 As we see, we already have Dr. Bhattra here. We invite both of you to for this fireside chat so that our viewers can benefit from your insights even more. Thank you so much. It was really a pleasure to hear the talk about the five key rules if I may use the five pointers towards digitally transforming any business. And as he rightly said, it starts from the top. It can be top down, it can be bottomed up, but if it starts from the top and it percolates down, then the middle management benefits because really people at the bottom, the millionaires, the younger people are very, very savvy when it comes to digital and they are naturally inclined to doing everything to keep it going. Now, let me and Deepak again in the same Ed said that I hope either it inspires you or gives you a tool, it gives you some information to be able to get on to your digital transformation journey. Let me take up from his talk itself. At the start, he talked about people talk about the fact that there should be a digital council, people who understand how digital is transforming businesses and how the application of digital in every part of the business can yield superior business processes and business results. So how do you select the member of the digital council? Sorry, I just lost the last few words, just a question. I said Deepak, you said you should have a digital council. I got all that. What is the last question? So how do you select who should be the member of the digital council? Yeah, so firstly, I think these people will not know, will not know enough about digital to actually digitize the company. They'll have to be trained, they'll have to pick up, they'll have to go on learning tours, they'll have to do some use cases and do some tests and pilots. Like I said, there are three, four government zones to the selection. Number one, it shouldn't be the leadership team, it should be one level. That's when you're getting a host of people in the organization. So it has to be cross-functional because any digital, any digital initiative that you touch, you realize will touch many more functions beyond that because the connected nature of the solution. What is important is that this should be your top talent. What is important is that they should have learning ability. What is important is that they should be able to seamlessly collaborate between functions. According to me, these three, four are the cornerstones of selecting a team. What is not required is that they need to be super knowledgeable about digital ways of advanced cutting-edge digital enterprise. I don't think that's important. What's important is learning. Fantastic. So you're saying people who understand businesses and who are curious minded or open to adopt digital techniques and practices so that they can be implemented. So it can be possibly a mix of senior management and some people who really may be digital evangelists in the company or may have come from an ecosystem where digital usage or penetration was higher. So now let me go on to some of the other points that you make in your address. You're the traditional FNCG enterprise and I know in your last conversation you talked about the fact. This was about 12 months back and we are 16 months into pandemic. You talked about how e-commerce in the chocolate segment and especially in your company was not a big number and you went on to the journey and it's a number that is steadily growing without getting into the specific numbers. Clearly e-commerce became part of your own journey. While you talked about digital in the sense of digital transformation of businesses and you said you have to decide whether you need to achieve digital officer or you need to achieve data officer. Both digital and data go hand in hand. Now tell me in your organization what have you done to be able to bring the elements of digital data together and make sure that every business decision maker is a digital officer and also a chief data officer. In every business you're dealing with data whether it's supply chain management, whether it's marketing and acquisition of customers or it is looking at cost management through data that helps you look at where it can be optimized. So give a sense of what have you done in Mondales to be able to on the supply chain front, on the marketing front and in terms of the internal operations really transforming it digitally and there I say that transforming Mondales into a digital enterprise. I mean it's not a digital enterprise in the classic definition but really moving on to that journey where you're digitally integrated in every function. Yeah so I think I think great question Anurag. So let me try and answer this in two parts. One is you know all these six examples that I gave you the six new spaces right two in marketing is personalizing at scale first party data. The second one was a GM example that we have started on that journey as well. So it's not yet in any full-blown shape but all the other five except using first party data I talked about personalizing at scale I talked about using big data to expand the situation using machine learning about the orders augmented reality shift line or IoT connecting devices or ship's poison to run a factory on this home and on this laptop all these are our use cases which we have done. I'll talk about the rest of us part of the answer. The second part of the answer is what then are the key elements which have worked for us in digitizing the enterprise. I think that's what we're getting at. So if I look at it you know first digital has to be picked into the business strategy you can't be sitting in the territory. It has to be seen as a driver of comparative advantage and therefore successful enterprises have a clear articulation of how digital will transform the business and not just in terms of projects and technologies but also in terms of capabilities and ways of working. Now for example we are focusing around these three charts same marketing and strategy and they have all been baked in us back then everything has tests and learns everything has milestones everything has costs everything has got ROI. ROI is not the perfect work is in the ballpark in some cases we get huge force multipliers in some cases we don't but I think the the leading with the first thought saying it has to be a part of your strategy it can't be on the territory. Second is leaders need to work better and this is very difficult because in at least in a conventional company while our leadership team or average age is less than 45 but still not everybody is a millennial now at least I didn't grow up and I believe the centennials and millennials have so this is not a this is not a native skill it's not my native suit so this is certain things which are a quack skill so I appreciate that I'm not going to be the most most enjoyed