 Well, this session will be moderated by none other but, Sabhasaji Mithar, Founder and Managing Director at Falkaro. Please can I have a huge round of applause. And so you're going to be doing the honors of calling our other panelists, right? Hello. Right, great. So in today's world, mobiles are everywhere and I can literally see, as soon as the session starts getting boring, everybody's screen lights up in the audience, right? So to discuss what mobiles and mobile web is going to do for all of us, I have the pleasure of inviting a power-packed panelist. First, may I call upon Sovrita Soumya, Head of Digital Marketing at Tata Motors Commercial Vehicles. A big round of applause for her, please. Guys, you can do better than that. Welcome, Sovrita. Next is Lakshman Thari, Head Marketing Communication and Brand Management at Legron Group, India. Welcome, Lakshman. And finally, to complete the panel, may I welcome Gayathri Sundaram, Head of Content and Experience at Kidzania USA. You can all take one of the mics. Right, so before the panelists take over, we'll just set a bit of a context. Today I think all of us have numerous mobile apps. My daughter has mobile apps going up to screen 10. I don't know what she does with them, but that's the kind of addiction we have for mobile apps. But flip back to five years back, every marketer was trying to build the mobile web. We had progressive web apps. We were talking about responsive mobile sites. And everybody was focusing on getting hold of the consumer through the mobile web. The topic for today is have the proliferation of apps, and obviously the apps have got better and more, you know, addictive, has that completely killed the mobile web, right? So, opening remarks from each of our panelists and then we'll open it up to more questions and the audience can feel free to interject and seek specific views. So Lakshman, up to you. So it's a good discussion. We are talking about screen age, and from a big screen now we are moved to a smaller, a mobile screen. And within that now there is a partition. We are talking about app or the mobile web discussion. How I take it as it's depend upon each brand or the each service provider that what is a use for you, means your users, how many time can access your content, what is the frequency of it, on that basis you can define there is a need of app or it should have just a mobile responsive sites to you. So if any users, if you have a content that users can come frequently in a day, maybe a five times to your website, then probably you need an app. You have to give a certain service to it. I will give you an example of three different industries. One is from my electrical fraternity. So there are influencers who come frequently to my website but they probably just scroll out some information. But for a certain services like visualizers for calculating BOQs of their projects, they frequently reach out to this particular services. So I will have apps majorly for the BOQs or maybe for the visualizer services. Think about same entertainment industry. It started OTT platforms we have. We talk about Amazon Netflix currently. But it started with the YouTube channels. And many of the YouTube channels, providers, also started their apps initially. But you need to have a sustainable content to stay in touch with your apps. Otherwise you will lose the consumer base for it. WhatsApp, which we have spoken before the discussion as well. So WhatsApp is every movement. Somebody is messaging you. It's kept active. Anyways, it's a messenger app. Earlier it used to be G Talk. It used to be a Yahoo messenger. And now it's WhatsApp. It's in your mobile, but it's kept active. There are other apps as well. There's WeChat and other things. But it's more active base. They have managed to keep it active. And so on, it's on app. So it depends on every brand. If you have a frequent users where it can come, there's a need of app or you can have just a mobile site for you. Great. Let's see what are your views on this. So my views, essentially, I'm going to, like I said, I'm going to participate in this panel as a two-prong approach. One is the one who creates the content for this online and reach out to the mobile that you're currently having. And the other one is a consumer in me, which also is a mother right now. And what kind of, you know, the dynamics and the demographic play that goes behind it. Essentially speaking about web on mobile versus apps on mobile, let's just draw a couple of clear indications so that we know where we are headed. But the thing is, any, firstly, it's a very business objective driven call, whether you should have just a web service or whether you should have an app that pushes more focused, you know, call to action. In the web kind of a portals, you definitely do have cost efficiencies because it's not so expensive to, you know, custom create according to the devices or custom create according to operating systems. But in terms of creating mobile apps, your conversion rates are higher because it's a very specific target that you're aiming at. Apps have to be on top of mind recall for you to be able to open the apps and for you to be able to toggle around and remember them that you need to keep them. However, there's a high possibility that you look at the apps and sometimes like, I have not used this app for a really long time. What's it even sitting in my mobile for? And click delete. So there is a lot of love hate relationship with the apps that one has. However, web, mobile web, is more purpose driven. So your objective is always met. Your definition of your, you know, what is the reason why I logged on in the first place is met. So it's a very focused reach out for the customers. Having said that, I still am not of this opinion that mobile apps is for all. It is for a very few customer driven brands and services. And web, on the other hand, is more vast, is more accessible and is for all and not just for one focused target group. So that's great views. Before I come to Sovrita, question for the audience. As per research, on an average, how many apps does a user have? Any idea? Throw a number. 