 Welcome to this special webinar presented by Danik Bhaskar Group in association with Exchange for Media. Over the next few weeks, we will be bringing you some curated series of webinars and the topic would be non-metros driving the economic researchers. The idea is to focus on the tier two and tier three clients and the consumers in India who are now leading, who have now come to the center stage of consumption across India. Today's webinar, before I come to that topic, let me just give an overview as what has been happening in the last 100 plus days. Now we are in a recovery phase. There are green shoots of recovery everywhere and that's largely driven by non-metro consumers. Very, very strangely, I mean, if you see, it was a different world order as far as consumption is concerned and which has totally shifted. COVID has perennially shifted the way we look at brands, the way we look at consumers. So we'll get into the depth of this conversation today. The topic for today is non-metros that road to recovery for the Indian economy and the focus of the webinar will be on how brands must strengthen the consumer connect in non-metros to accelerate recovery and growth. Before I go further, I want to introduce my esteemed panelists. I have with me Mr. Satish and as senior vice president, higher appliances in your private limited. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have with me, sorry, one minute, okay. I have with me Mr. Sudhakar Rao, director branding IKFI Group. Welcome, sir. Mr. Vipul Oberoi, CMO, IIFL Finance and IIFL Securities. Welcome, Mr. Oberoi and Ms. Gakun Sethi, CMO, Danik Bhaskar Group. Welcome all of you to this special webinar where in the focus is on the consumer sentiment in non-metrocities. Before I move further, I want to just understand, I think we all have been in a different world order over the last 100 days. So a little bit of story of how you have been personally dealing with a personal and a professional front as far as COVID is concerned and how are you balancing the two? Maybe a one minute answer from all of you. I can start, maybe anyone can start, there's no order in that. Yes, Mr. Satish, maybe you can start. Okay. The last probably 80 days or 100 days, the question was how you differentiate between the personal life and the professional life. I think there's no line, it's mixed now, both personal and professional life both are mixed and probably in a webinar like this, in my general days I would not have been coming on a t-shirt like this. So that thin line, the formal this one, I think there's a very little difference between a professional and a personal life now. So the lines are blurring. Yeah. Mr. Rao, your thoughts? Yeah. In the last 100 days, I would divide that into two parts. So the first part of 15 days, I was busy on the roads, working along with my co-alumni to distribute ration for the needy folks, especially those so-called migrant workers and we reached out to about 21,000 individuals and managed to put about 15 days of food on the table. So that's what we did as a voluntary activity from all my friends who studied along with me. So that was the first 50 days and the second 50 days I was coming to office because we need to work towards these green shoes. Therefore, we were coming to office and interacting with all my colleagues and trying to ensure that online education is in place and try and coordinate that it is taken forward in the right spirit. So that's roughly between professional and personal in the last 100 days. Mr. Agrawai. Yeah. So in this lockdown, actually, our lives have been, Satish had blurred, but if I say there is a stark contrast also, if I look at my screen, laptop or mobile, there's still a flurry of emails, work being done, and it was working from home and possibly working much more than before. But when I look outside, go outside, leave my office, the world was changed drastically. It's very different from what we are seeing on screens because of lockdown, we haven't still yet come back and I sit out of Mumbai. So life hasn't yet come back to normal, there are still empty roads, which in Mumbai you would prefer to have that, but on the whole, when you see businesses closed from our side, all the marketing channels, most of these are non-existent right now. So it's a big contrast which I experienced. Visiti, finally, your thoughts. Yeah, in fact, just as a couple of us here mentioned, lines are blurred as far as working is concerned. I also... Sorry, you know the connection I guess. I think that's okay. Yes, yes. It's a team. Right, right, right. I think there's some problem with the connection. Problem with my connection? It was slightly like we... In between, yes, briefly. Yeah, it's been a little weird since morning. So my son is currently appearing for his first online exam, so that's kind of new. Right, right. Yeah, so it's a... Right. I think it's just the level, it's the amount of work that's just gone up. Right. And it's all interconnected nowadays, so it's... Absolutely. So I think what I... The sense is that, of course, I think life has changed and changed for maybe the better, of course, maybe... Maybe this becomes a long run format, the way lives will be run. But one of the good things I just wanted to add is that during this hundred days or so, the level of interaction that me and my colleagues have had with our clients and advertised me at large has gone through the roof. I've never interacted so much with people and I think that was the... That has been the high point of the last... Right. Absolutely. I think people do actually highlight this point that why we have been socially distanced, but there has been a certain connect, which was never before. Great. So before... I mean, I want to move directly to my first question for the day, which is... We talked about... We have seen how consumers are... The metros and the non-meters markets are shaping up and we have come to find out and so have a lot of research that has been done over the last few weeks that non-meters, the consumers, they have come out as stronger, as resilient consumers. So my first question is that what makes non-meters so resilient to this drastic change that has happened? This phenomenon thing that has kind of vanished and closed businesses across and brought down this consumer sentiment, but yet non-meters are not that affected. So I want to come to you first, Mr Oberoi. What is your thought? What is the reason that we see this battle? Thanks. I would like to actually first try to separate the view from the chat. Is that the economy slowed down really not because of COVID, but because of lockdown. So I'm not getting into the reasons why lockdown was done and because of course essential and maybe I'm putting it through simplistically, but because of lockdown people, consumers weren't spending as much. Businesses saw a slow down in production or requirement of staff for certain services or had to stop their business altogether, which resulted in playoffs, pay cuts and ultimately these were the consumers who were not spending as much. It's a vicious circle, but it all started with lockdown. Now why I'm bringing this point also is that the major cities saw a stricter implementation of lockdown by authorities and more disciplined following of rules as well by the citizens, which hasn't been the case in non-meters. Now businesses continue to operate in most places. So there was a continuity in production and consumption of goods and services. Now, metros are hub of services. They have non-farm output. Rural areas are hubs of agriculture, which obviously cannot be paused. It should