 We're going to move on to our next topic here, which is making offline events matter in an online world. A successful event is a delicious recipe of a number of ingredients, good content, great concept, suitable talent, and above all, seamless management. This session will throw light on how far event professionals have come in making this process efficient and tight, and where this industry is actually headed. And for this, I would like to call on stage Founder Kwan Mr. Anirban Das Blah. This is probably the single most difficult speaking engagement I've ever had. Like literally you're walking on stage after one of the best speeches I've ever heard in my life. Big round of applause once again for Mr. Velumani. And this is such bad luck because there was supposed to be a panel that happened here. So it's fine. There's panels, as everyone knows, are more often than not quite boring and all over the place. To come not just after a speech, but literally such a fantastic speech, it's tough. I'll try not to bore you. I can tell you right now it's not going to be anywhere near as entertaining. What I'm talking about is not inspiring. It's much more brass tacks. It's about the event business. But hopefully we'll find a way to get some things out of it for you guys as well. We work with a lot of you here at Kwan and some of you may be wondering what we're doing up here and what I'm doing obviously and talking about events. For those of you who don't know, I'm a failed event manager. When we started Kwan eight years ago, we also had an event business. We shut it down in 12 months flat. We made profits. We did about two crores of buildings. We made 20, 30 lakhs in profit. But we shut that business because we realized that events are a bloody tough business. And we realized that there were challenges there that we felt we did not want to sit and be a part of. At the same time, I'm reasonably certain that there's no one here in this room that works more with event companies than we do. We've partnered with event companies and just on that side of the business, my partner Irvin Ash is sitting there at the back and he runs our sort of event programming business. And that's become a hundred crore business year on year growing at 25% year on year. We do 3,000 deals a year with event management companies across the country. So my guess is that our perspective on event management companies comes from a level of depth that no one else can match. And maybe that's why I'm here to talk a little bit about where we saw the event management business eight years ago, how it's changed and where I feel the opportunities are and where we feel that maybe there are some areas where you guys could look at that we're not looking at collectively as an industry. I also have a challenge for you guys, but we'll come to the challenge at the end. So why did we quit events eight years ago? I mean, there were two kinds of events. There were corporate events and there were events which were looking at creating IP. Corporate events we realized were just a nightmare. Every corporate event was a race to the bottom. Brands were not interested in anything that was value added. It was about who can give me the lowest cost and effectively any business where you're competing for lowest cost on a day-in, day-out basis is pretty much unsustainable beyond a point in time. When we looked at the IP-based businesses, and I know that there are companies like Wizcraft and like OML that have built great IPs over the last six, seven years, but back then we just found that again a really, really scary business. There was zero infrastructure. All events cost more than they needed to because you had to sit and produce infrastructure from scratch. There were no venues. Tickets were a joke. You know, ticketing infrastructure, every time we tried to do an event, 30, 40, 50% of tickets would go to sponsors or VIPs. You had to pay bribes. There were no permissions. Last thing you know, the day before an event, someone is sitting and saying, if you don't give me X amount of money, I'm going to sit and pull out this permission. And this was not really a serious business. We felt that if you want to sit and you want to create something on value, why would you spend money investing in something that was so high risk where all of your hard work that you've put in over the course of years can be wiped out because some guy who chooses to make an extra buck on the side decides to hold you hostage and where there's no infrastructure and where people were not willing to pay. So we decided eight years ago, seven years ago that we are not going to do events. We said we will partner with Westcraft. We will partner with Encompass. We will partner with all of the major event companies and let's sit and help them grow. And let's grow a business that, honestly speaking, piggybacking on you guys is larger than most of the event management companies in the country. What's happened over the years, of course, is that event business has changed. I think there are three or four major changes that have happened. I think that in Bombay, at least, there are a few more venues. In Delhi and Gurgaon, there are a few more venues, although I still don't think the infrastructure exists. We think that there are some politicians, when I talk to Aditya Thakre, when we meet Irvin Kejriwal, I think that they are much more progressive. They are trying to see it as an industry. They understand that the jobs that we are creating, jobs, we are creating opportunities, we are creating a better lifestyle. And I think that the ticketing infrastructure has obviously improved because of people like Book My Show and Insider. But at the end of the day, I still feel that it's not where it really can be or should be as an industry. And I still, what we're at is really a fraction of the whole opportunity. You know, we are here at an experiential marketing awards. The key word there is not experiential, it's marketing. I think we still have a mindset issue where we sit and we think that event management is about managing or executing an event. We don't realize that our challenge is the battle for marketing dollars or marketing rupees. Every event that you guys come up with is competing with a hoarding at Harji Early. It's competing with an ad in the Times of India. It's competing with a spend on Facebook. It's competing with something on viral fever. And this is what you're competing at. But our mindset when we sit and think of events is I will go to Pepsi or I will go to LG or I'll go to whatever brand. I will come up with a series of events, usually in one of the top six cities. Some of the bigger agencies