 to the third episode of Ephraim PR in Covcom next gen series where we are celebrating the win of the PR and COMS professional who made it to the elite second list of Ephraim PR in Covcom at the end of 40. So today we have with us Mr. Anirudh Bhagwat who is the CEO and co-founder at Adios Air Consulting. So hello and welcome Anirudh. How have you been? Good, good. Hi Nafisa. Thank you and thank you for having me here. Absolutely. It is a pleasure for us and congratulations for being in the second list of 40 under 40. So my first question is obviously on how do you feel being a winner of this prestigious title? I think obviously it feels great from the time that we've recently had over the last eight months. It's definitely a great time to be on a list and provide some amount of motivation for to keep going and kind of going towards the passion. But what I would say is that you know there's a certain vision that we've all probably built for ourselves professionally and these lists and this one particularly kind of just gives a small indication that you're on the right track. Obviously there's a long way to go but maybe it gives an indication that you're on the right track. So it is good to be on it and also being connected with the other 39 people. These are all stalwarts in the industry and it's good to have a platform or a reason to connect and kind of learn from them. Awesome and we really hope that we continue this winning streak and the celebrations throughout the new year. So we have seen that the industry has gone through a lot of changes and more so in the past 10 months. So what kind of sentimental changes have you observed in this industry and maybe we can talk about what are the broad trends that you have observed according to you. So I think one of the one of the bigger trends that I would see in a piece is that even and this is not necessarily only because of the pandemic. Even before the pandemic we saw communications as a domain or as a practice start taking a much more business-centric role in many enterprises. Interprises around the world are understanding that communication is actually by far maybe one of the most important things to run not just finance, not just marketing, not just sales, but communication as an art and because of which we saw the movement of communication professionals moving to business roles as well within organizations. I think that because of the pandemic I think it's further accelerated that trend where organizations are understanding that communication is now really one of the most important things because of the fact that every single thing that's set by an organization today because it's appearing everywhere on a two-way engagement platform like a Twitter or an IG or whatever where consumers can immediately reply have an opinion and influence others to also have an opinion in those type of situations the constructive message and the depth of how we want to communicate becomes so important for every brand and I think that's been probably the biggest accident in this time for as I've seen as a trend and obviously just like any other industry embracing technology, picking up digital platforms to collaborate I mean these are things that everyone would do I don't think that's specific to PR or communication as a practice but I would say that the biggest thing is that adaptability or innovation of how are we going to make things work and I think another trend is also the fact that within certain scenes because of the fact that today or rather recently we've not been able to actually physically meet customers or physically meet influencers etc how do you create those platforms of engagement how do you how do you create the media launch on a digital in a fully digitally in a digital environment right we are seeing a lot of industry conferences like yours also happening on a digital trend and there's a lot of innovation that goes in that right so I think those are the broad trends that I would see okay and you know you talked about adaptability, flexibility, evolution and innovation so I would like to ask you and have some insights on the kind of skills that are required right now to prevail you know or to you know do better in the market that has really shaped up so I think one of the biggest things is I would say it has nothing to do with core skills for me because I think pre-pandemic and post-pandemic the core skills of our domain are things that remain constant right I mean we as a at least I can speak from a PR agency perspective and probably any type of agency in marketing one of the biggest advantages is that we get to be exposed to so many industries at the same time which also means that our learning is continuous it's part of our job really you know it's something that we have to do across industries to do our job well so those type of core skills of getting better at the industries that you handle and getting deeper into you know we had technology coming in how do you look at ML, AI, LPR and a lot of data curation all of these things have been spoken about even pre-pandemic like I said maybe accelerated in this particular time but I think that the biggest skills that are on demand in the industry today are non-core skills are where we are actually looking at the maturity of the professional we are looking at the adaptability of the professional knowing that we are in uncertain times that will this will this person be able to adapt to different situations not only on from a delivery perspective but even from a work perspective because things are changing on a rapid basis right and the other aspect would also be how mentally aware or in control this person is and I think that's what is more and more important right and as organizations also we are doing a lot or we're trying to do as much as possible for our own teams in terms of you know well-being and things like that because I think it's very very important because it directly affects work you know there's an argument that it is more of a personal thing you know your mental state of mind is a personal thing for all those who are completely business oriented my answer to that would be that