 This is Shabba from Graves, you're moderated today to discuss critical success to measure digitally. I know I understand that webinars today, especially attending them online is becoming really brooding. No working break. We can't tell that our bosses are going for a nice seminar, no nice lunches. But trust me, in today's session we are going to compensate all of that with our awesome panelists who are here to help you understand how they can use digital to drive business and not just engagement. They literally have understood it to the core and have defined various metrics to understand how can they drive their business objective. Before we move on to that, let me start by introducing you to our panel today. I would request each one of them to share a small introduction about themselves, keep it nice, quirky and let me first have Bhagyashree Esnawari, she's the associate director and category head for Kulkure and Cheetos from PepsiCo. Bhagyashree, can you please help us with a small introduction about yourself? Sure. Hi, Shradha. Hi everybody. Very, very nice to be here today on Friday afternoon talking to you about the hottest topic that everybody in marketing is talking about. So like Shradha said, I work at PepsiCo. I currently handle the Extruded Snacks Portfolio at PepsiCo, which is Kulkure and Cheetos. I've been with the organization and in the FMCG foods industry for about 16 years. And I worked across our beverages and snacks portfolios. So in a nutshell, you know, my job is to bring smiles to people's lives with every sip and every bite. So that's what I really do each day. Trust me. Just to tell you, when I was in college, I used to just have Kulkure all day long, like literally during my exams as well. So you do bring smiles and a lot of happiness to a lot of people. So that was Bhagyashree here. Now we are moving on to Prasanna Rai. He's the vice president, chief marketing officer for Bipro Consumer Care and Lighting. Prasanna, can you please help us with a small note about yourself? Hi. Hi, Shradha. Thanks for the introduction. I'm Prasanna. I'm the chief marketing officer for Bipro Consumer Products. Normally, whenever the Bipro name comes up, people think of the technology side of the business. So I'm from the consumer care side. And we are predominantly into personal wash, wellness products and home care products. Suntour as a brand, Suntour, Madrika and then home care products like Safe Wash Soft Touch is the portfolio that we handle. I also take care of the e-commerce business. So in the discussions, maybe some part of the e-commerce aspect can also be touched upon. So that's about me. Yeah. Thanks, Shradha. Thank you so much, Prasanna. That was really nice. Now moving on, we have someone from the very demanding space of entertainment, which is OTT. And I'm sure that all of you are really clocking more than an hour on OTT platforms today. So we have Abhishek Joshi. He's the head of marketing and business partnerships with MX Player. Abhishek, over to you. Hi, Shradha. Hi, everyone. It's more than an hour, actually, on the OTT media ecosystem. And I am not complaining. Hi, everyone. My name is Abhishek Joshi. I'm head of marketing and business partnerships at MX Player. I will be completing close to two years in this organization in October. I joined MX at a very exciting time when it was in the pre-launch phase. And we had to do the entire JTM strategy for the product and offering. We officially launched in February 2019 with almost zero user base. After almost a year and a half, I am very happy to announce that we are at a 200 million amount number and the number one OTT player in the country today. What do we do? We do nothing, but we do entertain our consumers, our viewers and our users. MX Player, I don't know if you guys are aware, was acquired by Times Internet as an offline media streaming service. We overlapped it with a video streaming service and then we overlapped it with games. So MX Player right now is not only an OTT platform, but it's an all-encompassing media and entertainment super app. In the last six months, actually last seven months, we have launched three more apps to complement MX Player, which is MX Hakata, which is the short video form app. Then we have launched MX Sharekaro as well. So, yeah, it's a family of four apps, but a family of eight to nine entertainment offerings. Oh, that's really nice. In fact, we are not, you know, as a business also, we are putting up our music videos that we're launching for our clients on your platform and not just looking at creating a partner with you on web series. So, yes, it is become one super app. And trust me, it's going to become a big name as you go into the best in the market. Thank you. Let's move on. And then we have Santosh Ayer. He's the vice president and sales and marketing for Mercedes Benz India. Definitely one of my dream brands. And I'm sure yours too. So over to you, Santosh. Requested, please help us with some viewpoints. Thanks, Shraddha. And hello. Good afternoon to all the viewers out there. I am Santosh responsible for sales and marketing in Mercedes Benz India. Being in automotive industry for 21 odd years, you know, I started selling capital equipments and moved to automotive with two wheelers and worked with brands like Yamaha, Toyota, Ford, and last 11 years now with the 3.8 star in Pune. Seen the ups and downs of the luxury car market, the mass market. Currently, of course, all trying to withstand the post pandemic storm. Being part of various functions. So I definitely started my career with marketing, moved to after sales. I've done customer services. I've done political affairs, external affairs within this company. And now last two, three years now responsible for whole of sense and marketing function. So I think marketing is again, core to the heart. And now the Martek, you know, the way it has moved right from agency briefings to today's tech world. I think it's an interesting space and I think I learn every day and I also look forward to contribute and also learn from other panelists here actually. So let's see how it goes. So yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. That was a decent nice quick introduction. And finally, we have someone who is actually helping all sites who work day and night, offering us good content, make some money. So here we have Ankita Broi. He's the CEO of ad pushup. Over to you, Ankita. Thanks Shrata. And hello all the viewers. I'm Ankita Obray, co-founder and CEO of ad pushup. We're a supply side technology platform which helps web publishers accelerate their ad revenue growth using our eb testing platform. We're backed by Microsoft Ventures and work today with about 300% large publishers including brands and like Reddit, CNET, Mashable, optimizing about 6 billion impressions monthly. I'm excited to be a part of this panel today. Thank you for inviting me. And I'll try to bring the balance from the publisher side and all these market year conversations and try to give that flavor as well. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ankita. That's quite a plan. So let's start with today's session. My first question will be to Bhavishri. So Bhavishri, we all know that you know with COVID stuck in and the current pandemic today, everyone has moved to e-commerce not just the consumers who are trying to buy all their groceries there but even the clients and advertisers because that has become an important part of their business. 