go beyond those, maybe 12, 15, 20 cities. And all of us are sitting and trying to create content, fighting for very, very little people. We sit and say that this is the event. Some of us are evolved enough to say that this is the cost per contact. But we are not really thinking through how can we really compete effectively with a broader marketing ecosystem and how can we have a higher share of the revenue in it. We can sit and talk about all of the things that we need as an industry. I think the work that IMA does, whether it's Sabas or it's a team that works with him, to bring us more into the limelight, to sit and get more political support, more governmental support is fantastic. But I really feel that before we sit and talk about what we need from the external environment, I think we need to question ourselves a little bit deeper, a bit harder and say are we really sitting and doing all that we can as an industry. I'm going to give you four examples right now of opportunities in the event industry that I think are severely underutilized and I think that they're opportunities for us to work towards, right? Let's talk about the idea of India and where we're doing events. So Kwan does about 3,000 events a year where we're sitting and providing talent for different event management companies. I would say that at least 2,000 of those events or 2,300 of those events happen outside of the top 10 cities. They're not organized by event management companies. It's a fixer here, it's a broker there, it's a vendor there and it's an informal network that sits there and provides events, right? I don't understand, if you look at the top 10 event management companies in India or the top 20 event management companies in India and you look at what ratio of their business comes in the top 15 to 20 cities, you'd be shocked at those numbers because the truth is we're still an industry that sits and competes on any given, today is a Friday, right? On Friday and Saturday, I can guarantee that in the city of Mumbai there will be 30 events that will be forgotten tomorrow or forgotten by Monday for the same audience. There will be another 30 events next week and the same thing is being replicated across all of the six metros, right? And so which is why our event industry is completely focused on India A and which is why we're not capturing those marketing rupees. If people want to reach out to Bharat where 90% of the population lives, they don't come to us as an industry, we say that we're experiential marketing, no we're not. We're a city-centric event management industry. If we really were about marketing, we would have solutions that address Bharat and not just India. This is why if you look at a marketing guy, if he wants to go outside of the big cities, he will always go to television, he will go to radio, he will go to print, he will almost never come to an event management company. You know, we were setting recently Avinash and I and we were discussing a tour, a Bollywood tour, around Rithik Roshan that we were looking at taking internationally next year. We were looking at Dallas, we were looking at New York, we were looking at a bunch of other people and we were talking to a bunch of event companies and promoters based in North America. It blows my mind that in all of these seven years, we've never had a conversation with an event company saying that why aren't we going out to Lodhiana, to Chandigarh, to Amritsar, to Jaipur, to Patna and doing a Bollywood tour around that. You know, when we sit and talk about cities, the truth is, these are saturated markets. An event here happens every day, forget about every week, but when you go to Bharat, we don't have those experiences. You know, we don't have people catering to those audiences. It is so easy to put together and package things and take it there, but I feel that we have such a myopic view of what the opportunity is from a marketing perspective that as an industry, we don't challenge ourselves to go beyond our comfort zone. Second thing that I want to talk about is the whole idea of premiumization, right? If I look at myself this year, my team Real Madrid reached the Champions League finals. I bought a 30,000 rupee ticket for which I paid 2 lakhs and I flew to Cardiff to watch that game. Last month, I went to Bangkok to eat a meal at Gagan. Again, we paid a premium just to eat at the chef's table. In India, so those of us who are catering to India, there's a huge chunk of people that are not interested in going and attending that event, consuming it passively and coming back. They're looking for experiences. They're looking at something that they can share, that they can talk about, that they can remember, right? Again, when we look at events, we just look at it as a very chronological flow. We say that this is when the event will start, this is when the event will end, this is how I fill up the time, but we're not understanding the categorization. We're not understanding how there are other segments. How can you premiumize things, right? I think tomorrow or day after, Dream Theater is performing in Bombay if I'm not mistaken, I don't see why there isn't a whole segment that is sold separately just around the hospitality experience, the meat and greed experience. And the crazy part is that people have been doing this. I remember we were at some movie premiere in London and we realized that they had sold tickets not just for that. They had also sold tickets for attending a party to pose for pictures with the star. I mean, I know Sabha is not going to be happy to hear this, but last year at IFA, we realized that certain people were sitting and selling tickets to attend the show to sit close to the stars without Wiskram knowing about it because people are willing to pay five times, ten times as much just to have the premium experience. Again, again, as an industry, there are some companies that sit and do this, but this is not part of our DNA. We just think that we are here. Idea here, sponsor here, let's execute. But we are not thinking about it from an ancillary way. We are not thinking about how do we upsell. Let's talk about consumption, right? Again, when we looked at events as an industry, we always felt that our audience are the people in the room. Every event came down to, okay, this is the experience. These are the people who will attend it, and that's what the whole event is about. And I can understand that there was a reason for that because five years ago, seven years ago, if you wanted to go outside the room, your only real platform was television, and when you have 20, 30 channels and the cost of production is high, the cost of distribution