100. 40. 50. Okay, 22 is the number. Right now, just imagine this. 22 apps on an average. Obviously there are power users who might have 100. My daughter has, God knows how many I can't even count. But if there are 22 apps, name some of the apps which everyone will have. WhatsApp being one. Amazon, or Flipkart. Uber, Swiggy, Somato. Yeah, so if you count, brands may have a chance of being one or two on a user's phone. And every brand wants to make an app. At least they used to want to make an app. But users don't need those apps. So I think summarizing what the first two speakers said is a very interesting point. That if you have a banking app and we work with a lot of banks, there is a primary banking app that you will have, but you may have two or three other banks whose app you may not be using or may not have. And with the latest iOS 13, and we were just discussing this, you have this feature called off-load unused apps. Are you aware of this? Anyone on iOS 13, iPhone 11? Right, so now there's a default option. I mean, you can turn on that option to off-load apps which you don't use. So apps are in danger. Now, data motors I think is one of the unique cases where you have consumers, very involved consumers. Do you see the need for an app? How do you see this mobile web versus app? No, so like what Gayathri and Lakshman said, that is cool. Yeah, so for Tata Motors or in auto industry, there is a huge process of discovering the content. So when it comes to auto industry, people does a lot of research before getting into or filling in a lead on the brand side. So they do a lot of comparison. They go to aggregator sites, does comparison. For that, they will not download an app. They will look into different, different websites. They will search on Google and go to the website which gives the relevant content. So for app is not very much relevant for Tata Motors because it's more about giving information about the product where people can inquire about the features and benefits of the product. So end of the day, apps are more relevant for brands who are into utility like Swiggy or maybe more into gaming apps. So for Tata Motors, apps are not very much relevant right now. But what's your overall industry view across all industries? Do you think brands aggregators, entertainment companies, can they just do away with the mobile web and go completely app only? No, like... I think Mintra tried this, right? Exactly, that's what. Like we were discussing about Mintra, they again took a U-turn and came back to the web version because in India, people are not used to downloading a lot of apps and there is a myth about data security also, mobile data security also. So people don't prefer downloading a lot of app until unless it is utility app. Like all of you said, Uber, Zomet or Swiggy or maybe banking apps are more relevant as compared to one-time usage apps. Great. Now, we mentioned discovery as part of the conversation over here. As a brand marketer, how important do you think your mobile websites slash mobile web is to be responsive website plays in aiding discovery? Do you think that's the starting point? People don't necessarily go looking for a Legro app, they might be looking for a switch. And how important is the mobile web or, I say mobile web today, everything is responsive. From a purely SEO perspective or discovery perspective, we talked about aggregators. We have worked together and we have seen that people actually go to Google and search. The web is only present and search is the starting point of a lot of product discovery. What's your perspective? Absolutely. Very well said. It's somewhere is assumption in our entire mind. When you ask the questions, people said 40 apps, 50, 100 apps. When it comes to a mobile phone, people think it's first app. They forget like for any need or any searches, they first go to Google. So it's still search is the same behavior what the consumers are doing. And they lands first to your website. Sabha has given the example of switches. I will give you an example if you are sitting at office meeting in lunch hour and ordering some pizzas. If you doesn't have even any pizza delivery app, first you will grow and scroll the menu which is on the website of that pizza app. And then probably you will go and order it. And when you will have a frequent ordering mechanism, most probably then you will download the pizza delivery apps for you. But till the time, the website, the search engine is working for you. So you have to as a marketer, you have to keep investing on the search engine optimization and divert the traffic to your website first. So guys, my question to you is therefore are we coming to the point of view that the mobile web and after a point of time when somebody really starts becoming a power user, that's when the app comes into play. From Kizania's perspective, how do you see the mobile web and apps? So if you want to know Kizania's perspective, we are a word of mouth brand. We are a brand which banks heavily on equity and equity comes from the confidence that you have on the brand. So for us, app is secondary. For us, the primary objective is to be discovered as the safe brand that's part of your family or the brand that you can trust. So we are, honestly, we gained our, you know, the expanse of our audience, essentially by word of mouth. And then people started looking up for us and the web popped up. And that's our primary go to the conversions happen higher on the web. Rather than just the app bit of it, app for us will be more in terms of engagement once