 and welcome to another episode of our special series meeting all odds. COVID-19 has thrown many challenges at us. It's been eight weeks since we went into a complete lockdown. In these circumstances, we're all banking on leaders who despite so many odds and challenges are standing tall and ensuring that the business stays on track. With me today is one such leader, this Nina Dasgupta, CEO and director of Zerka Digital Solutions and CEO Adam. Adam's Ventures. I hope I got Adam correct. Welcome to the show. Yes you did. Welcome to the show Nina. Thank you so much. I must first congratulate you for another venture now you're handling two companies. I really don't know how do you handle so much. Well you have the same number of hours you just bring in efficiency I guess. Circumstances make you more efficient. So I am managing well one has to wait and see where it lands. We're very confident that you're going to take it to another new level. So you know I was going through the list of your partners and your clients. So you work with a lot of smaller networks I mean smaller in the sense of size you know be it Dungal or a lot of regional channels all the broadcasters have been affected very badly because of the current crisis and addicts has dropped almost 70-80 percent. What kind of solutions or what kind of ways what are you suggesting to them right now. Okay it's interesting so just to just a little correction I think something that needs to be corrected even on our website. Dungal is now set up their own team. We kind of you know took the business to a very new scale and hide and advise them to set up their own team because was wiser for them to do so. But we handle about 13 channels now a lot of them in the south and east clusters more regional channels. It's extremely interesting the performance of television is actually improved especially for news and GEC of course you're constrained at home you're sitting at home you're spending a lot of time watching TV. And it's coinciding imagine every salesperson looks for these numbers at the same time this rising number is coinciding with an absolute drop in advertising from brands. So what we have done is which is started working is we've started integrating packages so I'm bringing in conversations of broadcast and digital bundled in together where you start experiencing on television end your experience on digital or where you start experiencing on digital and end your experience on broadcast. So integration is adding engagement now to a television conversation that's something new we are doing. We are also working on packages that are actually targeted at people viewing their channel but outside of India. So we are making more efficient use of non primetime bands and bringing in more revenue. Our innovation has been around packaging and programming significantly my advice has been to package under specific heads because old is become new. So if you're packaging under famous old heroes you're packaging under strong women roles you're packaging music together because you can't create new content. So we're creating packaging. We are also speaking to some partners to bring gaming on if that's a possibility. There are technologies today available. So we have been doing different things. The good part is that we've started seeing an update on the revenue. The exciting part is that when we emerge out of the lockdown and come back to more normal times or better times I'm assuming that the revenue growth will actually grow significantly with the new initiatives. So that's how we are managing our broadcast. Even our digital partners it's all innovation and evolution. So even for our digital partners we are doing all innovations. We are actually mixing our displays reach video programmatic native all of it and we are focused on business outcome packages. So even for our digital partners it's innovation is the key word for us. So at Zarka you have clients which are from hospitality sector. You also have clients from automobile. You have clients from make my trip. These are the clients who have seen a complete shutdown. Nobody is going to make my trip these days. What kind of recovery plans are you making for them? So see these are partners who keep coming to us basis solutions we provide for them. And it's your recovery for tourism is going to be slow and it's going to be very in different varied stages of emerging from lockdown and I think the first thing will happen is building trust with the brand. Your travel will reduce out of fear actually more than anything else. You know also out of the sense of reducing spending unnecessary spending. So some people will want to save some people will be dominated by fear and I think it's about time that it's at that time that the brand will start need will need to build trust will need to assure people of how safe it is to travel. So for travel I can tell you it's going to take time. However at the same time state tourism boards or our own government ministry of tourism they will have to move faster because the income of the state or the income of the country a significant amount of that comes from tourism. Once government itself starts building confidence rebuilding the opportunity all our partners like make my trip all the hotels and hospitality industries will start seeing an uptake and benefit. So it's a long I don't believe it's something that's going to happen in the short term. I believe they're going to take probably a good amount of 12 months to 18 months to recover. They'll have to pivot some of the business pivoting will happen. They'll have to get into some new ideas of travel. They'll have to do new things and I'm waiting to see what those could be. Like other sectors that you have noticed which are doing better or which have an opportunity right now a lot of digital consumption has gone up. So you you have clients in OTT sector or