 Well, ladies and gentlemen, the evening is just getting started at the pitch CMO Summit virtual edition 3.0. My name is Babawali and next up is the leader who needs no introduction. He's an astute marketer and a best-selling author. He has played a key role in the launch and nurturing of many iconic brands of the Tata Group, such as Titan, Fast Rack, Tanishk and Tata Tee. He has also played a key role in successful turn rounds of the jewelry business and in the milestone acquisition of Techly. It gives me great privilege and I mean it when I say great privilege and honor to welcome Mr. Harish Bhatt, brand custodian Tata Group to talk about future-proofing brands to narrate examples of these with stories drawn from his new book, hashtag Tata Stories. Mr. Bhatt, a warm welcome. Thank you Vaibhav. Thank you for those warm words of welcome. It's such a pleasure to speak at the pitch CMO Summit. Thank you for inviting. I actually want to say something on a side note when I was going through your brand custodian and I'm like I've never heard of a title called brand custodian and then when I read the company's name, I'm like of course, now India as a country has borrowed DHR laws from you, we have borrowed your airline, there are so many things and I'm sure soon brand custodian as a title will also be borrowed soon. No, that's very true Vaibhav and hi Navel, nice to meet you as well. Good evening Mr. Bhatt, good to see you and really looking forward to the session. As Vaibhav has already mentioned, it is an honor, pleasure to welcome you, have you on board and I can't wait for you to start and Simran told me we roughly have 45 minutes and I told her, I said that 45 minutes, like you have 40 chapters, 45 minutes will be one chapter of a discussion. So I'll try my best to make it as engaging as possible but going back and thank you Navel for hosting me on your platform. What I want to tell you Vaibhav is why am I called a brand custodian, one of the things I want all of you who are listening up to this session to know, just think to yourself how many years of age, how many years young do you think the Tata brand is, you must have interacted with some part of the Tata group or the other, either with Tata Salt or Tata Tea or Fast Track Watches or Titan Variables or Tanish Jewelry, you must have and just imagine, think to yourself, how many years do you think the Tata brand is today, the Tata brand this year turns 153 years of age and if you sit back and ask yourself, are there many brands I know which are more than 150 years, you count very few on your fingertips and if you then ask yourself, do I know of 150 year old brands which are growing from strength to strength, even after 150 years, you would have even fewer brands that you can count across the world. So the story of the Tata brand is an astonishing story, okay, today the Tata group is a hundred billion dollar enterprise with a market cap exceeding $300 billion, it is the only Indian origin brand amongst the top 100 brands in the world and it's present in 150 countries and I'm so, so proud that this brand has originated in our country, India. And this is the story of that brand, it's a story of which all of you, whether you're working in a startup, whether you're like a brand which presented just now, a beautiful presentation or whether you're working in an MNC or whether you're a freelance marketer, it's a brand you can be truly proud of because I think it belongs to every Indian. The question which was asked of me is, how do you build a brand which is sustainable and what explains the fact that the Tata brand has lived on for 150 years and is growing from strength to strength. So let me try to explain that in the next 20 minutes, 25 minutes before we go on to a dialogue, before Navad and I have a conversation. You know, recently I wrote this book, Tata Stories and this book has got 40 stories from the Tata group. They're all real life stories which explain why the Tata brand has lived on for so long. So I'm going to use the 20 minutes given to me to just narrate three or four of these stories and that will highlight you. You know, like the speaker before me said, stories and jingles are what Indian marketing is all about. So please sit back, have a cup of tea or coffee and listen to these three or four stories that I'm going to narrate to you. Let me start with the first story I've narrated in this book. And there's a reason that I'm showing you this house. You may not be able to guess where this house is. It's in a small town called Navsari in Gujarat. And this is the place where the founder of the Tata group was born, Jamsheji Tata. His father and he shifted to Mumbai at the age of 13. He joined his father's merchant firm. And then in 1868, he founded his own firm which is the company that you today know as the parent company of the Tata group, Tata Sans. A few years later, he founded the very first Tata company that India has known. It was called Empress Mills and it was located in Nagpur where it was a textile weaving mill. Now, this is a photograph way back, you know, 1870s, 1880s. So it's way back many, many years before 143rd, 20, 130 years prior to where we are today. This mill quickly became one of India's most profitable enterprises. And the Empress Mills, it was located in Nagpur. And why didn't it become profitable? One because he paid utmost attention to the quality of cotton and textiles coming out of this mill. He used only long stapled cotton and he ensured that the weaving was done to very high quality. And second, it was very profitable because he also introduced innovative manufacturing methods like the ring spindle which you see on top of this photograph here had not even been used in many mills in the UK before Jamshiji Tata introduced it in India. And I think within a few years, it paid back its shareholders 20 times of their capital and it was recognized as one of the most profitable industrial enterprises in the country at that time. But that is not the reason why I'm narrating this story to you. Jamshiji Tata did something else at Empress Mills which all the fuzzest marketers and as brand builders should hear. You look at the women in these photographs. The women in these photographs like employees in many factories in India are semi-educated or uneducated. But here in 1887, imagine in 1887 for these employees, he introduced India's first ever pension fund. Today you talk of pension, but India's first ever pension fund was born in this mill that you see in front of you. In 1895, he established an accident compensation scheme for these workers, again a pioneering initiative in India. And then in 1901, he established something which all of us take for granted today. For the first time ever in our country, he launched a prominent fund for these employees. So imagine in this mill was created the concept of a prominent fund for a first time in India, a pension fund and accident compensation scheme. In the early years of this mill, more than a hundred years back, he had creches for the children of working women. What you see here is a picture from our archives of a creche more than a hundred years back in Empress Mills for the children of working women. Look at the child at one corner saluting the people looking at