41% of the people are buying more on e-commerce and not just electronics and fashion items. How we used to hear it earlier, right? Have you seen a similar growth in your category of snacks? And if yes, what has been the growth percentage for you? Yeah, that's a very good question Shradha. You're absolutely right. You know with the current situation with this pandemic it's brought about a lot of changes in consumer behavior and preferences and consumption patterns. And with people finding it difficult to step out of homes e-commerce has come to a significant rise. And we are seeing that as you rightly said across industries and so it is for us also. We're seeing very, very high growth. And I can tell you that it's very high double digit growth for us both on our foods and our beverage portfolio. So we are seeing an increased acceptance of online platforms and for all of our brands we are seeing household penetration increase through this platform and repeat orders coming in at a very high pace which has been actually unprecedented. We've tried in the past to increase the e-commerce channel sales for a long time but nothing like this pandemic has helped that business grow. So a huge demand for our large packs and great repeat orders for our baskets. So to just give you a perspective, we recently did a survey and 80% of the family survey said that snacking together has become an important bonding activity for them at home and 55% of them said that having a meal together is the best way for the family to connect. And therefore it, you know as our endeavor also we want to be able to service all the channels that the consumer accesses on e-commerce more. So while we've always had the bouquet of customers that we've worked with whether it's milk basket, grofer's, Amazon, you know and all of them but we're also actually actively done tie ups now with you know last mile service operators like Swiggy and Danzo exclusive tie ups that help us deliver uninterrupted availability for consumers across locations. And also you know more recently we tied up with the government's Brahmin stores, the CSC, the common service centers that you would have heard of and we listed you know our food portfolio on it and that helps us also reach the last mile at a rural level. So definitely big growths are going to stay and we are looking actively to ride this trend very well. So while e-commerce has done very well, digital penetration you know which is really riding the e-commerce trend is actually you know what's increasing also. So along with convenience which e-commerce offers consumers are also looking for great value and quality products and in line with that you know the insight of growing data usage increase in home consumption we are also you know in the midst right now this month of launching we just in fact launch a portfolio-wide you know consumer promotion on Lay's Curcuratoritos and what we're offering is you know up to two GB of Airtel data free with each of our products. So this is a campaign that we are doing across you know Lay's and Curcuratoritos so consumers are looking for you know maximizing their in-home time, they're looking for content consumption and they're looking you know to spend time with their family members with their favorite snacks. So it was really the sweet spot of you know getting them the best snack that they have with the best you know content data offer and so we've done this tie up and you know the early reads are very very encouraging and we expect that the season as we go down we'll see a big rise on this. Yeah so definitely big growths and it looks like the channel of the future for us. Tell me one thing you mentioned about large packs and you mentioned about actually trying to tie up with Danzo and even your last mile coverage with rural areas how are you balancing your cost of acquisition of a consumer for a 10 rupee pack with such because e-commerce deliveries are not cheap. We all understand that and today at the end of any e-commerce platform the largest chunk of money goes in delivery and returns right. What is your personal experience on that and how are you dealing with that in that case? You know you're right about that but these questions were you know the question that we would keep talking about when we were looking at making the PNL work out last year or even year before last where we had to look at every tie-up that we did as an individual PNL but now with the sales as I was saying you know our rocketing so high and you know the churn and the optics being so high we don't have to worry about that because the economies kind of fund themselves up. So and also at a time when what option do you have you know even with the lockdowns being lifted you've got restrictions at a lot of levels on either labor restrictions on being able to produce or the last mile go to market with our traditional trade network so all in all this channel has become also something that's you know great ROI and we expect that this will actually benefit us over on the future. So don't have that much of a stress now on that front. FMCG are you seeing most of your sales coming in the first seven days or you see that's because it's a snacking sector the sales come throughout the month. Yeah actually we don't see you know it's not like staples so since this is in pulse so yeah so you see we can you know sales higher but the but the seasonality during the month is quite even. Nice got it. So moving on because you're talking about FMCG as a sector I would like to speak to Prasanna here and understand while category for Bhagya is definitely seeing growth what are activities or success metrics have you defined for your home category when it comes to e-commerce and are you also looking at e-commerce not just as a performance platform or driving sales but also as a branding platform because Amazon, Flipkart and brokers are really trying hard for making this as a branding platform with DSPs as well. Okay Just touching upon I'll come to the question that you've asked me just adding on to what Bagishri was saying I'd like to add to that is that what we have observed is overall at the channel level modern trade has suffered so what has happened is people modern trade which is going fast that has kind of suffered and that traffic now particularly we are seeing it moving towards e-commerce okay so that's one and within the general trade we've seen rural not being affected as such as much as what we see in the bigger markets like metros so these two things because the fear in the metros I think would be or I'm assuming is higher so in the metro markets lot of percentage of population has moved on to e-commerce so these two things have worked together to actually acquire the tailwind to the e-commerce business okay second aspect is as far as categories within e-commerce goes we've also seen a good both especially because we deal with soaps and hand wash and sanitizers these are categories anyways which had a tailwind to it so in e-commerce also we saw a very good growth on it similar surprisingly even with home care products which is outbreak as well as clothingers and that seemed very good growth category which has got affected is actually the you know the imagery led categories, categories which you would associate with going outside like Pal, PO these kind of categories and these brands started getting affected negatively so but these were more than well compensated by the growth that we saw in the other categories of personal wash and sanitizer the hygiene product we also launched a new brand