not be paused. Non-meters, if I see the DEA2, DEA3 cities are a mix of both, but in my opinion they just happen to be along the Silk Route. But continuity I feel is the major reason why non-meters have been more buoyant and resilient. Mr. Santosh, I want to come to you. I mean, do you agree? Do you think the fact that lockdown was more visible in metros that led to the sentiment that we're witnessing today, that resurgence in non-meters, is that the reason? If you ask me the impact of the lockdown or this one in the non-meters was quite low. The second is the overall economic impact on metro. And third is probably the customer rate because of all this digital awareness which is coming in. They still continue to spend the money which they were having. That's probably the reason why the non-meters are probably performing better than. And the other factor is the dependency on the private sector or any of the other businesses in the non-meters were quite low when we compared to the city. For example, in the city, the number of private organizations which were impacted or this one were quite high. Whereas in an up-country market or a non-metro, more of the government services which were there, the dependency on the private sector is quite low. I think the government sector never impacted in terms of their salary or any of those things. So that I think was one of the primary reasons where the non-meters are still continuing to perform better. Siddhi, I want to come to you since you understand the dynamics of the markets which are non-meters since you have a great presence across India. I want to understand from you the sentiment, the reason for this research is the buy-in sentiment that is in the non-meters. How do you meet it? Is the question to me or to Siddharth? Yes, yes. Do you first? Well, I think actually first I believe that this paradigm shift kind of thing that is being talked about is now more pronounced. It has always been there. The fact that non-meters are performing better than metros, apart from the unfortunate fact that there has been a lockdown and metros are impacted more and so on and so forth. The nuance of the non-meters is very different from the metros. They fabric, their social fabric, the way they are constructed, they are all flat, they are not high rises where if you have a COVID situation and one high rise you get locked out, those kind of situations are not happening. That's number one. Number two, wherever there are societies, those are very small societies. We are seeing this because we are delivering to these societies so we know what's happening on the ground and we've seen that from very close quarters now. The other thing is that as markets or as people they are very social, their sociability is a very important part of the non-metro life. That's why one of the things that we have seen is their ability to while do safety to an extent but continue to be sociable. As far as while there was a lockdown, as a panelist said that it wasn't as serious as it was, but there was a lockdown. For example, in terms of our business we saw that a complete shutdown for about a round and almost became a non-shutdown. I feel that it's a cultural thing which is why the fact that they are less impacted. That's number one. Number two is the kind of, for example, you and I work in corporate offices so we are shut down. These are more business oriented business trade. These are also a government. A large proportion of the population has their own they have their own means of earning. Therefore they are less, they are able to decide whether they should work or not work rather than being in a situation that we are in. Right. I think you've brought in brilliantly this cultural perspective. I think very validly. I think we sometimes miss that in our conversations. Mr. Rao, I want to come to you somebody who brings in both metro and non-metro perspectives. Again, how do you read this change of consumer sentiment changing from the metro and being shifted to the non-metro, the drivers of growth being in non-metro? How do you read it? Was it expected or is it not that simple as we see it? Sorry, your audio is muted here. When this pandemic hit, as you know and I believe that it doesn't come with any advance notice. So the question of expecting it this way is not a non-existent. But on the other hand, I think the one overriding factor has been this lockdown and its fears as portrayed in the mainstream media. And metro guys, metro folks are supposed to be taking it more seriously and those names were actually being thrown up in media more often compared to non-metros. Here again, some of the essential services in non-metros were not affected. Their consumption patterns more or less remain the same but the demand is low. Generally, the demand which is actually fueled by the metros and that has affected definitely the non-metros as well. Now low demand and ancillary production and the related services, everything is affected. I fundamentally want to differentiate between metros, non-metros and within non-metros, rural and non-rural. I think that's a very important aspect. We'll come to that in the second round. I will speak about that after some time but primarily today, if you touched about my own organization ICFAI is into higher education. As you know, we have about 11 ICFAI universities across the country and they are present in metros and non-metros as well. For example, we are present in Hyderabad, Jaipur, Himachal Pradesh, Dehradun, Ranchi, Raipur and then we are in Sikkim, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura. So the spread of these universities is more in non-metros whereas our business schools which have 9 in number, they are in bigger cities. So the diffusion of metros we will try to close in now saying ICFAI business schools are in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Gurgaon, Jaipur So these are the 9 cities where we are present. So business schools are in bigger cities, universities are in which are non-metros. Right from the beginning, our focus has been to take quality education to the doorstep of larger pockets of this country. So by structure and by intent we have been present like that and this lockdown or this COVID will not affect too much as far as our education business is concerned. This is an annual purchase for them unlike those assumptions which they purchase every week and every month. This is an annual purchase and this is the first sector to recover although this is the last one to open. Whenever the camps are permitted to open, it will open but one important overriding factor in education would be the mobility of students from one city to another city will not happen this year particularly at least. For example, the student who is studying in say Jaipur would not like to move to Hyderabad and somebody in Gwalior would not like to move to say Mumbai. So the students will have to be caught which means the catchment area will have to be in those respective towns itself and Iqfa is present in all these towns by structure right from the beginning. Say last 12 years we've been present in almost all these locations. Therefore our catchment areas are more defined and we would like to expect those students studying there itself. In fact our numbers could be, our enrollment numbers could be much more than the last year given the fact that a large number of them will not migrate to nearby bigger cities because we are the best option in all these places wherever we are present. I think you have brought out some positive stories which I think have not been touched upon maybe in a lot of