her. Even today, there are many enterprises which don't have creches for the children. And he was asked, why do you spend money on all these things? After all, welfare costs money to do. And his answer was given in a speech in 1895, which I've got the original draft off. And he says, you know, we started our business on sound and straightforward business principles, considering the interests of our shareholders are owned and the health and welfare of our employees, the sure foundation of our prosperity. So look at what he says here. He says, as a business, we have to prosper, we have to grow, we have to become profitable. The interests of our shareholders are our own. But the interests of our employees, the health and welfare of our employees is the foundation on which we will build our prosperity. And he did that not only at Empress Mills, but at every single location. Do you know that when he constructed Tata Steel in Jamshutpur, he asked his senior leaders and his sons to make sure that it was a town with wide roads, with gardens, with temples and churches and mosques for people to worship, with sports grounds. And then his sons and he, you know, this commitment to employees in the community resulted in his sons and he taking a large part of the share equity of Tata sons, our parent company, and gifting it to Tata Charitable Trust. So a large part of their wealth was gifted to the Tata Charitable Trust. Until today, 66% of the equity share capital of the Tata sons, the parent company, is held by this Tata Charitable Trust. And what have they done with this money? They've established the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, hometown to many of you, established the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, the Tata Memorial Hospital, which is India's first cancer hospital, actually Asia's first cancer hospital in Mumbai, the Tata Medical Center in Kolkata, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, a host of institutions of which we are very proud in India. They've used this money to fund health care, education, which happens every single day, even today, that Tata Trust do it. And last year when COVID-19 came upon us, unwelcome, but it broke into our lives, the Tata Group, including the Tata Trust, committed 1,500 crores to the fight against COVID-19 in our country because we believe that was the most important challenge our country was facing. The reason I've described the story for you is because it illustrates one important principle of a sustainable brand. The principle that if you have to be a brand that sustains and lives on for decades and centuries, you have to live in harmony with your community and you have to give back to your community. It may not happen in the time a startup is founded. At the time a startup is founded, very clearly you'll have to establish the business viability of your business. But as you go along, as you make some money, we have to remember that giving back to the community is at the core of the Tata brand. And that's one of the reasons why people across India, 700 million consumers, consume Tata products today. And one of the reasons they trust the Tata brand is because over 150 years, Indians have seen this brand and this organization giving back to the community time and again, time and again, time and again. So I was very proud as brand custodian of Tata Suns as well as an employee of the Tata Group last year, March 2020, when Mr Ratan Tata and Mr Chandrasekhar announced that they would be committing 1,500 crores to the fight against COVID-19. And that's been spent on PPE equipment. It's been spent on creating hospitals, on creating more than 2,000 hospital beds. Do you know that more than 2,000 hotel beds in the Taj Group of hotels were converted into beds with oxygen cylinders so that patients could use them when there was no hospital capacity? So the first point I want to make about the Tata brand to you, to all of us listening this presentation, is the community is center stage for the Tata brand. And it has remained like that for 150 years since the days of the Empress Mills. And that's one of the reasons that the brand has sustained and grown for 150 years. But I want to come to a second reason very quickly. The second reason is that, and let me illustrate that through a story. The gentleman you see here in front of you was the chairman of the Tata Group for 50 years, his name is JRD Tata. He was India's pilot number one. He had pilot's license number one. He was a very avid pilot, but he was also chairman of this large industrial group. And he actually founded India's first airline, Tata Airlines. Tata Airlines was later nationalized by the government. It became Air India, what you see in front of you. And he continued to be chairman of Air India. Now he was so particular about quality that if he found the tea or coffee served on the aircraft a little bit out of quality, he would in fact write a note to the general manager of the airline saying the tea served on board from Geneva in this aircraft is without exaggeration, indistinguishable in color from coffee. I suggest the station manager immediately look into the matter. I don't know whether the black color of the tea is due to the quality of tea leaves used or due to excessive brewing. He was very, very particular on excellence of quality. And there's another story. Once when he was traveling on an aircraft for about half an hour to 45 minutes, maybe an hour, he was missing from his seat. And the gentleman next to him was a very senior IA's officer, LK Jah, asked him when he came back, where were you Mr. Tata, where did you go missing? And this Tata said I was walking around the aircraft just to see that everything was fine. So Mr. Jah asked him that could not take you an hour, hour and a quarter. So this Tata said, you know, I walked into one of the loos, one of the bathrooms and the toilet paper was not placed properly. And what had happened was astonishing. This gentleman who was the chairman of Tata Airlines and chairman of the Tata Group had got to every loo on the aircraft to place the toilet paper back carefully and in the right in the right way that it should be placed. That commitment to excellence in product and service, I think is another reason why the Tata brand has sustained. Why do 700 million homes buy Tata Salt today? One in two homes in India have Tata Salt. Why do so many consumers buy Tanish Jewelry or Titan watches or Fast Track accessories or Voltage air conditioners or the Nexon EV from Tata Motors? A host of, you know, there are about 16 different market segments in India where the Tata brand is a market leader. And that happens, ladies and gentlemen, because there is an inherent trust in customers' minds that the quality of product and service that we offer will be up to the mark and will be given to customers at a fair price. Now, this is an old fashioned but timeless virtue that a brand should have. When your brand is providing product and service to the customer, does it have excellence in quality and is it offered to the customer at fair prices? This is what sustains a brand over a long period of time. And I think that Tata Group and the Tata brand is committed to doing that every single year, every single month across