in the hygiene space called hygienics which has also given us a good growth overall in this COVID scenario which is more targeted at hygiene and health space so that's on the first part specifically referring to the question that you asked me on e-commerce so e-commerce I would the way we operate there are certain brands for which we have brand store operating and there are other brands which is the general brands which we sell the general trade and modern trade which also goes through the e-commerce platform so let me first take the e-commerce platform related part what we are seeing is here there are two aspects so one is the whole thing about brand building which is what you called it as brand building and the performance marketing most of the returns if I take ROS return on advertising spends as a metric and CTR as a metric I find that the search lead marketing which we get the performance marketing is much more effective as an FMCG player so that's something which we prioritize in terms of marketing spend where does brand building come in there are lots of brands which you are not able to get enough air cover through your traditional above the line medium in those cases directly entering into a search lead or performance marketing doesn't give you the results so we need to do some bit of brand marketing on the platform create a little bit of awareness and then lead into a funnel through the sales aspect so we actually found a good methodology on this so that we are clearly able to establish that there are certain brands which doesn't fully coverage in certain states who's that medium to create brand building because you can cut geography and psychographics and demographics wise buying behavior wise cuts you you're able to get on these platforms today you're able to do a very specific brand building exercise on the platform and then follow it up to the same consumer through your through your search performance marketing so that's the model which seems to be working on the brand store covid specifically has affected actively for the brand stores specifically related to the question that you asked earlier which is career was becoming a problem so any kind of dispatch that you were supposed to make across cities that got severely affected so this whole order has been negatively affected for our brand store sales so we we managed to get that positive sale from the platforms but the brand stores have saw a negative growth so that's something which I think kind of covers the question that you asked help you understand and I think that was a very important point that you mentioned as a follow-up to Bhagashree's answer I know that I have a couple of clients who are on Amazon and Flipkart and Tokus and are selling very well they saw a huge jump in their sales because as the overall business sales of their brand definitely decreased because the Horeka business stopped right or basically the wholesale business stopped from perspective of restaurants and hotels etc but their consumer business definitely increased and the jump was coming from e-commerce did you also see because at the end of the day we are at home and we are eating more I hope everyone is eating more and hence the consumption of staples inside home increased right but I am definitely not cleaning more or am I cleaning more so I wanted to understand your perspective I am definitely cleaning my stuff a lot of times but from your perspective did you see a rise in consumer sales for the wash and the home care category on e-commerce or otherwise because okay see one one is Horeka for us is almost negligible sales even COVID so we don't have that disadvantage so channels which got affected were modern trade which I talked about and even the canteen stores these are the two big ones through which we were getting our sales Horeka would be mainly for mostly I think it is dependent or categories like you know the foods category which Bageshri handled the beverages would be the ones who would depend more on Horeka for us Horeka is not a big business like I said earlier the businesses in e-commerce which got negatively affected are the imagery led brands or certain categories like talc and d.o which went through a little bit of a downturn but we are already seeing it coming back in the last one or two months we are seeing it coming back to normal levels very soon get that so let me move to Abhishek now Abhishek my question to you is that today like you were mentioning that I am restricting myself though to another day but I'm sure a lot of people are watching a lot more ODDs and we see Sadaq 2 when we see a lot of additional films also because they don't have any other choice we are seeing themselves on ODD platforms right since a lot of consumers are flocking to ODD and I'm sure the overall number has really increased out of the total internet monthly active users how are you planning to work on your customer acquisition cost which will eventually help you in driving more advertising to your platform thanks that's a good question and MX being an award led platform advertising is very important to us so let me take a step back and you've done that in all in one and a half years like February 2019 to being the top most is like crazy so you need to take the success of the cost that you've acquired those customers at I wish the answer was as simple as it sounds but I will take a step back and I will take you through the steps that we follow at MX see the internet marketing world is constantly evolving and we are focusing on finding innovative ways to reach newer audiences I mean why we all of us so you need to know your cap then you know how much it costs to acquire customers for your business you can better plan your marketing strat while we aim to reach new consumers what we also pay very close attention to it's to retain our existing consumers and add new ones without losing existing customers your combined cap doesn't go up so much so there are four broad principles that we adopt at MX to keep a check on on cap as we scale number one is we try to diversify the portfolio as much as we can every digital channel has its optimum operating point idea is to divert the entire spans that lies on the other point of that point of inflection towards the other channels like maybe programmatic or OEM led inventories etc number two is we keep on revisiting the end metric that you want to improve so in our case sometimes cap looks superficially high but cost per app event metrics are much lower for example you could have a metric of the number of minutes a new user will stream or the number of videos that a new user will watch so if you bring that into the picture your cap becomes much lower so a close watch on the entire funnel is very important number three is obviously we are in a business of content so please make content that your customers love very true for the OTT space the moment we realize that trailer, drama, crime action are the genres that be are you able to hear him? I think no Abhishek there might be a power cut no worries let Abhishek join back and maybe we can move back to him what I'll do is I'll move to Santosh now and Santosh to be honest and I'll tell you I have always been a Mercedes right from when you are growing up you're like I need a car, I need a bungalow I need trips so Mercedes has been one brand and I'm not going to take competition brand names but trust me that is one brand that I really wanted to always drive and it's very nice Abhishek can you hear his back actually