at this but the fact is I cannot stay away from this. Now the business leaders need to have a bare minimum let's say a business level appreciation of its real technologies we don't need to be more of it neither need to treat this as a pariah as a technical thing I think leaders need to walk the talk they are constantly learning and balancing outside day and inside out ideas sponsoring initiatives you know which bring in small wins and I think that's very important starting with small wins so that we get the encouragement and energy as leaders to say yeah it is working and how do I sort of you know expand the theme and we have done this very well so it's a suggested order that I talked to you about right giving the perfect order it's something that we started version 1.0 was let's just use historical data what has he sold and what has he what has he bought and how could you form your order better then we started saying okay let's look at the three other sorts who are similar types then he said let's look for you know big data outside the argument so leaders working the talk is important you can leave it for some only for the IT department to do it won't happen the other big element of success for us has been you know we need to build the culture for this entire thing so and we need to build the skills so I talked about capabilities right I talked about no code no code this is what you can write something without doing the how to code it in a in a software language the second one I talked about which is certified around 20 people this online market tips people who are then trained on digital so this is a lot of things coming together it will be difficult for me to now go by every function but if you get the thing I think you know it has to be part of strategy leaders say we need it we need to build the capabilities we need to build the culture fantastic one one of the things that I learned when I started my career I was software engineer before I went to is to what we used to call a killer app I used to work on rdb ms if there was before oracle there was a rdb ms called increase they would say killer app which means do something which is like a small proof of concept get it going in the organization and then scale it up across the organization so like you said start with something that could be very basic and small but then use it to kind of you know implement you know showcase the success of that to be able to get it assimilated on in the organization now let me tell you when you benchmark yourself when I say yourselves I mean really the eye talk of the organization mondial is mondial is India what are some of the organizations that are not in your sector but you look up to them and you look at what they do and in some way benefit and learn from it and implement that in mondial is India a lot of sectors so even before that that makes it two of us I started my career I'm also a 20s engineer I also started my career doing some source work right so in those days you will even know there's a chip called 8486 so we used to do some application and some system level software system level code writing of course so makes it two of us but the question that you ask is great so how should I apply to this which part of that that question basically I'm saying you look at companies beyond your domain and learn from the best practices whether I mean for example I look at what amazon does it's a company that all of us look at I may not be anywhere close to the scale there but there's still some inspiration you get from them you look at you know technology companies yeah so if I look at it like this you know so there are companies that we can learn outside of our domain take for example folks like you know make my trip if you look at the way they have been able to use data customize the things the same to you this is how they understand your traveling needs and requirements right and and all your vacationing needs requirements it's a great inspiration I'm sure they will be operating with hundreds of millions of consumer records so how will you get there in the next three to five years they're fundamentally need to know the consumer so that they can feed the right uh uh travel flight or vacation bites for us it could be to feed the right snacking insects or uh or how do we get them snacks at home or how do we snack at home so there's a lot that we could learn from that industry so item by item it could be different now the other industry that we could surely learn from we actually want to partner with is let's say uh google google analytics has got huge repertoire of information technology and capabilities like so it's not that we need to learn from them I think we use them as a partner that's a part of the interaction likewise if you look at facebook instagram uh watch that I think that they got a they got a wonderful set of tools the tools that you call killer apps right so which of them is one and and how do we partner them on social platforms is one of the things so so when you want to learn you learn from certain companies for inspiration who you learn in the part of the interaction so those are the two big things that you might absolutely as you move forward you know we're in the mid of 2021 as we move forward into you know there'll be a festive season hopefully hopefully I'm hoping there'll be no third wave or at least we'll be more responsible in the way we conduct ourselves as well as the you know the administration would have a better grip but hopefully this devali would be a better devali in devali is a good season for the product category that you're in right gifting usage of chocolate for everything and those months of september october norm but December are a very big months for your category right now what would you do differently I'm not asking you to reveal all your plans and but directionally and philosophically what would you do differently in these very important market months then you did possibly two years back yeah so like it started with that while we may want to wish it away a real thing cannot be wished away today even that these are festive seasons very social in nature and if we have large congregations and gatherings they can become super spreaders right so in that context I think you know one of the things that we are preparing ourselves for is to say what if the wave strikes during the value adjust that's a big season for us right it would mean we need to learn and adapt to running it very very differently than the way we are running so far so one thing that would happen then is a huge focus of consumers from the neighborhood stores and or e-cups so how do I how do I provide to these these families which offer consumers home delivery or contactless funders to be one of your option could be one of the considerations the second one could be