all our product categories. I'm not saying that 100% of the time we are successful. There may be occasional instances where we have to improve. I admit that, but overall, I think that's the commitment that Tata Group has and we relentlessly do that across every company of the group. So the second pillar, the first pillar of the Tata brand that I spoke about was community being at the center. The second pillar is actually excellence of products and services. And this story of JRD Tata and Arindya illustrates his commitment. And it is this commitment, do you know that in 1968, as per a survey done by the Daily Mail of London, because of such meticulous attention to detail, Arindya topped the list of airlines in the world for quality. And actually, when Singapore was deciding to start its airline, the Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, asked his people to study how Arindya could keep such meticulous standards. In fact, it is said that at that time, people in Geneva could set their watch by the time the Arindya flight arrived there. So that commitment to excellence has to become part of all our brands, if our brands have to be sustainable over a long period of time. But there's a third reason why the Tata brand has sustained over so many years. And that is the pioneering spirit of the brand. I think over the years, I've studied the history of the Tata group and the Tata brand. And yet truly, I think we listen to our customers and we look at the trends that are going to come onto the market and what we need to do for the nation and for the customer going forward. In the early 1900s, the Tata group established Tata Steel because Jamshenji Tata thought that steel was very important to a country which needed bridges and roads and dams and we could not import all the steel from outside. Within a few years, by the 1930s, the Tata had established Tata Airlines. By the 1950s, we had established Tata Motors or Telco, which now produces all the Tata Motors cars and the trucks that you see everywhere in the rooms. But by the 1960s, we had established Tata Conservancy Services, which is the country's largest IT services firm today. And it's growing from strength to strength. Then in the 1980s, we established consumer brands like Tata Tea and Tata Salt, which are extremely popular today as consumers were shifting to branded products. By the 1990s, we established Titan watches and brought in a completely new flavour of watches into the country. And here is one more story. By the late 1990s, India did not have a car of its own. And the only cars which were on the road were the old Ambassador in the Fiat as well as the Maruti, which was designed in Japan and assembled in Gurgaon. And of course, the Hyundai, which was designed in Korea and assembled near Chennai in Sri Paramburu. So, Mr Ratan Tata, who by then was the chairman of the Tata Group, said, why can't Indian companies get together and make our own car, which is suitable for Indian families to travel in? A car which has the size of an ambassador, a car which has the fuel efficiency of a Maruti Suzuki, and a car which has the styling of a Zen. People were skeptical that India could even make its own car at that time. And I'm talking now of 20 years ago. People said cars require too much technology. And the reason that Mr Tata wanted India to make its own car is that the automobile industry generates a lot of employment. It creates a lot of ancillary industries and sets the standard of engineering excellence in the country. So, while everyone else was skeptical, he said, no, we will go ahead and do it. He personally led the voyage of making India's own car, including being on the shop floor for several hours to look at the manufacture of the car. And this was the birth of the Tata Indika, the first Tata Indika which came out by 1998-99 on the roads of India. At that time, the styling of this car was spectacular, the first time ever that India had seen a car of this nature. To do this, he had to do several things. He had to get design engineers at Tata Motors Engineering Research Centre, to design this car along with the idea of tutoring. He had to get ancillary manufacturers to make every single part, virtually every single part that went into this car had to be made in India. He had to put up a factory in Pune. And it was very expensive to put up a car factory in those days, a couple of billion dollars at least. So, he and his leadership team went around the world. They found a disused Nissan plant in Australia. Big by big, they disassembled the plant and brought it to India. And they established the Tata Indika car plant at Pune. The first car took eight days to assemble. Today, if you go to Tata Motors Pune, every 56 seconds, there is a car coming off the assembly lines there. You know, many people have and initially, there were quality issues with the car. But Mr. Tata led from the front again and fixed each of those issues. And Indika V2 was born and went on to become the fastest selling car on the roads of India. Why? Because Mr. Tata felt the car and the automobile market in India is likely to expand dramatically and India needs its own car if this market has to expand because it has to be suitable for Indian families to travel in. The reason I'm mentioning this is whether it's Tata Steel in the 1900s, Tata Airlines in the 1930s, Tata Trucks in the 1950s, Tata Consultancy Services in the 1960s, Tata Salt and Tata Tea in the 1980s, Tata Indika in the 1990s or Tanish Jewelry in the 2000s. Or now, of course, the digital ventures which the Tata Group is launching for the future, each of these or you take brands like Chroma or Westside that we launched when organized retail was coming of age in India and they are today amongst the leaders in their respective segments. The Tata Group has been a pioneering enterprise which has always kept its eye on the future and looked at what customers in India need for the future and that has been the backbone on which the group has evolved. So I talked about Empress Mills, the textile mill. We no longer have textile mills in the Tata Group but we have a number of future-facing industries which are serving the customers of today and tomorrow. So that pioneering nature of the Tata Group is the third pillar which has made us sustainable. So the group keeps evolving and changing. The brand keeps evolving and changing and going into new areas, I think decade after decade. Whereas the values of community centricity and the values of excellence of products and services remains absolutely the same. It's fascinating to read the story of how India's first own car was created and I have narrated that story in my book but it's not just India's first own car. The slimmest watch in the universe was created by a company of the Tata Group. Do you know that the Titan Edge is just 3.3 millimeters thin, weighs less than 14 grams and when the Swiss refused to cooperate, Swiss think of themselves as the finest watch country in the world. Titan said our engineers and technologists will make this and I've narrated that story as well in the book of how Mr. Bijid Varkanath under the guidance of Xerxes Desai, the MD of Titan went about and created this watch and it's of course one of those iconic products which marks