okay I dropped off is it I'm so sorry internet issues no worries so did you hear what I was trying to say? so we heard you where you were talking about that how you sorry Santosh we'll just finish no no let Abhishek finish here that's better so basically you were telling about the fact that the cost of acquiring a customer is not that matter because when you look at it from a perspective of the minutes watched I'm not engaging that user with you so we heard you till there and to add to that the third point that we keep in mind is content because we are in a business of content so make content what your consumers love so as soon as we at MX realize that thriller, drama, crime and action are the kind of genres of content that the MX audiences resonate with so we make we produced and made shows like Haka, Ratanjal Ashram which actually did well for us because that is what we gave what the consumer were asking for so in our business content is necobreak and hence if you make the right content for the right people your cat will obviously go down and the number fourth point and last point that we keep on doing is experimentation you know at any given point of time we are live with at least 150 of creatives, audiences placement combinations this helps us to experiment faster and cater the right audience with the right messaging and creatives thus reducing cac and tell me one thing that I understand you know but like how facebook started then that thing you know when you first you were buying lights and then they told you don't look at lights now let's look at reach or engagement and they said don't look at engagement now let's look at reach and then you are literally paying to get back to your same audience that you acquired from five years back how do you feel about that when I hear you that you are talking about the minutes watched rather than talking about the app download piece how much are you spending or what percentage of your marketing spends are you spending on acquiring the same consumer back to watch the next new piece of content that you launched see MX is it a very unique place because from a brand perspective over the last couple of years MX player as a brand is up there in the consumer mind so to give you a number we have more than a million plus downloads slash installs every day which is all organic so my next session is going to be on your platform right so if I am having a million plus organic installs every day each day then you are dealing with a huge amount of traffic and audiences that you want to speak to and they also want to come on your platform and experiment and sample what you have to offer that is a brand now if I have established that as I started off saying that the retention of users is equally important or maybe more important for us in our current situation because of our organic traffic being so high acquisition of new users for us is step 2 now if we are successfully doing that so the percentage of spends on reacquisition is negligible because you have to keep them engaged and hence the idea of being a super app get it so you are telling them we are the one stop solution for you don't go anywhere that is true thank you so much Abhishek on that and I am going to move to now Santosh and I am going to again tell you the love that I have for Mercedes make that plus 1 I think it is just amazing as a brand and I genuinely believe a lot in that despite of being a Marwadi she keeps questioning me that why do you have to spend so much on the brand and I keep telling her that I sell brands I really believe in them and hence I arrive at them so my question to you from the Marpeg perspective in the last 2 to 3 years what has happened is that you generally have a central marketing budget and then there is dealer budgets and the dealers have also been spending a lot of money to drive needs and performance for your business at the end of the day recently we have seen that all the dealers have started flocking on to digital and using digital as a platform to drive business and work Facebook and Google has also created hyper local specific themes to drive that further being a luxury car and I can tell you that a lot of mass cars are doing that but being a luxury car are you guys also working towards that have you established something around e-commerce how are you looking at it well I think it is an interesting question because a lot of people think that e-commerce is good for fmcg or maybe good for some of the products as such from our side we have two spectrums one that is immense love for the brand and also in India the 3.0 star people just love them so we have a huge business on collection items and accessories boutiques caps t-shirts pens even travel accessories and we do a great amount of business online in fact during the pandemic our business have gone 3 times compared to last year more so for gifting more so for you know also maybe just having a piece of a star at your desk or in your office you know with momentos memorably our small toy models for us it is an entry point to fulfill the aspiration because it is a large country you know we sell 15,000 cars the total luxury car market is 30,000 35,000 we are a dominant player here but for us to grow the brand in this market first we need aspirations there and also with people with money in their pocket so for the other big challenges also you know here I say the biggest competitor for us is mutual fund industry because a lot of people have money and as you rightly said what your mom advises is what I think irrespective of the community that said let's save for tomorrow you know as culturally we want to save not spend we don't want to enjoy luxury the final things in life and I keep telling our sales team also that hey fight the mutual fund industry everything in the SIP if you get the SIP back we can send many cars here in this market so with this we also look at how to reach new customers and here I would say e-commerce is a very big solution now the way we tackle this is one I said already about merchandise and collection we have a collection store but what we do with retailers is we came up last October with an e-commerce platform for our retailers so we are the first brand not only luxury space but irrespective of the total automotive industry in India where we have e-commerce tie up with Roadster of US and then all our dealers have listed their inventory there so it's an inventory model where they list their inventories they offer prices transparency is important in online space so they also offer on road pricing along with all the discounts so the full inventory for new and used both are available so when we did this in October we started just used cars the media friends everybody said cars buying online you are not you know accessories we can understand you are doing a good job but why will people buy cars online let me tell you that from May till September I would say even end of August we have sold 500 plus cars online and this is pure online and this is new and used put together the used car will be close to 30% valence will all be new cars so I think we have solved a lot of pain but it's not like similar to a normal consumer behavior and here your point of retailers comes into picture what we realized in high involvement purchase like a automobile or a car is the customer also wants consultation he just cannot go on like an Amazon go and buy the car or look at reviews he checks all this he definitely looks at reviews but then he wants somebody to assist