I'm sure you have a lot of other digital clients. What kind of advice are you giving to those partners? See we work across partners and across brands right. For economists I work with corporates and I work with government a lot. They're trying to address global audiences. So you have to understand the impact for many many many companies are stable whether you look at a Microsoft whether you look at many businesses they are largely largely stable because their consumption and the need of the business continues to remain. For many industries the gap is just the lockdown and the time period. So we are going clearly behind stable industries one that are just waiting for the lockdown to emerge for them to get back into the same realm of business could be manufacturing could be instruments and tools that are getting exported right. So export is a very very big part even building that part. OTT you know while OTT is interesting one will have to wait and watch what happens with the movement of OTT. There is a spike now. One has to say where it comes and plateaus and settles down. So we work with OTT but with OTT our advice has been to get into something more steady and increase reach. It's about saying how do you start making sure that your reach is far easier for your campaign than just a pure ad. There are sectors like government there are sectors like IT that will very quickly transform because digital transformation is required right now. So the opportunity whether it's in Europe whether it's in US whether it's in Asia Pacific opportunity for Indian clients is significant today whether it's Vipro, Infosys, TCS, Tec Mahendra all of them. So that's another sector that we're working on very closely. Our formats that we believe will succeed and work is very research heavy and is very content heavy. And even even and the other part that will work format that will work very significantly is the social part is your Instagram your new formats of stories how you're taking stories into publisher side your feeds just your expansion it will no longer just be an Instagram it will become a mode of communication like there will be a TV channel in Instagram. So those things those are the innovations that we are working on for some of the stable sectors and like food you know these are stable sectors of food but there is a new interest. So we are working on those mediums and those categories. What are the overall challenges you spend almost more than two decades in this industry what are the overall challenges that the the entire industry is facing right now what kind of solutions would you suggest? I think we need to reskill our sales team significantly. One thing that hasn't changed much is selling skill hasn't evolved you know a solution based selling skill is there's a massive gap in the industry and that shows with the way media is getting traded today it is it is extremely commoditized there is no value benefit analysis that is being discussed today. So I firmly feel that we need to actually reskill ourselves as far as sales goes as far as you know building engaging prospects course. The other part is I believe it's time that what is that do you mean when you say we need to reskill our sales team I mean I is is reskilling typically we'll have to move from a format of just giving a solution because you have that as a product your product solution but actually shifting your view to saying what is the brand want to do what is how does the brand's consumer thing who is the consumer for the brand what is the consumer want what is the consumer's patterns of media consumption what is it that I haven't how can we then help together I think we don't really go down to the level of understanding the brand's need and relation to the consumer and not enough selling the product that we have you're just going and selling an inventory you're just going and selling cprp you're just going and selling a unit you know it's like selling a liter of milk but that needs to evolve because I believe media does so much more collectively it gives so much more back to the brand it gives so much to consumer a consumer also receives so much from consuming media totally and I think we need to put the value of the consumer the value of the brand in relation to the consumer and the value to the media so it needs to be unified training needs to actually happen basis that how do you upskill to start talking more solutions how do you use a lot of secondary research actually to do your sales your commoditized sale will continue but it's not going to take you far only a few will survive so I think I believe re-skilling is required meaning I I'm re-skilling myself I've been a salesperson largely right I re-skill myself um in fact we're trying to talk to a lot of publishers and we're telling them we'll help them as well uh because I've done that with a lot of my team so we'll help them as well to re-skill the other part also which is extremely needed is we need to actually start using a lot of research again offline research the good old offline research which understands the consumer personas and understands mindsets um everything online is good but there is significant merit in offline research it somehow adds so much more merit to uh what one is doing so these are two things that I totally believe must be brought back in my journey of last two decades I I these two are the ones that stand out really really strongly for me and I of course think that all of us need to learn from the youth of today you know the methods of working have changed as we are seeing now see working from home is very challenging and it's also something new for many of us we have not done it in the past what kind of negative problems are you facing as a professional while working at home from home oh man as a professional I'm facing a bad hair day problem literally right um um I think we are filling