conversations earlier but yes very well said. I want to come to you Mr. Satish. So there are the lines are redrawn you know the consumer the way we look at consumers is totally redrawn. The behavior has shifted and it might be a permanent shift altogether. Do you think the way we are looking at customers and overall and right now this question is like an overall sentiment of customers. Do you think there's a permanent behavior shift that is here to stay or is it a pattern that will alter maybe in the course of time as we go along? How do you see the shift in behavior? See in the behavior when we see I can probably classify this behavior into probably the areas. The first one is probably some changes which will happen permanently. Like for example the habits which are changing is like we could never imagine schools being online. That's definitely I mean those are the habits which will change. Somebody doing household chores those things not allowing a servant to come in I think these are the habits which will change drastically and there are certain fundamental changes which are getting accelerated. For example, the search for information earlier people used to go around in the shopping areas and then search for the information. Today probably the digitization is the thing which is there. So people would do more of a digital search to get that information and probably the shopping probably the online is here to stay at least for the smaller items and the smaller ticket size. That's the information which was there. Like if you remember the demonetization period when people who could not even spell probably the patriarch were forced I think probably the COVID has brought in that digital revolution and then probably that has changed. There are certain habits which are forced like for example probably in this last 100 days people have washed their hands more than probably their lifetime. This probably once the COVID fear goes out probably these things anyway and then probably social distancing today you are forced to live at home. So these are temporary habits which probably once the COVID goes off then people again will go back to shopping mall people will go back to their friends and then have a party on this one. So I think these are the considerable behavioral changes which I see happening. I know I think once these behaviors are formed to undo there is another task altogether Mr. Obra, your thoughts on this change consumer that we call that normally in our conversations with the consumer has changed. Has he changed forever or he or she or is it reversible? Can we undone later on? In fact, Satish rightly is pointed out two things. One is temporary habits and second is permanent and his demonetization if you see was also a rotation movement because it gave a huge fill up to the digital payments in India. So but right now when we talk about lockdown, I think a lot has been said about the acceleration of digital consumption but I would like to talk more about the digital conversation and that is a consumer behavior change which I would like to talk about because of social distancing really for the past four months or so people are getting more used to may not be happy but they are getting more used to face to face but non-personal meetings and webinar is one example of that yes, so you can just google the term meetings and you will understand what I am trying to say the results are proper but yes, demonetization with businesses think do we need customer to pay cash now lockdown has made businesses and even consumers think do we need personal interaction while our brick and mortar businesses, our branches will not go anywhere, workings will reduce because people will prefer interacting online first and when I say online let me clarify is only for me is any non-personal chat so it can be web, email, chat app or even a phone call but what we will see is that like work from home is becoming the norm and people have got used to it and many people do feel that going back to office and working regularly coming every day to office will become a bit difficult it may so happen for a large set of consumers even in non-meters so per case interactions from home will also become the norm only a word of caution this does not apply to rural areas and talking about non-meters Mr. Rao from your perspective the category you are in you briefly dust upon how students who are back in their homes right now would not like to come back, you briefly dust upon it but how do you read this shift in your sentiment in your category especially in education what happened even earlier before COVID was that they for closures they used to visit the campus and talk to some faculty members look at the labs playground and things like that and then they would close but a large part of their decision or the behavior of decision making was almost taken or made much before visiting the campuses based on the online stories that were available which we were carefully managing to have for example students are encouraged to share their views about the campus they are free to talk about their own experiences which will be a lesson for the prospective students to look at and therefore that way they have always been in touch for example the student who is living in some parts of West Bengal knows exactly which program in Iqbal University Dehradun is doing well I will advertise all the programs are doing extremely well but the student knows the same set of students who come to Dehradun will come for a particular program and not for another program all this was always possible because of the conversations that they were having in various discussion groups on social media and you cannot hire those facts so essentially what it means for me is that it has not changed much and those of you those students who come and check the university can see the infrastructure now virtually all the virtual reality films are available augmented reality pictures are available all those things will help them to make a decision but largely the decision would have been already by the summit substance of the experience shared by the previous students and there is a market there is a word of mouth in the market that is existing largely and it would be guiding and governing their decision in the process great, Ms. Eti somewhere I think all the marketing leaders like all of you out there I think COVID is also a certain kind of and maybe understand the nuances of how they would behave in the long run as we saw that webinars and going online has become a norm what has been your reading of the change customer one from your industry perspective and overall as a marketing leader, thought leader what do you say, how does it shaped up in the last few months one of the things that I would like to refer to is something I got pulled off very recently which is gave me a lot of information of course there is the first hand sorry all non-metro for us it is briefly disconnecting but can you hear me now I can there is a bit of a disturbance so okay I would like to talk to you about the recent Ernst & Young report which came out I think a few a week or 10 days back which basically and I read that report and it was very interesting because what it said was that I actually wanted to spend couple of minutes on that one is that you talked about how non-metros were resilient and we discussed how why they were better than metros and why this trend could be there to stay and so on and so forth some of the data that is supporting this discussion is that across I think they looked at some almost 15-16 categories and across categories it seems to be