 All right, welcome to this special Thursdays with InfoBib, a special series curated by Exchange for Media in association with InfoBib. And today is the very first session of the series and we have two exciting lineups. The first is the Fireside Chat followed by a panel discussion. So I want to get into the first conversation which is a Fireside Chat on surge of digital engagement to accelerate business. And this Fireside Chat is between Mr. Rajeshwar Rao, VP and head of digital program. And the questions will be, the host is Mr. Amandip Saan, this head of North Indian. Welcome gentlemen to this first conversation. Thank you, Mr. Sani. Thank you Rehan, thank you so much for the introduction and the warm welcome. Good evening everybody. I was actually imagining that we'll have a nice bonfire in Delhi's cold weather and have a cozy fire chat with Rajeshwar. But it looks like it will be a pure digital meet. I'm just focusing on the word digital here because that's the biggest buzzword that is the survival mantra that we had in 2020 for all businesses. Somebody who's not digital would be very difficult for us to survive. As we know, customer engagement is critical for success, be it retail business, be it an automobile business, be it an e-commerce venture. As we step into a new decade, it's imperative for us to understand where we are heading in this retail trade. Certainly the consumers are much more informed and much more conscious, capable of actually taking conscious open decisions. But are the retailers ready for an experience that actually surpasses or matches customer expectations? That's the question I have, dear friends. Are the retailers ready to offer an experience that actually surpasses customer expectations? A recent survey conducted by the Retailers Association of India to watch consumer sentiment has yielded a few key insights which the retail industry can actually use as a basic assumption for their revival strategy and which can actually work for their short-term and medium-term goals. Since lockdown, the restriction and social distancing norms meant a business impact, an impact because customers cannot physically go visit the market, cannot visit brick-and-mortar outlets and do shopping. For retailers, the only option is the contactless way of digital transactions, which actually provided a very safe way to purchase goods and other items sitting at their own home. That's the background of what is currently happening. Let's have a deeper conversation with our customer and industry expert Rajeshwar Rao. Rajeshwar, as mentioned earlier, is the vice president and head of digital initiatives at Lovia. Welcome, Rajeshwar. Thanks, sir. That's today. Let's understand how Lovia has laid the path to recovering this pandemic situation. Rajeshwar, to what extent, according to you, has the pandemic impacted the retail industry and considering the last three, four months, how is the industry coping up with the ongoing crisis? Also considering the fact that Lovia had also too, was made to halt their business operations for a couple of months. What do you think, Raj? Firstly, thanks for having me, Aman. So yeah, so pandemic was a seismic event for marketing as a concept, per se, right? And a lot of rules changed overnight. Let's say I've been some vast medium of communications like newspaper, radio, or distributed. And now they're coming back to normal, per se. And one more interesting factor is O2D has gained a lot of traction in the media play and also matching up with the television, per se. So at that time, I mean, we really aligned marketing sources for reaching the right audience, per se. And a classic example of such realignment was April, June, quarter for us. So when we realized we'll not have the business as we were kept out of essentials, not the budgets, to speak to customers. So we kind of realigned ourselves to focus on one metric called engagement. So there are almost, it's in our work days, the content, I mean, ranging from making videos to memes to, I mean, live sessions on Cookery. So basically anything we could offer to our board customers and stay connected with them, you know? And the results were phenomenal. I mean, so our app downloads and engagement continue to stabilize in spite of zero spend and revenue. Yeah. Thanks Rajeshwar. Rajeshwar, you know, it might take a while for customers to actually, you know, go and visit the stores because of pandemic and the social distancing norms, you know, that industry has to follow. You know, having such a scenario, how do you foresee the customer engagement in the coming months or maybe for 2021? Right. So I'm leading online business also will still cover retail bit as much as I can. So I mean, even though all the doomsday scenario for offline retailer being discussed, so we believe it's difficult to hold back often recovery, you know, unless a new wave of COVID hits us. Having said that, then back to substantial and the way customers are growing now or conscious about what they buy and how they buy. So some factors will be important notice. And one of the factors is, I mean, tier two and three contribution to online will increase. So I mean, so closely has basically introduced them to online during lockdown. So it's now up to us to keep them excited, you know, and the other factor is people will be cautious of unbranded products. Something which is an issue in our category as well. So now branded purchase will go out leading to more organized players or unorganized ones, you know. Yeah. That is not an advantage when you talk about the branded purchase because that's where the customer confidence lies. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. And Rajeshwar, how do you assess the gap between your customer needs and your delivery and you know, what are the measures one can take to improve and productize satisfaction? Yeah. So basically we need to be fanatic about hygiene primarily, I mean, so veros and stores need to be sanitized properly. And every team member within the ecosystem right from ground sale staff for veros staff to be trained properly. And all communication about it to end consumer is the key, you know. So that they should feel totally secured when they're buying from us, right. And finally we should have tight control about this like how could a partners. So that is more reactive action on complaints than to react to them. I think the partner ecosystem was a must here. Exactly, exactly. I mean, the partners Having control over them is, this is must. Yeah. Be proactive rather than reactive. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Rajesh, coming to my next question here how are you delivering the information to those who need it? You know, what kind of tools or technologies do you think a retailer or an e-commerce player should use to engage customers with a value-added experience? So I mean, there are so many ways to connect, right. I mean, right from email, SMS notifications, social media and so now we have WhatsApp too, right. And this is where Infobip is helping us reaching out to the right customers with the right set of content, right. And a brand message has to be coherent, you know. You cannot just have one way and language of communication on one channel another language on another channel. I mean, so key is to keep so much data or content going but completely coherent. And there are some automation tools that needs to try to ensure one understands and even a customer is going overburden with information. And there's some tools which are used to cut channels that are not efficient as such. So that means you will not use your good brands and the stocking customers which eventually leads to a lot of hard-bun and business space loss of time, you know, yeah. And I think WhatsApp is the only channel which is available, which is a two-way communication channel and- Exactly, exactly. Which makes a lot of business sense. Yeah, we're hoping some good traction from WhatsApp too, yeah. Yes, yes. And Rajeshma, coming to the next question, Clolia as a brand has adopted a physical, a physical kind of a model where you guys have the online presence also. And at the same time, you guys are dependent on exclusive and multi-retail outlets. And so, you know, a customer visiting a store might have a very different profile than a customer visiting the online segment here. And the whole discovery process, how do you think retailers, you know, can get the balancing act right, focusing on safety value, pricing this to boost customer sales and satisfaction? Yeah, so the key is to, I mean, have you messaging similar, you know, so understand what's working there. I mean, for example, in our case, we could take, so we saw offline online customer had little overlap, you know. So also our offline customer was a little eldering age. I mean, let's say 18 to 35 in online that if I bless in offline, if you look at majority ports, I mean, so, I mean, we define our communication accordingly. So once, for example, if we have to code, so we're going to type in color TV, you know, TV celebs wearing clothing products and that kind of, I mean, communication that we pushed on offline. So while influencers work on pushing online communications as such, you know. And one more important factor is our price plan is essential, you know, so we cannot have different pricing on different channels. And so, I mean, it kills the trust in brand, right? I mean, both the sellers, I mean, so retailers and marketplaces and the buyers also buyers, I mean, the end customers. So if you cannot maintain parity, so, I mean, at least put different products in different channels, right? I mean, the customer has, as I mentioned earlier, customer has become much more conscious. Exactly, exactly. And actually prefers a way which is digital as well as physical in the current scenario. Exactly, so we will have to maintain that trust and confidence throughout. And that's only possible when you have universal pricing across all channels. Exactly. Thanks. Rajesh, your final words and advice, you know, to the businesses on what are the top three things to manage the only channel touch point of consumers? So, I mean, like I said before, you know, so keep communication coherent. And the second one is we should not have competitive advantage to one channel. So we should give equal opportunity, you know, so equal opportunity is required for trust and brand, right? And lastly, we should keep our, I mean, cross margins and intact. So it won't be the channel just for the present, so just for the sake of it, you know. I mean, for example, exclusive store, I mean, exclusive store for marketing. That's a bit, right? I mean, exclusive store for marketing at the main. So if cross margins don't add up, we cannot be able to scale the business in the channel, right? And we'll eventually lose all the support so that it's going in. So these are the three, I mean, I mean, these are the three pieces from my end, you know. Okay, Rajesh, well, thank you so much. I'll just summarize the question points because on a personal level, I believe the world is changing with every passing day. I think more and more of the business and the customers are more involved. Businesses are actually looking to recover from the effects of the post-pandemic lockdown situation. Right, right. They should base their approach on the underlining predictability because one word that is gonna be very normal and frequent is change. Mm-hmm, correct, correct. This situation has put us into a post change and actually opened our eyes also. Exactly. The future is actually digital. And yes, the shopping expenditure will undergo significant changes after the scenario here because customers are now, if you fight between a value-added customer and a price-considered customer, exactly, exactly, yeah. As you know, all the categories will move to see high levels of interest. We could expect, you know, customers to be conscious while spending and when they do purchase something. And we really need to, you know, change and adapt to the digital world. And as Rajesh were mentioned, you know, this whole scenario of success is only possible when there is a metric of engagement, when there is a partner who is not reactive but proactive and who have only channel approach, but a same strategy for visiting all the channels, be it WhatsApp, be it a physical store, be it an online purchase. And what words is, yes, there is overlapping and what better, which has been better done by people who could see that they're not their ages defined as customers, which has actually helped them. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. There's a question for Mr. Rao. My name is not given. Yeah, yeah. With COVID, hitting the Markham budgets, what channels have worked for Clovia and how would you analyze channel specific performance, influence of marketing campaigns on offline purchase? So, I mean, so when COVID hit us, you know, so we shifted our focus to, I mean, organic percent because we don't have to, I mean push budgets there. It's pure organic, right? And other important medium is social media and followed by our notifications. And like I said, you know, so we have created engaging content, you know, right from different set of videos, memes. And since our TG is predominantly female, so we used to make life sessions on now. So people, I mean, female, I mean, so interest, interest of female sort of life sessions and all, you know. So one such interest is, I mean, Kukri Pursing, right? So that, that means we used to, I mean, focus on all the organic traffic and so that's how we used to engage our customers. So that, so that then there is no clarity as such, right? I mean, even if I spend a single penny, so I'm not sure of any written as such. But at the same time, I would not sure, I mean, so how much