 So before I start, I just have a question. How many people here are from the advertising industry? How many people here are from the publishing side or the brand side? The brands? OK. So in some sense, I am an outlier here because I am not from the advertising industry. I am not from the publishing industry. In the conventional sense of the word, even though BCG does publish a lot of content. And actually, BCG doesn't really advertise per se. So why am I here? I think the three simple words are, when Sam calls, you don't say no, right? So when Sam called me and he said, Avik, I want you to come here and speak about if India is booming, why not add X? I tried to protest. I said, Sam, I really don't understand that much. And I'm sure there are many more qualified people who can talk about it. But Sam said, no, no, no, no. Actually, Avik, I love the fact that you don't know anything about it. Because then you can actually take an objective view about the same. And what I'm going to do over the course of the next half of an hour or so is actually share some data, some information, but more importantly, share some stories, which I have spent time over the last few days and weeks talking to people in the advertising ecosystem. And Jeff Bezos was there on one of these panels. And he made an observation, which I think is very true when one thinks about story and data. He said, when story and data collide, it is the stories that win, right? So I think even if I reflect the conversation which was had earlier today when Balki was talking about creativity, I think it's important to know the data, but it's important, more important, to tell the story in a compelling, convincing manner. And that's the theme that I would start off with. Now, if you look at the title, you know, India is booming. What about ADEX? I'll take the first two minutes to lay out what my team initially came up with as the first few slides. India is booming. You know, it took 60 odd years to reach the first trillion, seven odd to reach the next trillion. The next trillion happened just in three years. If one looks over the course of the next few years, India from a 3.5 or trillion is likely to become, depending on who you believe, you know, eight, eight and a half, $9 trillion economy. You know, if you look at the numbers, we were nowhere in the top 20, then we became in the top 10. Today we are top five and, you know, we are likely to become top three by 2030. If one looks at it from multiple parameters, you know, 3.5 trillion GDP, great performance, which is there. If one looks at it from a market perspective, 1.4 billion people, $2 trillion plus of consumption, great market opportunity. If one looks at it from a growth perspective, 7% GDP. You know, in the last few years, if one looks at the financial markets, they have done really well. I don't know what has happened today, but, you know, over the last few years, it has done really well. And, you know, digital penetration is increasing. So, you know, what's missing here, right? And the next story is something which somebody is described just as she was introducing me. Most people would say the best is yet to come if one looks at the conventional parameters, GDP, advertising as a percentage of GDP, you know, there's significant headroom to grow. And the next chart which you see here is, you know, if you look at the X axis, it is the nominal GDP growth. And if you look at the Y axis, it is the ad revenue growth. And, you know, in there's shining out there in the right hand side top corner, which is there. If one goes further on multiple elements, you know, one could say that, you know, and I've not used the 2023 numbers, but if I look at 22 over 21, there had been a significant increase. If one looks at from a small, medium business perspective, you know, again, things are growing well, new sectors are emerging. So, if everything is doing well, why am I talking about India booming and addicts not booming? So, let me start. When I saw this, I actually told my team, no, there is something which is missing here. And I have to make a confession. I did have an exposure to advertising, but that was close to 30 years back. So, my internship, my summer internship in 1996, 97, was with Hindustan Leaver. And, you know, the story was I received a letter and it said, you know, we are pleased to inform you that you have been selected for the summer internship, et cetera, and your projects, your summer internship project, is to figure out why Life Boy is not growing in rural Orissa and Bihar. And we expect that you are going to spend time in rural Orissa and Bihar to understand why Life Boy was not growing. I came to Ahmedabad, I went first day and all my friends were, you know, laughing and making jokes to me. You're gonna spend, you know, all your time in rural Orissa and Bihar. We are going to be enjoying in Delhi or Bombay as the case may be. I went the first day to my guide and, you know, he said, Abhika, I have some bad news for you. I said, okay, you know, what's the news? What could be worse? And he said, actually, you know, this problem which