so that let us say buy mobiles or buy ought to be more in the non-meters that seem to be like a real eye-opener for me at least where it is important to see that report that across categories there was there seems to be a larger intention to buy which is why this whole feeling for this whole belief that it is these markets are more resilient than than metros at this point in time they will continue to be more resilient for some of the reasons that all of us gave here the fact that they are probably the fact that I said that socially they are different or the fact that they were not as impacted that their occupations are different they are more business oriented so they are running their of course demand I mean to say that demand is not down would be like that would be a really stupid statement but of course demand is down but the fact is that resilience seems to be that report said to me that you know that resilience is what these markets were showing so that seemed to be a point that I thought I'd bring up in view of a non-meters so to speak I also wanted to touch upon one of the things that Satish mentioned and again this is first time experience because we are talking to our customers our readers our you know our franchise who are on our digital avdars and on our radio stations so we actually talk to them practically every day through a large speaking mechanism and one a recent dipstick that we did which was particularly in the category of how people are behaving when they are going to shop so here as Satish said that they are doing a lot of understanding the research I saw in the EYE report was that they are actually metros are you know more they have adopted digitization and you know all kinds of work that they are doing through that but non-meters are lagging behind and some of the things that the non-metro people have respondents have said that there is they are probably there is less connectivity is lower all of the languages that they want is not available sometimes they are a little scared of frauds and e-payments and so on and so forth so some of those factors have been mentioned pertaining to this dipstick that I am talking about which we did in a larger size across several markets where we found that people who are going shopping particularly for white goods they were going with a clear picture in their mind that this was the brand that I am going to buy this is the price of the brand and I will go and pick that up I am not going to go to because it is covid they are not the shop that they trust the most they are going there they are picking it up and they are coming back home so they are shopping they are actually physically generally is probably from various mediums from what we were expecting I think all of us are making our amazon sale lists that we want to currently and we will probably indulge in that there the people are actually going out to shop absolutely I think I really thought you and I read that report and these are and as you mentioned I think sentiment is important the sentiment of resilience is important I think the markets will come back once the sentiment is there I want to come to you Mr. Rao with my next question I want to begin with you that now we talk about the resurgence the coming back the green shoots but the larger question is that are there any specific categories that will be the drivers of this green shoots that are emerging initially that would take off help the market sentiment are there any categories specifically that would be driving it in your view is this to me yes yes see my response will be in two areas what is related to education and the other one in general the first one about education is that the online education that is currently going on in our attempt to connect to a large number of students across the country education institutions have not reached beyond 50% of the population which means there are 37 crore students studying from KG to PG and research level across the country all the time 37 crore students are studying out of this at best institutions have reached out to them online 50% so a large population another 50% is yet to be touched for more importantly four reasons one lack of devices either smartphones or taps second internet connectivity third one is the bandwidth even if you have internet connectivity that does not ensure bandwidth and the fourth one is electricity now all these four factors are not uniformly present in the remaining 50% of the population locations but in different different pockets some of the factors are dominant but then it is an interplay of all the four so it is not working the way we want it now this will only be possible if the government is on mission mode I said this earlier and I am saying it again that if the government is on mission mode and rapid build infrastructure probably we could reach say 70% 1005% from where we are at present 50% having said that I come to the general discussion of the ENY report I am not a great fan of ENY report I read this it is a July 2020 report it is the latest one for a very important reason that I want to live like an optimist and die like a pessimist and not the reverse see currently what is happening is the rural sector or the non metro is just not the rural non metro is basically tier 1 tier 2, tier 3 and some of the tier 3 and tier 4 is also rural so therefore let me talk about rural itself now rural economy has got agriculture economy non agriculture economy you know that agriculture economy is about you have farming and then non farming is about construction, livestock rearing and so on and so forth so all this put together is the rural economy I do not see that there are any credible reasons why the rural economy is going to help fuel the overall Indian economy I do not see that actually even otherwise also the rural economy was only about 1 7th of our economy or 1 8th of our economy therefore I do not see structurally why that should be helping the overall economy in coming back to normalcy you will have these islands of boost on a comparative mode saying that non metro is doing well I agree to that extent but is it going to be permanently like that I am sure it is not COVID is reaching non metros and even rural areas now so the hitherto factors that probably gave a semblance of resilience are now not going to exist therefore we need to have those things once again checked E&Y should present another report by end of August or middle of August that would be the realistic picture as we move forward the number of COVID cases are going to rise the state governments are going to lose their control their medical facilities and infrastructure has already busted and it is going to go worse the state revenue collections are coming down more because of no access and no activities happening in various parts of the state their collections have come down drastically so their own ability to service everyone will be very very poor especially at a time when their priority is COVID so these are large number of issues which are there I think it is misunderstood I am comparing this E&Y report to what Vivek Kaul has been writing about in various pieces and where he has been talking about Vivek Kaul a good friend he wrote that bad money he says that people have actually not understood the rural economy or the agriculture economy actually very very small and some of the instances taken by for example the tractor sales and motorbike sales have gone up motorbike sales and tractor sales are very very small part of the whole thing in rural areas for example last fiscal 2019 and 2020 the tractor sales each tractor on average