out Titan today and it's a favorite of Indian customers but from scratch, this was created by Indian engineers and technologists and it has stood the ground as the slimmest watch in the universe. In fact, just two years back, Titan launched also the slimmest ceramic watch in the universe. So this pioneer instinct of the Tata Group is also very important. So as I come to the end of my presentation, I want to just talk about three simple ideas why the Tata brand has lived on for 150 years and maybe there are some lessons here for each of you to look at as you look at building your own brand. The first idea of the Tata brand is the community is the purpose of our existence. The why of the brand is clear. Why we exist is not just to make our products and services. It is to put that money back into the community and the Tata charitable trust which own our parent company 66% of it, do that time in and time again. Year after year and so do our companies. So that is core to the idea and we should think of why our brands exist because if the why is clear to us then everything else falls into place. The second is excellence in any task however large or small. This is the JRD Tata talking of one must forever strive for excellence or even perfection in any task large or small and we try our best to do it or for every single Tata product or service that you guys would buy or you guys would consider purchase. That excellence is the second pillar of the Tata brand and the third pillar of the Tata brand is we always ask ourselves the question that Mr. Ratun Tata is asking on the slide can we do something that has never been done before and can we serve the customers of tomorrow by planning for those industries starting today. So that's about future proofing brands. Future proofing brands is about living in harmony with the society, about excellence of your products and services and about constantly evolving to serve the customer of tomorrow. With those few words I want to invite you to read Tata stories. It's available on Amazon and Flipkart and various websites. It has 40 stories of how the Tata brand has been built. Some very exciting and interesting stories for all of you who are brand builders here today. The book is a national bestseller but more important than that I think these are 40 remarkable stories which can inspire you and provoke you and think of doing much more with our own lives. I have cried while writing some of these stories and I've smiled while writing some of these stories and I'm sure you will feel that emotion pulsing in you as well as you read this because Tata truly is a brand that belongs to our entire country and each of you can pick up a lesson or two at least from these 40 stories. With those few words Naval I'm going to stop my presentation. I've run out of time if I could narrate these 40 stories it would take a couple of days and I'm going to hand over the session. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Bhatt. It's a cliche but I'll repeat it again. It's been a pleasure. It's been an honor sitting here watching you talk and listening to all these amazing stories. In fact, while you were talking especially about the Air India story something came to my mind many years back. I read the famous biography of JRD Tata written by RM Lala and it narrates the story about how Mr. Tata himself flew before the airline was started and as you mentioned he was the first pilot he was the first person in India who got a pilot license. He himself flew the plane from Bombay to Karachi and back and that time planes were not equipped enough to fly in the night. So he actually made a stop in Gujarat somewhere and they stayed there for the night and then he restarted the journey in the morning. It's a fascinating book to read for those of you who might not have picked it up about the passion the man had about the sort of obsession he had with serving the customer obsession with quality. I still remember and I also remember this incident from the book where he went into the toilets and figured out where the and cutlery. He used to be such an obsessive person about cutlery of Air India. That's right. Absolutely right. So shall I stop sharing this novel and get into our conversations? So I'm going to stop sharing the slide and yes, that is true. I think obsession is important because obsession with quality is what sets our companies apart. Any company, I'm not talking only of the Tata Group. Any company which grows over a long period of time obsession with quality is so critical and that's a key message from J.R.D. Tata stories. Yeah, absolutely. Yes and what gave you the obsession to write this book with the kind of portfolio of work that you handle? This is a more than a handful, researching so much and going into the background and having read that. What gave you the idea of writing this book? So it's very interesting novel. I wrote this book during the pandemic and by March 2020, the world had closed around us and I was working out the form. I continue to work out the form most of these days. Sometimes I come into office but if you remember last March, April, May, June, it was not such a positive period for many of us. There was a little bit of desolation. We did not know which direction we are going in. There were lockdowns across the country and generally the mood was low across many, many segments of Indian society. There were some jobs being lost. Incomes had come down. So I said, you know, at this time, the best thing that someone like me who likes writing can do is to write positive inspiring stories which can lift our mood. And I said, I've been working with the Tata Group for 34 years now. What is a better place to find these stories than from the Tata Group? So I wrote a couple of stories now. Well, I remember the first story I wrote was about Lady Mehrabai Tata. I don't have time today to narrate the story but everyone can read it in this book, hashtag Tata Stories. And I said, let me write these stories and put it on LinkedIn. And let me see if it helps inspire people. And, you know, as I put up two or three of these stories on LinkedIn, I saw that the reader response was fabulous. The reader response, people said, these are stories which are inspiring us. People said, I, you know, a couple of people wrote to me, a couple of young women professionals wrote to me and said, I read out these stories to my children at bedtime because they feel very good and they feel very positive. Some people said it's prompting me to do much more with my own life when I read about inspirational figures like this. So I was encouraged to write more and more and eventually when I had written about 20, 30, 40 stories, it took the shape of a book by itself and Penguin decided to publish it as a book which I'm very happy about because writing is a key passion with me. But the core reason I wrote these is to put these inspiring stories down. And, you know, stories have to be documented. We are a nation of storytellers but we don't have enough stories about Indian brands and about Indian companies. If stories don't get documented, they will get lost in the next generation. It is because the Ramayana and Mahabharat and Bible are documented that we remember them after so many centuries today. And