 You know, every time I have been to any such conference, there are a few words which have been thrown at me, like, of course, Millennial, storytelling, connected world, et cetera, et cetera. And I've been told every time something will be dead, you know, television will be dead, brands will be dead, advertising agency will be dead, brand builders will be dead, somebody will be dead because millennials are connected and they are doing a lot of storytelling in an interconnected world. So what I did, I actually took out three pictures from the internet from three different websites and millennials are buying a lot of these. This is a white tee. You know, a white tee shirt, like the way I'm wearing a black tee, a white tee. So once you look at that, there is no difference you can feel. So, you know, like these three are pictures from, these three are pictures from three different brands. The beauty of it is one of them is 6,800 bucks. One is 600 bucks. One is 135 bucks. And that 135 rupees, people will bargain. You know, can I get three of them for 300 kind of stuff? But the other one, they're willing to pay 6,800. So if I tell you the brands, you will actually trust me. The first brand is Prada. The second one is H&M. And the third one is FBB, right? The millennial who is supposedly having a lot of information and they don't really care about brands. They're so well connected and they're telling stories to each other. They pay 6,800 for a white tee and 135 for another white tee. So which means, before we ask ourselves this question, are brands really relevant? I think we need to keep on looking at some of their behavior. And keeping that in mind, I want to have the first question. Okay, I think I have the questions written down. It'll be easier. Yeah, so I will... I'm not a millennial, so I will never pay 6,800 for a white tee. You know, luckily. So I think it's supposed to be information overload. And especially the millennials, they know everything. They know everything about everybody. They know when, you know, like Muriniya will join and Pochettino will get sacked. So I'm a bit of a football fan. So they know everything, but they still are buying 6,800 versus 135 and after bargain. So my question to Rahul, Rahul works for Jeep. Rahul, what happens to the role of brand in this kind of information overload, you know? We are seeing massive amount of information supposedly. What happens with this information overload? So Partha, the role of a brand is extremely important in the age of information overload. You can't really ignore what the brand stands for. As you rightly said, that brand is a shortcut to all the information that a customer needs on a particular product or a service. I completely agree on the point that there is too much of information overload just on specific to my industry. There are 24 different touch points before a customer will go and read or understand before he goes and buys a vehicle. And every of each of those 24 touch points further has around more than 20 or at least 50 different channels to get that information. Which at this point in time, we are talking about 50 different touch points for a brand to really communicate or be relevant when it comes to people going and buying a vehicle. There are a lot of sites which compare one vehicle to another. There is a lot of journalists who write reviews about it. There is television, there is digital, there is out of home. There is so much of information overload. And what actually this is doing is, I think to some extent it is helping, but it's also confusing the buyers to a greater extent. So I think the role of a brand really plays a very important part over here in terms of differentiating and then also putting metrics to the information. What is true, what is fake news or what is editorial which does not have any background. So that is what I would say what's happening to the brands in the age of information overload. So it's a very interesting point. You are saying that when there is an information overload, the role of brand becomes even more important. Extremely important. So or they used to claim supposedly that brand is a shortcut for information. So when you don't have information, then you trust a brand. Like typically Apple buyers will never know the configuration of a phone. Most of the Apple buyers don't know the configuration of a phone. They say if it's Apple, it has to be good. So you have got whatever, 100 GB, I must be having 200 GB. That kind of a feeling. But the Android users are very, very clear about their specs and stuff like that. So you're saying the reason Apple has that kind of a following and it's because a brand is stronger and in a world of information it gets even stronger. So when we launched the Jeep brand in 2017, the Compass was launched in 2017, we had great success. So we were selling like 3,500 cars a month. And then we did a small survey to understand why customers are choosing a Jeep and not something else. And there were 56% of the people who said we bought it for the brand. Forget what others are saying, what the reviews are saying. There you go. So it's so much of, yeah. Just look at the brand name. And with more information, it becomes more important. I guess there must be a threshold point where, as we were discussing, if there is too much of