cost about 5 lakhs of rupees so if 7 lakh tractors have been sold then it was only 35,000 crores whereas it works out to about 1 eighth of the whole thing so we can't go by those factors I totally agree with you I think you have gotten a sentiment which is there I think there is a scope of course I think how the COVID scenario will shape up and henceforth I think that is another conversation I do totally agree with you your point of view what is before us what is before us if we look at the picture that is right now before us and what the picture is coming is of course something that we can look at later on basis the data that we have so far in your view what would be the categories that would be driving that growth the market sentiment back in your view of course I have a point of view and I believe that agriculture is first critical to the economy how much contribution it makes of course it's not a major contributor yes from a numbers perspective but of course it has an overall cascading effect on the other aspects of the economy including what Satish should also talk probably about the white goods sales say so the cascading effect is also important and when we started this webinar which has to be really broken second I feel is the MSMEs because they generate employment and the more we support the MSMEs and it all depends on the government support right now so they would not really bounce back organically like a phoenix support has to be provided third I believe is telecommunications and I feel that telecommunication essentially was always communications and I am not talking about just phone calls data is critical which Mr. Sudhakar also mentioned for his students who and because schools and campuses will be the last ones to get open in fact communications is important for everybody's business including mine so low cost of data is critical because in our business which is a more profitable business and NVFC business we have seen a drastic surge in the adoption of digital payments and that we have seen in the past one year or so and that is possible only if we have good reliable data or data connectivity so telecommunications is critical whether they can bounce back or not it's entirely up to the government right now Ms. Sethi I want to come to you my next question is to you since you the interface that you have with brands is different I mean you are there is a cross section of brands that you interact with and your understanding of the categories that are ready to can you hear me sorry am I audible yeah yeah it's breaking in but it's okay tell me so I want to understand from you the categories according to you that would be driving this growth since you have as I said you interacted with the whole lot of the brands across can you hear me we can this is slightly I mean in between it gets disconnected for a second yeah but for a second it drops and I am like I can only go by data what the data tells me is that there seems to be you know good amount of volume in a certain number of categories auto for one is one of those categories there is education which is the other category which is there is a good amount of volume in the non metro markets that we can see here there is FMCG there are and one of the things that we've seen you know it's an interesting it's an interesting situation that local FMCG brands have given upward FMCG brands around for the money also because they have seized the more for example Amul if you see the story there Amul sees the moment and continue to advertise at a point in time when everybody was quiet and wondering what to do and it was it bleep the benefits of that you know of that big thinking and taking advantage of the fact that everybody else was quiet and then and they wanted to make their brand more salient so there are there are several large categories which are extremely promising one of the we are also seeing some amount of movement in the non metro markets from FMCG which is in sufficient categories so these are some of the larger larger categories that we see volume in if I were to talk about my business in the sense that the business that we are in in terms of media a couple of things have happened which is really a different you know this whole metro versus non metro situation that we are seeing we are discussing actually in the metros we have seen that over the last just about a week 10 days back I started receiving my newspaper but if you look at non metro markets and I am talking all regional markets here not Baskar alone this is all regional markets all whether Kerala to Gujarat and so on and so forth all regional publications where went back into recovery mode of just because for 7 days everything got shut down so after 7 days the recovery was extremely rapid to the recovery of a newspaper is close to 90% in our markets it is about 82% we are a public limited company we have to file our price for houses it audits us we have to file our returns on SEBI our quarter is coming up next week so we will be filing I know for a fact that we are at 82% recovery of circulation so first the state departments help the sanitization and everything that needed to be done was done really rapidly I would give a lot of credit to publishers here because I think they understood that they cannot live without I mean they should not allow this habit to be broken right and that quick thinking allowed the recovery of circulations to happen very fast we also for example in our case if I look at it we are delivering about 75 million MUV you know the fact is that and we have seen a clear pattern when we look at our portfolio we see the morning newspaper being read we know that again I am going back to a report which has been discussed before which said that the trust index as far as newspapers is very high I don't for a minute doubt that because we have seen that in our markets we are also talking to other publishers and we feel that the written word particularly in these markets the written word is taken very seriously and more importantly the other number that really you know kind of surprised me was that online people tended to believe online news more than they believe TV news I would assume there is a reason for that because in the non metros the digital papers that's why the trust index is quite high as far as online is concerned so these are some you know categories which are moving in the like I said if I compare July last year versus this year I am sure that we are far away from what numbers but there are volumes which are speaking of good I wouldn't say great but definitely a recovery which is being seen there is a promise there so mrs. satish you have heard all of them and now I want to get your perspective on this the drivers of this the green shoes the resurgence and in your category also give me a perspective or sense of how your category is placed in this revival that we call the green shoes where do you see the role of your category plus the overall the drivers that would be there as far as other brands are concerned luckily for us I think probably after the grocery industry we were the fastest to recover because the average time spent by individual at home has gone up what will drive this category or what are the things which will drive the categories which will add the hygiene part the categories which will address the convenience part I think probably those categories would grow much much faster giving our own examples probably these the larger refrigerators which is costing about 65-70,000 trust me we ran out of inventory last month okay the people are storing more and people are looking at larger