 And now ladies and gentlemen, so to set the tone for the program I'd now like to invite on stage the chairman and editor-in-chief of Exchange for Media Group and BW Business World. Please put your hands together to welcome on stage Mr. Anurag Bhattra. Good afternoon. It's my honour and privilege to welcome you to the 16th edition of the Pitch Madison Advertising Report 2018. This is the first event of Exchange for Media that I am attending in Bombay in 2018 and I can tell you we're running 10 minutes ahead of time. So that's a good moment. I see lots of my friends, see people who built the industry. Mr. Patel, thank you for being here. And Sam, it was an idea. Me, Amit and Naul came to you 16 and a half years back and said we've started Exchange for Media and Pitch is a year old. Would you like to do something like this? And I think Amit drove it and for the first five, seven years, Amit, and you built it. It's come a long way from then and I can tell you that Vikram was asking me at the start of the event that don't you think the hall will be small because this is one event that really gets the attention and the mind space of everybody in the media industry because one wants to know how much money will be spent in advertising. Especially we're coming after a year which saw kind of two disruptions. One happened in November 2016. The demonetization disruption then was GST. So we are especially doing this after a two-meters year. We never imagined that GST would be such a strong negative impact on advertising, especially TV advertising. So really when we come to pitch advertising, pitch medicine advertising outlook 2018, the question on your mind is how will be 2018? Will the industry grow? Will the industry recover? Which parts of the industry will be doing better than other parts of the industry? Which mediums? And if you look at the agenda of the day which Sam and the pitch team have put together is one, we also have Shiv who's somebody who's one of the most knowledgeable leaders. I don't know where is Mr. Shiv Kumar. I can't see. Maybe Shiv is sitting. You know, I can tell you that I look forward to his emails. He reads a lot and as I say, you are what you read and when he sends me a summary, I'm on his mailing list. I'm sure there are a few hundred people. When I read what he sends, I don't have to read the book. He is somebody who really encapsulates what's in the book beautifully. And unfortunately, sometimes he sends me those after I bought the book. If I got them before I bought the book, I would save money. So if you look at the agenda today, we have an agenda addressing almost all the issues that are in the minds of advertisers, media owners and agencies. We're looking at the role of CMOs who are at the forefront of creating growth for their brand. So Shiv will talk about CMO or Chief Growth Officer, old wine in new water. Now, for many, many years I've been hearing about the demise of magazines. I can only tell you that in IRS, the magazines have grown. Is it the end of TV as we know it? Are we near? Is digital television going to take over, you know, linear television as we know? Sudhanshu Vats, the Group C or Viacom 18, will make a case for how we are in the brand and content business. We are not in the television business. We also have a panel discussion which brings again all stakeholders together and looks at how can FMCG brands get more out of digital spends. Especially we are doing this in the context where a lot of leading brands across the world have expressed concerns over the kind of content that online and social media platforms have had in the last few years. Also, we cannot have a discussion on marketing, advertising, media if we don't talk about e-commerce and we don't talk about retail because the e-commerce brand and retail brands are driving advertising growth. Also, we have discovered that no longer e-commerce is the only way forward. e-commerce stores, e-commerce companies are buying physical stores. So how can e-commerce and traditional retailing coexist and understanding what builds the retail brand? Very important. You know, they say if you want to look at the future, you must look at the history. You must look at what happened in the past and learn lessons and apply to your current and to your future. So we have lessons from 2017 and I didn't go to a top-ness U.S. business school. I went to a business school in India. I got into that school because the quality control was bad. I am from the first batch of that business school. It's called MDI. It's a good school inspired by people like me but we have somebody called Avinash Pandey who went to Harvard. First, I thought Avinash is the name of a pub when you went there but I then discovered it's a business school. I hope you'll, since you're my friend, you'll let me indulge in a joke. But Avinash will talk about what they don't teach you at Harvard. And finally, we have two giants from the media industry. One, we have Matt Dorela who is the Global VP, Revenue and Operations at Twitter who will tell us about what Twitter is doing to show up its revenues. Twitter grew globally 17% last year and they're looking at non-traditional ways of monetizing. Last but not least, India's biggest media company CEO and that's not Uday Shankar or Puneet Goenka, Rahul Jauri who leads BCCI. Revenue is 16,000 crores. So I would call it India's leading media company. We'll talk about will BCCI kill GEC? So really we have a day packed with and eventually Lara will encapsulate what everybody has said and Sam is going to present the findings of the pitch Madison advertising report. I can tell you there is a new normal in every domain. What happened in the past is no indicator of what will happen in the future. So really when we and especially the Madison team, Vikram, Sam, Lara, unveiled the Madison pitch advertising report, I'm sure there are surprises but I asked Sam, what should I say before your address? And Sam said that 2018 is also about cautious optimism. So I can say that I'm sure it'll be more than Sam likes to be right. So I'm sure he has underpegged. So whatever we say, I'm sure it'll be a little better than that. On this note, I'd also like to acknowledge the presence of somebody who's a legend. I've read his books and he happened to be here and I invited him. His name is Mr. Tony Buzan. He's the originator of Mindbaps. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for Mindbaps. So Mr. Buzan, thank you for being here. Please give him a big round of applause. And Ram, thank you for bringing him here. Ram is himself an author and a management consultant and has written many books. I can tell you, being a media owner, exchange for media, of course, me and our enemies started and we've been lucky to get your support to build. But running business world, I can now understand the pains of a media owner a little better than I did when I was running exchange for media. I can tell you that it's not either or. I can tell you print still, we do a very bad job in print media of marketing ourselves or the effectiveness that print has, the credibility print has. And we are not taking the story of using print to build digital brands because we are in the business of content and brands. We're not in the business of TV or newspapers or magazines. Of course, our traditional businesses tend to take our mind space. So I can tell you that Pitch, Madison Advertising Outlook is something that my sales colleagues from Business World are here. They're attending. We all look forward to it and use it as a guide to plan. And there I say that the heads of revenues or media companies use it to build targets for their sales team. So I'm sure Sam will give you the right numbers to be able to build the right targets that your team can meet or exceed. I hope that 2018 does not see another disruption from the Prime Minister. The disruption could be in the form of an election in November and it may mean great money for news channels. But it may mean other things because elections bring a lot of other things with them which I don't have to explain to this which can slow down the economy. If there's a riot somewhere, I know you represent the, you look after advertising. We have a great leader in Modi, but we are looking at an economy that should grow faster. Last night we had the Business World Banking Awards, Magna Awards 10th year, our Banker of Lifetime Achievement Award for Banking went to the longest serving CEO of a bank in India across, in fact, the longest serving CEO of that size of a bank in the world. It went to Mr. Puri, Mr. Aditya Puri of HTFC. And we are talking about many things, but the one thing we were talking about is that with or without any leadership, India is growing. We're on the right path. Of course a right leader in the right decisions can accelerate that growth and we are in the right lane. We're driving at the right pace. There are temporary GST demonetization or temporary roadblocks. There are temporary traffic jams, but eventually we'll be in a fast lane and we'll be driving fast. I'm sure Sam will amplify that message. I wish all of you luck and growth in whatever you're doing. God bless you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Batra. Yes indeed, we have a very interesting evening lined up for all of us with a house full of perspectives.