him and that's where we introduce a virtual concierge till 10pm in the night our dealers are available and their sales teams are available so you go online select a car unlock and offer you click on a virtual consultation you will be connected straight to the local dealer sales consultant and this is where we have exactly connected to the location yes yes so frankly for a customer we have allowed him to see stocks 500 kilometers in his radius so that means if you are in Delhi or in Bombay you can see stocks up to 500 even on the bar even other places so you know trying to give more what a brick and mortar cannot give because in brick and mortar at the best you may visit 3 Bombay dealers or 3 Delhi dealers and check stocks here you can check second you are comfortable with your local guy and that's where you can select your local partner of your choice get into a virtual consultation mode and then this guy can also send a personal offer link which can be valid for 24 hours and then he books a car because this is the deal that he is so as a luxury brand we have also this is only unique in India this doesn't work anywhere in the world because India is such a large country to manage entire e-commerce on a high involvement product like luxury cars is just impossible and that's why we have integrated the entire dealer partners they have individual stores for new and used cars on our e-commerce platform they have individual stores for collection items even for collections for example all as I said now you know Mercedes Benz fitness bikes are a big demand right now because I think fitness is the new thing people are buying Ivana and here again our dealers are doing it locally so what this means is we need a very high level of maturity among retailers some of our retailers have themselves invested in CRM tools like Salesforce and others they do their own marketing solutions they also do their own campaigns basically to drive traffic to their platforms because to their shop to their e-commerce site so it's a very unique experiment where it's done on a central basis but our dealers are pulling in they put inventory they have individual stores and even when you look at search when you look at anything else you know that's all done by dealer it's not done by MB India's entry here we only optimize our central market place which is our on the platform which is our Mercedes Benz.co.n but the linkouts are all to the channel partners so it's a very different experiment I think last week for themselves also so that's what currently on as far as automotive retailing and marketing is concerned. So I have a follow-up question for my other two panelists on this but I'll come I want to ask you this question first would you let's say if you come up with your next you know model and would you be open to just launching it exclusively online for let's say 10 days or something and you can put it on retail would you ever take it? I won't name the brand I said I've worked for multiple companies earlier I've done this in 2008 I have launched a car online virtually only for customers you know it doesn't work and that's why I think the key is fidget digital you know this is something we need to understand the role and the and the when we say omni channel that experience is important online is very critical but if you ignore the overall omni channel experience especially in a high involvement category like cars I think we may not be going so we have tried these you know all these have been done by many brands gimmicks you know only online special offer you get a discount if you book online but I think that's not what you want right you don't want a 10-day spike you want consistent e-commerce sales going forever which would also be profitable for the channel partner and for us so to answer your question we will do all cars online actually in fact we don't restrict it and our belief is more omni channel and fidget digital than pure online as such I think omni channel is one very important point that people need to understand earlier what we used to do is in digital generally a lot of clients are fine so they just look at the spend that they are doing on digital and compare it to the sales or the engagement that you are getting on digital but they never used to think that you know what we are doing on digital is also impacting your off-life so you need to understand your total spends versus your off-think there will be some direct attribution there will be some non-direct attribution but the question that I have for Prasanna as a follow up here I wanted to understand so they have come up with their own D2C which is the e-commerce channel for themselves would you think of that and I am sure this must have crossed your mind because I remember coke selling coke bottles from coke go.in if I am not wrong with the domain name but they were doing D2C have you thought of doing direct to consumer or direct to home through your own e-commerce channel? should I go first? actually there are lots of startups in the FMCG space recently in the last 2-3 years who have come up with non-distribution digital only kind of brands in fact we created a venture fund which invest specifically on these kind of ventures and as we speak also as a marketing organization which is India led marketing and organization we are actually in the process of creating a team which will do this we are looking at certain brands which would most probably be on the premium end which could be a digital only brands which we are planning to set it up which will go through a different rhythm of new product development both through brand store and through platforms and may not be distributed I will say are you looking at putting those new products on your let's say viprohomecare.com are you looking forward to share that with Amazon and Grofers and BigBasket etc also so what I said it will be open to both may not be distributed through our traditional channels so that's something which we are looking at this gives us an opportunity there are three benefits that we have seen there one is global portfolio any kind of premium options which are available in the other countries difficult to sell it through our mom and pop store through the grocers so we want to experiment whether that work through the digital only channel second is it also becomes a way of testing the waters before we enter into the mass market into the distribution channel and other line marketing it will be a good plan to test the waters before we go mass yes yes and Bhagya would you be happy opening a kulkare.co.in or let's say Pepsi the totality.com or .co.in where you can sell all your products directly to consumers trust me like I've tried this with a lot of my brands and by far whatever cuts whether it is 8% 10% 20% 25% that we give to our e-commerce partners Amazon and Grofers it's still worth it because the whole stress of setting up that team the spends etc hasn't returned in the same ROAs that we generally talk about so what are your viewpoints on those so Shadha I have a slightly different view from what you mentioned just now and you know I concur with this and now on the point of testing waters through e-commerce and that's something that we definitely do you know we've got so many new brands products in our innovation pipeline that we really want to test before we go full scale so we want to do pilots whether they are in smaller companies or in a smaller channel but the real test for us is to check one thing is this is the mode that we're