we sent to you two months back actually has been solved. You know, this problem has been solved. So, you don't need to go to rural Orissa or Bihar unless you want to. But I have this problem that, you know, right now we are advertising on a bunch of programs, but we really are not sure whether the media effectiveness, numbers, et cetera, that we are getting is that the right one. So I actually want you to do an analytical model and so on. But he said, you know, it's your choice. You know, my heart was saying, oh yes, I'm gonna be in Bombay. Yeah, you know, that's what you really want to do when you're 23, 24. But I made the straightest face that I could. I said, I hear you, you know, can I sleep over it and come back to you tomorrow? Right? And next day, of course, I said, you know, I, with a heavy heart, but I will do this media effectiveness study that you want me to. And over the course of the next few weeks, I actually went through the IRS numbers and I created actually a mathematical model which could be used to translate what used to be once a three year kind of a thing into something which could be done on a more periodic basis. The reason I'm saying all of that is one thing which I have realized both through that internship and in all my time at BCG is getting enamored by what you see as the headline messages is not enough. One needs to de-average, one needs to get into the detail. So that's what I'm attempting to do on the two pieces that we are talking about. India's booming and ad-ex is not. So let me start with the first piece. You know, there is, of course, the story of the glass half full that I talked about so far, but actually if you look at it, there is a question and that's the question that Sam posed to me. What is inhibiting breakout growth? What really is happening? And, you know, if you look at the numbers, you know, over a four year period and of course there's COVID in between. So you see the dip which is there. But actually if you look at it in real terms, it is actually not even growing at the GDP growth. Because one of the things that people sometimes mistake is some of these numbers that we see are actually in nominal value terms and not in real value terms. So actually if you look at it on a real term, actually ad-ex is growing less than GDP. Now, I call this a tale of many India's and I do think that what's happening in India is actually needs to be disaggregated. You see on this slide here, on this page here, really the contradictions which are there and the thing which is the true about India is anything that you say about India, the reverse is also true. You know, one of my friends actually, you know, talked about it in one of his books where he talked about the fact that, you know, India's got this unique ability to disappoint both the optimists and the pessimists, right? That's the two. So let's see what's happening here. And I know this font size is probably too small, so apologies for that. But actually if you look at the left-hand side, it is the glass half full. So if any of the people in this room had invested 100 rupees in just the Sensex in 2000, 100 rupees that 100 would have become 789 rupees in 2020 and 1443 in 23 and 14X in 20 years, 23 years. Actually that's by itself great, but if you actually compare it to what is happening in other markets, if you did the same in the US, the 100 would have become 300. If you had done it in China, that 100 would have become less than 200. So it's been an outlier performance from a market's perspective. More importantly is the second bucket. 20 years back, 20 years back, if you were a girl or a boy born in India, your life expectancy was 58 years. Today, your life expectancy is close to 70 years. 12 years improved life expectancy in 20 years, which I think is fantastic. If you look at literacy, 30 percentage point increase in that time period. That's glass half full and if you look at FDI inflows, significant increase. But if I had to compare the same thing on the right-hand side, while the stock market performance has been fantastic, if you compare it in terms of absolute quantum, we are still smaller than many other markets. If one looks at some of the quality of life parameters where there has been significant improvement, there is still some room to go before we meet with developed world standards in some cases, even developing world standards. So I think great progress, but room to grow. Moving to this, and I think this is an important element. I took not a one year, four quarters, three years, five years, but I actually took a 15 year view. And if you look at it, this is something that everybody would be happy to look at, which is to say, actually GDP close to 6% growth, consumption also 6% growth. I think everybody in this room knows that India is about 60% consumption from a GDP perspective. And actually that has kept on growing slightly ahead than overall GDP. So if GDP is doing well, consumption is doing well, what is it that is not happening? Now this is the piece where I de-averaged. And the first thing to see is the difference between services and products. So I'm going to ask a question. So in 2014, the number of cell phones sold in India was about 250 million cell phones. Any guesses what the number of phones sold in India in 2018 was? Any guesses? 