 Hello and welcome to another very special episode of our series Beating All Oaths. In this series, we are speaking to leaders who despite so many challenges thrown at us by COVID-19, are ensuring that the business stays on track. With me today is one such leader Mr. Ashish Sehgal, Chief Growth Officer, the Entertainment Enterprise Limited. Welcome to the show Mr. Sehgal. Yeah, good afternoon and welcome to everyone here, who are listening to the show. I hope you are safe and sound and healthy. Yes, of course now that question of being safe and sound is becoming a passing. My idea is how brave I am to be facing the whole entire issue. And I hope everyone is sitting there and bravely going after this coronavirus. So we have to start to live with it. Let's hope it gets over soon. Sir, these are very difficult days for your industry. I hope the coming days are definitely better. ADEX has dropped, but still all the broadcasters are putting a very strong foot forward and you are managing your show. How are you doing it? So yes, there is no denying that the ADEX has almost crashed currently in the last two months. And so much so because there is no business happening around. And the majority of broadcasters' revenue comes through advertising. And since people are not making money or not selling anything, why will they advertise? So because of that, advertising has come down and it is understandable. And since everyone else who are doing some business is trying to reset their button and figure out how to do their businesses. So is the case with us. We are also resetting our buttons and now trying to see how we move forward from here. Whatever has happened has happened. I think the only way to be positive is about how to move forward from here. So what are the measures that you think are better on your mind and how do we go forward from here? The important part is that how people and individuals who are dealing in the organization with all these challenges, how motivated they are, how well we are now or how good we are to face this problem, how motivated we are. And obviously keeping a brave face to now going forward strategize, think about what's the future is going to be. My perspective is that let's forget what has happened. Each month is on its own. Let's think about the next month. And there is no point of I think we should give the targets a pause for a while and think that what is I'm going to do for the next month. And that's how you start building blocks. Because once we start building these blocks, this is how we're going to climb back to the original volumes which media was or television industry was used to. One of the major problems is that we are not able to produce new content also. And Mumbai which is the center of most of the businesses, most affected and the cases are still increasing. Is there any solution in your mind hypothetically that what can be done? Do you think temporarily things can be shifted out of Mumbai? How soon can we start? Because Delhi is recovering, a lot of other places have recovered. So do you have any thought in your mind? How do we get back on track as soon as possible? I'll answer this question conceptually to different departments. From the consumer point of view, yes, there is no fresh content. Possibly what they were used to on a television or a linear medium in India, they were used to watching it. It's discontinued. However, there is enough and more content available across each and everybody's library that people are able to showcase those old nostalgic content. And hence you see the advent of your Ramayana and Mahabharata coming back from yesterday's and still bursting charts in terms of rating, etc. So the another good part is that people sitting at home, the best way of entertainment for them is consuming content. And they don't mind watching things again and again. Contents which have repeat value like movies, cinema or your mythological shows, your comedy shows, your infotainment shows. These are the contents people are able to view again and again. And if somebody has seen it earlier, they are again wanting to watch it at their leisure time. If you see overall ratings, they have only increased whether in the old TV platform or whether on the television platform. The consumption of content and the time spent on watching content has dramatically increased has actually gone way beyond what it used to be. So from that perspective, people from a consumer perspective, they are not feeling the pinch of content not being there. That said, obviously the driving of the business is also on the new content or the fresh content. And that brings in new eyeballs that keeps the consumer giving them something more to engage, etc. And yes, we have to come back, especially for the general entertainment channel or the sporting channels, etc., who've been doing live events, etc. They need to come back and start delivering that kind of content to the consumers. And we have to start thinking about how we go back as soon as possible, creating that content. Now we are creating content not just in Mumbai, we are creating content across the country. We are in various regional markets, etc. The good news is that the Karnataka government and also now the Tamil government has given indications of opening up the production, etc. for the content. So hence, I think soon you will start, at least in those markets, start seeing the content being produced. Similarly, those markets or those states which are now falling into green zone or where the government is going to start giving a little bit of liberties, I think we will start slowly doling back the entire content machinery. However, the majority of Hindi content is being produced outside of Mumbai. And we have to start thinking how do we start to actually take this creation of content outside of Mumbai or at safer places or actually get used to to start creating content with lesser number of manpower. You know, you would require artists, but there is a lot of manpower which is behind it, which is building certain