information, it also leads to confusion. And you just then go and make some decision based on, there could be then several other surrogate methods. For example, you would just ask a friend or somebody you trust. Since you bought this topic, so I think I'll go back to Sapna now. This is the whole world of peer-to-peer. I think the guy who started Undercurrent, he said a very fantastic thing once. I still remember. One very famous tweet of his said, I talk about your brand to my friend, not because I like your brand, but because I like my friend. I didn't quite understand it, but sounded really profound. And then I slowly kind of figured out what he meant. In a world where peer-to-peer conversation is far more important than information coming from brands, because there is a failure of institutions. I'm not referring to political situation in the state, nothing of that sort. But still there is a failure of institutions. Institutions are failing us. Therefore people have started believing in each other more. In that kind of a scenario, especially in your category, where people are selling and buying peer-to-peer product, what is the role of a platform brand? I mean, why is, say, a platform brand at all needed? I would say it's not just, you know, I was thinking about it. It's not just the category that I work in, in peer-to-peer classifieds. In general, if I think about it, I started my career in PNG. And Narasimha Niswar, who was there, the previous speaker, he was my colleague, and we worked at Rekit as well. And back in the days when we used to make the marketing plans, we essentially had, you know, two or three elements. There was the TV was there, there was some radio, there was some out-of-home print was there. So these were the main staples. So those were the opportunity points for a brand to talk to the consumer. But now as time has changed, if you think about it, the opportunities for the brand to talk to the consumer is far fewer than the number of opportunities that other people have to talk about your brand to anybody else, you know, anybody you're targeting. So that brings the relevance of peer-to-peer. And hence the number of touchpoints as a marketer that I have is far fewer than the touchpoints that other people would have. So it becomes very essential that, you know, you have a pulse, you have an understanding of where the conversation is going, what are the people talking about, and talking specifically now coming to OLX. Given that it's a peer-to-peer transaction brand, it becomes very important for us to understand what people are talking about. You know, it's also, given that it's a transaction brand, trust and safety becomes very important. So for example, there's a particular kind of fraud which is very prevalent now for digital money transfer. It's called UPI fraud. Now as a brand, how much ever I try to educate the consumer beyond a point, you know, I have to depend on the community at large to educate, to disseminate the information and try to make it positive for my brand. Just extending this thought one more. I mean, any of you can take this. You know, like, that's fine, that trying to understand the peer-to-peer conversation and possibly using that as the biggest source of cultural insights. Fantastic. But today when I say try to book a hotel, when I'm taking a trip, I'm trying to book a hotel. I don't even look at the picture that the hotel site puts because I know that, I mean, sorry, I've been in the profession for long enough. You know, how to make an ordinary thing look out of the ordinary, right? So I actually look for consumer photographs, you know, to understand what the hotel would be. I have no faith in the hotel brand to even give me a picture. Forget about the write-up. Write-up, they will talk about a pillow like as if it has just landed from the space. So that I ignore, of course, many people ignore. But even a picture we have started ignoring. So what happens when the faith in peer-to-peer is that much? And, you know, there is a sense of, you know, cynicism which is coming in, the voice which is coming from institutions. One of the key thing here is that the brands have somewhere need to really work on the authenticity. And there's a deficit of, I would not say deficit, but there is a gap in terms of the trust which we exhibit. Because somewhere the way the brand building got evolved is that you have to show the best and the perfect towards the customer. And at this juncture, we are working into an open kitchen format where the kitchen is seen by your customer. So they know what's wrong in what you're doing and what is good in it. And the brands have to somewhere come to a point saying that we have to accept the fact that these are the things we are good at and these are the things we are average at. And the customer is buying you for what you're good at. They're not buying the whole thing. And as rightly you said, if you look at a travelling piece and all, I would go for a customer review. I'd also go for a family review. If I'm a family customer, I'll go for a youth review. So I know that it's more authentic and it has not been written by a content writer which will talk the language of a brochure or a website translated into a thing. And there's a lot of work which is going on and that's where this piece has to... So