 And now let's move on to the next special address. When we speak about fashion, retail, there's no chance that especially for men, we don't talk about these few brands that really excites us. A next speaker represents brands that have redefined fashion in India, be it leading the formal wear segment who now tapping into smart casuals. He leads the iconic brand such as Louis Philip, Van Heuzen, Alan Solly, and Peter England. Welcoming Vishak Kumar, CEO, Mudra Fashion and Lifestyle. So I was saying let's welcome Vishak Kumar, the CEO, Mudra Fashion and Lifestyle, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited. To make you retrospect, is your brand future proof? Also, I think one thing brilliant for all the viewers out there is that Mr. Kumar wants this session to be very engaging and interactive. So please keep posting your questions in the Q&A tab and he will be happy to respond. So Vishak, over to you. Thank you, Weber and a very good afternoon to all of you. Yes, I agree with that. Let's try and make this interactive. So the way the technology is going to work is that you please real time keep typing into the chat box. And I've requested Simran to pass them on to me on WhatsApp since I'm not going to see them directly on the chat box. So please do keep them coming. I want to keep it real time. Don't save your thoughts. Don't save your questions till the end. Let's do this as we speak. Sardar, could you put up the presentation please? Thank you. Yeah, so we're talking about is your brand future proof, but this is almost assuming that the brand is fine today. So my first step to you and I've kept it in six steps for you to sort of future proof your brands. And while I have kept the presentation fairly generic, I will try and give you as many examples as possible from the business that I've been into so that it makes it as real as possible for you. Moving on Sardar. So the first step is to say, look, is my brand relevant today? A lot of things. It's nice to say here, let me future proof my brand. But my question to you is, what if your brand is already dead and that we're not aware of it yet? So there are some ways by which you could figure that. And in any case, if even if you are alive and kicking, it's important that you're setting the right foundation for your brand to be future proof. So let's look at some of the things that you could do to check if your brand is relevant for today, Sagar. So first thing I would say is, if you want to know how relevant is your brand today, first is, of course, you must check your sales. I'm sure all of you have your MIS reports and so on. But to look for the quality of sales, it's not just about your numbers. Of course, the fact that your numbers are growing would be a good sign that your brand is relevant today. But look for quality of sales. For example, are you selling more of your product at discounted prices? Are you selling to the right customer cohorts that you intend to sell to? Are you selling, for example, if you're a cutting edge brand, are you selling to the earlier doctors or are you selling to the legards and so on? So I think it's important that you analyze your quality of sales. Equally important that we do research. Now, this is something which is never urgent and important, but it's very high on importance. It's just that it's never urgent. So I would say look at research in whichever forms you can, if you're a smaller business, do research through dipstick surveys and talking to customers directly. Don't limit it to awareness. Look at how people like your brand. How relatable is your brand? A lot of times, brands do stuff which consumers can't relate to. It's just that we fall in love with our brand so much that we think that that's stuff which is happening to other people. So it's extremely important that we also look at what's research telling us. Do people like me as a brand? Do people relate to me as a brand? Do people know me? Do people know my logo? Can people recognize my logo? Can people recognize the things that I stand for? Customer satisfaction scores absolutely vital. Before you can start any exercise of your brand, please look at how satisfied we follow a process called post purchase mission happiness. Post purchase mission happiness is a lot of us do things around customer satisfaction, net promoter scores and so on. Happy are you with what you bought. This goes one step further and it goes to the all of you would know that all new great. You know it's only after you purchase mission happiness does is to ask you this question of how happy are you with the government you bought exactly one month after your purchase. So if you bought from any of our stores let's say a Louis Philippe store exactly 30 days from today you would get a simple SMS with a link for just five questions which ask you basically how happy are you with the product you bought. We don't stop at that we compile that data and we are able to compile that at a fabric level, factory level, mill level in terms of all possible specifications so that it leads to further continuous improvements as a way of life. So please do look at how happy are your customers with you. Very vital that you also look at purchase data are people that you're selling to are they the same customers who are buying again or are you required to sell to new customers every time. It's a vast country so you will find a lot of first-time customers but what makes a brand a brand is when you have repeat consumers. So do look at your measures of business to see if you're getting enough of repeat sales of course as a healthy business you do need new customers that's your engine for growth but do keep looking at are the people who bought from you are they buying from you again and again. Okay Simran keep do please send me whatever screenshots you get as and when