 All right moving ahead now we have our first panel discussion over here where we will be understanding the Indian consumer at a global level and the topic for our first panel discussion is understanding the Indian consumer a global opportunity, smartphone insights, streaming and consumption. I would now like to invite our moderator Ruchay Shukla the marketing manager India. Let's hear it for him. Welcome. Please have a seat. Thank you. Now I would like to invite our panelist on stage. We have with us Mr. Manoj Damre founder, VTO, content analytics and intelligence. Yes we have sort over here. Joining the panelist we have Mr. Gautam Raj founder and CEO Hub Hopper. Along with that we have Tony Kakkar an artist and joining the panelist we have Anitha Nayar CEO, Havas Media Group, Southeast Asia. Welcome to all the panelists. Thank you so much. Hello. Good morning everyone. We have a fantastic panel today with us to kick start with some big numbers that we've all been like hearing in the past two days and we'll keep hearing today. We'll keep hearing forever. It is the most potential market that we are in right now. It's the most interesting times that we all agree but welcome my panel on this lovely topic. My name is Ruchay Shukla. I'm the marketing manager for Outdustry India, a unique music services company based in China, Taiwan, US, UK and of last year we are in India now. So just want to quickly have a brief introduction from your side of what you guys are doing very quickly with Anitha. Ladies first as always yeah. Yeah so my name is Anitha Nayar and I look after the Indian Southeast Asian operations for Havas Media. Been in industry long 30 plus long years. Don't get into my age with those number of years. Good to be here. Good to be really checking this music forum out because there aren't too many which are happening in the country and I think there's a dire need because as I said earlier there is huge amount of talent in our country and I think we need forums like these to really really you know for them to come up. Thank you. Tony why? Hi my name is Tony Kakkar. I'm a musician. I make songs. Hit songs. That's what I'm trying. Hey guys I'm Gautam Anand. I run Hubhopper. Hubhopper is India's largest platform for podcasts. We have over a million hours of content across 15 languages and eight demand and supply side products for the podcasting ecosystem. Hi good morning to everyone. My name is Manoj. We run a company called Vision and it's into content analytics and insights. Let's call it like that. Intelligence as we say. It's based upon the fact that there is a lot of data and there is a lot of content. We just marry these together with the patented technology that we have applied for and we'll our attempt is to try and help the whole ecosystem and assist the ecosystem to understand where content flows are happening across platforms across genres across artists and help them to make the whole thing even better. Thank you guys. Let's start with the biggest biggest numbers that we have. 1.3 billion population. Almost a billion plus users on smartphone are going to be reached by 2024. Subscriptions wise we are almost at 600 million plus over the last year in 2018 but then we are going to reach 1.25 billion by 2024 again. My question to you guys and if Manoj if you can open this panel here. Are these big numbers a myth? What are these numbers that we should be realistically talking about while having the consumers in our mind? Wonderful and I think it's a lovely segue because Amarjit here in the previous session put out that squids 1500, 30 and 1. That 1 is interesting because the whole Balakadu Mantat Marathi, the DNA of the whole number system is that what is that one thing that we are interested in and when you look at how have these numbers come 1.3 billion. Everybody knows it by heart but is that 1.3 billion actually having 600 million handsets? Probably yes and why the simplest ways if there is anybody who has a smartphone over here raise their hands. Almost everybody has raised. Is there anybody who has a feature phone here raise their hands? Nobody. If somebody had raised their hand I would have gifted you a smartphone so you missed that opportunity. Oh God I didn't sorry it's out of vision. So here is the proof of the pudding you know very simply people say that we are writing about big numbers but you can see those big numbers by the naked eye when you look at these kind of numbers 50 million songs across the world and only half a million or 1 million that Amarjit was saying probably that's the number that we want to bump up and how has this number come is there is this troika in Hindu mythology they say you know B for Brahma V for Vishnu and M for Mahesh in the classic new age mythology it is B for broadband it is V for virtualization which means cloud and M for mobility when these three forces come together you will see that the numbers automatically come once there is an advent of broadband there is a huge percolation of people who are using it once there is a requirement that the mobility needs to be there I want to use it when I travel from home to office and office to home and XYZ you got it and finally what has happened is the cloud has happened you know I'm a technologist so I have to say a little bit of things on that because the cloud has happened distribution of content became easy so when this Brahma Vishnu Mahesh come together broadband virtualization and mobility you will get the perfect storm so I am for one a complete supporter of these big numbers and they are yet to happen in India in terms of usage but they are pretty much there in terms of the basic fundamentals that are