time this bandwidth will go. So I mean, till the time this is on, I'll have to maintain that engagement, you know. So that was my primary focus and those are the channels which I focused on, you know. Great. Thank you, Mr. Rao and Mr. Sani for this lovely conversation. And I must just mention that you're watching E4M Presents Thursdays with Infobip. And thanks again, gentlemen. And we will move on to our next session, which is a panel discussion. The topic of the discussion is reimagining retail and e-commerce in 2021. As we know, COVID has done many disruptions and one of the big cause in the e-commerce space. We have a leading panelist for this special panel. We have Mr. Kashyap Vadapli, chief marketing officer and business head, Pepper Frye. We have Mr. Ritesh Goshal, chief marketing officer. Mr. Kashyap Vadapli, chief marketing officer. Mr. Vikas Chauhan and the session chair for this panel is Mr. Shankar Aayur, head customer success, Infobip. Welcome, gentlemen, to this panel. And before I hand it over, I just want to also announce that we'll be taking questions. Please post your questions and we will make sure that they can answer. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very well. Hello and everyone. Welcome to today's session to reimagine retail and e-commerce in 2021. It's my pleasure to have an esteemed pool of panelists alongside who will tell us the story behind the scenes during such peculiar times. A lot has changed in the past 10 months. We know a few changes have remained. We call them as a new norm and some of them I'm sure would rewind back to be March 2020. We all know it was a herculean task for every organization to sail through this period. The recent trends, though are a little positive and the sentiment of people are also positive because of a lot of other external factors. Will it be now safe to say that the retail industry has regained the lost ground or shall we say that the e-commerce business is the new way of retailing or will it both exist together? That's our topic for discussion today where we'll find out from our panelists how it could be in 2021 going forward. Let me start with Kashyap. Kashyap, we saw an enormous success and growth in the e-commerce business. There was a spike and predominantly we saw a lot of new users coming on board. Do you see this as the foundation for the growth of e-commerce business in 2020? Hi, everybody. Glad to be here and share my thoughts. So directly coming to the question that Shankar posed, e-commerce in India and globally has been moving in one direction. E-commerce penetration has been changing. If you look at some of the developed markets, what had happened was e-commerce as a percentage of retail had reached anywhere between 15% to 20% of the market and it had slowed down growing after that. You know, rapidly in 10 years' time frame, let's say the West started in 95, started picking up speed in 2000. Between 2000 and 2010, it probably reached 15% penetration. 15% of all retail was going through online. After 2010, the growth has been slow. It's been 15%, 16%, 17%, very, very slowly over a couple of years each. But what we've seen during 2020 is that almost 10 percentage points of growth has been added. So if you look at US and a lot of the Western markets, e-commerce now is 26%, 27%, 28%. So number one, e-commerce and let's look at India. In India, I think e-commerce really started almost 15 years later. While technically, there were firms doing e-commerce in India right from 2001, 2002, I think it only picked up pace around 2010, 2011. So we are a 10-year-old, 9-year-old market. People like Amazon entered India in end of 2013. So we are a 7, 8, 9-year-old market. E-commerce penetration in India is in single digits. Obviously, we were going to go, we were going to go to 15%. We would eventually get to 25% that the Western markets have come. It's a question of how quickly it will happen. So firstly, the point I'm making is direction is there. The penetration has to increase. It will go to 15% and then eventually to 25%. What happened last year was an acceleration of this penetration. Obviously, there are obvious reasons why this acceleration happened. Because of the lockdown, physically, obviously shut down for a much longer period. I know all kinds of retail shut down for a couple of months, but warehouses and distribution opened up a little bit earlier. It opened up by May, early May, whereas retail really, especially if you think of malls, et cetera, opened up in July, August. So there was a three, four month period during which e-commerce went through. Obviously, there was a ton of e-commerce happening even during the lockdown on the essential goods, but even non-essential goods started happening, starting, like I said, mid May. So fundamentally, here's what I think. I think that last year proved to be an acceleration. We've seen, again, using an industry specific example, we've seen like a 40% jump in the number of searches online for our category. We've seen similarly a 40 to 50% jump in the traffic that our website was receiving. I mean, if I kind of do some mathematics and remove all the paid marketing bit, which obviously we didn't continue doing extensive paid marketing during the lockdown phase because we wanted to maintain ROI, but even if I take that aside, all the 40 to 50% increase in online interest in the category in the form of search, almost all of it translated into traffic onto the website. So what last year did is, the direction was always there. It was always going to increase penetration of e-commerce. It helped to speed it up by a very, very large extent, different industries to different amounts, but I think most industries would have seen anywhere between to a 20 to 50% jump in consumer interest. Really, whether that translated into sales is a function of pricing and so on and everything. But in Indian consumers, interest in e-commerce got accelerated during last year. Right, so I think the board is acceleration. I mean, what I understand is we've got to speed now. How are we going to maintain that speed is going to be the big question, which probably down the line in the session you will address. But you mentioned the board, something that went on during the lockdown as well was the essentials. And my next question to be castes on that, where I want to understand from you that the basic essentials were one of the key products in demand through online channels. In fact, somebody who's not a digital guy also thought of coming on digital only because of the essentials probably. Let's put it that way. I just want to understand from you, come from a healthcare background, just share your experience on healthcare and how do you see that trend in that category in e-commerce and what has changed with the consumer behavior? So, thank you everyone for being present today and being a part of this conversation. I think COVID certainly