talking about that you suggested driving incremental reach for us so I'd only go to the extent of you know setting up a PEPCO.com you know to e-detail if it's going to give me incremental reach you know currently the full scale GTM that we have which is for example the smaller pack that we have is the widest distributed pack in the salty category across the country so that's how wide our reach already is so if we're going to set up something new is it driving incremental reach that we're not able to drive on our own currently there are a host of platforms that you know are able to do that for us so the data we can't reach our consumers incrementally through what we already have is the day we'll set that up and that's also the way we're approaching you know consumer marketing to the point that we were discussing earlier that even when we're using digital as a platform for consumer marketing we're not looking at it only to drive engagement or reach what is the incremental reach it drives for us and also what is actually you know the engagement level that it drives for us in a way that the content is relatable to that audience and you know just to elaborate on that a little bit we recently did a campaign on Phukre called you know Chakpatashukriya or it was an ode to Indian families essentially it was a thank you to Indian families for sticking together and we realized that you know when we put out that content it was so relatable that the engagement raised for like double that that was happening so we used that platform for this we're seeing if you get incremental reach get that now I'm sorry it's just been so late coming on to you first following the order but help me understand and you are one guy who's actually keeping everyone happy from a perspective because of their spending content everybody wants to become a content provider today in the market I can see so many youngsters saying that I'm going to become a content provider I'm going to open my own website I'm going to open my own app you know and you're that one guy who's waiting you open an app and I'll tell you how to monetize it so we would want to know more about it how do you do that and how do you help these publishers or content providers set up add opportunities and any case example will be really helpful for us to understand this uncle you're on mute sorry sorry if I only had a dollar for every time I did that but let me step back and probably you know give you a download of what the publisher side ecosystem looks like today right while there's of course a segment as you mentioned right everybody wants to you know like bring out the author in themselves start creating content but if you look at the market today it's predominantly concentrated at least in India with a lot of media houses right only majority of the user base and the way this the media houses have been set up today as you already know you know digital is there are very few digital only media houses they would typically have some sort of offline presence either that is in the form of print also in terms of television right and I don't mean OTT predominantly if I could say offline in the sense television so this year I think their playbooks have been completely rewritten predominantly because while they've had digital as a channel you know grow tremendously we're all aware you know right after the pandemic set in how much time people are spending online on websites you know their user metrics all you know went off the charts and at the same time but you know what was surprising is their revenue right their PNL especially for a lot of these media houses didn't really mirror that because you know they had a lot of their business coming from offline print as well as you know television etc right it's also because digital was always considered by these media houses as investment into the future right so while from a PNL standpoint they will always you know prioritize sort of if you would look at you know concentration would be heavy on offline channels or television their look at digital was always an investment into the future but I think that changed drastically you know in the last 6 years now what they're looking at is I want an ROI from digital right and you know as their offline channels have shrunk you know there is no newspaper people are in fact now who really enjoy newspapers are reading e-papers right a lot of us might be actually spending and they're figuring out you know transition or take that e-paper segment now and the Solaris ads etc which they had in the offline world how can they actually start using programmatic which has never been a use case you know for programmatic ever so their playbook has you know completely been rewritten where they're starting to think of you know how can they marry the offline the online but see see in this business right this this business of programmatic is very different from what media has been used to which was predominantly a sales heavy business or you know insight led business turned into programmatic which is very heavy on technology and data a modern market here today uses numerous parameters to take decision you know you're not negotiating in programmatic right every auction is spent or decided the prices decided by DSPs or you know decided by algorithms instead of people sitting on the table and deciding you know the spend so what we're seeing is the in the media space while there has been massive growth in terms of audience time spent on websites average page use per session engagement publishers where they lack predominantly as you know their understanding of programmatic technology and you know that has been something which has you know for us we realize that caught that early on that you know something which we think you know are solving as a platform for publishers and you to be surprised you know it's also because when we say programmatic it predominantly means Google in India today right most of this is just Google so you know just by changing that playbook a little bit really looking into what you know programmatic auctions are the tech bit you know we've seen massive growth and success we work with customers like Outlook India you know for an example and Outlook India for example you know on the programmatic website has seen three digit increase right you know it's more than 200 300% you know revenue improvement that they've seen on the digital front all because of you know how they would look at this auction the technology just really taking you know if I could say you know looking under the hood and figuring out what's going on and that I think has been a big change this year where you know publishers have become really serious on understanding what are these metrics how is programmatic working you know it's not a part of the management focusing only on TV or offline and not even understanding what the digital that has completely changed it's the priority has been changed and you know now what we're seeing is publishers are starting to understand that and you know what we've seen in some of these cases is you know they are now bringing in more auction models they're bringing in more demand partners where like I said the you know the market for example today for a publisher you know they are seeing about 40% of the revenue which used to be 90% plus coming from Google is now about 60% purely because you know they are bringing in new DSP connections they're bringing in new option models which also allow advertisers and marketeers to you know sort