on everybody has a phone everybody listens to music everybody has two ears everybody has two eyes literally what else do you want so I think the numbers are real Fantastic Manoj we have I'm never going to forget that motto what you just said it's a great hope for our the growing culture that we have Gautam very interestingly is that you realize this numbers three years back and while your hub upper was a social networking site back in the days but you could see where the podcast was heading you could see where this audio streaming was heading back then I mean what what was what was going on in your mind back then so I think and I completely agree with you because it's quite confusing on a daily basis we read a different number KPMG takes out one figure then EY takes out one figure then you see another application that's crossed a hundred million markets incredible to see so whilst circling down on an exact figure is fairly difficult there are a few undeniable facts in my opinion undeniable fact number one is that smartphone adoption is happening at an unprecedented rate unlike anywhere else in the world in history nobody can contest that the second thing is that on average people use their smartphone for entertainment this is again nothing that one could contest it's it's the truth it is exactly what's happening and the third thing the thing that I find most special which is what I saw three years ago as well is that audio is special audio is unique why is audio unique audio is unique because of two major reasons one is because of the fact that it actually addresses the opportunity cost of one's device what I mean by that is everybody has their devices with them for approximately 14 hours a day five hours of those 14 hours are spent on screen 99 percent of your applications are trying to fight for some period of that five hour window but audio has an ability to actually transcend from on-screen consumption to off-screen consumption so instead of trying to fight for the exact same bloody time that everybody is trying to fight for and changan is rising and everybody spending millions and millions of dollars audio has the ability to actually capitalize on the nine other hours that nobody's talking about actually look at that blue ocean window opportunity and give people an experience that's unique and and and that's not as sort of shark infested so that's scenario number one that it has this ability to actually look at the nine other hours in my day but the second thing is that audio is not an either or form of content it's an and form of content so even when I am on screen and I'm on those five hours of my day and I'm using WhatsApp I can still use audio it supplements other experiences when I'm driving I can still listen to audio when I'm getting ready I can still listen to audio so audio has the ability to marry different things that I was previously doing so that's what I find very unique about audio is that it's it's unlike any other medium and for us to treat it like any other creature would be a disservice to the medium that it is so that's my thought so I think that leads to my next question is like would you agree or disagree to the fact that people are mainly consuming data and content via music and more than 50% are on YouTube and consuming consuming the music in general as per music via a visual medium do you think that is is a competition for you in terms of an audio streaming or how does it go so I mean super interesting first of all I think there's constantly this conversation about VOD versus audio if you look anywhere in the world these two aren't actually opposing entities they both actually work together wherever there is video consumption as an explosion audio consumption explodes as well because it's logical if you humanize it people get used to consuming more in general so they consume more actively when they can and they consume more passively when they can and I think the fact that you brought up YouTube is an incredible I mean example why is because a majority of India I mean and the YouTube office in India actually one of the largest queries that people have from YouTube is to let people play YouTube in the background so you need to see our greed and hunger for an audio product that we're literally taking I mean it's so Indian of us we're literally taking the world's largest video platform and we're trying to use it as an audio platform so we put on a YouTube video and then put it on the side and start to listen to it we've all done it I'm a culprit as well and I wish as well man that YouTube wasn't eating as much of my battery because I want to consume it in the background fantastic I'm sure everybody in the crowd is also doing back in the back at their place but Anita from a brand side how are you seeing these numbers and how are you making sense of these numbers out of the behavioral patterns of the consumers I mean when you're pitching it to a brand and when the brand comes to you just in talking generally about music per se what are you seeing in the consumers as their behavior so typically from a brand perspective I mean what are brands doing today like they're catering to audiences right and when you look at audiences you bucket them and you then look at the passion points of those audiences and very often and this absolute music to everybody's ears is that music is one of the the huge passion points whether you pick up millennials today or whether you pick up the older generation or even you pick up teenagers as in the sub millennial guys music is music to ears for everybody and a huge passion point you know from a brand perspective we've I don't think we've done justice