is high, I understand that your audience was in the room. But we live in a different world today where distribution has dramatically been democratized, right? Today, if I look at a classic property, right, if I look at the blenders pride fashion tour, which I think Show House does if I'm not mistaken, it's a property that's iconic, it's been running for 15 years or something like that. They've gone beyond the city, top five, six cities, they go to smaller towns, but even if you're doing a 10-city, 15-city tour and you have 200 people in the room, it's still a really small number. I don't understand what stops people or what stops Pernod Ricard or the event company from sitting and saying that, okay, this is now going to be distributed online, this is going to be distributed via an app, this is going to be streamed, this is the merchandise that will be created around it. I know you'll have a session after this on merchandising, right? But the truth is almost all event experiences can be consumed in multiple formats. They can be consumed live, they can be consumed through memorabilia, they can be consumed through experiences, they can be consumed digitally, and I don't think that again as an event company, we are sitting and maximizing the distribution and the monetization of the different platforms that we have. The last bit, you know, when we sit and go out there and pitch an event and I've been a part of event pitchers, I've seen them, what we're pitching is always, boss, there's this concert or this idea and we will do it on this city, on this day. That's not what brands are looking for, you know? What you're pitching is effectively a one-night stand. Brands are not looking for one-night stands, they're looking for relationships. They don't want to sit and have a customer come in, engage with the event, but not with the brand and disappear. As an event company, you need to own platforms. You need to sit and tell a brand that, listen, I will give you music as a platform, I will specialize in this kind of music, this is the on-ground event, this is the follow-up event, this is the community experience, this is the online engagement experience. If we don't bring the idea of presenting platforms to people, if you look at Bollywood, for example, it's very clear that someone specializes, phantom stands for a certain kind of cinema, a sergeant actor stands for a certain kind of cinema, right? And we sit and create experience, Bhansali. Everyone owns a platform, but I feel that here it's ad hoc, there's no storytelling, there's no narrative, and it's literally selling one-night stands. It is far tougher to sell ten one-night stands than to sell one ten-month relationship. And I think that the DNA of event companies, in terms of how they approach it and how they sell it, needs to change dramatically. You know, one of the biggest success stories in the event space in terms of enterprise value in the last five, seven years, is the OML story. But if you look at OML, what OML sells is in NH7. They sell a music platform, they sell a comedy platform. I think more and more event companies need to start thinking year-long engagement and owning platforms. You know, this is where we come to a challenge, right? I don't know how many of you work that much at Kwan, how much you know about Kwan, but today Kwan represents about 150 people. If I look at agencies number two to number ten, they represent about 80 people. We work together, and the reason we do that is because we sit and we put together things. We work with the movie industry very differently from how we work with the event industry. With you guys, we provide creative elements. With the movie industry, how we work with studios is we provide IP and we co-develop IP. So if you look at EROS, if you look at Viacom, our role is they come, they sit with us, they say what content is out there, what rights are out there, what director can be put, what music can be put, how do we set and raise finance for this, what actors can be put. We put together 25 movies a year. We're bringing 2,000 crores of revenue into the movie industry year after year. And whereas our share of participation in the event business is literally 100 crores, and we are creating nothing together. We just sit and we are a vendor, and we are a vendor that is getting rich of you. We save your partners. I know that, say, Sabaz, Andre, Kwan, it's a great relationship, and we save your partners. But what is a partner if you're not helping each other grow, if you're just sitting and providing stuff? This is my challenge to you guys, right? I really feel that just across the four areas that we spoke about, premiumization, Bharat, multi-platform, and owning something year-long, right? Music and comedy in Bollywood and all in dance and all of those things. You know, I'm setting Kwan a goal of partnering with the event industry and saying that in the next three years to create IP and business worth a thousand crores together. Avinash, could you stand up for a second? Most of you know Avinash, and you guys have been working with him for a while providing events. So, Avinash is going to drive this at Kwan's end. Our challenge to you guys and everyone sitting in this room is can we create a thousand crores of business together as partners working in these four areas? These are all white spaces. These are all spaces that we are not really working on and I'd be happy for someone like Sabhas to do it or I'd be happy if you all come as individual event companies but let's set ourselves a goal here. The event business is too large and the potential and the possibilities are too massive for you guys to be sitting and doing events reaching out to 2% of India's population. The future is digital and the future is experiential. You guys need to figure how you guys can make print and television advertising obsolete. That is the challenge before you. That is the goal before you. If that's not how you see yourself as an industry you're doing yourselves a disservice. Thank you. If anyone would like to ask Mr. Blau a question this is a good time to ask it. We are throwing the session open for a couple of questions. If you have any questions related to what he said or maybe something else this would be a good time to ask. You can see Sabhas smiling. I see there are no questions. Okay, thank you guys. Avinash is at the back. Please make sure that we actually sit and we actually do this and we make this happen. Thank you. Alright Mr. Blau, I'll just take another minute. If I could invite Mr. Rajiv Jain on stage, founder Rashi Entertainment please to felicitate this wonderful speaker, please sir. Thank you so much.