once again we've seen this that in any kind of a of a outbreak I think the the local district authorities are given with two parts from the district and hence we need we start approaching business in India as not as a country but as 700 districts so in which district do we have what level of positivity so do I put my teams out of the market or the positivity is too high do I bring them back and we give them what we improvised on was a telecolonial or a tele sales app so preparing ourselves for virtual selling is another thing preparing ourselves for running our operations district by district I can't say this is my strategy for the future which means I need to skill the people who are who are owning the districts on on impacting the government officials etc right so actually this runs so the big learning has been that if there is anything that is here to stay it is deceptions so how do you still manage deceptions in this how do you still manage running the business with deceptions would be the biggest one fantastic I'll ask you my last question and let you go I'm sure all of us think about the future while we try to be in the moment be mindful of what we are doing give it our best today and you know I know the planning cycles in COVID have become a little short-term and while we in every organization there are people who are flowing for now and there are people who are flowing for future now as a leader who needs such a big and venerable brand and such a large business what are the mega trends you see happening for the next 12 to 18 months whose green shoots you may have seen now you talked about in your last answer looking at districts looking at home delivery still while dealing with each other districts or cities or states in a unique way because the scenarios may be different but what are some of the trends that the viewers on this broadcast people today who are on this in the audience can learn from what are the mega trends that you can spot now which will become even bigger in the next 6 months 12 months 18 months yeah so there are three four things which have got sort of you know accentuated or accelerated because of them too so the first one is nesting at home there are of course a lot of people who are spending significantly more time nesting at home and this could mean this could mean very different things to different companies or different portfolios so if you have an out-of-home consumption portfolio this is the last one if you have an in-home portfolio it's a big one so how do you balance your portfolio could be one big thing the second bit is insecurity in terms of both let's say insecurity financial insecurity is becoming a bigger and a bigger concern because there's of course a lot of sectors which have got hit once and just coming back they'll back it again and hence jobs and hence financial insecurity is becoming a big and that has a huge bearing on the portfolio so we don't sell very expensive products but we still do sell products ranging from 5 rupees to a expanded release and hence we do see gravitate consumers gravitating towards smaller facts and new unit prices of product the third thing that's happening is this entire worry on hygiene and safety and all of these two works so it's not about health and wellness health and wellness is always a trend but I think what's not purely accentuated people's minds is hygiene and safety well if you look at it right I would call hygiene safety and also immunity in that sense right so because of the virulent nature of this disease so what we did a smart thing in one week we provided our pumps to immunity pumps because they had a great immunity pump because almost all the vitamins ions in all that you need for immunity and that's really resonated well with the consumers there seems a way to fracture the brand the other big thing that's happened with consumer sales we are gravitating to brands and products and that's where we look at the daily milk for example standing for generosity and small acts of thank you and the generous acts to humanity per se has been hugely helpful for us this trend is not going away so it's going to be around for some more time now these are the consumer trends you could talk about many more such consumer trends the other trends are the digital trends which we just talked about today so that's got actually the other big thing that's got accelerated is this in the in the businesses what kind of themes and what kind of culture and what kind of behaviors and what kind of attitudes you're going to have right in mind six so those are the ones that have got really accentuated but what more to come about this in living the pandemic we are not it's not behind us absolutely Deepak I am saying we're living the pandemic it's not behind us we have to work on all scenarios we have to work on digital transformation I hope his six case studies or examples that he brought about help you learn how to transform your organization and your function digitally the fact that he talked about dealing with each district as a unique scenario I hope we don't need that but clearly in the past few months we have needed that and who knows the future would have given you a thinking matrix how to deal with it and clearly he talked about how the chief data officer and the chief digital officer need to collaborate sometimes it can be the same person and I would read it as or hear it as that everyone needs to be chief data officer everyone needs to be chief digital officer so thank you Mr. Iyer for joining the tech month 2021 giving us your inputs telling us how you've done it at Mondaliz India and especially the e-commerce business it was a very small business maybe 20 months back is now a sizable part of the business so clearly a lot of FNCG companies are looking at e-commerce in a big way and especially in the gifting season e-commerce will become even bigger so my three takeaways are one is form a digital council of people who are capable of implementing that in their businesses in their sub-businesses in their department and they are not necessarily people who are digital in their function but people who are open to learning and who are open to being better second is really start with something small make sure it gets implemented and then scale it up and third is clearly do scenario planning we are still living the pandemic we are not out of it so sometimes today being better than yesterday love us to believing that it would be exactly like that tomorrow but not sure so thank you so much Mr. Iyer for talking to us we wish you luck and I'm sure we'll continue to do well on your journey of digital transformation God bless you thank you back to you thank you thank you so much Dr. Bhattra and thank you Mr. Iyer for sharing those insights with all of you was thank you so much for your time thank you