 Hello and welcome to Exchange for Media. With me today are two brightest minds of media industry, Mr. Naveen Kheemka, CEO, S.N.S.Media.com and Ms. Sonali Malveya, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer, S.N.S.Media.com, S.N.S.Media.com. So, thank you for talking to us after the merger and tell us how has been these nine months because you also must have been experiencing you know all the changes that have come with merger. Yeah I think very exciting I would say I think each one of us in media.com and S.N.S.M. we're really looking forward to this because we really wanted you know so so actually if you look at media.com and if you look at media.com and the way media.com was born and the way media.com scaled up globally and India so I call that the era one of advertising. This is the era one of advertising where scale is important, size is important, you have to have blue chip clients and media.com is done so well in that locally here and globally. Then there is the era two of advertising which is slightly more digital which is where S.N.S.M. got born globally and also in India. Digital clients, Google was a former client and it's so well for Google and set up tools, systems, processes which were so so up there you know so top of class and S.N.S.M. did so well and now what I am saying this merger is actually era three of advertising. The era three is neither scaled nor digitized it is actually becoming very sophisticated. By sophistication what I mean like now is that today it's not the scale not your digital expertise but your ability to be able to holistically understand the complexity in which the consumer is going through with so many platforms emerging. So it's not creative first now, it's platform first and therefore your solutions have to be very platform interesting. So I think given. It's really very interesting way of thinking. Yeah so I would say this era three of advertising is what gives birth to S.N.S.M. in your account and we are really poised now to be able to write this journey for our clients. No other agency I can tell you. In the world now is so well poised to deliver on this. So Nali what how would you like to have to do that? Well for us as well the last nine months have been super exciting and I think all of us because the beauty of our group is that nobody is a stranger to each other so we've all kind of been together anywhere. We've all understood and actually appreciated the complementarity that the two agencies had brought to each other even before the merger officially happened I think there were projects that we were collaborating on working together people and teams knew each other. We both understood and respected each other's strengths and we came together to support each other's areas of opportunity. So for all of us it has been completely something that we've looked forward to. It's never been about oh my god what's gonna happen but it's always been about how soon can we go and hit the ground running. So that's been one aspect of it. The second aspect of it is about how the two and like I talked about complementarity how the two really beautifully come together to not just drive scale and a lot of planning efficiencies and effectiveness that Vidakom already had in this table but also to drive outcomes that essence has been really known for and imagine being able to bring them all together in the service of our consumers and our clients and literally move to the third area just like what Navin explained right now in the service of our audiences. Move away from platforms, move away from talking just media output and actually drive outcomes that make clients successful with their consumers and audiences. So yes we've loved it, we've loved the journey and everybody is completely charged about what comes next. Navin how has your role changed from CEO of Vidyakom to now CEO of Essence Vidyakom. Yeah I think pretty much from a job profile point of view I think it remains the same right but how will I tell you suddenly when I met the entire team of Essence Vidyakom it hits you right and suddenly it's such a large agency with about 6,800 people all together we had town halls, years only went to Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, met all our teams together, lost the agencies across three locations suddenly that evening I went home and I told my wife that I'm feeling a bit pressured I'm feeling very responsible now for so many people in my team to help make their careers grow and then obviously have so many clients and their expectations and to manage everybody. So yeah I'm a bit jittery because I feel a lot of pressure right now a bit more responsible I guess a lot more gray hair on my head. So yeah. But how about you you also plan to have some big chance of that. But I think I'm just super excited about it. My role changes and it changes in a space that I've always loved I am somebody who's always gone after driving up concerning business results I don't think the job is complete until you actually are able to add impact back to client businesses and this gives me that great opportunity alongside that and I think that as Naveen said that this is a really overwhelming responsibility because you have to be true to your clients and true to your people and with both of us taking on very clear roles and of course working very very closely together we actually are able to do a lot more for this and in the service of everything we're expected to do and ultimately not feeling alone that you're actually running alone and you have to take it. So this is a great place where we can come together and two heads are always better than one. So I love the change I love the opportunity to interact deeper with clients