changed the dynamics of the world that existed and the new normal is how we are defining it is getting accepted across different startups of the consumers that we see today. Now, essential services meant largely that everybody wanted a safe and controlled environment for themselves. So, not to step out, the fear of COVID was and in fact, still there. So, how do you ensure that the necessities were unable to get access to the consumer, to have consumers to have access to it? Now, there were two important parts to it. One, if you look at healthcare in general, there were two parts to it that fundamentally got changed in this segment. One is the provider side and when I say provided side, it's the doctors or the HCP community that we talk about. And the second is the consumer side. Now, from a consumer side, you see a lot of adoption of technology that was already happening for lifestyle and other brands and eventually that would have correlated for healthcare. What COVID did was bring this or pre-poned this by couple of years. So, tele-consultation for example, rose almost 400, 500% in certain categories for multiple players in us during COVID. And similarly, the delivery of medicine and other aspects that you see. I think for consumers, it pre-poned and there was a fundamental shift that happened on the HCP side as well. A lot of doctors who have never used the EHR-PHR tool shifted to this medium to keep a constant connect or enable access to the patient to the healthcare services. These were two structural shift that happened in the healthcare segment, which you'll see a lot of creating a lot of tailwinds for this sector to continuously grow. I think another thing that happened was entry or flight consolidation with big players entering into the segment and further strengthening the concept and vision that this segment holds of enabling digital access of healthcare services to the end consumer. So, that would be my view or my submission on this. Yeah, as you're right, actually the important question was the acceptability of the, if I put it this way, the doctor and the patient both to actually digitally connect. Because it's a very, very critical segment, isn't it, in the healthcare? And to accept that digitally was one thing which probably COVID helped in doing it. I would rather say because that's what I demanded at that point in time. Moving ahead, Pawan, it's a very different industry, very large offline presence for you and suddenly you hit a block, right? What was your strategy to meet this new consumer demand which only looked at screens? Okay, hi and good afternoon everyone. So, West, you are absolutely right for a brand like ours which has almost 40 million daily consumer touch points in this country. And retail presence, I guess, in more than one million media stores. Yes, we have, and you are absolutely right in saying that we have a huge offline presence. And which is true for a brand which has so many connect across the entire spectrum of society, especially for masses. Now, what happened during COVID? Especially when COVID struck and in the initial period in late March the lockdown was imposed. The first and the biggest challenge that we faced, especially when in the contents of our industry was how to make sure that our customers had access to the entire rate of our products. Especially in times when there were restrictions with movement, they couldn't step out of home, there were compulsions of staying within home and all that. So, the biggest challenge was how to overnight, almost overnight create those channels to solve the last-mile connectivity problems that were clearly obvious to everyone. So, we had even prior to COVID, we had a fairly big online presence in all the e-commerce and e-grossy platforms. But when lockdown happened, what we had to do or was overnight and very quickly was create those multiple channels which were able to take us right to the consumer's doorstep and have access to them even then they were compelled to stay indoors. So, what did we do? We just leverage on everyone, anyone and everyone who had the capability to solve the last-mile connectivity issue. So, what I'm saying is the food delivery platforms, till that point in time, focusing on something else, say a Zoomato or a Swiggy. So, their business went down as far as the restaurant food delivery came down. But they immediately took to brands like ours and they started carrying the entire set of essentially grocery products. In our case, the set of food products to consumer's doorstep. And it wasn't just the big names that you heard of. These are delivery platforms, the meal delivery guys. So, all of them started delivering a new range of products to the consumer's doorstep. And we had to create these ordinary channels and a lot of the issues were almost overnight. Yeah. So, in that, every town was sitting during this COVID time, especially in the first two months, there were these machine moving or small local grocery platforms, many of whom were operating just on WhatsApp. You know, taking orders on WhatsApp and doing local home delivery within a small radius. And these were the ones that we also leveraged on. We just made sure that whatever option we were available to reach out to people who were long inside their homes, we did not miss out on any of those optionities. Right, right. Definitely paid which difference to us. One more thing, the big organized retail chains. Now, they ramped up their only channel presence during this time. So, you know all the names, they ramped up the online side of the business. So, that also helped us in a very big way. We started out B2B e-commerce operations around that time. So, what I'm saying is there were restrictions on movement, you know how the typical FNTD set up was. So, our distributors were, especially in April and May, not able to cover and effectively service the detailed demand that the factory across the country. And there's one more context to this. At, you know, all of us know this. People were spending more time at home. They were compared to, they were cooking at home, they were eating more at home, more than any other point in their entire lives. So, there was a big quantum growth in demand for food products and especially the ones which are consumed at home. And the demand grows sharply, the demand grows by a huge quantum and all of a sudden. So, we had to put up all these alternate channels overnight to all those last-minute connectivity issues. Today, if you're talking about online was offline, at least as far as the business that goes, that happens through the online radio chains, through the large, what we call the modern trade in our columns. Roughly 35% of it is coming from the online side and the balance on the online source. With a bit of the omni-channel digital, so practically we do our deliveries to the distribution centers. So, the splits are not always of the omni-channel