refrigerators same is the case probably earlier now most of the people are spending time at home and they have their most of the men getting into washing so earlier the maid was doing so semi-automatic machine was there now they are upgrading to a fully automatic machine earlier the maid was doing the cleaning the dishwashers people want to buy and people want to buy all this UV product and the best part is since the time spent is more the living room has become the new entertainment center so we are seeing a huge surge in our large screen televisions which are happening so it's a huge I mean across the category whether it is metro or non-metro the large screen televisions have gone up so overall if you look at the categories whether in our industry or any other industry the categories which will address anything related to hygiene anything related to convenience I think probably those are the industries which would definitely grow much much much faster than what current space it is I want to make a small announcement that we have another 10 15 minutes left and we are already getting some questions and I want to request my viewers that you know you have any questions please post on Facebook Twitter on zoom and we will definitely ask those questions I want to come to you Mr. Satish my next question I want to start with you is that in all of the categories there is a missing the physical touch points have come down and completely not been seen there for some time and the touch points have shifted to digital and one is that can we recreate the physical experience digitally and how how are brands thinking strategically in a long term way to adjust to this digital touch points that are emerging right now ask me that question yes yes this is my answer to you my beard is what I can say the last 100 days has been a night where it was trust me as is the industry where people would want to touch and feel a refrigerator see the refrigerator I would like to see a washing machine how does it look what does it function would like to touch and feel a microwave okay when you are opening a door and see how it would work now here is a challenge for us in the last 100 days the first and foremost the pre-purchase completely changed the customer the way he was going to a shop floor earlier they used to go to the shop floors talk to the sales person understand from him what they want and this one come back home discuss with their friends and colleagues and then they were buying it now that completely stopped second during the purchase now people earlier would prefer to go to a larger outlet or you know some store which is in a mall or something people started buying locally we suddenly saw a resurgence in the smaller outlets in the distribution channel people said boss even if it was finally to be expensive let me go buy neighborhood store why take a risk of getting into something one is okay lockdown second is also we saw a resurgence so the purchase pattern changed the third important challenge was the post purchase earlier if you buy a refrigerator or if you buy a lady television our engineer used to come to your houses customer houses set it up to his requirement and then come out of it now all the three parameters completely changed pre-purchase okay we have to make everything digital from a people who are see our industry is almost I would say varying from brand to brand probably 93 between 90 to 93% is from offline and about 10 to 7% is from online businesses now this 93% people we were depending completely on physical everything physical physical catalog physical product demonstration now in quick succession of 30 days you have to shift from physical to digital you have to make everything so clean your websites get your blocks cleared get the videos done everything how effectively you will put your product videos and everything to them second we have to get our distribution channel right okay if the customer is going to neighborhood store are we present there how do you change that thing then in terms of advertisement if you have to advertise very good there was no live activity happening none of this hope of course working all the they were only broadcasting the repeat channel there is no outdoor there is no print especially in the metro you don't have a print to do it so what is the only means get into digital in digital okay there is a whole list would you get into Facebook okay if you have to get into Facebook will you use a static will you use a video there is a huge change which we have to do in terms of our entire marketing approach had to change now the post purchase it's a nightmare means as a consumer I bought a product which is about 50,000 and it has come to my house delivery I need to start it right now so how do you without engineering being now even if you upload a unboxing videos the problem each customer will have a different perception do I switch on this refrigerator right now or what do I store then finally we have to reinvent the wheel wherein we made people to call on video our service engineers would take the call on video okay madam please show me where is the problem okay this is okay this is how you switch on this is how you set up the refrigerator this is the temperature okay there is a knock there in the right corner okay do that one so those are the complete adaptation if you ask me what we were in March if somebody had told that okay Satish there would be a day coming in wherein you have to demonstrate how the unboxing has to be done on video probably in March none of us would have believed it but here is the time now most of our demonstration especially the large the high ticket sizes we do a demonstration on video so customers don't want things so it's a completely different change which happened in terms of adaptation and that also explains the story behind the beard I cannot understand yes perfect Mr. Rao yes I mean so brilliantly I think said Mr. Rao your take on this digital the missing physical touch points and completely digital tell me the story in your category in education what is happening is the enrollment process has become online it has been automated the industry has been moving in this direction over the last three to four years but COVID and pandemic and lockdowns have compelled us to adapt to a situation which anyways we would have adapted after say four years or so so the industry on the whole have taken online very seriously because that is the only way to connect to the prospective students and the other stakeholders the admission process is online the counseling is online the visits are being worked out online the selection process has become online I would like to tell you that a large part of our selections in our undergrad programs is already done and we have been able to identify the students through online interviews and selected the students and given the admission letters as well and so many other institutions are also doing the same so yes the touch points have become very different but slowly and steadily the industry was chat conversations, mentoring, hand holding and the experience of online admission fairs has been prevalent for some time but it has just catapulted into a all pervasive feature in the last three to four months I think it is working but in the second round of the question I would like to answer what is going to happen in the future and how it is going to evolve but as of now yes touch points have changed and industry has adapted beautifully Mr Oberoi how are you navigating the shift how are you coming to terms with this new world I mean marketing world order I may call it In