that's also a reason that I documented these stories. And the good thing about this book now is that every story can be read within six minutes because I think our attention spans are a little short today. So I made sure that every story can be read within six minutes and then you can decide in whatever order you want to read all of it. Very rightly said, especially about documenting India's business history. Again, we'll go back to J. R. E. Tata's biography where he talks about as a child when he came back from France and joined the Cathedral School in Bombay and they would teach British history and his question would again and again come up about what about Indian history? Why not Aurangzeb? And he'd be told to shut up. So I think documenting Indian history, documenting historical facts about what's happened in this country adds immense value to the end which is the life of people who are sort of reading it. And not only that novel, we read business biographies and business books about General Motors, about Amazon, about Google which are all very respected companies. I have a lot of respect for them but we should know that within our country also there have been these great companies that have been born and we should understand their stories and understand our way of doing business in India and how groups like the Prata Group and then other business groups as well have done business because I think that can inspire us to do much more in our country as well. Absolutely. Let me ask you about the 10,000 crore rupee economic plan since we talk about other business groups also. Eight businessmen in India drawing of the 10,000 crore rupee economic plan in 1944 setting a vision for the Indian economy as they could see independence coming. Tell us more about that. So you know this was 1944 and World War II was coming to a close and it was clear that the Indian independence was on the end. We didn't know at that time whether it would be 46 or 47 when India would be independent but it was the quit India movement had started and got over and it was clear that independence would be on the horizon. But for people like JRD Tata and G.D. Birla as well, they thought to themselves that political independence will only be worthwhile if we can also have an economic plan to uplift the country. And the British of course were not willing or had not put such a plan in place at all at that point in time. So they said, why don't we get together and put a plan? Why don't we get together and create the very first economic plan for independent India? So you know eight people, five of them industrialists and three of them technocrats JRD Tata, G.D. Birla, Lala Sri Ram, Kastur Bhai Lal Bhai and Pushyotham Das Thakur Das. Big industrialists of that time got together and JRD Tata also brought into the team three technocrats from the Tata group Dr. John Mathai who became the first railways minister of India later Adarshiv Dalal, Saadarshiv Dalal and A.D. Sron. And then they created this economic plan from fundamentals. They looked at you know how much calories does an adult person need per day 2,600 calories. What cereals? It requires 16 ounces of cereals, 3 ounces of pulses. It's fascinating to read this plan and I've got more details narrated in the story. They had extensive discussions, debates how they should get funded and then this bold imaginative economic plan for India was released in 1944. The British were taken aback because it just shown that as Indians we can think as powerfully if not even more powerfully than them. And I'm told that the Lord Vivell the then Vice-Roy of India was disturbed enough by this plan to write back immediately to London and say you know considerable stir has been created and should we do something similar? Should we produce a rival pamphlet? Not only when the British disturbed I think the Gandhians were equally disturbed because this plan called for investment in industry and not in not in you know Khadikraft or not in small scale but in large scale industry. The leftists were disturbed because they thought of this as a capitalist plan. So you can say that it ruffled all the feathers but great industrialists like JRD Tata and JD Birla decided to do this. In fact, it was nicknamed the Tata Birla plan because both of them were part of the team. But they did this because they thought it's important for the nation and there's a lesson there novel in our own ways. You know, we do small things or big things. We work with small businesses or big businesses. It's always important to think about of course I need to contribute to the Tata group and my business but in addition to that what can we do? How can we stretch ourselves that little bit more and do something for our community and nation? So I'm fascinated that these industrialists you know in the throes of the pre-Independence Day campaign found the time, the bandwidth, the energy to sit out and do this even though the British government did not support it, the Gandhians did not support it, the leftists did not support it, they came in for so much flak yet JRD Tata stood up and you know he actually said that you know if this plan was not implemented how would you raise the standards of living of the people of India? So it was a pioneering plan and I think it set the basis for many other economic plans that India had thereafter in the future. So more than money, bandwidth, energy it is first about willingness and intent to do something to do something positive when it is not required of you when it is not a compulsion for you to do it so I think that shines through you know what generations of leaders of Tata have done over more than a century of 153 years as you described. Let me move back move to the book again and you know your first chapter starts with Swami Vivekananda it kind of it's kind of you know incongruous with the stories that you talk about so tell us more about how does Swami Vivekananda fit into fit into a book on business? So what an interesting question now also if if you look at the cover of this book on the cover of this book you'll find Jamshedji Tata who is the founder of the Tata book. Now Jamshedji Tata was an industrialist okay I've spoken already about Empress Mills and Tata Steel which he founded but he had a strong belief at that time that India needed a research university in science and technology if they had to progress at that time India certainly had arts in arts universities but it did not have a higher university of education in science so on one of his visits from Japan to Canada when he was traveling by ship Jamshedji Tata had gone to Japan and then he was traveling from Japan all the way to Vancouver in Canada on that ship he happened to meet Swami Vivekananda so Jamshedji Tata was going to the World Expo in Chicago which was happening in that year 1893 and Swami Vivekananda was traveling also to Chicago to address the famous Parliament of Religions which all of us know his address which went sisters and brothers of America and the ovation that he got and he was there to put forward his vision of Hinduism at the World Parliament of Religions so they spoke on the ship they must have spoken about technical education for the future because Swami Vivekananda himself wanted monks to be technically