because we've not been able to marry what music brings to brands along you know with with the way the brand should be using music I mean the classic case about Tony singing coca cola to write yeah I mean I don't know within the given parameters maybe coke should have just lumped it up yeah I don't know why they didn't do it if if the the stuff is really you know to the core meets all the you know the rules and regulations of the brand or the brand architecture within which the brand works one could have easily lab it up and would have been writing that I don't know how many million you know views that he's got our listenership that he's got on that so I think it's the two industries to my mind while the audiences are there we're talking about passion points I think we're working in silos I think there is a huge amount of scope for specifically audio industry and I completely agree with you I think what you said Gautam is again music to the ears of radio stations because you know the audio consumption we sit in metros and we are looking at only audio consumption we're saying okay let me watch YouTube by the way I do a lot of that I play YouTube in the background you know where I listen to audio and there's a lot of audio consumption that happens in drive times also because all the FM stations are doing exceptionally well so I think there is a huge amount of scope for brands to marry those passion points with what is available in the music industry there is the music industry opportunities I think are infinite if you ask me you know India is crazy the talent in India is crazy you pick up a talent at every nook and corner of this country we should be able to marry those two and actually garner the data that we are talking about from an audience's number perspective and specifically in the audio format because it is not only the metros that we're talking about you know tier two tier three smartphones for example all hands up here none hands up in tier two tier three for example you know so there there is a huge opportunity because it's voice I mean today we are happy saying even if you look at the what we've translated we are happy to say okay Google and hello Alexa are we doing that all the time you know so I think voice has a huge amount of potential going forward and within voice is you know what we are talking about audio within audio we're talking about a lot of music we need to marry them together just to quote an example you know we at Hawass Universal Music is brothers to us and we actually created a music video called Thunder by Imagine Dragons to promote Dubai as a destination so you know there is a lot that you can do the HDFC life example where Sarutake Geo these guys have actually created an anthem with Arjun and Jyotika you know so the question here is that how do we marry the two because there is a huge amount of potential and I think we haven't hit it there really so so let's try making more sense of these numbers that you've been talking about and Tony by a question is and I understand that you all these things are very importantly tracked so what do you have to say I have a different story that I was not consuming like an ordinary child, I was learning music production those days and I was learning from somewhere from a studio sister Sonu sister Sonu and from there I took software pirated and then I started working on that software and I was going to make music for a long time I was going to make music I was going to research how I can be a better producer and most of all I don't know I don't remember there was not so much it means we watch movies and such I don't think Savan I mean these were all apps it was YouTube so at times you watch especially your your fan audience because your song is traveling in every corner so what is it it helps your artistic profile Yes, very much because this Spotify and all streaming apps because of which the song reaches very quickly and if the song has its own power then the song is reaching very easily and thankfully the most amazing thing is that if you can make a good song and it can be a hit then you don't need a promotional budget for you and if you have a viral power in your song then upload it and then it will explode Fantastic, that sounds like a story of every song Manoj, you've been a star, like a veteran in the telecom industry you've seen its shape in the last couple of years I want to bring this and touch upon this concept of the wallet share and mind share essentially where every user uses their extra bucks in a non-essential commodity I remember my days when I was like a couple of years back I would walk into a planet and crossword and I'm carrying like 100 bucks in my pocket but when I get out it's like 4 CDs in my hand so that was where my extra money was spent what is the current trend? where are the consumers spending or what are they keeping in mind while spending? Brilliant, I think Gautam talked about share of audio we take it one step higher and say share of year are your years open 24 hours and there's a very famous one-liner that was used by Nick Reed who's the CEO of Netflix and he was asked by one of the audience an investor analyst saying who's your competition? he's saying my competition is sleep when people sleep that's the only time when their eyes and ears are closed otherwise completely I'm into them either I'm into them or somebody else into them so to that extent when you look at share of voice or share of year it becomes very interesting to see a day in the life of a consumer so in the morning if you even track what I do I may not look like it but I go to the gym in the morning there is a song that I have that plays