great wellness amongst your team having a good emotional portion as an aggregate within your team is directly proportionate to how good and how well you will do in business because at the end of the day if we are all happy doing what we want to do we just do better of it right so even from a business perspective it makes sense and I think those are the types of skills of adaptability or having a high emotional portion having a high maturity I think these are the types of skills that are most in demand apart from a lot of the technology skillsets and communication and content skillset that the industry's been adding for for the past few years now and you know we have all been working from home and this is also an example of how we are working from our homes doing everything virtually so if I ask you what has been your experience of working from home and with your team maybe you must have you know a lot of new stuff about your team and what are the you know new experiences that you had during these eight to nine months sure well firstly let me let me make a statement that I'm sitting in office right now because we have started coming to office it feels good I I tell you work from home has been a really incredible learning experience not only for the organization all our leadership as well and to myself right because I think that in you know self growth was a lot that happened during this time because you started being more embracing digital technology embracing collaboration being okay with uncertainty being okay with work line balance as it presents itself because everything had changed right so I think that was the biggest aspect that I would I would kind of look at but when it comes to where we are kind of going or the skills or the qualities that we need I think it's very important to look at that emotional portion so I forgot your question I was asking a rather lighter question like what are the new experiences you had with your team maybe came up with some you know things about them right so the biggest experience I must tell you is that our anniversary was actually right during the lockdown right and usually we always have a habit of going on off-sides together and kind of connecting and we did this again our first time of the team really trying to put together a digital type of celebration and we called it a lot of alumni from from IEOSP and the past people who worked with us and had a great turnout it was because an excellent time because at that point of time you obviously adapt to the fact that this is the best we can do in terms of for yourself also in connecting with people and I think that is something that was an experience of mine which kind of worked out really well but you also asked about my impression of work from work honestly I think that in the given circumstances it you know when it's needed it's needed and and you always will put you know the safety of all of us as high as priority but in this in the situation that it is not needed I would be a person that would rather be in office I think that collaboration I think that seeing people on a regular basis the water cooler talks and all of those things that they call it are very very important to me as a professional I think they add a lot of value to a business and given the circumstances are safe and and and it is possible I would definitely look at a hybrid now between work from home and work at office I think it should always be a hybrid and I am not sure if work from home permanently would be something I would be comfortable with in that sense because of current experience. I think you basically kind of somewhere answered my next question that I was about to ask like is the industry ready to go fully virtual in the times to come or are we technologically adept to go to that next step now? I think absolutely we are I mean I would and I'm speaking as an industry look at the type of events that we've been able to run without much delay look at the type of digital collaborations that we've been able to do even you know platforms and communities that you know for a for a media platform like yours who's trying to build even you guys have done that right I've seen we a lot of consultancies have done media launches and you know press meets and work has been as usual so I think it really shows to the resilience of the team I don't think it was very hard for all those to pick up and I think that at times when we are in situations where we have to figure out as as a community and as professionals I think they've always been very innovative you know keep on moving ahead and figuring out what could be solutions so I think in that sense we've been we've been as an industry I think we've shown a lot of resilience during this time because while there have been challenges it seemed like we've not missed a beat and we've only gotten better post pandemic. I think resilience is the right words everybody has shown that kind of resilience and adaptability so Anirudh moving on if I ask about your form ideas fair and how has ideas fair utilized or used the challenges into an opportunity in the past eight to nine months so I think one of the biggest challenges was that we were all from home right and I think that the that we learned a lot about what is it to connect with the team what is it how do we maintain the same culture of an organization in a digital remote omnipresent type of level we're still learning it by the way but I think that that was a that was a huge learning of the lockdown the other thing is also it gave us time to introspect you know obviously when the lockdown started some of our customers you know wanted to renegotiate some of our customers caused their contracts a couple of times left also so so speaking as business yes it was a difficult time but at the same time it was important and it gave us time to actually introspect a bit have much more deeper conversations about the business with leadership and with the team in terms of where are we going what should be our vision how do we get prepared post pandemic and you look at it as a time for preparation you know and I do believe that a lot of things are happening for