fact talking about our line of business which is I manage marketing for both NDFC and securities business that is a broken business and broken business has seen volumes which have never been seen before we have seen a huge multi-X jump in transactions but when it comes to NDFC business and our primary businesses are Hold on business don't and you can imagine what the situation would be for example, Hold on people take it for say their occupational requirements or for spending on some luxuries of the family or for emergencies and if you see that apart from emergencies people are not really spending they are postponing their purchases so it was always a difficult time for us but thankfully we were ahead of the curve as far as investment in digital was concerned but I can say with facts that our loan payments through our mobile app through our web portal has increased drastically and we recently launched a digital bond on for top of which has become amazingly popular so people are adopting these digital platforms it's only that the brands have to be ready we have seen in fact we will do a lot of hyper local targeting on digital platforms and we have in fact got more leads through hyper local searches in these 4 months than we got in the previous 6 months before the lockdown now it's all a testament to the kind of digital adoption which even non-meters have been doing so it's not been tough for us from a marketing perspective because it's something which was always on the anvil and one needs to be so this category from your perspective I think people miss the newspaper in their hands and till they got it so that's a different story from your perspective and tell me what is that story how are people navigating this space why you will see digital is there but even that report which I also read the credibility factor you have the touch and feel of the paper you really can't trust I don't think it's just a touch and feel situation I think it's a question of you know the pull of the brand that you've grown up with I mean I can't ask this entire if they would ever be in a situation when they don't have their brand available to their customer for a long period of time I don't think anybody can actually afford to be in that situation ever particularly where habits are concerned and so on and so forth so I think newspaper reading and the trust in newspapers the credibility so that's not surprising at all there are several data points which tell us in fact there has been doing a monitor which is on smaller towns versus larger towns smaller towns, larger towns, rural I think that which also tells the same thing that essentials like newspapers are very high in the smaller towns which in this case means non-metres so I would assume so there are so that's nothing new to the high trust index it's not something new to talk about it has taken I think publishers take the changing what we say the Kendrame Pathak concept which is basically that your reader is at the core of whatever you do and understanding how the reader is changing and what are their requirements I mean today we are not in the business of breaking news right but so we have morphed into into an information hub a knowledge hub so to speak so that has carried regional print into places into larger number of homes across across the years so that's not something that is surprising to me what is in fact I wanted to pose a different question to the panel here and such marketing leaders here one of the things that I wanted to ask is if we were to look at what the subject matter here today is which is that are unmetros really fueling the recovery of in India and there seems to be some data available now to say that yeah there are certain categories where they are looking more resilient and so on and so forth in this situation how does the market prioritization model change yes please open question anyone wants to take it market prioritization model change one point traditional traditional market prioritization where you know even markets are metros but now metros are not firing they will come back and they will but at this point in time you and I are not going to sit there and say we wait for the metros to fire right we will say that these are the markets that are firing go get in there so what happens to market prioritization I just wanted to get a word from all of you can I ok see market prioritization as you rightly said as a sales on a marketing guy you can't wait for market to wake up you know ok you need to take we will say ok where is the market working these are the markets which are working ok what does it take to take that market up ok for example in the up country market or the rural market so we have been pushing our entire distribution channel the towns which are open so at any point of time at probably around 9 o'clock we get a clear information which are the markets open which are the shops open so entire our sales team they have a mapping exercise which we do so we understand which are the markets which are open what is going to be closed now what is it working there is the print reaching there ok now of course in terms of how do you get the customer so print is whichever markets prints are reaching probably ok take that as a priority and then put the print there ok if that market can be doing we have experimented for example we did some experimentation in the up country market to see the tier 2 and tier 3 like how a digital a facebook or a campaign can work so that we clearly we experimented on a particular product in that market to see whether facebook will work ok that way ok some markets we did like for example now the onums is starting so ok in Kerala touch would ok probably the newsprint does not got affected so probably to that extent that they have already reached like you say about 80-85 percent they have reached ok move ahead there because in TV there is nothing like happening so move into print and then try different combinations yes of course don't wait for metro to come up whatever money basically what you are saying Satish just go where the sales is right yes obviously if the sales is in the tier 3 markets then go there I guess at the end of the day at the month end we need to look at the number so the number wherever it happens stays the number there that's it I mean that's what probably we have been prioritizing and moving ahead wherever he is directly so I want to come quickly to these have some questions so specific I quickly want to refer to these questions my first is to you Mr Satish this question is from Rekha Morey as you said before that your industry is back on track same happened with regional dailies and non-metro markets how are you guys making the most of it definitely that's where you could see during the lockdown probably I mean without referring to the names probably in the metro market we stopped advertising but in the non metros we continued our advertisement in terms of the like I just gave an example of onam so we are full flat even today we have a full page ad which has come in matrabhuki you know so wherever we are seeing an opportunity whether it is a regional or this one we have been quite aggressive in that markets to move ahead I think right Mr Rao for you the question is where do you see the education category in the next one year what are your plans to deal with the situation yeah I have seen that question we need to understand two important scenarios that are emerging going to the pandemic as far as education is concerned we see that initially there was a lot of confusion as to what has to be done and then quickly institutions have woken up to