what I'm hearing you say is that if you go back to the history of brands, it actually started with authenticity. Brands were supposed to be authentic and that's why they were a source of trust, faith, belief, whatever. Somewhere down the line, they lost that authenticity and people went back to peer-to-peer authenticity which is... So if brands are getting back the authenticity, so there's no reason for them to feel threatened ever in the peer-to-peer world. They shouldn't, right? Because the more they are authentic, I think greater will be the validation from the consumer today. Because earlier in the brochure universe, you could put out whatever you wanted and there was no way for a regular consumer like you and me to evaluate it. Today, the minute he puts out a fake review of a pillow that's just come from space, there are five actual consumers going to thrash that saying, you know, the truth is far from reality and that's not the way it's going to be. So your point's correct on this. We are going back to basics at that level where if authenticity is not there, there is no role for that brand. Superb. So since we are on authenticity and kind of the added benefit to authenticity, I would say is transparency. So obviously now the question goes to Majid. Majid is with Biketan and he would be the best guy to tell us what is happening to transparency and authenticity. From a brand's perspective, why would I believe a brand that in the world where the biggest brand which is the president of the U.S. has built his brand on something called fake news? So why would I believe a brand? Thanks to Jitain and Rahul as well. They brought in authenticity and fake news. So from Biketan's perspective and from media's perspective, it's very important to be right than be first. Because today what's happening with the low cost data and smartphone evolution, what's happened is everybody is the content publisher today. So even as the news is happening or even if the news has not happened, the update is already right there, right? And that's where the issues are because fake news, there's a lot of end people that's when they come back to a brand like Biketan which is a 93-year-old legacy brand, content curation, there's a lot of unbiased news reporting. And then they come back and look at the kind of content which is there. I'll give you an example. This happened in 2016 when a chief minister then Dr. Jai Lalata was admitted at the hospital and there was a news which broke out that she's no more. And that news was all over the internet and some media publishing houses in fact went on to publish it. And later they had to retract this news back. While we had this news, we knew this news, it wasn't coming from an authentic source. So we didn't want to be the first to publish it. We were holding it back while a lot of leading news channels went on to publish this, but we were holding this news back because since it wasn't credible, it wasn't authentic. There was no point going and publishing. So it's very, very important for brands like us to be right and be first because that's what we bring in. The battle with time is already lost because someone has already uploaded or tweeted about it. I really can't go ahead and fight my battle with Twitter. But why people come back to a portal or a content like Biketan is because of the perspectives we bring behind the scenes. What's the truth and that's what people come down and research on those kinds of content with us. So that's what we go ahead and do. So okay, I can't help but ask you this question. You're almost breaking my heart by saying that there is nothing called breaking news. So there are brands which have been created on the platform of breaking news in media. So what happens to those brands? So again if you look at from our perspective, so we are a magazine brand. We moved into dotcom. So right now what's happened is we have a different content team which looks at breaking and then there's another team which looks at this breaking news. Should I give a perspective to this breaking news? So there are certain, not every news is breaking news, right? So there are certain news which goes in for, like you said, your millennial audiences who like snackable content. So there's perspective content, there's snackable content. There's a mix of both content because we have different audiences who consume different content. But we have different teams who manage both of it. Breaking news is definitely there but only if it's authenticated. Because someone is, the news had come out on social media and news channel that chief minister is no more. We didn't go on and produce but while it was a breaking news but we know it wasn't authentic. So we still hold on to it until it's not authentic and from a credible source we don't really want to go ahead and do everything very clear about that. So this is like that famous thing where they say Morgan Freeman has been killed by the internet some, you know, 17, 18 times. He says that I wake up and look at the internet to figure out if I'm alive or not. So you're saying somewhere people will get tired of that kind of, you know, like hunger for speed and they will come back to people who do research, people who are, you know, like authentic, people who spend the time. So while the news is there on the