educated and when Jamshedji Tata came back he was seized with the idea of creating India's first research university in science he pledged half his wealth to the creation of this university at that time half his wealth was about 30 lakhs which was the annual income so he pledged 20 or 21 buildings if I remember right that he owned as part of his wealth which would go into an endowment for the creation of this university the British were very reluctant to create this university they put a number of roadblocks saying where will you get the professors from will there be enough students where will you how will you resource this university because it required much more than what Jamshedji Tata himself could provide so Jamshedji Tata wrote a letter to Swami Vivekananda and I have the the letters contained in this book as well saying you may remember me as your co-passenger on that sea travel from Japan to Vancouver and you may remember that I told you about this university I want to put up I'm now moving that plan forward and will you please help me by publishing an appeal in favor of this university and to Swami Vivekananda's credit Swami Vivekananda immediately responded and in his you know magazine the magazine that he had begun which was called Prabhuda Bharata he said we are not aware if any project at once so opportune and so far-reaching in its beneficial effects was ever mooted in India and he said you know by some by some this Mr. Tata scheme paves the path for placing into the hands of Indians this knowledge of the future it grasps a vital point of weakness in our national well-being and then brings forward a scheme which can address it and he goes on to see you know some people may think the scheme is too costly that it costs 74 lakhs but he says if one man could find 30 lakhs why can't the whole country find the rest so Swami Vivekananda put up a stirring appeal saying no idea more potent for Bhutan the whole nation has seen the light of day in modern India and this is what you know after that the Maharaja of Mysore gave land in Bangalore this university half of Jamshedji Tata's wealth was left to it there were also other funds raised and eventually the Indian Institute of Science as we know it today came into being it remains India's number one ranked university and it was called the Indian Institute of Science because from Jamshedji Tata's point of view it was a dedication to the nation although if you travel in Bangalore you know I've taken auto rickshaws very often in Bangalore if you go towards Malaysia all you have to tell the auto rickshaw driver is take me to you know take me to Tata Institute and that's what he knows of it as so again again Navel I am seized with you know as I researched the story and wrote it I have told it now in five minutes but you will find the detail of the story written and seized by you know these leaders he was an industrialist like Jamshedji Tata and a monk of the Ramakrishna order he was very young at that time Swami Vivekananda how come you know the collaboration between these two very very different facets of society an industrialist and a monk to help create a university of science and technology for the betterment of the country neither of them were scientists or technologies but they put this together for the betterment of the country that amazes me and I think I've seen leaders of the Tata group do it every generation if it was the Indian Institute of Science in 1910 it was the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in the 1940s and 50s which led the development of atomic energy in the country and where the country's first digital computer was created so I can keep talking about it but it goes back to your earlier point there are some things we have to do for our livelihood and some things we do because we love marketing or we love branding or we love the company we are working for but how do you push yourself to do things which are not necessarily required of you where does that passion and love come from I think that's the key learning I learned while writing these 40 stories and if we discover that in life I think it makes our life so much more fulfilling if you can Tata group is the epitome if I can add of a company, a business which is kind of so deeply integrated into the Indian society it is not just a group that provides products or services to consumers so to say but the ethos of the Tata group are meshed into our society's fabric and as you said at the beginning one of the key things that Jamshetji Tata used to talk about was that how are you giving back to the society business exists eventually to serve the society at large the products and services and also for the betterment of the society and let me ask you something which is connected to this but slightly outside the book Indian business has come a long way especially in the last 30, 40 years after liberalization there's been significant growth last 10 years we've seen significant growth in technology digital led businesses there is and I don't have a judgment on that there is significant race for profits or financial benchmarks being met in a very short period of time there is capital coming in from investment funds who are chasing sort of dare I say short term sort of goals how do you marry and what do you say about how to build brands that are sustainable those fundamental rules remain even valid even today 150 years later so how do you kind of for an entrepreneur who's building a business today how do you marry these two seemingly contradictory sort of goals or approaches yeah so you know I don't think they're contradictory first and foremost if you're an entrepreneur listening to the show you have to build a business which is serving some customer need and it has to be built on a profitable business model there is no doubt about it if companies of the Tata Group were not profitable enough how would we give back money to society so the first thing that you have to do in any business any entrepreneur has to do has to build that economic engine and that happens when you provide customers something that they need and you provide customers something that they need with excellence of products and services so that the customer keeps coming back and there is customer retention which happens you know today we talk of customer acquisition customer retention but it all goes back eventually to the quality of products and services you offer and is there a problem you're solving in the customer's life this is true of Tata but it was also true of the speaker before me when he spoke about the problem of online degrees or online education that he was solving in the lives of young people once you do that then you have to build a business model which is profitable only then will you sustain over a long period of time or short periods of time it is possible to drive a business model which is not profitable but I firmly believe over a long period of time you need profits in the economic engine for the business but when you have done these two things when you have established a product which is differentiated or a product which serves a customer purpose and you have established a good business model which you're happy with then the question which comes neverless what do you