you get them so that I can read that into the conversation as we speak. Yeah go on Sagar. As you look at future proofing your business it is important that you identify the things that might change your industry that might change in your industry. There are things that all of us are familiar with as the shifts that might happen. Let's look at some which are most likely to happen Sagar. So clearly technology and this is something which is likely to affect every business. I had a friend in a leading watch business who told me 20 years back that our business has to change a lot of technology. We've been in this industry the watch industry has been around for hundreds of years and it's not going to change and look at how people wear watches today and how tectonic shifts have happened in the watch business. Almost every industry is going through changes like this. For example in our own business in Aparap technology has completely changed the way we sell and increasing amount of business. The previous speaker spoke about 2% in his industry. We are already close to 20% now as business which is happening through e-commerce and it is rapidly growing. Societal norms things change. Imagine if you were a business of selling ties, neck ties and you were the market leader in selling neck ties. If you didn't see the societal norms changing. When was the last time you saw somebody wearing a tie to work? Of course when was the last time we saw a person in a physical office but tied apart. When was the last time we saw even pre-Covid anybody wearing a tie to work? So it's extremely important that we recognize even definitions of what is dressing up, what is various norms of society at different points of time. Demographics and this is something again where is the nation aging? Is the nation getting younger? Where is the large part of the consumer cohorts? Where are they? Is again something very, very important to recognize. Who's got the money? At different points of time, different consumer cohorts are very vital from purchasing power perspectives as well. So I think keep a close eye on the demographics of which are likely to change. Now this is relatively easier to predict political landscape, economic progress. Look at, for example, small town India. Small town India is, you know, I was a couple of weeks back in a town called Namakkal in Tamil Nadu. A year back we had practically no business in Namakkal and today it's such an amazing story of how well the the van Houston store in Namakkal is doing. Some of these are happening as the country progresses and the business in these markets, of course. Now, can you just put up a store and forget it? No, it's extremely important that you understand the market, you understand the consumers in that market very, very different from the rest of the country and so on. But please do identify the things that are changing in your understanding, laws and regulations, entry barriers. How easy is it for international brands to come into your market? What will happen if more and more brands come into your market? How will you respond to that? All of these are things that one must prepare for as we prepare to future-proof our business. Needless to say, I think everybody's become very familiar with Black Swan events now. COVID is one such and it's what people call once-in-a-century event. But watch out for the next Black Swan events as well and how you would respond to them. Okay, I'm going to take a 10-second breather and look at some of the thoughts which have already come. Perfect, so there are nice questions. Thanks Tarun, thanks Neha on some of the stuff that you want addressed and I will take that on as we speak. Yeah, go on Sagar. I'm going to also give you some predictables in your business. As we look at the future, all of us worry about how uncertain it is and what is likely to happen and so on. What I do want to do is to give you some most likely predictions, which are almost foolproof. So yeah, just go forward Sagar. So here are some predictions for you. First is, consumer will buy it only if it's of good quality. Now, this is a sort of no regret action. Make sure that your products are good because people are not going to buy mediocre stuff. So this is one future-proof strategy that each one of us can have, easier said than done, but absolutely good advertising, good marketing. We're only sink a bad product faster. So make sure that your product is damn good. Remember that people prefer to buy stuff that is simple and easy to use. As you key in on WhatsApp, you know what I mean. The simplicity of a product, the ease of use is extremely wide. We see this even in the apparel business. For example, as we saw the pandemic and we saw more and more people working from home, we realized that a lot of people had lost their Gobi solution for ironing clothes, etc. And when we launched this line of wash and wear garments, which didn't require ironing, which was easy maintenance, it just flew from the shelves. So it's clear that if you're able to give people simplicity, if you're able to give people very easy operational product solutions, they do like it. Trust me, technology will keep disrupting business. So keep watching for technology. It affects every industry at some point of time or the other. Please remember, all of us used to buy cassettes and CDs and see how that industry got disrupted. So industry after industry, the way we used to take photographs while on a holiday across the business, you will see. And it's not just for tech industries that technology will be a disruptor. Technology will be a disruptor in very, very basic ways in all of our businesses. Do look at how technology is likely to disrupt your business. Consumers will increasingly, as the stress on the planet increases, as the stress on sustainability increases, there will be