in too much of our time with calls there is very little time for thought um decision decision making is delayed decisions are not getting taken as faster as they used to um some parts are good you're saving a lot of time um by by not being stuck on the road and and doing something more meaningful but you're I'm still trying to figure whether that's good or bad because you're also kind of filling in a lot of space while you were traveling you were quiet you were thinking you were catching up on your calls with clients you're actually not able to do that much any longer you're doing much more but far less so productivity is reduced well we we are yet to see productivity of course is by default impacted outputs were impacted given the current scenario but I would guess if one was to put a barometer for some it has gone up for some it has gone down um for a research team productivity has gone through the roof you know that one after the other taking a trillion pieces of research um for my product team it's improved but for my marketing and sales team well you know what we're not used to sitting at home always yeah but there your your productivity will by default reduce what is market conditions do is your own frustration um and we are constantly trying to keep our people motivated you're telling them accept the frustration if there is uh we do two days that was my next question okay so that before you could ask the question how are you keeping your entire team motivated in these prices so we do it in bits and pieces okay there is one thing we do um so me and my executive management team there were four of them we talk every evening that's the safe place where we kind of you know share our frustrations issues it's a very friendly chat we laugh we talk that's how we take care of each other first at the top level um which is what Karan and I do regularly and for the rest of the people um we have we have created these zones of safety completely so there are gaming so each day there are groups created each day every group has to spend some amount of time on an activity on the next activity that is being planned for the week so there are two activities for the week so you're making sure that other can work they're doing something which is saying how do I take an entire gaming thing outside of my office you know how do we bring really 13 people from some 18 cities together now actually not 13 18 cities we think of how do we get external uh people who are posting games into our office how do we do music so we are also trying to figure how you play music one after the other when so many people are doing next week there is one guy who is doing origami for the children of Zarka you know so all the kids will come in so every day every group is spending about an hour planning on different activities and twice a week we have about two hours of each time two hours of some gaming there is something always on cinema and there's something always on art and uh story and the other thing we just do is we talk to them and we just say we'll accept it here this is how it is as of now and it's not going to be like this forever so that's all we are doing to try and keep the motivated engaged actually more than anything engaged you know and empathy before we close I would I would want you to speak for a few minutes you know for I mean some piece of advice and suggestions you have for those who just started their digital venture this year just before the lockdown there are too many startups that came in in last few weeks or few months or a few years and right now the market is really in that state a lot of people have been affected what kind of motivation or advice or suggestion would you want to give to them okay so one is it's very easy to get disheartened you know if you do get disheartened live with that emotion for a very short while but then just get out of it because it's not going to serve any purpose it's not easy remember it's not never easy to do a startup it's never easy to run your own business but it is that much more satisfying so connect to the satisfaction less to the base of you know being demotivated two is actually create connect with a few people who have been in the space and actually make a group tell them that you're trying to make this group at a time when you're you're you wanted to hit the road running but you've kind of come to a horrible stop and these are people who can probably advise you will not judge you because they've gone through the same phase themselves there is nothing called failing there is only a bad day or a good day so there's someone to hold your hand during a bad day and the third is become a member of a body and at this time you can go and maybe if you're in the digital space go to um you know imai probably at this time or if in the mobile space mma become a member of the body ask him to give you a massive discount but the body supports you so much that's where you can ask for help for supporting small things like marketing and small things like tools that you're not able to use yourselves you know the community gets in and helps you so don't hesitate to ask for help and at this point focus on your business don't focus on your own um what should I say your own success or your own failure it is about the success of the business and what do you need to do and what do you need your team members to do uh to succeed so act on that yeah so that's it from i said only those three pieces that is really inspiring even i'm feeling inspired right now because i also needed some kind of motivation thank you so much nina for speaking to us it's always pleasure talking to you and stay at home and stay safe we wish you and your entire family your office everyone good health and let's hope this pandemic ends as soon as possible thank you so much for speaking to us thank you so much you take care as well bye bye thanks bye