a reason in that sense and in that sense it is a learning for all of us so a lot like I said the a lot of the learning that we've had because of the pandemic we've just sped up our whole industry wide digital transformation like time stand right it just happened immediately it should have happened a long time ago needed something like this to happen to actually get us there but we are there and even post pandemic when things go back we still continue to have these skills so we'll be much more agile as an industry we'll be much more flexible from an idea sphere perspective we realize that measurability is going to be important in the future evidence-based measurability where we can actually show not only the impact of our work to brand but also to business aligning to what I said initially in your question and because of that we are able to develop some outcome based models for business look at how we want to structure our business where we went into more of an understanding of what customers want we also launched our white paper sometime during the during the lockdown so it's been it's been a lot of learning nefisa so mainly introspection being agile and flexible and also adaptability of the team like I was I was I can tell you without a doubt everybody on my team better did better than me at adaptability during the lockdown and it was it was the most difficult for me and and I really had soft blood because I used to look at saying they are everything is continuing you know as business as usual to the to the most extent probably I took a couple more days to get on the bus but it was it was exactly a great learning and a great self-discovery of our own selves all of us and absolutely we have to you know keep all rolling to sales through these difficult times and we have actually everyone has come out as winners right and so you have been an entrepreneur if I am not wrong right so and there are many people who aspire to be one so what are the qualities or maybe the important skills it's required to you know come out or become a successful entrepreneur in this industry according to you so I think that if you it's very easy to start a business in our industry mainly because of the fact that you need only a laptop and internet connection to start a business right so in that sense there are very less barriers for anyone to start and probably after almost nine years of ideas we are one of the one of the things that we have we have started to realize as entrepreneurs is that a business must have a very very clear purpose and a differentiate of why they want to do it if you're if you're going to go need to in into an industry of just having another consultancy or another agency and I understand that the differences are made for thin but you must have some of them because my thinking is that you're taking a risk as an entrepreneur to start a business you're doing it to create value for yourself and others and when you're doing that why would you even do exactly what's there in the industry because that increases your risk of failure because there's just one more right what if the only way you can succeed is to have something clearly differentiate number one so I think one must understand that why and what is the intent or why am I going to start something the second aspect is that we must know the business of our craft not the craft itself I've seen so many remarkable communication professionals at times struggle in running a business because they may understand the craft but they don't know the business of the craft and I think one of the one of the things that young professionals who wish to be entrepreneurial do is that during the course of their work try and observe and understand the business understand how margins work everything about how does this whole shift flow that the agency that you're in because those type of learnings and that type of observation will definitely help so that would be the second thing and the third is the how strong are you emotionally because entrepreneurship is all about being able to handle good and bad well it's being able to manage stress extremely well there's going to be uncertain times I mean you essentially step into a world of uncertainty from the day you start and you need to be extremely strong and mentally aware and mentally in control to do that and a lot of these things honestly you know I personally and I can watch on our entire leadership and my co-founder Meena that we've learned is that it's something we're learning now I wish that somebody would have taught us now or taught us that before but I think the business of what you're in your attitude and your and your self-control or your ability to handle stress is very very important to being a great entrepreneur along with the fact that your business must be differentiated there must be a reason for why you want to start something I think your voice would be really helpful for people who are you know on this way of being an entrepreneur so as we know that we are in the last month of 2020 and we are going towards 2021 so what according to you would be the key innovations that might re-shape the beer and pop-up industry in the times to come maybe we can talk about two or three innovations according to you I think I'll tell you I don't know I should call them more of my my forecast of what I think that we should be doing as an industry I think that overall because of the time that hybrid work environments will continue I think digitization of our entire delivery process and this is not only for beer but any type of any type of agency as such in the marketing but I think digitization of that automation of a lot of manual workflows and redundancies in our own business which we do on a daily basis that continue to do the same thing and at times it gets monotonous but we don't take the effort of finding a better way to do it and I think we are starting to do that and having those engines which will allow us to define process and systems in a consistent and automated form where you're actually obviously in a way digitally transform yourself to do that where the communication profession sit on top of the system