of flex their hand in some terms of targeting in terms of the data that is available for them allowing them because there's no right as long as it returns and last one month has been you know as all of us may already know has been really good for digital in fact this month we are seeing eCPMs and spend higher than what we saw in Q4 last year in a lot of segments and CPG of course has been a very very key driver but tell me one thing because of the audience increasing on the digital front and we are not just seeing that the time spent has increased but also the fact that there are new audience coming on internet as well right when you said cpm has increased it has improved did you mean it has increased because of inventories available more I'm sure cpm should have reduced right correct so no no absolutely so you know there are two terms which are used typically in the industry which is request cpm so while you know a lot of new audiences come online you are absolutely right about that I think the data which advertisers marketeers dsp's have about them right is significantly less so but if you look at the average eCPM that is driven as a result of you know the new inventory coming in but also the spend which has increased right and for us what we are seeing is the average price has gone up while there is of course there is you know wide distribution audiences which do not have a background or you know a history with dsp's and you will see their cpm's to be much lower but overall if you look at the mix right the average which the inventory generate that's actually gone up got it and help me also understand when you say that working with programmatic and working with various dsp's has helped me in improving my ad spend being a publisher right it has helped me getting more advertisers is there any also is there any problem in terms of or skepticism in terms of that data will go out dsp like a dv360 or a media mat someone else right because now they want to use more audience based stuff and not just pgds or direct buying on my platform so is there any such kind of wave of skepticism in the publisher side as well I think data is a very very interesting topic not just in India globally right we are seeing that IAB just received you know launched a TCF framework just to cater to that and I think while you're absolutely right you know publishers are trying to make sure it's in fact not just predominantly from data safety standpoint but also you know the changes about the cookie the first party data becoming more important while from the publishers that we've interacted in India predominantly I couldn't say it's a very very big challenge today but one of the great things which have happened is you know it's starting to become you know important for them to understand what what going on you know compared to two or three years ago you know where nobody would really even care about the data or understand you know what's going on when a on your website you know what all cookies mean people have started asking those questions that coupled in with you know first party data changes in the government policy around you know data protection laws there's massive changes which we're seeing but I think they're still very early in that game we have very last time but we have a question from the audience here and I think this is for Abhishek so Abhishek is there any changes on consumption for a minute for a new audience existing audience see the existing and the organic minutes per user will always be higher than the new audience equipment because the existing or the organic guy already knows what he wants to watch and where he can find it on the platform wherein the new guy you know will have to come search for it maybe he will like it not like it but and it is also the force force that an organic acquisition will always be higher and more more loyal to your platform than an acquired paid guy but in our case the difference is not so much but yes the existing user is the minutes per user is higher there's another question and it's a very interesting question it's more philosophical to be honest in this current world especially by after looking at the Netflix new social series that everybody must have watched the question is what's your take on the cookie less world so who would like to take that up I'd be happy to go Amit yeah I mean see I think this the whole industry you know cookie has been the base premise on how you know marketers function how we collect data and all and you know partly that's the reason it's going away or you know being talked about is also because of privacy concerns right have become much more important so the cookie less world is I don't see this as a challenge but more sort of an opportunity there's already a lot of products coming out you know which are there are multiple methods which are coming out I see that as a small road bump but I think it brings the much required balance between data privacy and the ability to target from advertisers and as you know you know IAB has been working on a lot of you know and closer to home there are companies which have started looking at how can you build DMPs with authentication how can you build you know take consent I feel that this requires a this will give the balance you know which was much needed but it's not sort of going to be you know in the long term as difficult or creative that bigger challenge for advertisers to target you know the users they want to be I genuinely feel that cookies is a great thing to be honest I know it's very scary to know that you've been on your phones and your desktop but to be honest as a person individual now I get so many customized results for what I want to see what I want to buy what I want to look at now it's a choice whether you want to look at it you want to buy it or not but I definitely don't believe in going for a cookie less world will then go back to the days of seeing a billboard they don't they can't track us they don't know who we are and we're just making our own decisions so that's what I feel so there's another question which is talking about what is the customer life cycle and a cost of acquisition and that's for Abhishek again Abhishek you're definitely in demand like the other see the cost of customer acquisition will be different from all the other avenues of I mean it depends on how you are acquiring the consumer is it is it outside the MX ecosystem is it retargeting is it re re-acquiring is it an install so every video will have a different cost but if you're asking me specifically how much does it cost I'm sorry that's something that I can't share yeah otherwise you'll open the next utility in one and a half yeah that I can't share but yeah I mean but it also depends as I said earlier as I spoke earlier that it also depends on the offering that you have and how how in how much intent does your consumer or prospective consumer have for that offering if you can marry both then the will be lower get that Sathosh the next one goes to you and you need to help us understand and I know you guys deal not just into B2C family but also B2B at times right so talking about B2B arena as compared to B2C how the scenario has changed and what initiatives that are taken by the digital marketing agency to generate business so for B2B I think as I said the luxury car market is quite small and evolving we of course have 120,000 customers here and I think on B2B data again becomes backbone and data with consent we call it DOC which is declaration of