every day in the morning because the beats per minute are very high so somebody told me if this happens it will be very good and then you can run faster on the treadmill not that it has had any impact but yes that starts like that then in the afternoon I have to report back to my bosses and so on and so forth let's say that's when some cool music comes then in the afternoon at lunch then you get to see saying that what is my wife listening to or what is Gautam listening to in Delhi so if I had something like that I would start listening because discovery is not that easy like you, like Tony Kakar, like brothers it's less that they explode but there are many long tails that are very good, like Jitendra Abhishek I don't know how many people have heard about him but yeah so that's something that is really close to my heart if you try finding on Spotify you might not find it so that's that afternoon time when I want to get an input from somebody saying that Malik, this is going on you know folk is going on type what is happening, what is happening there and then evening time is when I really get to relax that car is driving and that's the time when I start discovering stuff that discovery time to me is something invaluable which I think most of the marketers should target if let us say I tell the marketers Abhi Spotify can give Spotify numbers Ghana can give Ghana numbers or a radio channel can give radio numbers let's say is there anybody who can give it across saying that listen there is Tony Kakar who is trending not only on radio but also on Spotify also on 93.5 also on 92.7 in Lucknow in Kanpur and in Rai Bareilly this kind of data which is what my company does by the way so it's a little bit of a spiel is what is needed to be made available and you know to other to just give a testament to that is when Tony told me that we want this data how will you get it? if you give it a little then you will get it so that things has to come out so who is consuming what is a Brahma Vakya Mantat Marathi saying that you have to know it and you have to know it across platforms that TV, video, audio and remember Nikrit statement my only competition is sleep that's the only time when people don't really want to put your rapid eye moments and all that and monitor but otherwise I can guarantee you once you start tracking as a marketer or a content creator or an artist or a distributor a day in the life of an audience segment that's the time when you start getting answers ke interventions kaisa honne chahiye if I am going everyday below that Mahim Gantry that Gantry should have something that I want to see if I am going everyday and you know doing my Navina on Venice Day at St. Michael's at that time the holding vahapar ane chahiye this is marketer, meaning I am preaching to the choir, mam is sitting here with decades of experience but I would urge every marketer sitting in this room every artist sitting in this room to try and map their audiences moments mentally and then play to that particular marketing speed that is what I would say and of course there is our software available thanks Manoj for the wonderful insights circling back to the payment structures and what a consumer spends obviously the roadway to our current music scene has a lot of roadblocks and to you Gautam I think you would be dealing with this everyday how are the people actually paying, the people who are actually in the mobile data how many people are actually paying for it and I know that ad supported models are right now just set like a stepping stone they are laying the foundation for the paid and the premium models to come in but how is this roadblock being tackled so just before I answer that question I think I am slight outlier in this way because sleep couldn't compete with my love for audio so I actually, I mean I am self-professed, mildly crazy I put flat speakers inside my pillow or I wore headsets where I listened to content because in one year I listened I read more books by listening to them than I had in the decades before by reading them actually so it was so valuable for me that I can't sleep without audio content so when I wear that headset it's a very unsexy thing for a new wife that I've just had but outside of that my love for it is unparalleled so I mean I think I'm glad you brought that up but you know the point that you bring up is how are you going to tackle this issue because there is a larger macro problem at play and that macro problem that's at play is the fact that we need to focus on localization and localization across monetization, localization across experience because localization doesn't just stop at the vernacular localization actually transcends that localization is actually sitting and being cognizant of the fact that your user here is a different entity altogether and your creator here is also a completely different entity and this user may pay in a model that doesn't sit well with the way things work in the west and it may not sit well with the way things work in the east India is a very unique, unique territory in that way so the way that I think that we should look at this is that India already has all the raw materials everything that is required for audio content to work in India already exists high commuting times are second highest in the world high amount of time spent at home were second highest in the world high amount of multilingual, multicultural in the cities that say in one location well nobody beats us in that being cognizant about the amount of data that we are consuming fantastic at that, low barriers of creation in audio across languages the fact that publisher generated content in audio is less