content. So we will have to start to also create new SOPs in terms of building the content in future. And those are work in progress. So as and when we are ready, we will start sharing with the media or the press. Also, when these ones open, your addicts will also open, right? Yeah, so when the business activity starts to take place, obviously the addicts will start coming back. See, we are directly related to the economic activity, taking place and hence people will start advertising about their products. And that's where we will start to see the volume starts to come back. There are essential commodities who are already advertising. But again, as I said that that is only comprising of not more than 25 to 30% of volume which earlier it used to come. And now a lot of advertiser is actually thinking of at this point of time when the media is cheaper than what it used to be earlier. When there is not so much of a clutter, they're also looking and brand building etc. There are some advertiser who are taking those break steps and coming back and trying to build the brand for themselves while possibly their products are not being sold as well. Also, do you think 8 weeks, 9 weeks is too long a period for a brand to just stay away from television? And it should now gradually start advertising even if the production is not on. But a span of 8 to 9 weeks, isn't that too long for a brand to be not there on television? Yes, exactly. You know that public memory is very short. You've taken ages and years and years to build your brand amongst the consumer mindset. And this period when you are not present with them or not on top of their mind and especially when they are consuming so much of a content on television, on such mediums and your brand not being present there, they are also used to actually watching ads along with the content. And people are habitual about that and if they are not seeing that right now, slowly and steadily somebody else will come and take that place. So people who are advertising currently, they start taking the front stage of the consumer mind. Hence, it's very important for people at least who have good cash reserves with them start to use that as an investment rather than seeing it as an expense. Also, you manage such a big network. Which genres do you think are still surviving? Like news is still doing decent. And which are the ones who have been really hurt badly and which are the ones which are still doing good? So as I said earlier also, cinema is a genre or movies is a genre which any which way is a repeat viewing. Every day there are almost hundreds of movies being telecasted across various movie channels and not all of them are freshly produced. You keep on repeating those movies and still people keep coming back and watching it. And because of that, you see now the consumption and movie channels have gone up. Most of your number one or two entertainment channels is mostly the movie channels and not the general entertainment channels. News obviously, because being the flavor of the time period right now because of the sheer nature of it bringing information to people at their doorstep, the consumption of that has almost quadrupled. It's almost three to four times what it used to be. And I hope it continue to sustain for a while because news as a genre itself was kind of suffering for some time. And I think this will see the comeback of news genre even at a future stage. However, currently news is the flavor and because of that also the addicts reduction on news is not to that extent which has happened on the any of the genres etc. The most hit is obviously the general entertainment because obviously everyone was or the consumer was always so used to watching fresh content on a daily basis. The appointment of viewing on the general entertainment channel was because of that because they wanted to see every day what my character is doing, what are they going to do now. But the good part out of this entire episode is that, you know, what we've understood is that there is an appetite with the consumer to even watch nostalgic old good content. You know, so people are hungry about good content. And I think these learnings will come in handy when we are planning our future content plans as well. Not necessarily each and every day you have to give them something very fresh or something very new. People would love to, you know, have, you know, content which they would have watched sometime back but have possibly would have loved it at that time and they would like to see it again. These are very unique times, you know, I doubt any one of us has been like this ever in our life, you know, at home for eight to nine weeks without any movement. How has this changed you as a professional or as a person? Do you think differently now? Yes, of course, you know, I try to think differently almost every day because when your business is on an existential crisis, you have to keep thinking something new every day. You have to keep yourself engaged, you have to keep your teams engaged, you know, and keep on bringing reconstructive work up front so that, you know, you are able to be in the field and try to keep on doing things so that we can come back to the original situation. And to do that, we are doing many things, you know, within the organization, we haven't, you know, created the entire virtual world within the, for the organization, you know, on the MS team, virtually every day I'm connected with all my team members and sometime even I'm talking to more than 100 people at a time which was actually physically not possible. So, you know, the virtual world has actually opened up our eyes that there were things which we could have done possibly, you know, earlier which we were planning, trying to do physically can be actually a lot of work can be done virtually also. So, social distancing being there, there are things which we'll keep it in as a learning for future also that things like working from home. We won't have you in Dubai every second day now. Yes, I don't need to pay to