social media, what happens is people come back, they research whether this news is authentic or not. Because they know there's a credible source, like figure in which is there where I could go back and see if this news is authentic or not. So while it's already there on the internet, there's always people who come back, research this content and they know it's not authentic and I should not. There is a reactive audiences but then that's what we bring to the table. Because we've created that, the content and the unbiased content which we brought in so that's why people come back to us. So since Daily Hunt is a little faster, I would say, than a magazine, what is your point of view on that? Thank you, thank you. What is your point of view on that? Thank you for the vote of confidence. Actually, Vicodin is also on our platform and honestly trusted and valued partner. But what works for somebody like us is, and I absolutely second what he just said purely because this is not fastest finger first, right? We have a fiduciary responsibility to be honest and informing the public in the right space. So I concur with both his points. A, we can't be fastest finger first and somewhere where we get in for somebody like us, technically we are always first. Because from an aggregation, no matter who breaks it, we will always get it alongside with that guy. So at that level, fastest finger first is taken care of. But we always provide another perspective to it. Like a case in point, if you today look at Daily Hunt, the product and let's say, and you clicked on Maharashtra State Election and honestly there were two perspectives as to at any given point of time who's making. We were conscious enough, aware enough that looking at the pace of development, we needed to give both perspectives. And from both quote unquote sources or both quote unquote sides. So A, it's extremely important to be aware of what's happening in the market and what you're doing because there is a sense of responsibility towards it. But having said that, the trust quotient, the fact that you need to be validated and for somebody like us who doesn't have any UGC on our platform, always throw in a dedicated partner source that kind of puts us in the safe zone with consumers. Hence, we have valuable consumers like us who validate us on public forums. That's a very interesting perspective. But you said something I want to pick up on that and maybe that is my next question. You said that you don't have UGC on your content. Today what I'm seeing, even in the world of publishing, any UGC which has got more than 5,000 followers becomes a publisher, more or less. So with this kind of lowered entry barrier, what do you think? I mean, why would brands spend on overheads and why would brand spend on building the brand and connecting with people? What is the need? So at one level as a marketer, I'll need to concur that I see some set of polarization happening. I see, and some of us were chatting before, I see big brands wanting to invest in overarching thoughts but wanting to activate it on ground using micro-influences, no doubt on that. And one is seeing there also the same conversations playing out of being authentic, real, having honest conversations. If those are missing, those are fly-by-night operators in influencer space, if I may say so. The genuinely big guys are authentic, they are valid and they have, I think, seen us in a test of time. And I can just name a few just for the, you know, for the heck of it. Like for example, a Tech Guruji or a, you know, these are the kind of guys who've done, you know, good old-fashioned work, they've built their base, they are known for their specific verticals and I know a lot of brands who want to gravitate with people like them. So yes, there is a case for influencers but there is definitely a case for marketers to be aware of how much do we want to get sucked down to this micro-influencer, you know, trained for lack of a better word. And within that also you need to be careful whether they are real or they are, you know, somewhere in between or they are technically guns on hire. So we need to be worried about that as well. Okay, sorry. So what is happening is as marketers we are also struggling with trying to reach the consumers. So it's a very hackneyed word to say but the viewership is all fragmented. So we don't find people converging at any one place and that's why, you know, there are these measures of going to micro-influencers, trying to go to sites, even if, particular platforms, even if we can get a few thousand consumers from here, you know, from there and from everywhere. And I also wanted to mention another point that we were talking of the peer-to-peer influence and the fact that any small thing on the internet can sometimes unnerve a marketer. If I have a problem today with my washing machine I would go on to, let's say it's an IFB, I go on to Twitter and I lodge in a complaint there and Twitter is very quick to react. And they would immediately say please DM us or we will DM you. Let us know your number, somebody will call you and you will get it instantly. And the reason for that is that, you know, they don't want these negative conversations or anything which doesn't put the brand in a good light to happen online. So even if it might be, you know, a very