250 in 2014 in 2018? 700, 600. Actually the number was 300. 300 million. 250 actually became 300. But the average selling price, which was 4,000 rupees, increased to about 6,500,000 rupees. What do you think was the number which was sold in 2023? 800 million. It was actually 200. 200 million. But the average selling price has now become 15,000. Right? The reason I'm saying this, there is a theme which is there both in terms of the premiumization which is happening. The other, if you look at all categories, all categories, which category do you think in this 15 year period has grown the fastest? Could be product, could be service, which category do you... Okay, I'm excluding gaming. I'm excluding airlines because those were very small 15 years back. But you know, established categories, which category do you think has grown the fastest in the last 15 years? Jewelry, beauty, luxury. Actually it's health and education. It's actually health and education. And if you see, you know, what I did here was to look at, you know, the overall growth has been 11%. If you look at any product category, product categories are typically grown at 8% to 9%. If you look at services, services, health, education, travel have grown at 11%, 12%, 13%. Now, two to 3% doesn't seem like a lot, but actually if you compound it over a period of time, it's actually a huge, huge impact. So what has happened in the last 15 years, 20 years, is that the shape of consumption has changed. We, as a society, are consuming more in terms of services rather than just products. And you know, just think about our individual lives, right? So, you know, I know of many people who earlier would dye their hair at home, who would do the equivalent of the facial at home. Today, many more people are actually going to salons and getting it done. Making food at home versus eating out. See change, especially in urban India. So the thing to keep in mind is the shape of our consumption is changing. And I come to that, how this makes a difference to what we are talking about. The second is what I talked about, premiumization. You know, the four and a half thousand ASP growing to 15,000. It's actually not just true in mobile phones. You know, if you look at something that we all use, refrigerators. The one door versus two door mix has changed dramatically today where the frost free is close to 50% of the market. 15 years back, it was 30%. Mix changing. If you look at beauty, you know, somebody mentioned beauty here, personal care. The premium segment is growing much higher. If you look at auto, the SUVs are greater than 20 lakh is growing much higher. If you look at apparel, so category after category after category, we are seeing this theme of premiumization happening, but the mass is actually not growing at the same level. Right? The third is, of course, e-commerce. Again, you know, this is something which, you know, if you go back before 2013, you know, you don't even see anything. Of that small base, there has been an increase of 40%, but the interesting thing is that base has kept pace still close to last year. So we are actually seeing, in terms of the themes which are happening, we are seeing growth in premium. We are seeing growth in services. We are seeing growth in certain channels. But if I put it all together, in terms of, and this is, you know, some of this I have taken from the previous report in terms of the sectoral breakup and there were some refinements that we applied on the same. But if you look at it, the largest sector for advertising is FMCG. If you look at the last five years, it has actually grown at less than 10%. If you include the last 12 months, it is even lower. Right? If one looks at, you know, some of the other product sectors, they have grown at 8, 9, 7%. So the point I'm trying to make through this is if one looks at the overall India growth, while many, while all of India is growing GDP-wise, while all of India is growing consumption-wise, but actually, if you look at sectoral revenue growths which are there, that's something to keep in mind as we think about what could be done to unlock ad-ex growth, right? So that's the first theme to keep in mind in terms of do we think about how to de-average and segment and sector is one lens of it? We could think of other lens and I'll talk about that. But that's the first element which is there. The second piece, which I want to talk now applying the client hat. So I actually talked to a few executives, brand owners equivalent and I asked them, you know, how do they think about growths, ad expenses, investments and so on? And everybody sort of conceptually understands it. They say, yeah, you know, it's always about finding the right balance between growth and profitability. I said, great. And then I asked the BCG team to do this analysis. This is a very interesting analysis. This actually empirically shows, and this is for India, the