structures. So, you can say that it could be even as close to 40% of the overall. I wanted to hold your thoughts on those numbers there because that's where we will head to probably. But then I get your point, you need to scramble to organize a lot of channels and some of the names that you mentioned would have never thought of probably carrying basic essentials to deliver. But I think that was the call at that time for everyone who was present on the field. And I clearly understand, in fact, one of the things which you mentioned about WhatsApp and those kind of social chatting groups and things like that, we were also very actively involved in enabling these kind of tools for a lot of organizations because that was the only medium which a lot of organizations had to reach to their consumers. Now I turn to Ritesh. Ritesh, I've heard you many times before telling about how you went about organizing the retail front. So, I'm not going to ask that question back to you again. But what I want to hear from you is, the omni-channel platform, it's been some months now which is in place. We've seen customers, there are more customers outside their homes now, shopping, how do you see this model has delivered, this omni-channel model of the industry expectations? And what are those key business drivers you want to highlight first? Okay, sure. So first thing first, see the customer, the shopper in India has been omni-channel for a very long time. Okay, browsing online, doing the research online is something I recall when I bought my first, you know, when I chose between an LCD and a plasma back in 2006, 2007, you've seen it to do my entire research and then I went and purchased some of it. So, behavior on the customers can interrupt you here. Can I interrupt you here? But isn't that a small segment of knowledgeable shoppers who did that? I mean, would I? Absolutely, absolutely. So, you know, the tools were there even then, the platforms were there even then, two fundamental changes have happened. One is, you know, data speeds and devices on which to browse data has really exploded the customer side of things. And on the other hand, the online marketplaces because, you know, unlike the seniors of the world have a revenue model linked to the online space have really exploded the behavior. So access to data, quality of data, et cetera has, you know, fundamentally changed and therefore it's a mass habit now. Specific to what has happened during the lockdown and post the lockdown. One is a lot more people have started, you know, throttling the number of trips they make to the physical market. Okay, so shopping for things like the next smartphone you need or earphones, headphones or, you know, let's say your printer is running out of ink and you need to change the printer ink, et cetera. A lot of purchases which used to earlier drive people to our stores have just disappeared. So we observed the small ticket purchases. Purchases below 5,000 had dropped by, you know it used to be 46% of a business last year. This year it's virtually gone. Okay, only people who are in the market for a next big article make the effort to come to the store. Others are buying online. So now even though footfalls are back and, you know, markets are largely open online business continues to be above 10% of the mix while store business is also growing versus last year now. Okay, so that's one shift. If I can, you know, if I can reduce my exposure I will do it. That's one purpose, the online pieces. Second piece is before I make the trip and, you know, expose myself to the risk can I make sure the product is there? Can I make sure whether my credit card will give me a deal and so on and so forth? Therefore, contacting the shopkeeper and then confirming, you know, all these details is one thing that decided to be used for. In the online shopper set there is a small set which is unfamiliar with online shopping but maybe because they are older maybe because they are at risk population in some way they are, you know, choosing the via media of shopping online, but using a video demo in order to, you know, get a virtual experience of touch and feel. This channel which we have started operation towards the end of the festive period actually when it was stable and really working. We are seeing, you know, business upwards of a couple of crores every week now and conversion on this channel is almost 40%. So people who book a call, get on video chat with the staff in our dark store in Bangalore four out of 10 are actually ending up buying. So these are some of the, you know, habit changes in the omni part. I would expect going forward, see people who have, you know, got used to the navigation and the behavior of buying online will not stop going forward. It's a fundamental shift, you know. Once you cross the barrier of sharing your credit card details and seeing that nothing bad happened and you continue. What do you want to get delivered to you? I think. I want to get delivered to you as well. You know, suddenly, you know, you say, okay, you can do this too. What I think is, you know, for the larger investment articles where, you know, you're worried about whether the new fridge I'm buying will fit into the space, whether all my utensils will be fit in, et cetera. Larger articles, more expensive articles you will still want to make the visit to the store. Convenience articles and things which you, you know, need frequently and need at the drop of a hat. Those are all things which are moving on. So are you saying that, you know, the, I mean, my next question was that only, but I'll continue on that. One is 40% conversion on the video demo, which is practically telling me that a lot of businesses are going in that direction, of course. So are you also telling that, okay, that's one side of saying the shopper doesn't go out as the convenience of really understanding the product. But is it also touching the aspect of an experience of the touch and feel of the product, especially in consumer durable, which matters a lot? See, I think it is a compromise that people are making. Okay, if, you know, between seeing, you know, an iPad being turned around and showing you a refrigerator was actually seeing the inside of a refrigerator, there's a difference, okay. People who are reluctant to let go of the latter experience, but are hesitant to step out, I think are, you know, switching the video demo route. Somebody who's comfortable shopping online, you know, and therefore, you know, assessing the dimensions of the product, looking at the various ways there are of, you know, exposing the specs and then taking a call will not go through the, you know, the effort of getting on a video call and spending five, seven minutes, you know, trying to understand the product. Someone who's confident of stepping out of their home will still prefer to come to the store. It's the person in the middle, maybe