do after that what gives you fulfillment will just the making of profits give you fulfillment it'll make you wealthy the creation of profits but we're not going to take that wealth anywhere with us one day we're all going to die and move away from this earth the most fulfilling thing can only be to give part of that back to the community and society and there are so many so many industrious in India who have shown us that part the Tata group for instance or Azim Premji for instance I can think of many many names and that I think is the most fulfilling aspect for an entrepreneur so be very competitive build good products and services retain your customers and get them to come back and buy from you again build a good business model but on top of that ask yourself what can I do for the community in the nation because the other thing let me tell you neverless you know I've worked for this group for 34 years and one of the reasons I've worked for this group is I think what I'm doing is helping build the nation and I think part of the profits I've generated through Tanishk or Fast Track or Tata Tee eventually go back to the Tata Charitable Trust which owns 66% of the company and that gives me a good sense of purpose it tells me that you know I'm not just another cog in the wheel I'm helping do something good both by producing Tanish jewelry and Fast Track watches but at the same time generating profits which are part of which are going and I think entrepreneurs can get greatly inspired by that I've known many new age entrepreneurs of today have a purpose with them back a cause and I know how happy they feel when they do that the other good thing about that neverless if your brand has a cause to it if your brand has a purpose to it I think many younger customers today want to purchase and partake of brands with a purpose they want to purchase and partake of brands which are doing good and they also want to work with companies which are doing good so we are found with millennials and Gen Z people that purpose has even more meaning in their life than it used to have in my generation absolutely so well said purpose and having a meaning so very important for us as individuals as well as brands since you spoke about building purposeful brands and you've been a brand builder all your life let me ask you you did this for more than 30 years today young marketers are being pulled in many directions you have a boss who's chasing you for achieving your quarterly targets there is chaos going on social media you thought of a brilliant campaign and suddenly somebody commented and you had to pull it down the CMO's life for example is tenure has shortened down to 18 months on an average I'm told very different from the era when you started your career and built the iconic brands that you did what is your advice to young marketers it is all good to say to a young marketer stick to fundamentals but there is fire in the kitchen how does he handle that how does he or she handle that so let me firstly tell you there were many fires in the kitchen when I was running brand system and every month I had to produce profits for whether it was for Titan or whether it's for Tata consumer products that pressure of and every month I had to make sure that the brand grew and we had many more customers coming in and buying watches or jewelry or tea that's part of a marketer's life we are here to create consumer demand we are here to create consumer demand in a profitable way for our companies so that is not going anywhere but I do agree with you with the advent of digital with the advent of all the chaotic situations that you're talking about the pressures on a CMO's life have grown and I think CMOs should therefore look at two or three things CMOs and marketers should look at two or three things with a lot of focus the first thing that we should always look at now is whatever we are doing is it driving growth for our brand sometimes we are seduced to do things which seem to be the flavour of the moment but are we driving growth for our brand in a real way are we catering to customers needs that is a timeless truth it is not going away in there the second is yes of course you have to master digital it's not possible to exist in the social media world today without mastering digital without knowing how you will respond to trolling without knowing how you will put forward the face of your brand in a meaningful way on digital so that younger people can interact with it people no longer want one-way communication from the brand but if you get immersed in it and you don't give yourself time to think then it can impact the marketer very badly because in the hurly-burly of doing that day in and day out sometimes you get so distracted that you are not thinking about the fundamentals of your brand so I would say divide your time between activation and real thinking for the brand that's a second piece that I would say the third thing I would say now is be in touch with your consumer marketers who are not in touch with your consumer the consumer of today may be very different from the consumer at the time I was marketing Tadrati but in earlier days you would have heard whether it was Hindustan Unilever whether it was Tadrati or any other company it was mandatory for us to visit markets that's right consumers in markets meet trade in markets across the country I remember going into the markets of Andhra Pradesh or Mirat or Tamil Nadu to meet hot tea shops to meet consumers so whatever is the product or service you are selling selling while digital and data can give you part of the picture nothing actually replaces interactions with consumers because they give you the ideas to build your next campaign they give you the ideas to build your next product so I think those in in the midst of all these digital distractions it's important for marketers to also ensure that they are in constant touch with your consumers the best marketers today do that in whichever field you are sometimes the digital distractions of this age are very very strong and sometimes I think marketers should just put away their mobile phones for a few hours at a stretch sit back and think of what they need to do for their brands absolutely unfortunately for them the consumers are not putting away their mobile phones so the chatter the chaos continues but as you said chaos is part of life it existed in some other form when you were marketing those brands the nature and perhaps the intensity of the chaos has changed we are almost out of time let me ask you one last question to put you in a spot out of the 40 stories which is your favorite one okay so my you know the first story I've also already narrated but my favorite story actually is the story of Kalpana Chawla and JR Dita I'm sure all of you in this call know Kalpana Chawla she was the first Indian woman astronaut who went into space but do you know that when she went into space she carried an old black and white photograph with her and that old black and white photograph was novel of the flight that you described of JR Dita's very first flight in 1932 and the story of why she did it she did it because in 1982 the 50th year of that first flight JR Dita insisted on flying the 50th anniversary flight once again he was