and to add a lot more meaning to what is aspiration is to partner them in the most deepest and meaningful ways it's important that we have your focus behind those outcomes as well and I love the opportunity to be able to drive back. So Naveen there is this internal pressure that has come to you now because your team has become much bigger and all but they were also some external pressures last few months you know funding to start off and ride up there were these things that you know India may also have recession there was global slowdown how has all of that impacted addicts and then there is this view from you know you are there. Of course of course so you know I must tell you I mean last year was tough right all of us and if you look at the broadcasters if you look at the digital partners everybody was saying that yes last year given that inflation levels were so high companies had to deliver margins the easiest thing to catch was our marketing and advertising budgets budgets went down it obviously had a trickle down effect on on media start up funding dried up and therefore that kind of trickle down effect on media so before it was almost like a double double by me right high inflation on one end you know listed companies wanted to show profits start up funding that drying down and therefore having an impact on addicts yeah it was tough but let me tell you as a sense we have come even last year we grew we grew huge yeah that's the and that's what that's what Nick also told you right that yes this is my high growth market and let me tell you in the last three to five years we've been the top performing market for globally across all our markets in terms of percentage growth even the even though the base might be small so that's where the as far as the growth is coming from and and the reason for that is we we are always hungry for more we keep going and we keep meeting new clients we keep pitching for new businesses we don't we don't keep you know staying with our existing set of clients we want to keep adding more and more and more so that is one mindset that i think the entire agency is built over the last a couple of years that i've been there and that's really working really well for us is de-risking us also from a slow down eventually that might hit us so uh so yeah so and what was your the other point this i have things started to grow yeah so this year so this year what we are seeing right now is again january was extremely slow um February march onwards we are looking at a lot of summer categories giving us briefs and things are starting to look up startups still slow right now i would say however uh with women's ipel coming up and the men's ipel starting in in april and the men's ipel for the first time in two years coming back to the country with home and away matches with with all the activations possible on the home ground so i think i think it is going to be a sell out and also the other thing to note here is the first time in the last five to seven years that ipel today is going to be sold by two different broadcasters so the television broadcaster and the digital broadcaster each one each one trying to reset for themselves what you could expect from a viewership point of view and that is a very interesting fight that is going on right now in the market it will only help let me tell you it only help unlock the true potential of ipel and that's what i've been telling them that you are now because of the pressure that everybody is on we'll try and get more and more advertisers on board make it much more flexible easier locally possible to be able to advertise on ipel it will not be any more a big daddy's game but i should the success of ipel will depend if you are able to increase it from 100 advertisers to 500 advertisers so yeah so i'm very 100 percent so if the number of feeds that they are investing in if they're opening up their entire feeds so today what stops a local terminal advertiser who's present only in Chennai to be present in a Chennai super teams match nothing stops him today and that's the advertiser you actually worked on board because that's where the ratings are so yeah so so yeah i'm very very hopeful i'm having a lot of chats with them and i'm also guiding them and it's just what to do but yeah but i'm very hopeful if this happens you could really see a new age economy around ipel growing much much bigger and better so now do you tackle many new age clients you know as as a CEO how have the expectations from agencies changed in the last few years you know before i answer that i'll just give you a brief context when how new age clients have also evolved over the last few years growth was always the key driver and these small businesses they were trying to scale up or or the larger ones regardless new age clients have always focused first on growth now that growth manifested itself first as acquisitions and everybody was going after the most efficient acquisitions the next stage came once they started seeing and understanding that there was a lot of churn in their consumers because they weren't really engaging deeply and they were focusing more on acquisitions is when they started to build on say hang on we need to now start focusing on our brands as well because that is what the differentiator is otherwise everybody is on the same playing field and the minute the next person comes they're going to just move so then they started focusing a little bit on brand fast forward to this year everything became more late last year when everything started to become harder when we talked about how funding had started to dry up i don't know if it's good legally dried up or investors have become a lot more cautious because suddenly