because he's older or maybe he's someone who's got an agent parent at home. There is some kind of, you know, reluctance to step out of the home. At the same time, there is reluctance to buy without seeing is, you know, plugging, this product is really plugging that cap. But quickly tell me, do you think, when will you focus more if you want to really build that customization? Is it not going to be the online part of it or is it too early to take a call on that right now? Look, see, in mature markets, if you look at, and someone was talking about the market being 25% online, that's essentially where we see our category as well. So if you take this by as an example, for them, around 25% of the business is online and the rest is at store. The store actually supports the online business. On the online business supports the store, it sort of, you know, plugs into each other and creates the complete brand story, the branch proposition for customers. So that's where we need to go as well. Currently, like I said, we are around 10% of our business is online. For us, the gaps to be covered, the experience to be fixed and, you know, the promise to be lived up to is really in the online space. Customers who come to a store are really happy. People who are shopping online, you know, there have been all kinds of feedback including saying, you should stick to running your stores. That's what you know how you really do. But that's a painful journey, but it's a hell we need to climb. So we'll get that. Sure. Okay, I think that's the very key thing, you know, the touch and feel is being the very, very key part of a marketing strategy for a product which has a very high ticket size, you know, buying ticket size is higher. And that's where Kashyap, I just wanted you to throw some light on the experiment of, you know, companies who are born digital, you know, we have seen some of them, they were digital, they moved on to the physical presence after that, where they boosted their brand and actually wanted to bring that immersive experience with the customers. Tell me, now with this business dynamics changing, of course it got accelerated and all that, which is basically on the digital front, but you know, people have invested and brought both things together. What's your thought with this changing business dynamics? How do you see this model going forward? Sure, so I think again, it's a question of balance and where your category and your brand will settle. Like Ritesh was saying, global benchmarks of 25% being online, let's say in electronics. So you're right, we are a digital first brand. Many of our sales happen through the app. So, you know, we are an 80% furniture brand, 20% we sell non-finiture, but 80% of our items that we sell are furniture. Our average ticket size on furniture is around 17,000, 18,000 rupees. So they are not all just shoe racks and side tables. So people are buying beds and wardrobes and sideboards and everything else. And like I said, our single largest isolated channel is the mobile app. So obviously, you know, it defies common sense for an unstructured category where customers' knowledge about the product and the brands is actually poor. Standardization around specifications, around materials used, around design philosophies is not there. For a non-standard, high ticket size, high involvement category, people are willing to spend 50, 60, 70,000 rupees buying sofa sets, eight-seater dining tables on the mobile app. So obviously, there is that customer on one side and then there is the customer who will potentially not even want to buy a small stool without having sat on it and felt the strength of the stool with their own two hands. So I think it will finally boil down to where the balance happens. Our philosophy is that it's the same customer. Fundamentally, it's the same customer, their same type of customer. We are a very, actually if you look at it, 80% of our sales come from our top eight cities. And if you just look at the pin code kind of a mapping and look at where people are, we realize that there are homogeneous, well-traveled people working in MNCs, smart, confident shoppers, they're the same. I mean, whether they're... And these are the same people who also come to our stores. We have 65 stores now. It's not just an experiment. Almost 35, 36% of our business comes from our stores. So it's a significant chunk. I have to pause you there. This is very interesting. When you still own company, you say 35% of the store, what does it say? Does it say that it's a co-existing business? As you said, the balance or what Rithish said, depending on people, you see that even though we had COVID, we saw so much of surge in online business. You see that trend that remains same that 65 stores will increase or is it going to be like 65 is the platform to push people more online purchasing kind of an activity? How do you see that? No, so we think the customers are same, but the big difference is use cases. And I think again, I think they're talking about it. If you're doing up your house entirely, you're moving into a new house or you're doing up an entire room, you're going to buy anywhere between seven to eight items to maybe up to 25 items if you're doing up an entire two-bedroom house. So it's a big commitment. Just from a consumer behavior perspective, it's not like a routine consumer response. It is an extensive problem that the customer is solving. Their mind space, it's going to occupy a large part of their budget and they are willing to put the effort around it in terms of finding the right comprehensive solution. Okay, so the customer profile is similar. If I'm just going to replace, like I need to just buy one study table because I'm working from home, I can buy it online. It's going to be in one corner of my bedroom. It's not going to be very design focused. It's a functional product. I'm going to buy it and maybe costing me anywhere between 8,000 to 15,000. But if I'm going to do up my entire living room, I'm buying a three-seater, two-seater, dining set, sideboard, entertainment unit, coffee table, maybe shoe rack near the door. My budget is suddenly like one and a half lakhs to two lakhs. I need to ensure that there's a design aspect around it, they go with each other. So in those kind of scenarios, I'd like to experience a little bit more. I'd like to understand more. I'd like to touch and feel more. I'd like, and more than touch and feel, I think it's about trust. It is about somebody assuring you about how the whole thing goes together. So in our stores, the people that are there and just like many other retail places, you really have experts. These are not salespeople, salespeople. They're actually experts. A designer who can actually say that, okay, what's the house looking like? Do you have a photo of your living room? You know? And you consult and you make them happen. So the way I see it is it's a balance. Both of