capital intensive and is also not literacy intensive is incredible but the thing is we just need to sit from the perspective of the user and say listen how would this user pay maybe the sub model doesn't work as well here maybe bundling it with a telco would work here or maybe from the creator's perspective we actually sit in the life of a creator today I mean the way that Tony was mentioning the fact is that today we've almost made it impossible for a creator to be able to create it's almost like we don't want them to do it if you look at the Indian podcaster today from them to have the intent to start creating a podcast to actually getting to somebody's ear is an impossibility we need them to be technical experts they first need to know where to host what hosting is then they need to know where to record then they need to know where to edit they open this incredibly crazy tool called audacity which just looks like a spaceship after audacity then they need to figure out what an RSS is these guys aren't technical but they need to do this we expect them to do this then they have to go and take that RSS and put it in different platforms and then somehow just like Manoj sir said they have to figure out how to analyse that data and then figure out how to monetise over it so then post that point if we actually expect creators to just come in without us technologically making these barriers easy is impossible I mean essentially the biggest biggest thing that I think we should solve right now coming together and I love the fact that this event is happening is that people need to come together and figure out how the hell can we make it such that the 500 tonies that want to start creating a podcast or creating music don't have to go through this laborious five-year process of creating and then distributing because for every 5,000 tonies there's only one that is I mean fortunate enough to be actually exploding in the way that you are which is a travesty because the greed is for Indian content so I mean that I think you've just led me to the next question to I mean let's listen from the main man himself Tony why what is the sound of the millennial like I mean I feel since always it has been the same the core the soul is the same and whenever the catchy songs used to be the same as the catchy ones I feel its sound has changed you see the songs that go on these days I think that production gets better and then the soul that should be intact the song should be technically it shouldn't be that's why the songs don't work I feel that if we are our Indian soul like the music that we listen to in our genes that we enjoy that our parents like we are leaving that to be made so if we leave that to be made the song the composition as we are Indians keep on producing I feel that should be fantastic I love that what you said I think we have just couple of minutes left last 3 minutes Anita just want to bring back in terms of brands we've talked about numbers we've talked about the trends how can a brand leverage the content and how can they actually reach the right target audience you give an example of Kokola technically Kokola should have jumped on the track right from day 1 but maybe it was a missed opportunity what do you have to say loads of such opportunities missed actually speaking and the reason that I see is that I think as an industry we work in silos Tony is going and creating his own song which is doing the charts Neha is doing something but I don't think and it's I think the first thing should come from brands to try and leverage that is existing in the marketplace I don't think brands are really opening their minds as much to leverage the opportunity that is lying in the marketplace you've got content here you've got data there all you have to do is marry that and you can just create wonders it's a question of creating something and force fitting or it's also a question of actually seeing what you want and then creating it for example when you were mentioning that there is so much that one needs to do right a day in the journey I mean it's as simple as trying to figure out what is it that your consumer likes right and if you know what your consumer likes or what is it that ticks the consumer then you would do that now what ticks you in the morning to increase your speed on the treadmill vis-a-vis what ticks you in the evening with a drink in your hand are two very different things and I think we are just not able to make good use of that so to my mind I think there's a lot of synergy that is required for the two industries and since this is a music forum specifically talking about music I think there is a lot that can can be done and that will break the charts like his songs do for me soul of the music as you said rightfully said I don't understand the details and the rags and whatever but to me music is what touches here what gives me goosebumps and which brings tears to my eyes you know that is what soulful music is all about and that is what if you're going to do to your consumers as a brand you've had it I mean you've made it you know your conversions will be there loyalties will be there trust will be there and that connect and engagement from your heart with the brand will be there so I think there's a lot needed to be done in that area for sure yeah we'll come to the question system I think very importantly here we are all from like a different variety of streams here and it's very important to kind of collaborate and have that synergy as you rightly say ma'am so I guess that's the future and just talking about tapping on the future of the consumers I want to each one of you to answer just in a simple