 Now if we are moving ahead to a very interesting fireside chat and the topic would be the growing importance of news publishers as the era of third-party cookies comes to an end. And please allow me to introduce you to Mr. Puneet Jain, CEO for Digital Business, HT Media Group, who comes with a unique combination of building large businesses from scratch as well as advising large corporations in their journey to scale up. Extremely focused on execution and firmly believes that it's the implementation that makes any good idea a great success. And also I would like to introduce you to now our session chair, Ms. Nazia Alvi Rahman, Editor for Exchange for Media to join us for this quick fireside chat with Mr. Puneet Jain. Hey, hi Nazia. Hi. So we have already started, we are already running behind schedule. So first of all, welcome Puneet and thanks for doing this. And I'll straight away jump to the question so that I can have maximum out of this session from you. So the first question is of course about your journey. We've been tracking HT Media's progress in last few years and it's been an exciting journey. We have seen HT grow from a print giant, one of India's leading consumer internet houses. So while we all see your outcome, if you can take us through the journey, if you can tell us how it has been and what have been the key drivers for your growth. Sure. I think firstly, thanks Nazia for having me here. It's a pleasure to be part of this forum and to talk to you and your esteemed audiences. I think I feel fortunate. So you said right, I think last couple of years have been phenomenal for HT Digital, the kind of growth we have seen and we have come in India as some of the largest digital destination in the country that's outstanding and I feel fortunate to be part of this journey. If I were to break this progress into three dimensions and that's how we typically benchmark ourselves on how we are growing, it is reach, engagement and audience. With respect to reach, I think we scale from some 70 odd million to 190 million users over the last two to two and a half years, among the fastest growing players in the country in this period. And I think it came on back off quite a few, let's say, interventions. I think first and foremost, and I heard this from I think one of the panelists in the previous session, I think it's the realization of going a digital first approach. I think firstly, I think the importance and the leadership mandate towards building our digital first business. I mean, as soon as that sort of came in and we built out the relevant team to drive that progress, I think what has it helped us to scale from some, we had about three platforms a few years back. Now at this point, we have 20 plus consumer platforms across genres, news and non-news, which helps us to let's say push out credible news and engaging content day after day. I think what has further helped us is we have been able to let's say identify content niches that was typically underserved like health, tech, auto, food, and built engaging content formats to leverage the current consumer preferences for long type, from long form content, short form content, visuals, videos, flip like news pieces. And lastly, I think building out the hyper-personalized recommendations on our Web and App platform. I mean, again, I'll just spend a few seconds on this hyper-personalization. I think over the last couple of years, we have significantly invested in our product and tech stack. And last year, we built our own AI tech stack, which probably makes us among the few publishers in the country right now to have its own in-house AI stack, which has helped us significantly personalize the content feed of every user. And as we let's say further improve our ability to collect and leverage data, this personalization will keep getting better and better by adding on to the engagement part. I think we're also very bullish on the vernacular content. So over the last few years, we built out our Hindi and Bangla play and gained leadership in these segments. I think soon you will see us launching a few more languages and getting deep into the vernacular space. In fact, this last week, we launched our Telugu platform. Lastly, I think in terms of audience, I think, I mean, in terms of enabling our advertisers to reach their audiences, we are announcing our customer data platform abilities and learning from experiments every day and investing heavily on data and tech to scale up our first-party capabilities massively. Thanks, Puneet. You just mentioned that how your focus is on developing your tech and first-party data abilities. So given that news is one of the biggest categories accessed on the internet, do you think publisher partnerships are now even more important for brands as we all know that third-party companies are coming to an end? And so are the news publishers prepared with alternatives for the eventual demise of third-party companies? So I think first and foremost, I think all of us realize this and all of us are very well aware that it's a very large event. I mean, the digital advertising space, which is probably as old as 20 years and more, globally and in India, has been cookie, has been an integral part of user targeting and digital ad. And one of the key reasons for, let's say, the overall, why is it able to deliver and the growth it has seen. So one, it's a very large change for everyone involved in the value chain in the ecosystem from brands on one side to publishers like us on the other side. It is a very, very large change. And all of us would need to figure our own ways of, let's say, dealing with it and capitalize on it. I think the good part is sufficient time is being given to do this transition. So it's not an overnight transition and it allows people to plan their strategies in post-cookie word. I think as a publisher, as a steve, we almost feel like it's sort of our second chance and a chance for redeem ourselves. I think the digital boom came so fast that probably some of us and several of us sort of wasn't well prepared. But I think this time around, it's almost like a chance for how interest targeting will be done in future. And as published as