consent and according to that to do any kind of marketing activities to these set of customers they are highly sensitive if they start getting spam or mails or even any communication or retargeting that to them so our biggest challenge in the B2B is to get consent from customers to start communicating with them considering the profile of customers that we have in our portfolio so that's what we do we of course also use platforms we are also trying to use social platforms trying to target much more on this base but I think the core of all this lies the CRM data because then only you can map your customers with that CRM data and of course as I said consent is important because for us it's a very clear no go to communicate without consent in place and there's a follow up question also and it looks like somebody is asking from the journalist team or something so the question is after Harleys exit from India and the current negative growth for the automobile segment which I don't think it is happening everybody's bounce back but still I'm going to put the question up so after the current negative growth for automobile segment how is Mercedes planning to bounce back from the current trend so for us if you see post lockdown we have been going by 25% month on month so till September we are almost 60% back to pre-COVID times our expectation is by October we should be back to last year levels having said that 2019 was not the best year second half of the automotive industry I think this festive period will play a key role to see how the recovery happens but at least as far as we are concerned because we can't say for the total luxury market because we are the only guys who give out numbers on a quarterly basis consistently so we see a recovery now in fact the last 10 days post the strut etc has seen a very good bounce back across segment the interesting part is we see a big demand in more than 80 lakh rupees or 1 crore plus segment there we are seeing demand even better than pre-COVID levels hopefully that should also trickle down to the plus 40 lakh segment as regards Harley and Comet I think we cannot see what there has been MNCs who have not been successful in India they have their own valid reasons and then there are MNCs also who have been successful as far as Mercedes Benz is concerned we are 25 years year 2200 crores of investments we have a fantastic plant in Pune so we are fully committed to the market with our dealer network and I think with the kind of products that we bring what defines our market leadership also so we are committed to this market that's the assurance I can give to the person who has put this question up sure sure thank you Prasanna the next question goes to you and as we speak about customer acquisition especially during the post pandemic what initiatives can be adopted down the funnel in the desire and subsequent consumer action okay so just and help me understand what are your methods that you are adopting post COVID to acquire a customer okay that's a very proud question yeah so I think if I have to answer it we are not getting into specifics of FMCG or a product I think it's very important that you know each of the businesses defines what is their metric for evaluation or acquiring a customer because each of these stages it's not like communication is going to get your customer so each stage so we typically go through a funnel kind of an approach you know start with opening up awareness campaign to a specific target audience and this is the response that is a retargeting that happened and over a period of two or three interactions with particular consumer we also now have more and more trying to bring them to a e-commerce platform even though the linkages between a digital marketing and a platform sales that linkages still is not very very clear you know people claim that they are able to indicate what kind of digital marketing leads to the e-commerce we are still seeing it as a struggle to exactly measure like saying that if I put one rupee here am I getting the response in terms of e-commerce sales to a platform unless you have your own brand store if you have your brand store then you get good data on that but we find it very difficult to link one on one and justify even to the platform that my digital marketing spends is coming and delivering to them so that challenge is still there but I would say digital is a much more customized way of reaching to the customer but as far as your messaging your communication has to follow the you know typical in my case the FMCG model of you know what is your customer inside what is your what is your proposition how you link it up what's the kind of communication works for which those traditional items still are valid in the digital world and in the e-commerce world what has changed is how sharp you are like you said in your cookie world you can be as sharp as the cookie can manage to get you but otherwise content remains the same approach to content remains the same get that the next question is for you Bhagya that's very interesting are you planning to come up with healthy snacks variant and I'm adding are you coming to come up with some healthy cookware that we can eat all day long we can give to kids yeah yes actually we are you know we watch consumer trends very closely and while in the past too we have had you know ins and outs as we call them to test waters on how much of a healthy snack the consumers willing to have so please tell us that you know the consumer is health conscious yes but it's never the cost of so indulgence you know is the primary need the consumers whether they're having their bread they're having a snack so we are constantly looking for healthy snacks that balance the taste and are as indulgent as our food scale snacks are having said that even in our current range we've taken proactive measures to reduce sodium and that's the journey we continuously track ourselves on and again you'll see next year some work on that front so both will happen but I wanted to just touch upon the question that Sumitra raised here on you know in the pandemic world war initiatives can be adopted I can just give you a perspective on what we're reading from consumers and clearly the need for you know value in all that they're buying is extremely high so the convenience the need for quality and value is high and while we are already doing work you know at the consumer level but even on platforms we're seeing that you know our attempts to make bundles or multipacks or cross promoting with other categories is you know is delivering significant results and growths for us because the consumers still in the mindset of you know kind of hoarding back and taking the best value deal so while we still work on how digital metrics can be strengthened just these you know just these monthly plans that we do on bundling packs are really giving us a big growth sort of fighting new consumers thank you thank you I know there are a couple of more questions on my inbox and I am so sorry guys when we're running out of time I'm going to definitely pick these questions with them separately on WhatsApp or emails and I'm going to come back to you with these answers thank you so much everyone the audience Prasanna, Santosh, Abhishek, Bagishri, Yankit for being such a nice panel for being so patient and answering all my stupid questions also thank you so much it was really nice having you guys today on a Friday without a beer thank you please send us some beer thank you thank you so much bye guys