top 200 listed companies in India. This is a mathematical exercise to look at shareholder returns for the top 200 companies in India over a three-year period, over a five-year period, over a 10-year period. And what one does is to look at the financials and try to do a regression to say what explains the movement and share price. So is it growth? Is it margin improvement? Is it multiple change? Is it cash flow? Now interestingly, regardless of the time period that you look at, you find anywhere between 40 to 55% of the shareholder increase is actually explained by growth. If you take a shorter term view, of course the number is lower. If you take a longer term view, the number is higher, margin improvement is actually 11, 15 or 17% only. But if you look at it, and many of the pink papers report this, probably the last year for corporate India was the highest ever, best ever in terms of profitability. But how has that happened? So I looked at three cost heads. So looked at the top 500 companies, listed companies in India. Actually, 333 of them have been consistent in the top 500 over the last five years. There are some who have come in and some are out. So because I wanted to keep a like to like comparison, I looked at the top 333 odd companies and took the time period just before COVID to first half of last year. And you see an interesting thing, you know, you see in this time period, capital expenditure as a percentage of those 330 companies revenue is actually coming down. You see a bump back in H4 2324, H1 2324. If you look at salary as a percentage, and you know some of it was induced by COVID, you see that also coming down and then some reversal. Actually, if you look at selling and marketing expense, that used to be 1.7%. It has actually come down to 1.1%, right? Now, you know, the question is, why is this happening? Because, you know, if you ask anyone as to what are the assets, they would say it is plant and machinery or some physical assets gets covered in capital expenditure. If you were to ask people, it's people which gets covered in salary. And you know, one would say it is their brands with some sense should get covered in the third. Now, one can imagine that because of what happened because of the uncertainty just before COVID, just after COVID and so on and so forth. Of course, everybody tightened their belt and wanted to make sure that they are not overspending. And one can see. Now, the thing here which is interesting to me is you actually see that on the other two, there is that bounce back which seems to be happening on the people side and the capex side. So if you look at the last bar, you know, after a decline, you see that increasing. But in advertising, it is not happening, right? Now, I come from an industry consulting which in some sense is similar. And you know, one of the propositions that consulting had when I started in consulting was consultants brought data to the table, right? This is a time, you know, this is 1997. You actually did not have Google at that point of time, right? So if you wanted information, where do you get information? So one of the roles that I played was to say, you know, get data to the table so that you actually have discussions on a common information set. Then that moved in terms of saying, okay, you know, can we move from data to insight because actually data became a commodity? And then it became in terms of saying, okay, insight is fine, can you actually deliver impact? That's a theme that I underwent. So I actually talked to a set of different participants in the ecosystem. And I think predominantly, unfortunately, advertising is still viewed as an expense. You know, I'm just going to take the liberty here even though I'm in a place which has got advertisers and publishers. I do think one thing for the industry to think about is how do you actually change from being an expense to an investment? And you know, I'm probably the least qualified person to do that. My wife actually tells me that I have zero creativity. But one suggestion, should we even call it ADX or why not call it ADIN, right? Because the moment we say ADX, you know, it just reinforces the point that it is an expenditure. And on expenditure, nobody thinks about a return. On an investment, people actually think about return. Now, you know, I'm not going to argue whether two seconds is enough to give a return or not, but I think changing the vocabulary is very important. And as we think about from an industry perspective, what do we need to do in order to be thought of as an investment is one thought I would have. And you know, sometime vocabulary makes a huge, huge difference. You know, I was talking to Raj during the break and Raj said, you know, one of the roles of the CEO, and he has been a very successful CEO, is to be almost like the chief motivator who actually gives energy and motivation to the team so that when they come to work, they are feeling energized, happy, engaged, et cetera. I would say one of the roles of the CEO or a leader is also to change the vocabulary. So for example, if you think about FMCG industry, and