opportunity for us to know our consumers better and offer those insights to advertiser without probably any third party in between. So I think why it's a very large opportunity. And I feel that all of us are getting there in working towards it. I think especially, I think, and one part of the question was why publishers are, let's say, well placed. I think firstly, it's a scale. I mean, together, we publishers attract about 500 million users every month on our news content that's as big as social media or any other digital destination out there in the country. Even in ST alone, we boast of 200 million users coming to our platform. So what I think we have been doing at ST is leverage our scale and increase our identified user base. So being able to identify our users, then subsequently driving the user registration and then moving them up in the overall journey of having knowing them better. And parallelly, we are building and optimizing our customer data platform so that we are able to capture all the content they are viewing, the topics they tend to be interested in their response to various marketing campaigns. So if you see that there's a tremendous amount of data that is getting generated on our sites. And with our scale, if we have the right tech and product stack, the opportunity is huge. So I think what we have done is on tech and tech and product side of things, we have advanced our contextual and behavioral data collection and insights capabilities. And through best in class segmentation and courting, we are able to offer and leverage these and target them for the benefit of advertisers. So are you saying that this move will give rise to contextual advertising based on the content that a user is looking for? So look, so I think firstly, I think overall first party data would become the new new backbone of digital advertising post this post cookie sunset world we get in. So while let's say there will be multiple solutions people will take. For example, there are solutions being built by the key networks as well. So all of us would look to leverage that as well, especially on the client side solutions. But I think publishers who have capability of building their own first party data and their insights, they will be at a comparative advantage. Sorry, so if you can, because that is actually my last question. So I wanted to understand what kind of solutions are publishers creating from the first party data on their platforms? So I think two parts to this. I think one is there will be let's say we are keen on exploring audience targeting through PPIDs. So publisher provider identifier at scale and working closely with advertisers to integrate our first party data with advertisers first party data enabling advertisers to leverage their first party data and integrate into our campus. So essentially one of the biggest breakthrough I think that possibly would happen is how do we combine first party data of publishers with that of a advertiser like that's I think one key progress we are making working towards it. For example, we are looking to integrate our SDKs with a native platform for targeting. For example, so that if a consumer moves, jumps from advertiser to our platform, the user journeys are sort of seeing them. They are in disjointed. So that's one of the solutions. Other of course is I think let's say if we are common, so we could use common user identifier either through direct integrations or via third party ID consortiums like so that that does not depend on a third party cookie. So that could be other alternate. Lastly, I feel contextual etc will play a very key role. So our ability to offer audience-based performance campaigns, control the frequency and positioning of ads on users on various site interactive data points. All these factors which we'll be able to offer as a publisher will go a long way in ensuring the seamless transition as well as the rightful place for publishers like us in the post cookie world. I was reading about this entire thing before our session and I came across this report that publishers could lose up to tell $10 billion in ad revenue when third party cookies are disabled. And as per Google's own research, most publishers could lose 50 to 70% of their revenue if they don't reconfigure their approach. So what would be your last word on this because we have to close the session now? Yeah, I think my last word would be one every challenge is an opportunity and this is an opportunity especially for players at scale like us. And I imagine with the kind of content we offer, content has the chance of becoming a new digital advertising currency in the cookie world. So and that's where publishers have an advantage. So how do we leverage the strong ability of offering let's say unique user segments and a heavily contextual user have a contextual environment to showcase brands and products, right? That's something only as publishers we can do. So if we can get that act right, I think this is a this is clearly a sort of homecoming I would say for publishers. And lastly, I'll just add I think while I think bulk or discussion was around leveraging first party data for let's say improving audience targeting for advertisement, I think not only first party will help towards that but also in personalization of content and UI, UX and engagement. So I think will be soon this will also help as deliver a best thing like user experience where every user journey will be personalized. So being able to build infinite user journeys with every every every part or every pixel of of our sites will be personalized. That's the sort of future we are looking at. Thank you, Puneet. Thank you so much for doing this. And you know, from what I have understood is that going forward for most of these digital publishers, the first party data and the content will will start to play the role of new digital currency. So did I get it right, right? Yeah, at least I think of I'm sure everybody will have their own perspective. Thank you, Mr. Jain for joining us. We wish to have you again for a much longer session this time we were totally pressed for time and we're already late. So thanks again and I will see you in the next video.