small remark somewhere, the brands do feel the fear that it would have a negative impact. So there is a sense of insecurity, a sense of trying to control things because in traditional media that was never a problem. But in digital media that is a problem that sometimes things can blow out of proportion. The most innocuous of things can blow out of proportion and you want to control it. So you want to have a feeling of control and put your guards. Okay. Jithan, Samir said that how much you want to get sucked in by influencers? You are in fashion business. So how much do you want to get sucked in by the influencer? And I just want to, before you start, I just want to tell a very small anecdote. You know, I went back to my alma mater and I was taking a session and before me everybody was saying that just listen to yourself. Don't listen to anybody else. I stood up and said, no, no, no, you guys have too much of opinion. Listen to other people. Develop perspective. Opinion without perspective is nothing. So listen to everybody. Don't listen to these people. Everybody says listen to your heart. Your heart is usually rubbish. So unless you develop perspective, when you are 20-year-old, your heart is not everything. You need to develop perspective. Today your world especially, fashion world is completely, you know, controlled almost by these very strong opinion leaders and micro-influencers. You know, like people who have, they are very serious people. You know, once I met somebody, I said, oh, we have got 15,000 followers. I said, no, 16,400. I said, wow, that's outstanding. So, you know, like how do you handle and how do you navigate a brand in the world of so many experts and you must be dealing with millions of them, right? I would first define what is an influencer because the definition of influencer for me took a good seven to eight years to understand who is an influencer. So initially, when this whole journey of influencer management started, we said we have to hire three or four people who have a very strong social media presence. And if I look back, those three, four people are not existing currently as we talk. So what we realize is that there are three types of influencers which are available. And brand needs to be very particular about what are they trying to do with this because there is a reach influencer which is actually like a print in an offline medium who is going to just put up a post or a tweet and you have reached X amount of people and then you should be happy about it. But there is no engagement there, there is no affinity there because that person is going to immediately after two hours post for some other brand. So you need to be mentally prepared for it. Then there is this domain expertise which comes. So let's say in my case a fashion editor or in a paint industry architect or auto expert. These are domain guys and there is somewhere a B2B conversation happening where it is a very product level, occasion driven conversation. But they cannot give you a mass reach. So if you compare the celebrity influencer to a fashion editor, the reach will differ. So there you have to evaluate them at an engagement level, at a product level. And the third piece is the peer-to-peer and which is what we are talking about the college influencers and students and we have identified a whole lot of it and we are working with them closely. And the most interesting thing is if you do a mismatch of either of this and I have done both of them, it backfires. So you get a celebrity to interact with your customer. The customer feels so intimidated he will not even speak to the celebrity. And then if you get a fashion student to interact with your fashion editor or a prosumer type of a customer, he will feel so down with that he will not interact. So either of this doesn't work. And I must tell you that the power of influencer is internally and externally both. So internally if you have to get things done faster, you need an influencer to talk about it. Whether it is from a domain or from a celebrity perspective. And the other challenge, in fact we just did one consumer promotion where we gave a headphone of a renowned brand. And I got a message from a guy based out of Pune. He has a YouTube channel and he has around 5000 odd people and he reviews technology products and he wrote to me saying I bought this headphone so he purchased fashion from me and we have given him a headphone free. But he reviewed that headphone and said this headphone is of not good quality and you need to change it for me otherwise I will publish this video. And I need to call him and talk to him and understand that this is not my core product. My core product is something else. I have given you a consumer offer but you said that you have given me so you are responsible for it. So I am saying it can go either way. So I think my big understanding is that you have to constantly keep on evaluating an influencer strategy based on the requirement of the brand. And as we all know that this whole peer level thing is working but reach is also extremely critical because as we are talking about brand authenticity when you take a very high level celeb and thinking that these many tweets and these many reach that authenticity still is a question mark. So you have to work in the midway with a domain