increasingly pressure from consumers to give you products, to give them products which are good for the planet. Now a lot of brands today, a lot of companies today have done what is called green washing, which is basically tokenism in the name of sustainability. Remember that consumers will see through this very, very quickly. Good brands will be those which are able to tangibly, demonstrably show to consumers that they are good for the planet. Another very, very important, almost short shot prediction, consumers are increasingly becoming aware of the health impact of products. So make sure that your products help consumers to stay healthier. So to do look at, again another example, in recent times with COVID, where people have become increasingly aware of how they have to improve their immunity, etc., are athleisure lines, are lines of sportier merchandise, etc. They've just been flying from the shelves and online as well. So please remember this, that there are things which are going to stay stable and you just need to make sure that you're really good at those. Move on. Now here is where we come to the meat of it on how do we future-proof our business. Please understand the true positioning of your brands. And here is what I mean by true positioning. A lot of times we write these marketing statements, positioning statements in PowerPoints, in our own boardrooms, meeting rooms. Don't start believing in those. The only positioning to remember is the one which is in the minds of consumers. You will have to get that out of their mind and understand that. Sometimes there are people who believe in the taglines or strap lines of their campaigns and believe that to be their positioning. It's very, very important that you understand truly what consumers think of your brands. And all of us make this mistake of starting to believe our advertising message to be our brand positioning. That's what we want as intended position. That's what we are trying to influence consumers into thinking about us, but they make their own minds. And it's very, very important that we understand what does our brand stand for today. Of course, then it becomes relatively easier to know where do you want them, how do you want them to think about you. Another important thing to understand as we speak about positioning is this whole notion of marketing myopia. So I can just page down. Beware of now, some of you who've read Kotler would know marketing myopia. It's basically how sharply, how tightly versus how loosely, how widely do you want to define your business. In a conventional thinking, all of us have been told to have razor sharp positionings, especially those who are more FMCG inclined. It's extremely important heart. This brand stands for germ kill. This brand is strengthens, fights tooth decay, strengthens gums. So we have all grown up with very, very successful stories about how brands have worked, which have worked with very, very sharp positions have done extremely well. And yet I want to also caution you about the reverse, which is what is Theodore Leavitt calls marketing myopia. And let me just give you some examples of that in the next slide. Okay, do look at this. And I'm going to now make this a little more interactive and seek your answers on the chat box. All of you know which company I'm talking about as I write this. So most innovative film role company, good to have that, good to be an innovative 20 years back, it was damn good to be the most innovative film role company. The question to you is, how would you rather have positioned the business so that it, in the 1980s and perhaps in the early 90s, could have future proofed itself? Here was another business which was leader in cassettes and CDs. How could this business have redefined itself at that point of time, so that it future proved itself and was relevant even today? Best training institute for your hostesses. Now, this is an amazing company does extremely well, but what would happen if airline travel reduces? How could this business future proof itself going ahead? Best brands for men's office where what would happen if the future of office itself changes? How can this brand redefine itself? Copying equipment, video game business. So I'm going to wait for some of your chats on this one to see what's the kind of positionings that you would recommend for these companies so that you could make them future proof. And perhaps Simran, somebody could even read them out as you get in the chats. We already have questions for you. If you could look at it, we have 10 minutes time left. We've already sent you questions. Yeah, I've got that, but I just trying to see if Simran, if people want to just respond to that this. Yes, so we have a chat coming in. It says that the leader in cassettes and CDs could go to doing a podcast and turn into a digital podcast company. Hang on, hang on. But now that is what I would call in my next slide as a pivot and we will come to that. But the larger question is how could I broad base myself? One is to say I switch to something else. Second is how do I position myself in such a way that I widen my horizon? I widen my position for the business. Are you getting any more, Ritika? I'm looking, so I'm looking. Yeah, thank you so much. There's a gentleman who's mentioned, we bring games alive. Okay, so gaming can go beyond video games. It can go wider into gaming. Please do look at it in respective industries. Look at, for example, the best brand for men's office where could easily extend to, for example, the best brand for men's lifestyle across different usage occasions. Best trading institute for air hostesses could perhaps extend to saying best trading institute for hospitality. So you could widen the scope of the business that you're in to be able to make your business more future proof. And that brings