them will coexist. The customer profile is not very different. But based on the use case, is this one-off piece that somebody is buying or is it a comprehensive solution? And I'm using the word solution because there are multiple things, like lamps thrown in, carpets thrown in, you know, and the whole thing comes together. So people taking bigger, higher ticket size, higher involvement use case scenarios, find that a lot of them end up going to our studios. And you're going to change. So to your question, how do we see going forward? So our 65 stores are predominantly in our top seven, eight markets, but you know, 45 of them. But the remaining 20 are in smaller cities. We are definitely going to try and expand to the next 50 cities by opening one month store in the next 50 cities. The use case is what I'm sorry to interrupt, but I understand that, you know, what you're saying is that I can clearly see a demarcation though it's online, it's digital, it's e-commerce, whatever we call. There is a use case-based business and there is a essential or an on-demand-based business, which is clearly bifurcating the models of business here. And obviously you cannot ignore the digital fact to it, but there is a balance is what you're drawing in some businesses. And whereas I understand in some businesses, you just need those channels to basically reach to those consumers. Moving on, you know, that brings to the next point, you know, exactly the high ticket size we mentioned. And, you know, we saw the highest ticket size product bought on e-commerce business for last one decade. If I take that last 10 years, it's a predominant years. It's been mobile phones. And again, those ticket sizes have been pretty decent, right? I mean, people have invested money in it. That's purely because I also believe that a lot of discount offers, a lot of stuff which attracted consumers to that particular platform. But going beyond that, we've seen last three years, apparels and media and entertainment, hospitality, these sectors have also merged into e-commerce very well. Because my question to you is healthcare and education, you said 400% somewhere I've heard and that's a huge number spike. Healthcare and education in e-commerce industry, how do you visualize that? So this is very interesting and it adds to the conversation which Kastrup also just mentioned that you have to look at the category. A high involvement, low ticket size would be the first category. Low involvement, low ticket size would be the first category that you'll see people participating. Then high involvement, high ticket size and that's how the curve will move. And it's a national progression that we've seen. Mobile phones, Nokia phone is a Nokia phone. OnePlus phone is a OnePlus phone. The decisions are largely equal. You look at which is the best price you can get on it. Then you reach a stage where you trust the medium and you trust that online payments are secure. You trust the brand that I'm interacting with is secure. Then you move to the next level in the category which is touch and feel and you saw lifestyle and other aspects that came into it. And then pretty much the furniture. I think we've seen that evolution has happened and what you're doing is you gain a consumer and you continuously hopping for more and more wallet share. So a lot of vertical players are moving and you see it is merging towards certain few horizontal players taking a larger share. Now healthcare and education both have one more very different element to it. So safety, security and touch, feel and all those elements are there. Both of them have a lot of legacy or trust aspect that is there. This is healthcare to purely is a need-based category that comes into the picture and works very differently from an aspirational category. Secondly, education if you talk about again partial need-based but a lot of again high involvement, legacy, brands or the value chain or the people involved to get mad, consider in the decision-making. Now if you talk about the excess problem that it has solved if you look at the number of doctors per individual in the country or number of hospital beds per individual in the country, you need solutions to able to address these fundamental problems that exist in the value chain. And if you look at the rural and the urban divide, the numbers are highly unfavorable to the rural part. Now how do you solve the problem of excess of quality healthcare or education to these the pyramid where actual India is whatever you call it. What you're saying is that this sector will take a space in e-commerce solving some basic national issues right now. I mean to that extent, if I can put it, I mean these are like serious issues which an e-commerce can address. Is that my understanding, right? So it is not just e-commerce. This is a digital era that we've covered as an ability. So transactions is a part of it. It is also access to information that consumer can get today. And that's a larger part. See, a very empowered consumer is much more in position to make better decisions about his education, about his healthcare, about any of the lifestyle choices that he made. And that's where the power of digital comes. See, e-commerce is a part of this whole digital era which we have come to and COVID has certainly helped. So if there were any doubts that education and healthcare will they be playing a major role in this from a digital forefront? COVID has made sure that those certain aspects of those certain doubts have been wiped out. The rate at which is growing, the consumer adoption that is happening in this field is phenomenal. I think it solves some of the fundamental issues, structural issues and challenges which exist in the value chain for healthcare delivery or education system access which are there. And it brings to the forefront good quality access to even the remotest part of the country. I think this segment is here to stay and grow at an exponential pace. Yeah, I take your point in terms of access, the digital front from an access and information point of view, right? But I think the transaction is what my focus question was and because of which I use the word e-commerce and and that's where probably an aware customer which is mostly in the urban and metro is now able to put that trust with the key word which you used in that sector was trust, especially healthcare where they're able to put that trust on that screen and able to connect with and address their healthcare concerns. But point taken, I think access information will further lead to this in the rural market as well. Just to add, I think you must not on the point that this is a need-based category. So if you need a medicine, whichever part you are, you will find a way to access it. And if that means somebody has to travel say 50 kilometers to get it, they will do it. Or if that means an e-commerce venture can help you get an access to it, you