everybody is looking at the profitability and here comes the challenge now it's about driving growth because that bottom line has to keep moving but also about driving engagement and making sure that you retain those customers that you have acquired so that has become there's a sphere of reference because now it's no longer just about acquisition or about riding the brand it all has to move together fast forward to the expectation from agencies when they started on it was about saying how do we go to agencies who can get us the best deals who can get us most impact who can get us efficiently for us but as they started moving forward they were like okay we need to be partners in our growth and partners in all the expectations that the that our investors and our ecosystem has from us and that is how the role has changed today conversations are not just about media or media deals that you're doing they're about okay hang on help me build my tech stack help me with my content becoming a lot more effective so Nick spoke about how messaging is really important so help us create messaging that's addressable that's that skill that is that makes sense and is actually resonating with our customers and we wanted to make sure that all of it has returned on investment first the other bit is about when you're engaging deeply with your customers how are you building a whole framework around advocacy and that is extremely important as well so all of those are equations where we can't know with our clients and today therefore if we have to be partners to clients they expect us to be on the same plane field understand their business and be responsible for their outcomes just as they are and then drive them in the most effective way possible it's no longer just about efficiency it's a lot more about effectiveness so I think in that we've also grown and we've also evolved our capabilities and our strengths to start driving those are you working more like partners most certainly as consultants but I think our advantages that we're consultants who are responsible for outcomes as well because we're driving them and we're in real time able to optimize and say what's working for us what's not working for us so that we can cause correct change and it becomes a much more virtuous cycle because we're responsible not just for the thinking but also for the implementation and measurement of that so Naveen before we close you already have co-op you have PNG you have Uber you have all you have very big clients from most categories what are some of the new categories that you would like to add to your eating I mean the more the better so that's okay you won't say no to any category I must tell you however yeah there's some so we've done a whole need their entire gap analysis as we call it right and we've done a lot of work in progress on that and so on he's working very closely with all of us on that so I would say I would say the key category I would want to focus on is obviously auto two-wheeler four-wheeler we're not there in that category at all so it's a big category in India a large spending category amongst the top 10 categories in the country we must be there there's no questions around that and we will get there so obviously I can't I can't tell you more on that and outside of that I would say currently within the BFSI sector India is really growing if you look at the new age startups that are coming up it's all in the BFSI if you look at the traditional BFSI companies also now want to create very large brands because of the historical you know the what should I say the historical presence that they have in the country but they haven't done much so I see a lot of action in the BFSI sector which we should be able to target and given especially given our strength in this market in normally in the city right now outside of that I would say within FMCG there are newer categories emerging so yeah there are some open slots there so we definitely want to get into that and outside the categories I would definitely say that at least four markets in my mind within India that we want to expand but two definitely this year so two markets that we are entering right now are Ahmedabad and we are entering Kolkata Kolkata we already won two, three clients, two, three underwears so if that happens then we have a nice 15-20 number team there and Ahmedabad also we just closed our clients hopefully we should be able to service it right now out of Bombay but eventually maybe open an office there and then in the next couple of years then also open Ahmedabad office and Chennai office so yeah so yes apart from clients it's also the your expansion into normal cities is important give us you know to give us huge opportunities for our people internally have to make them grow also and to be relevant to more number of clients we wish you all the best I'll just add to because we keep talking about this as well I think we also want to go after clients who will challenge our defaults and give us an opportunity to partner people who are willing to take a punt on us and that goes for our existing clients as well as our new clients to say that with us you know increasing our scope and our depth of services so much it's really important that we also get those opportunities so every client who's willing to partner and take a chance with us despite all the legacy that media agencies technically have had in the past or traditionally have had in the past I think this is a really amazing option we wish you all the best we really wish you lots of clients you have a big target to meet me yes it calls you to double your billing by next in next five years we do it in three years thank you thank you thank you thank you so much