities which are fundamental to the trade, the consumer and the brand. And that's where the economic value needs to get created. So the emphasis by many organizations in closing what I'd say in the last period has been on deploying hygiene factors, trying to address tactical measures to deal with the uncertainty, the chaos, etc. But the universal adoption of these tactical measures means that they're not going to be differentiators in the long-term. What will be a differentiator in the long-term is to have a sustainable strategy which is driven by data, which is built on a digital ecosystem and which ultimately is using personalization to provide a differentiated experience to the consumer. And that's where economic value is moving and that's where I believe we all need to move. So I mean that's my summary of this in general but I'd be very happy to address any questions if anyone has. Hi sir, I'm Tarun from Garuda. So would an airline be willing to monetize their user data in terms of other marketers to monetize it? So would an airline, it's a global question, would an airline, I'm sure there would be airlines which would be willing to monetize it. As an airline ourselves I would not monetize it. And there are a variety of reasons for that but you have an extension to that question I think. That's basically in terms of the personalization you've been speaking about. So if a person is flying to a skiing location, so in that terms if you know somebody is going to fly there, sometimes you could offer them hotel spaces or the other skiing equipment as well. So in terms that is the next stage of consumer data where we are moving to I feel. Yes and I think it's important again leading to what the last panel said to insure and we've pivoted if you look at Ereja.com as an organization used to be, Ereja used to be an organization which was an airline company. It is moved to essentially becoming a digital travel data company so you have investments now in car ecosystems or Uber equivalent ecosystems in Southeast Asia. We've moved to selling hotels to selling rentals to selling health to selling all of those things but those are sold on the same platforms. When the consumer comes on to that platform they know what they're sharing their data for and what they're buying. Which is very different from taking that data and handing it over to another company in exchange for their data. Now it's easy to do in a collaborative ecosystem and we are 84% for example owned by data sons. So is IHCL or Taj hotels. The monetization of that is very attractive to do. But it's very important to keep those guardrails across the different organizations. And tomorrow if I wanted to provide an offer to my consumers who are travelling say from Bangalore to Delhi at a Taj hotel in Delhi to stay. That offer needs to be on our platform and the consumer needs to book the hotel and once they've made the transaction whatever data is required for that transaction needs to flow to the partner. But it wouldn't be correct in my mind to hand over the data of saying these are the 100 people who are flying into Delhi and go market to them yourselves. I think that will be doing a disservice to the consumer. Hi. I have a question like to what extent the AIR is using analytics particularly the customer analytics. To tracking the life cycle right from booking to shooting the journey. Because recently we had an experience in family like where we booked a ticket during this lockdown period for Delhi to Jaipur. And the AIR is here. Flights remain scheduling for so many months. And then we found that the ticket got lost though we booked through the make my trip. It was the responsibility of make my trip also to ascertain whether the passenger has really got travel or not. If not if the flights are not scheduling and it's like four or five and more than kind of 10 residual then money should be automatically refunded to the customer account. But yet it has not happened. So do you have any analytics tools for analyzing these kind of huge cases? Yes. This is exactly the point I was making in terms of what you do with that data where the ownership of that data lies. Who the consumer trusts with the data. Now when you make a booking through an intermediary for example. The way the process works is if the flight gets canceled immediately because the money has come through the intermediary. The refund moves from the airline back to the intermediary. Now the intermediary has the choice of refunding that money directly to you or waiting for you to reach out to the intermediary and refund the money. And those are governed by the terms and conditions of that intermediary. So if you book on the airline website directly for example your refund is instant as soon as the flight gets cancelled whether you cancel it or the airline cancel it or is rescheduled. You will immediately get it back. It might take three to four days for the bank who has got or the credit card company to process that money back to your account or your credit card. But as soon as you have an intermediary that life cycle increases in the course of the pandemic there are many smaller agents. Not the likes of the big ones who have I mean the OTS the large OTS have an own reputation to maintain. And so ultimately because of a regulation because of their own reputation those refunds get processed. But there are a lot of smaller travel agents who genuinely had cash flow issues at this period of time and went bankrupt. And that effectively just I mean that goes away that. In this case sorry in this case it was make my trip was not a small vendor. Exactly. Big operator. But they remain saying that we have not got yet refund from the operator. Because next they are rescheduling to the next they said you are loaded to next flight. Same something they have used to say. So we still reported to them and we are hoping that is still they act. How long ago was this. I think now it's more than years. So let me get your PNR after this and make sure that this is sorted. In principle it shouldn't happen. I am also a tech professional. So I was kind of raging from that point of view because I generally I advise free of cost to make my trip on so many things right. Once I booked from Rachi to Delhi and suddenly you know my older passenger co passenger was also booked you know mistakenly because they ticked default. Sometimes you miss this so I recommended certain modification in their mobile apps and they agreed to that but they did not refund the mistakes. This is precisely the point that I was making is that what organizations do with that data how they handle it how responsibly they deal with the consumers. Is what is going to determine next time whether you transact with the same organization and whether that transaction is driven by a choice of price. Now you may have gone through a particular channel because you got a discount at that channel or you got a bank offer or something. And so it's driven by that tactical incentive. But after one or two experiences of this nature you realize that sharing your data or dealing with a firm that is going to be responsible with that data and with the money that you've given to them is going to make a lot more sense. And a lot of these larger organizations will naturally pivot to that it's a matter of survival now it's not a matter of you know comparative advantage anymore. But that that's precisely what I was saying. Thank you.