travel now, so at least for some time. But as I said earlier that, you know, we'll have to learn to live with coronavirus and I think that's the way forward for the entire world. So will it be for me and as well as for everyone else. So from that perspective, yes, there will be, you know, always an opportunity to have that personal touch with people. But as I said that, you know, we've learned new things which possibly earlier even if we were forced to, we were not looking at it. You know, I think this possibility existed earlier also. And I think this COVID period has brought us to try those things which we wouldn't have otherwise tried. So yes, definitely we are finding, I'm finding a lot of new things to be learned. You know, another example I'll share with you is that, you know, today we've almost doing a brand speak by an industry leader almost on a daily basis on our HelloZ app which we have created on the MS team. And there are almost 500 to 700, you know, people who come every day almost attending learning from the various industrial leaders which are coming out there and giving us that kind of an opportunity. Now in earlier time, if I had to do something like that I had to figure out a haul, okay, every time. So it's a cost company would say forget it. Secondly, obviously then asking a time from that industry leader to spend, you know, spare that time and come all over to our office or whichever place and we're going to call. So they are in the confines and their comforts of their home. They have their, you know, thought processes just to be shared. They spare just an hour or an hour, whatever time they can. They easily come, you know, share the similar things which we possibly would have created a lot of opportunity, you know and a lot of infrastructure to be used. So I think this learning which I'm going to actually continue even in future because this helps me to keep on doing my team a lot of learnings and also for myself. So and also what is happening is that we are now engaging almost on a daily basis with one of the other business associates which earlier you would ask an appointment, you know take a time with that person. That was not happening. I think I've met a more number of clients in last two months you know whatever 40 days or 45 days what I possibly would have met in a year. So I think there are advantages also. COVID-19 has made all of us far more efficient than we were. Yes. We are working overtime. Sorry? And we are also working overtime. Yeah, yeah. And we are also doing our household chores which we had never done in our lives. Yes. I have been doing, I have never done it. Now I have been doing, I have been booking at home. So before we close I would want to, I mean if there's something that you would want to say to the industry and there are a lot of people younger than you people are anxious, people are demotivated what is it that you would want to say to the industry? To the industry I would like to say here this is the time, the time has come for at least television as an industry to come together and collaborate. You know, the overall ad-ex has come to a certain level but usually one would think that it's now becoming a survival of the fittest scenario. Let's go grab and snatch and whatever do and try to at least fill your own stomach. I think this is the time when we have to have patience. We need to come together, think together and strategize how we build the business back here I'll build my own business and you do whatever you want to because I don't think unless and until there is more and enough of the business coming back not everybody is going to survive. So this is the time all of us have to put our head together think as to how we revive this industry back and I'm sure this will get revival because the business will come back people have to go and sell their own products advertisement is the mainstay for them. There are new categories which are developing. What is that we can do for them as a television industry? Television is a mass reach medium and today from our industry point of view we have that onus to kick start the economy back because we are the one who are bringing the message back to the consumer and that message has to be positive. That message has to say that yes economy is coming back on its track and we have to start consuming products the way we used to earlier people and the environments are safe around you. So that is the onus of the media which we currently have and we'll have rather the responsibility as a media we have and I think we'll have to also stand together rather than fighting with each other to build the business back. As far as youngsters or the newer generation I think obviously the anxiety will be amongst almost at every age not only just the youngsters. This is the time for patience and this is the time as I said in the beginning forget you know what was given to you or what was your KRAs think positive be focused on the goals you have and also think about the next month start building block by block don't be in a hurry or don't just give up because things will come back I think we need to build everything block by block and the whole house will come back again. Thank you so much for speaking to us this is really inspiring we must take the message home this is the time for the entire industry to stand by each other and that is the only way forward for all of us to grow together Thank you for speaking to us this interview will really inspire many and we wish you good health and we want you to stay at home for another few days and stay healthy. Thank you very much. Yes I will definitely I have been at home and I will be at home till the time we feel that we are not safe I mean we are safe sorry and possibly we will be working from home for a longer period of time even though a lot of other industries are back here Yes so I think and thank you very much for your time and giving me this opportunity to speak to the industry at this time I think it was completely our pleasure Yes thank you so much My pleasure