will use it. So a need-based category, eventually wherever the fundamental supply chain gaps are there or excess gaps are there, is there to fill. So when this helps you make better decisions and this certainly helps you connect the service gaps or overcome that which are there. Right, right. Thanks Vikas for that. And this brings me to my last question or probably second, last, if time permits. Pawan, I just want to understand you touched upon those points where FMCG products not like consumer durable or lifestyle or anything else is in the flux of online versus physical retailing. And I say that because these are basic essentials. Once you game grounds back, one thing's normalized. These are like available next door, next lane kind of scenario. How do you see this so diverse consumer behaviors where you will have people online and also behaving the traditional way? How do you position your products and businesses in future? Quick one. Okay, Shabba, what I feel this entire COVID period has created four irreversible changes in the world around us. And I'm speaking only in context of food, food, hygiene, grocery, the world from which I come. So, very quickly, one, online, the sheer convenience of online purchasing, okay? Even when it comes to something as routine, repetitive or planned as grocery shopping list, okay? Once people have experienced the convenience of placing an order from the mobile phone app and expecting home deliveries, even post COVID after the vaccinations and after all these COVID-related apprehensions go away and people are free to go around as they please, I think that convenience is something that people would not like to let go of. Okay. That's one. Well, if talking in our terms, so what it really means is even today, quite truthfully and honestly, our digital to physical ratio would be 2 to 98, okay? Another one year expected to become maybe three and a half is for 90, whatever, 96 and a half. And but maybe in another six years time would be close to seven percent, which I think is a pretty good benchmark. If you look at the US market, even in 2020, in the grocery context, it's only around a little over 10% of the overall grocery business in the United States today is online and the rest of it's still offline. So maybe five years or six years of now, six to seven percent share of Indian online grocery business would be pretty good, I would say. But yes, coming back to the point I made originally, some changes are irreversible in our society and consumer behavior would be aligned along those lines. A couple of other very quick points I would like to make. One is, I mean, pardon me, but I'm only talking about the context of the large, the vast FMCT and food grocery world. In our world, in all of us, as shoppers and consumers, so we understand what they're talking about, the relevance of your neighborhood grocery is something that has come back in a very big way. So I'm talking about digital versus physical versus, you know, what it really does is all those large, hyper, big, modern formats to us, to hyper, hyper stores, their role is once again set to be redefined because maybe tomorrow or even now, their role could be reshared as experience and exploration zones so people go there, experience products, explore new products, new packaging, new values that come into the market, then quietly come back home and add it to the smart, you know, the smart shopping basket and the online apps. So I think that would have happened even in food grocery and FMCT going forward. Okay, okay, Pavan, I understand, but when you draw examples with the US, the only thing is, you know, our markets being so diverse. I mean, there's one side in which we spoke about access, the other side, we spoke about, you know, customer behaviors in different use cases and domestic grocery consumption, the variety on that also is probably, I don't know how many times more than Western market. So obviously the diversity creates a lot of challenges when you also see the online versus offline version. That's exactly on time, gentlemen, but I have one quick question, which is more like, you know, I just want to know your quick opinion on, I clearly see four gentlemen here, two on this side, which is essential, just talking like, you know, okay, online will become, and we have the other side where we have lifestyle and development, which talks about a balance. I just want to know the buying behavior in general in 2021, what do you see? Will it be 20 or will it be different? Will it be physical, physical or digital? Let's start with Ritesh. See, I think what we have seen, especially in the smaller towns is, you know, outside of Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, outside of these three cities, the stores are really full now. You can see it's almost like people are celebrating the end of COVID by coming out. In some ways it's a problem for us in the store because, you know, we still have to protect our employees, but, you know, there seems to be almost a, you know, coming offline with a vengeance kind of thing. Okay, so it's physical. For the next few months, that's going to be the case. All right, okay, Kashyap? Yeah. So yeah, I kind of agree. I think customers are back in the stores, but I think the, if I were to take a guess on what will lead the growth, I think it will be digital. Okay, great. Vikas? Yeah, I completely agree with Kashyap. I think the growth or the quantum of people, you know, adopting a newer methodology or newer channel will be much higher when it comes to physical or digital. Digital will be much higher. There is no denying of the fact that physical is going to be there, and it is currently the largest segment, but the growth and the pace at which you see digital growing will be unprecedented in terms of digital. Your thoughts, Pawan, and the close? Okay, very quickly, our physical will come back, and digital will be the flag bearer, driving the growth even forward and fast to pace. Great, so I think, you know, I just want to give a quick point, you know, I come from a company-based industry, and another recent survey said, the retailers will look at kind of an offline, online business board, which we all spoke, but about 7% of retail shopping mindset would remain both kind of a scenario, because one, the fear in the back of the mind saying what happened, and the other, as Ditesh mentioned, to go out and express, you know, that's the feel around. So gentlemen, thank you so much for your time. I think we really heard some great views from all of you. Over to you. Thank you. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you, Mr. Murappali, Mr. Ghoshal, Mr. Singh, Mr. Johan, and Mr. Ayer for this level. Thank you, everyone. Thursday for BIP, a special series brought to you by Exchange for Media in association with BIP, and we see you soon, next, at the same time. Thank you, everyone, once again. Thanks. Bye-bye.