you are inside the family entertainment center. So that time if you have to queue in to a parent saying that, okay, so your kid has done these five activities, do you want to know about it or track your child's interests on the app, that makes more sense and that makes complete connect why you should have a Kizania app. But having said that, you know, the average return of a child in a year for anybody is about thrice. So they are going to use the app actively thrice. Does it really make sense to invest in that kind of app? Absolutely not. For us, it will be more like we all know that our interest would be to invest in the SEO and figure out what are the kids, what are the parents looking out for online when they want to look for a safe and a very meaningful entertainment for their children. So we would want to be in that domain. We would want to be in the domain where your first and obvious choice and the push is going to be Kizania. And that for us and yes, you are right. I would still go ahead with the fact that the web is more essential. I wouldn't say more important than app, but yes, web is essential in the first spot because without that you are a dead meat anyway. And app is for the people who have evolved in the web, have gotten a top of mind recall and have a new business objective to be continuously tracking what you want to do or tracking what you like or offer customized solutions for you or give you proximity based messages so that you can keep us involved. So that for us is not the objective right now. Okay. So just sharing some data. So we work with a mobile phone brand called ASUS which sells exclusively on Flipkart. Now, again, maybe we'll just keep it interactive. If you've been seeing there are a lot of sales going on and so on and so forth. Now, for a brand like ASUS which sells exclusively on Flipkart, where do you think the traffic which leads to the conversion come from? Is it from within the Flipkart app? Where does it come from? Any guesses? Paid traffic. Only 47% of the sales come from within Flipkart. There is three crores of media that is being spent to drive traffic from search, GDA and Facebook which go directly to the product landing from which an ad to cart takes place. A lot of people complete the purchase on the mobile web. Many people go back to their account later from the app after they've collected a few items and purchase. So the role, imagine if there was no website. What would I run my GDN campaign on? Where would I take the user? So this 53% of the traffic which is being pushed to buying a product is actually being sourced from the web and pushed to the web even if it's the mobile web. So that's an interesting point of view of why even today making store landing pages on the web is such an important part of product sales. So I think we're coming down to the points that maybe mobile apps will not completely replace the web. But there's an interesting thought and again a question to the audience. How many of you have a banking app? Pretty much everyone, right? What are the top three things that you do in your banking app? It's a little louder please. FD, make FDs, check balance, fund transfer, payments. You heard of UPI 2? You heard of WhatsApp payments? Okay now I mean we're in the final stage of the data localization clearance on WhatsApp. Now WhatsApp payment starts, would you use your login to your bank with your password face ID or whatever and then transfer would you just transfer money on WhatsApp? If on WhatsApp a bank were to allow you to just send balance and get your balance would you still login to your banking app or would you get that message on WhatsApp? That's a slide, that's cashback, that's more like acquisitions but I'm saying if WhatsApp itself were to offer you all kinds of services which you would otherwise do from your app how many people would continue to keep apps? I'll throw that question open to the panel now saying that we've talked about the mobile web, we've talked about apps but what about this potential disruption which can come from a completely different way for a brand to reach out to consumers? We could be talking to devices and saying hey can I order a piece I mean Burger King had done that so famously and one had can't. So why is this one? WhatsApp for Business is here, we're doing some work on that. You could literally serve your entire product catalog on WhatsApp, you can take bookings on WhatsApp, you can collect payments through UPI too, you can do everything possible that your mobile web or app can do using any of these newer emerging technologies. What of the world of the future is very different from the world we grew up in where we talked about HTML, websites and apps. What of the world of the future is device agnostic, what do you think is the future? I mean let's do some crystal ball gazing about how product discovery and sales might happen in the future. So your primary question is expansion of this messenger basically beyond the messaging duty and maybe you can work as a transaction app. Legro China they themselves are using WeChat which is a big in China and they have entire e-commerce based on WeChat. So there is the e-catalog which is available, you can scroll the catalogs and you can actually buy the things. In India it's still not WhatsApp has started the business version but it's still not started majorly a major major commercialization software. But yes in future definitely people will come on the messenger staff and they will do more than messaging also the business transactions over it. In my case I've already started this is where the consumer in me will speak now because as a mother you have this mom communities which are very strong and when I say that it's not just to ask what's best for your child it is also could you tell me where should I buy X or could you tell me where can I give