me to the last thought, which is pivot, which is at some point of time. Go on, Sagar. At some point of time when it looks like the business that you are in is headed towards a dead end, neckties. There were brands which sold only neckties. What happens to them when consumers just stop wearing neckties? Countless examples of such things and that's when you learn to pivot. I'll give you one example, one sample. Just go on, Sagar. Here is an example of, here is a camera business, which said that their target customer is creative professionals with an eye for capturing and sharing beauty. And this brand is the digital point and shoot camera that delivers a window to their world, which is the point of difference so that they can experience deeper connections through a shared perspective. That's the end goal because brand X has a long history of developing new technologies that allow you to, so basically that's the reason to buy. And the point is this, if at some point of time you believe that this company is losing that target customer or it's losing that category, digital point and shoot perhaps is no longer relevant. The business would need to pivot. And different companies must recognize the time at which they pivot so that they are able to spread themselves to a wider audience because at the heart of it, consumers buy us because we give them reasons to buy. So this brand, let's say, has a long history of developing new technologies. This is their opportunity to extend that to many more new categories. So as you can see, it's very, very possible that brands pivot and brands are able to scale beyond their current position. So I will summarize in the interest of time. Make sure that your brand is relevant today before you look at your future proofing strategy. Identify the things that might change in your industry. Be prepared for those changes. Know the stuff that is less likely to change. You need to anchor around some things at least. Understand the true positioning of your brand. It's not enough to link your advertising is equal to your positioning kind of equation. Beware of marketing myopia. Don't position yourself so sharply that it doesn't give you any room for maneuver. And finally, learn to pivot at the right time. If you think that your current position is untenable, learn to pivot at the right time. So that brings me, ladies and gentlemen, to the end of my discussion. I think we have five minutes for some Q&A. So maybe this might be a good time, Simran. Yes. Ankita has also asked, you know, she just replied to your mail saying that scan on the go, the question you put, scan on the go and be fashionable, be comfortably fashionable for work anywhere. Absolutely. Fantastic. I think, yeah. So every business, ladies and gentlemen, will give you some of these opportunities to be able to redefine who and what you stand for. So do look at some of those. I have some more questions which had let me take on a couple of them. How do you create balance between brand values and ever-changing consumer needs? asks Tarun. I think it's the same point that I made about where do you pivot and where do you know. It's important that you know the core of your brand and that core of your brand cannot change. So let's say if a brand like Louis Philippe is built around the core, which is excellence, craftsmanship. So everything that Louis Philippe does will have to be built around craftsmanship, will have to be built around excellence. Can Louis Philippe do a shabby garment even if consumers ask for it? Answer is no. So some of these are, you know, in that sense, Tarun best addressed if you know the core of what your brand stands for. Okay. Very, very wide question. How is Aditya Birla fashion aligning its strategies to achieve 25,000 cross revenue? Pritha, that's a very, very large question. But at a very simple level, I think continue to make very, very exciting products which are in touch with the customers of today, which help customers to live their life better, go deep and wide into the country and be where consumers want us to be, become an extremely digitally strong omnichannel business, create a portfolio of brands which addresses every consumer opportunity. Is there any other question which I'm missing, Simran, which is there on the chat box, which perhaps you think I should address? Yes, so there is a question that it's from Dria and it reads with increasing AI and data driven personalization, how do you stand out in a cluttered digital space? It's a very, very difficult challenge that most market years today are facing, which is the sheer amount of clutter. And I think this is where brands have a bit of a head start, because brands do get a little extra attention from consumers. That's one. Second is relevance. How do you constantly strive, especially in the digital world, it becomes possible to personalize, possible to serve unique to consumers advertising, possible to serve unique to consumer solutions, products. I think the critical challenge as you go forward is going to be, how do I work to a segment of one? How do I address single customers as marketing segments and give them products and services, give them communication in that context? Thank you so much, Mr. Kumar. I think the session was fantastic. I'm hoping that if Sagar can send me the presentation, I would be able to re-jog it and understand the nuances that you mentioned. So thank you so much for your time. Please do connect with him on Twitter or on any other platform. I know you are not available on Twitter, I think, but let's get connected with him. If you guys have any questions, do connect. But thank you so much for your time and hoping to learn a lot from you in the future. Thank you, Weber. Thank you, Weber. And thank you all. Have a wonderful rest of the session. Thank you very much for having me.