liner what are you most excited about I think 5G is going to roll in the couple of months or years more and more visual content and audio content is being going to be groomed in the most innovative way with AI doing its thing with the 360 degree viewing coming in what are you most excited about for the Indian consumers you know from the availability of data and content like what we have heard I think we have done very well so far by monetizing consumption so kithna deti hai you know that's the question kithna hoe million hits Tony why you know that's the quantified question I am proposing that we should monetize fandom kya aapke kithne fans hai and it's not just likes it's about what is the total duration of songs that were played under Tony's banner let's say is it in million minutes or zillion minutes so that gives engagement and therefore if your songs are going to be soulful or if your content is going to be soulful automatically it will be registered in the mind of the consumer on hearing it let's say so it is not the number of plays of course it's a great metric and important metric it's like GDP right everyone wants GDP but nobody knows the next step of GDP so therefore I would say let's move from monetization of consumption which we have done well because thousands of metrics are there to monetization of fandom ek bandhe ne kithne paar gana suna udh daala tha 95,468 minutes or something like that I can give you that data every day and once you know that you will automatically find a way saying that wow at that 5000 minute kind of barrier you hit the records that is your escape velocity so I would say go from consumption to fandom and that's the monetization sequel so I think what excites me most is the ending of isolation and the ending of isolation in three fronts let's take from first looking at the terminology itself and I'm obviously going to speak from my perspective I want the word podcast and I'm saying this in a public forum I wanted to die a horrific horrific death because it is such isolating misleading nomenclature nobody associates podcast with Premchandh ke kahaani nobody associates podcast with Kabir ke dohe or with you know the gransa hai or the Quran or the Bhagavad Gita that their grandparents used to listen to once that ends that's something that I'm super excited about because that stops the isolation that currently exists that people believe that only like mastery lessons by Robin Sharma is what a podcast is so that's isolation on one front on terminology second is isolation of user here is where I see the biggest irony there's a dichotomy that exists you're taking a medium that is inherently not discriminatory on language not discriminatory on literacy it's a digit into a product that requires people to be literate and requires people to no particular language it's the biggest irony ever so the way that mam said that we need to start you know viewing disseminating this content to people in a way that they can actually consume it something I'm super excited about that's isolation number two and the third and the most important one is opening the door for the creator and I will I mean work till my bone to make sure that you know a creator can come to a platform and this is what we do a creator can come to a platform not worry about hosting they can host they can create multiple pieces of content music or non music they can submit that to multiple platforms in one second they'll be in Ola in one second they'll be in Alexa they'll be in Samsung they shouldn't need to worry about that and then they'll get analytics and figure out monetization from one platform that's the third isolation that I want to end that's it so that's what I'm excited about good term podcast very carefully and so thanks for the info Tony Bhai what are you excited about the new age consumers new fans I'm really happy that everything is now monetized like music is monetized in a better way and I would say as a musician if more people monetize their music and if that money comes directly then better music will be musicians will be brave musicians will be more now the whole story is upside down no one knows where the money is generated where it comes from it comes too, it doesn't come how much money Tony Gakkar has made he will never know and when he will he will die he will make 200 crore rupees and maybe Tony Gakkar won't get 2 crore so what I mean to say if more people become transparent then better musicians will come out their music will be released maybe I'm lucky or all the people working in the industry all the people who are lucky they have come to know how things can be brought forward how they can be released now it becomes very difficult to release a song, I released Manak Oka Gola my setup is not good so I can't release another song because I don't have money to make a video because people are expecting that he will shoot in L.A he will come down from big cars it won't be possible for this my first song should be monetized and then there is so much money in music that everything can be done but people don't know there is a big mystery I can talk in detail as much as I can so thank you I'm super excited about everything that these three are excited about to cut the long story short but I think it's very important for us to make those connections in the right context with the right content I would just sum it up by saying this and that takes care of from a context perspective your money is your monetization from a content perspective so those connections are your home so that's my two bits on this fantastic do we have time for a couple of questions one or two questions I think we can take one question