the stuff that I have and make it useful. So when it comes to shopping on WhatsApp there are major kids brands today who will take your order on WhatsApp. There's hardly I would say 10% who are not present on WhatsApp and cannot reach out to you so at least I can voice out for all the mothers today because they know that moms are pressed against time they are not going to log on to your website and then add it to your cart and then you know make them shop along so they have made life very easy they give you a phone number contact us you give us the address everything on WhatsApp and if you want to make the payment it could be cash and delivery because life is much simpler or if you still want to route it through Paytm there's just one number so life is really getting easier with WhatsApp having said that entertainment portals are also wanting to chat with you and connect with your on WhatsApp. Travel industry is wanting to connect on WhatsApp because they want you to know what's hot or what's recommended so everybody wants to be part of the platform where you are maximum scrolling and making personal conversation so the brands want to be known as an approachable brand as a friendly brand as the one who cares for you and the one who's there for you so that only comes through when you're there on WhatsApp and if your question is whether yes it will replace all of these things replace is a very strong word but it will definitely dominate and if you talk about Tata Motors we have already started using WhatsApp for business because our objective is to engage with people who are actually interested in your product so there is a huge cost of call center when you start calling everybody who fill in your lead so our focus is we have given WhatsApp for business option and we have seen 80% of people actually opted for WhatsApp for business where we can send them brochures we can book a test drive through them so WhatsApp is really helpful in reducing cost as well as engaging with right audience I'll give you another example we did very interesting campaign for CV industry for Tokyo please so as a virtue of profession truck drivers are always on move and they don't you know use a lot of internet to do searching and all but they are always present on WhatsApp so we said that you have seen a wonderful India why don't you share pictures with us and you would not imagine that we got 25 thousand pictures shared by truck drivers from different location of India so you know you have to be present in the platform which users are actually using and engaging with so definitely WhatsApp is therefore all category of business and everybody will get into it very soon great Sabya WhatsApp should start payment very soon I guess yeah yeah of course great so any questions from the audience before I sum up do we have a microphone in the audience okay there's gentleman over there this audience is very quiet Priyanka what happened I think maybe you should turn on the lights we can catch all those who are sleeping yeah please go ahead is the question to anyone in specific hello no nothing in specific so hi I am Anhe from Inusane Unilever I am a digital marketing manager there I think one piece which we are missing out in the discussion is the advent of progressive web apps because that's the hybrid we're talking about between a mobile app and a web app platform so your views on that because in Inusane Unilever we are trying to have our brands on web app progressive web apps as opposed to hardcore mobile apps so what's your view on that anyone specific want to take it okay so let me take it first and then yeah so the question was what's our view on progressive web apps and should people concentrate on making progressive web apps instead of you know proper mobile apps I totally agree that for brands like Tata Motors or any brand who would like to share relevant information when use is there progressive web app will be very helpful for us also there's another benefit in making a progressive web app I really haven't figured out why brands have not invested in it of course there's a separate cost in building a PWA which I mentioned in my opening remarks is that your search results significantly improve if you have a PWA at least in the Google ecosystem so if search is something that is extremely critical for you then making a PWA is a great idea of course it costs much more than making a normal responsive website so maybe brands have not really you know woken up to that opportunity but yes for brands like Tata Motors or any brand which does not really have that kind of dynamic content which needs background content refresh at a frequent level I think it's a great idea to invest in that but yeah I mean we have been pushing a lot of clients to move to PWA and we have been seeing traction from brand side maybe they don't understand the importance of a PWA or we have not been able to explain to them why it is important but yeah if you have the money it's a good thing to do yeah thank you any other questions right so just to summarize then I think nice thank you so much for the time but I think what we are trying to say is that the ecosystem is far larger and it won't be this versus that the web has its role maybe tomorrow whatsapp you know bots voice maybe medium will always interplay with each other and they will collaborate and they will you know cooperate and build an ecosystem our users will use apps but sometimes when I'm probably not in front of my phone I might still go to Zomato or Flipkart on a mobile browser but the ecosystem will progress and 10-15 years back we would not have thought that we would be here maybe 10 years from now we will be in a different place and we will be talking about something else killing the mobile app and the mobile web thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure thank you everyone