building their infrastructure and training their faculty members to get on to online connect so confusion to infrastructure building to the maturity stage of where institutions would win is to create differentiation the institution was already known for certain USP's I think that USP should be brought into even in the online world I think once the differentiation is achieved then that would be a maturity stage now within this online adoption there are again three important phases one is the first phase has been adopting various tools like zoom, whatsapp Google meet or MS teams so on and so forth front tools some institutions have moved to what is called a white label learning management systems white label LMS white label LMS is little more than a tool it gives you certain other functionalities but that is available in the market and you can put your logo on that and you can run but institutions which are here for a longer stay and who have a job to protect their reputation will build their own learning management systems it is like staying in a hotel to staying in a rented house to stay in your own home that is from a tool to white label LMS to your own LMS it depends on your vision and the power of stay in the industry the education space that you have been into and that defines various other actions these are the two important scenarios that I think about you as I foresee this is going to be a blended learning in the days to come even after face to face learning is opened up so a large part of the things that we were teaching in the classroom would now be relegated to online that is asynchronous learning in terms of videos games and things like that but campuses would be very nicely prioritized for peer learning learning from friends building camaraderie bonding games sports so on and so forth I think we will be using discussions debates and all these things for navigating through contrary opinions and that is what education should be used for and some of the budget schools are some of those who have not been staying in education with passion will move out eventually they will be compelled to move out and the best of them will stay as far as faculty members are concerned they have adapted themselves beautifully well and they become the champion of gathering all the students they become more discoverable if they use their social media and then they play role model they continue to play role model that they have been playing and therefore the best of the teachers will become better with this new scenarios emerging I am really sorry I am just in the interest of time I want to take one final question like that typical news channel debate types like one minute to all of you I will start with you Mr. Oberoi so tell me as we go on one the sentiment that is there in the non metro markets how can brands leverage it what is your advice to the marketing community how do you see it a quick one minute answer for them it's like to reach out if it's specifically for the marketing community I would say that the themes are changing earlier we used to talk about prosperity we used to talk about fulfilling dreams etc but the themes have changed to a more subdued emotions security is an important one we are coming back down in the Maslow's hierarchy of needs so our themes are what we say the message we say it's more about security of future and it is very important for you to reach out personal interactions will be limited but digital is embedded into the life fabric of every citizen of India almost and the important thing is stay connected Mrs. Satish your quick my advice to anybody in marketing or sales is probably as I said again I'll repeat one is the pre-purchase behaviour has completely changed the process of purchase has changed and then the force purchase has completely changed now as a marketer you need to clearly study what are these behavioural changes which are happening whichever product whatever categories we are in how do we reach to these three changes which we have done and then probably adapting to the new digital when I say digital it's not about e-commerce alone it's about the way the information you will reach to consumer and the medium which we will use it to reach that consumer I think that will completely change and I think as a sales and marketing person faster we adapt to this one I think better would be for everybody Mr. Rao quickly then I go to the last final word I think this new form situation has done what is called minimalism minimalism helps us identify the real needs from those loosely drawn when diagram kind of needs that we have been marketing on in the past I think those products and services that can be taken inside the living room through access to customer through retention of customer and through engagement of the customer I think those products and services will survive and for us we will forever learn to live a life that is frugal and more efficient and marketers and businesses will also turn adaptively more efficient and more faster and reach out to the customers accordingly one point before I close is that once one person has asked the question the new education policy will definitely have seen FDIs coming into education and more and more good foreign institutions are going to set up in India in the years to come my answer is yes to that perfect may I say a slightly tweaked question to you is that how can brands make most of this situation as you are seeing this sentiment how can they leverage this you know I just want to say a couple of things first of all as far as you know tier 2, tier 3, tier 4 all the various tiers of markets that we talked about non metro markets that we talked about there is a misconception in terms of what percentage contribution they bring to the table in terms of various categories from the data that we understand almost 60 to 65% contribution across certain very large categories of markets the faster they are they are merged into the fabric the larger getting fabric so to speak I think the better it will be I think we as marketers need to understand that second is that in terms of regional publications they continue to be there the numbers are out there as Satish was also mentioning so those continue to do well that is back the amalgamation of reading both online and online between the physical and the digital avatars is something that we are seeing in the in the non metro markets in a spectacular way as a company we continue to do a lot of work in the product area so that you are able to continue to be to your franchise I think that is important and I am a great proponent of the fact that we need to continuously look at which is the last question that I had to all of you which is market prioritization and how do we if this is the situation then what do we need to do in this situation do we take note of the fact that there is a paradigm shift and therefore change our thinking or do we wait for you know do we wait I think that is and I am sure that we won't because I think we knew so these are interesting times and I think we are all responding in very very interesting ways Satish had totally loved the way you described and that is very interesting actually and then the time bound to do it so fast so much for I want to thank Ms. Satie, Mr. Oberoi, Mr. Satish Mr. Rao for this wonderful conversation and our focus along with our partner Denik Bhaskar would remain on Non-Metro's way come up with a series of as I said webinars and for today thank you so much for joining us to all the viewers who watched us and all the questions that were posted thank you once again for your time see you soon