as thinkers as problem solvers as content creators and let the system do the redundancy of manual workflows and try to ensure that you're spending time on quality I think this is where probably as an industry we will go because we need to get you know we need to get much more efficient and consistent in our delivery what happens across multiple consultancies is that different teams often deliver at different quality levels and it could be all different and I think this is a challenge all consultancy space somewhere digitizing at least the bottom functional layer could help in that it's not going to be an answer it could help in that and the second thing that I see in 2021 is I see more and it's already happened but I see more consumer behavior or consumer psychologists coming into our fraternity or those skillsets being required I think understanding of the human mind is very important for us as we are professionals because at the end of the day there are so many mediums so many messages one can deliver how do we know and how do we get into the minds of our audience of who we are talking to I think a lot has to do with consumer psychology and and there are it's already there are professionals but I think you're going to see many more of that so one on a technology side one on a skillset side I think those are going to be the major trends absolutely I think communication has taken the centre stage now and more so it will be amplified in the years to come so Anirudh let's move to my maybe the second last part of this interview what are your future plans so a lot of so like I said we we took that time to kind of get feedback from customers look the pandemic time to kind of introspect and in what we want to do we've kind of realized the need for having a single window service work for customers right where they would want a lot of their communications to be done from one particular or another led by one and what I mean by communication is not only media relations where it could be content it could be sales content it could be you know what what the leadership is saying there's multiple facets and for that you require obviously a division of insights where you're continuously getting insights from the market or your stakeholders you require content to be created and all sorts of content and you require the photo market or amplification which is how do I go out whether it's social media or PR and we've actually built these three into SPUs within our business we have project managers which which manage the brand and we are able to give that single window so over time we've also been able to build a strong ecosystem which is a platform that we've been we have worked 75 partners who we've all worked with and ranked and rated and these are across design content etc so we are able to measure that quality and give a single window I think the future plans for a year's we are also lying how are we going to be able to technologically look at our value chain and figure out where can we really in a way transform ourselves what can we do better how can we become more efficient something we call internally about the six piece which I will get to but things like productivity performance and those type of things that we want to kind of look at it how do we be how are we able to build platforms that can provide a measurable answer to that apart from apart from which one of the other things is also to figure out how can we use our insights which is a key differential event something very close to each of our hearts and ideas here how do we use that to create a larger impact in the community how can we look at insights as a larger play because we've been doing it for many years and we started also evolving into understanding and going into that so I look forward to how we can use that better as well so these are these are the two things one from a technology transformation perspective and the other from a product perspective of what more we can do with the type of really good work we've been doing on insights and if I ask on your personal friend and not ideas fair if you talk about ideas fair what are your personal goals for the future so my my personal goals are one is to be a little bit and continue to learn to be more patient in life and more more calm and collected in in this environment I think one of the things that this is taught us is patience and that's one of the things that I see for myself going forward the other is also trying to understand that when as a leader trying to get better at transparency at friend and said understanding what is the right thing to do not running away from in a way what what one may call a sticky situation or something that's difficult to do it and face it around and you find the right solution which is the right way to work out of business and those type of things is a learning for me as just a leader I think that continues to happen and the third thing is to spend more time with my family and and try to ensure that I continue it's something where probably what the pandemic has also taught us that you should enjoy work if you enjoy fun you should enjoy family it really is just being about it's about your mind being where you are at that point of time physically so if you are at home be at home be at work and and as long as we do that I think we intend to be happier and I want to ensure I do that so a lot of these are a lot of changes I don't know what I see for myself if I do this well then awesome I think this was an insightful talk I would just like to finish this interaction on an exciting and fun note and let's play some rapid fire right so I will just say some terms and you have to speak to us what that comes in your mind right okay so shall we start so when I say digital what do you mean transformation social media conversation um influencer marketing PR technology permanence just there now 40 and a 40 list great milestone awesome thank you so much Anirudh this was really an insightful and and you know exciting talk thank you so much for being here and once again congratulations thanks Nafisa thanks to the exchange for being by having me it was great for me as well