then 78 years of age he had just suffered a heart attack a few weeks before he had recovered his directors were telling him don't take the risk yet he said for the young people of this country I will do it because it's important for you to do something better than you think you could do it and better than others thought you could do it and JR Dita flew that flight again from Karachi to Ahmedabad to Mumbai in 1982 recreating the 50th anniversary of that first flight and one of the people watching him that day was Kalpana Chawla and she says I was so inspired by him that it made her go to the US complete her aeronautical engineering higher studies join NASA and then become the first Indian astronaut to go into space that that old black and white photograph and this entire story is now in our Tata archives I've just tried to narrate it in a couple of minutes but I've written it up you know very well in this book I would I would actually you know now I'll encourage all our viewers here to pick up a copy of Tata stories and you should know that you know these 40 stories can well inspire you you should also know that you know author royalties from this book are committed to the Tata Medical Center in Kolkata so it's a book which can it's a book which can I know I'm making a sales pitch for the book but I don't think that's a wrong thing to do at all when I believe so strongly in the content of the book it's a book which can inspire you to do many more many many more things with your own likes when you read them and very noble cause of you know donating the proceeds to charity to help the society and help people in need so to add to what you said you know yes you know people who are watching must go out and and and most importantly they'll find it worthwhile the book has amazing stories you know we don't have time of course to talk about you know many of them but you know if you I was I was going through it and the list of sort of content I mean we spoke about Swami Vivekan you have written about you know Mr. Mulgaonkar who was the chairman of Tata Sons in a chapter called okay Tata okay Sumo Kalpana Chawla also you already spoke about Tata Indika you've spoken about how Gandhiji visited Jamshedpur and I mean I can go on but but it's it's you know it's a it's a thread of you know India's business history of the last you know many decades yeah and and you know you're quite right you know stories and real-life stories are what you know what inspires the most and these are not just stories of the Tata group novel they are stories of the human spirit of achievement of challenges there are failures here there are successes here there are dreams here I'm sure every single marketer on this call has a dream of what she or he wants to do in the future and it is those dreams and passions which actually make our life worth living and all these 40 stories will give you stories of those dreams and passions. Fantastic in fact I'm going to recommend to my father to read this he's he's 78 but he's still very active in business and as I can see he's your senior from college he's from Witsthilani he's from I think the 69 batch with that thank you so much Mr Bhatt for spending time your Friday evening with us genuinely a pleasure talking to you and I hope this was worthwhile for our listeners and I look forward to meeting you when in your city next yeah I hope the pandemic is behind us and we are able to you know meet face to face. No so I also look forward to meeting you and I want to thank you know exchange for media and I want to thank Pitch for hosting me today thank you very much I really enjoyed this conversation and the opportunity to present some of the stories from Tata stories and I want to wish all the marketers were listening in on this call and viewing this call all the very best it's been a pleasure and a privilege to be on your platform thank you. Thank you so much thank you back to you brother. Thank you so much Mr. Awja thank you so much Mr Bhatt please stay there we just logged out okay I was saying that I just okay you're there thank you thank you thank you so much I was I was saying that I just ordered your book. Wow that's really nice yes thank you thank you very much thank you very much for that. I will I will tell you why because you know one of the most you know India doesn't lack a lot of things you know but I think one thing that we really lack are fabulous stories of Indian entrepreneurs you know we talk about Colonel Kentucky we talk about Sashiro Honda we talk about Henry Ford we have these staggering personalities here and I'm glad you touched upon one of my favorite stories which is about the Indian Institute of Science the way it was formed how Winston Churchill said how will you generate jobs and you know he said he will generate jobs and I'm glad you know he passed away in 19th May 1904 but the college went on to start in 1909 I think which really talks so much about and you know Vaibhav it's good that you remember Jamshedji Tata and the Indian Institute of Science because in many ways Jamshedji Tata was the original startup man of India he started up you know the textile impressed mills he started up Tata Steel he started up Indian Institute of Science his vision led to Tata power being created so he was the original startup man of India and the original entrepreneur of this country. I think that's a beautiful title for your next book I think you should consider that. But I think I was just inspired by you know what you said just now about Indian Institute of Science and so forth. Absolutely you know a lot of people don't know about Indian Institute of Science is that people think it is made inside the forest but actually they planted a you know the idea was to create a forest inside the college it's a beautiful place but also the vision that he had and to multiple people who he went to saying that please donate a land please give us a land and I'm glad you know I think the version of story that I heard was that he travelled to England to the Queen because Winston Churchill said no and even though Winston Churchill owes a lot of money to Bangalore are you guys aware of it? To the Bangalore club right? To the Bangalore club yes he owns. I saw that you know in the lobby of the Bangalore club I saw that document which shows how much money he owes to the Bangalore club. Yes and still he didn't choose to give land you know that's the irony but Mr. Bhat thank you your service in Tata group is as much of my age and we would love to learn a lot from you and please continue inspiring us and don't forget to reconsider the next book title The Original Startup Man of India. What do you think Mr. Auja? Yes it's a fantastic title to as I said GRD Tata's you know biography was written many years back by Mr. J.M. Lala but I'm sure Mr. Bhat is already working on many books. Thank you I am indeed passionate about writing thank you very much for hosting me here. Thank you would love to send you the book so that we can get an autograph from you but thank you so much it was fabulous having you guys here thank you so much once again. And my thanks to my colleague Sri Lakshmi who is on this call who put the presentation together thank you Sri. Thank you Sri Lakshmi thank you thanks for your support.