specialist and a peer level and constantly work on that is what our learning will be. But my question a little differently is so what happens to the role of the brand in this world of influences? I mean do you think the brand holds the ultimate authority in this conversation? Do you think the brand can control this conversation or steer the conversation? Control is a bad word. Do you think the brand can steer the conversation? Or do you think it's actually the influencer who develop the conversation and brand has to just write it? So I will tell you two things here. I think what brands are actually very struggling out to be part of the conversation. Now whether it goes towards the brand or against the brand today how do you close a conversation is more important than how do you start the conversation. And as you rightly said that not all the conversation will be started by the brand because we are going into a co-creation space. But it is important that how does the brand takes the opportunity of talking about something. So let's say in terms of a domain expert talking about it. That's a very easier way to handle because it's about a product and you are very much in control of it and you can close it. But let's say there is one person somewhere in Delhi or in Lucknow has you know written to you on a Twitter or a Facebook. That conversation can go either way. And then you have to handle it either offline or online. So it can go either ways but I am saying brands cannot shy away from this conversation and I don't think brands should even try to control this conversation because it's a futile exercise and I don't think that's possible right now. One last question on this to Rahul. Because I have seen auto brands spend this proportionate amount of money for some five people you know auto car you know drive India those kind of five or seven people disproportionate amount of money is spent hoping that they will eventually influence the audience. Do you think the audience actually connect with that five magazines you know what I am talking about. And why is there a change in the approach of auto brands in influencer management. Very good question Partha. The names that you just took the auto car and so there are top five or six seven top magazines who have built their own identity and they have been viewed as one of the most authentic people who can review a car right. And after being in this industry for more than 10 years now I completely trust their judgment when it comes to they writing about a particular product. Rarely I have seen that they've been influenced by a vehicle manufacturer or a company or a brand or paid money to write a false review about the brand because that would hit their credibility and their brand and they would lose trust. So no matter how much money do you spend on an event and probably you welcome them into a five-star hotel and give them a nice treatment they would give you an authentic review about the car or about the product that they are feeling. Touching back on what Jethan was saying and what you asked him that will the influencer drive the brand. What I honestly feel is the brand has to stand on its own. The brand has to be so strong. See influencers and the brand investors are going to add only those five ten percent more to what the brand is already doing. But if your brand does not resonate with the target audience if your brand doesn't stand for what it is I don't think it's a sustainable business case. Of course you can afford to say that if the brand you handle is called Jeep. If it was called Morris Garage would have been another story. Okay I think we are slightly over time. What a minute. So I get this yellow sheet which says all kind of things and I can't like read it out it's so rude. No no no it's a very sweet one. I think what I could conclude from all the people who are practicing like brand owners one simple thing that it doesn't matter whether millionaires are very super connected and they are telling stories in this connected world and information overload back to basics is what the story of brands are. Be authentic, be true to what you make to start with make something interesting. Stay true to that. Have faith in your authenticity and your backbone and then brands will still remain as relevant as they were. This is what I'm hearing. Do you think we have a question from the audience so we can wrap up? But Partha you didn't conclude who's dead. Who is dead? Who's dead? We don't know. I think see one thing is for sure. Brands are not dead. I was so hoping that this panel will tell me that brands are dead. So I don't know whether from the morning anything has been killed yet but I was so hoping that somebody will say brands are dead but looks like it's not. Brands are alive and kicking. And agencies are alive. Agencies are alive. So there we go. I'm like very happy. I can go back and sleep well tonight. Actually we're doing the questions offline. Sorry? We can have the question answered but offline, not right now. Offline? Okay. So any of you have any pressing questions to any of these fantastic panelists? Please catch them anywhere and ask the question. Thank you very much. I think I learned a lot sitting here. Hopefully the audience also learned something. Thank you very much. We have a huge round of applause please.