I had this discussion with one of the FMCG CEOs, was to say, you know, we say this category is 97% penetrated. But the definition of penetration, have you used it once in the last six months or last 12 months? Really? I can think of penetration as being the measure for a durable, which you have in your home. But is really a 97% penetration really the right measure? So how do we change the vocabulary is the one thought I would have? I talked about ADEX, ADIN, you know, there are three starting thoughts and I would request your indulgence because I'm not sure this is comprehensive. But I think there's a first, who do you think as your customer? And one thing which may be worth thinking about in addition to the chief marketing officer, in addition to the brand head, in addition to the category head, how do you think as an advertising industry of the CFO to be your customer, right? How do you think of the CFO being your customer? Because the moment you start using that lens and you think about investment, I think the entire vocabulary starts changing. The second is many of you have participation in different parts of the advertising value chain. Can you actually stitch together a network where you actually offer not only the media, not only the creative, but actually you become the custodians of that customer, consumer journey and you deliver to whatever set of outcomes that have been decided between the brand, manager, category head, CFO as the case may be, without being programmatic. And the reason I would highlight that is, I think of course there is one role that advertising has to play in terms of spur to action, call to action, but I think there is also a value in being there and trying to find a way to disaggregate the two, but also own the two is an important element. And the third, I think all brand managers would love this, but to actually have sharper segmentation and focus. And sectoral, I talked about, are we, and I think there have been either categories or spaces or channels where you see growth happening and can you actually be slightly ahead of the curve to actually help your clients navigate where should they be investing in order to get to the outcomes that they are thinking about. So, there are three thoughts. Like I said, this is not meant to be the last word on this topic. This is literally the start of a conversation and I wanted to use this opportunity to lay this out and get your reactions. I would just leave this as the question. So, about 12 years back, I was invited to Calcutta. I was invited to Calcutta. This is in late December, early January. I'm forgetting the exact date by ITC. They were having this strategic planning process and somebody had recommended to Mr. Deveshwar that there is this, as he said, young boy who will come and share some thoughts. He has some interesting thoughts. And I remember, this is the time that the Modi jacket or the Bundy, whatever we made, had started becoming popular. And just on a whim, I said, should I wear that? Should I not? But then I decided to play it safe and I went in a suit itself. But I had this one slide which talked about themes, consumer themes which are happening. And I remember one of the images I had put was that of that jacket. This is 2012 or so. And as luck would have it, Mr. Deveshwar was in that room wearing a Bundy. And I was young and somewhat important at that point of time and I said, Mr. Deveshwar, this is a trend which is happening, blah, blah, blah. And so, 10 years back, you would also have probably been wearing a suit and a tie and not this. And he just smiled. After the presentation finished, I left and then the head of finance who had actually invited me, he said, Mr. Deveshwar wants to meet you. So I went and he was a larger than life figure in ITC and all of Calcutta, if not more. And he said, okay, Abhik, what have you done? So I said, sir, what do you mean? He said, no, no, not many people would have said what you said. So where did you study? So I said, I did my engineering from IIT, Delhi. Said, yeah, that's a fine college. I also went there, right? So I think he had some sympathy for me. Then he said, you know, why are you working at BCG? And he said, my thing is he said, you know, everybody talks about make in India and so on, so forth. He said, my theme is something different. He said, if you look at any value chain, the maximum value capture happens by the brand. The maximum value capture happens by the brand. He said, I want to not only make in India, but I want to brand in India because there is a significant part of the value which actually gets captured in brands. And to my mind, that is one call for this group if one thinks about the next decade or beyond. Of course, there is a set of things which India will be for India and so on, so forth. But actually if you look at the top global brands, India doesn't find its fair share there. So is it something that the advertising agency in India can actually help Indian CEOs, CMOs, CFOs, brand managers actually to create the next set of brands, some of which will be from India. Thank you very much.