 So guys welcome to the second webinar hosted by Change to Media. I was thinking the other day we'll be living in very strange times where board rooms have been replaced by drawing rooms, where offices have been replaced by work from home setups, professional cameras which are ones used to you know make films are now giving way to regular mobiles and even the live the live events that we had for that matter with cameras and boom mics and everything else like you know how as we knew it have given way to these webinars. So we're literally living in the time created by COVID-19. So this is what we're going to discuss today. I'm Mita Nayar. I'm an assistant editor with Impact Magazine and let me introduce my panelists. We have Abhishek Gupta, CMO, Edelweiss, Tolkien, Life and Shortens, Saurabh Gadbir, Chairman and MD, PNG, Dwellers, Tarun Shah, Head of Marketing and Products, Kodha, Auto India and Sanjeev Shukla, Group CMO, Muthu Patkachal. I'm here to discuss branch challenges and the road ahead. Also before that let me also tell you about a hashtag, if you're a webinar please show some love, please keep tweeting. Let me start with a very basic question. You know this the COVID-19 outbreak was not exactly a boat through the blue as far as India is concerned. So we saw it coming, we saw what was happening in other countries. Tell me was there any scope for any kind of preparedness as far as the industry is concerned here? Mr. Gupta, can you take this question? Yeah, so you know I agree with you Mita that yes we saw it coming and could see that it is spreading. However at the back of our minds, there were always some kind of this thinking, situations will not come to what it has come to today. It will come and probably it will pass, probably disrupt up to a certain extent but not up to what it has done. So while yes we were preview to what was happening and probably we had some time to prepare for it but nobody would have anticipated that things would come to this. So yes and no would be my answer. And you know as a brand then what was the first step that you took not as an advertiser but as a brand when you realize that there's no going back? So you know strictly for our business which is relies heavily on the advisory model. You know we are dependent on people, our sales team, advising people in what kind of product to buy and then those advisories things are not happening, phase two things are not happening. The first and foremost for us to ensure that the confidence level does not go down. You know if not to meet people it is not that you're not able to actually do business. So important to ensure that confidence level does not go down and the second challenge that we also look at that is the at any point of time you're talking to a lot of prospects, a lot of people who are looking for financial products and as you know an insurance product is very much prone to procrastination. So at a time where it is very easy for customers and prospects to go away very easily because of this situation. It is important to ensure that the confidence level of team does not go down. I think our focus during the first few days of this situation will ensure that we maintain that confidence level. Let me bring in Mr. Ghatgir maybe. You know as an advertiser let me take my earlier question and let me tell you as an advertiser. What was the first step that you took? Yeah that advertiser you know as a brand we had to first talk to our customers because this we are somewhere seeing that things are getting a little worse and we need to get prepared for that. So we had launched as a brand a helpline for customers to really place orders in case the stores get shut down. We had made the entire plan of supply of how this group will be delivered to them. Since the precious items gold diamonds we had to really be prepared from that perspective and at that point the lockdown was not officially announced but there were signs of you know things getting a little worse but after getting prepared for the entire thing after coming into customers in the first three four days we got more than 7,000 calls from customers with the requirements of you know gold jewelry coins and being a festive season being wedding season people had faced a lot of demands. Unfortunately before we could assemble everything lockdown happened. So the first task was to really inform everybody about that we have received your requirements. We are processing it but we're not able to ship it to you until the lockdown lifted. That was the first communication we tried to give to people and a lot of people were disappointed because Gudi Parva was around the corner and it was precious for them to get something precious in their homes but we could not honor that and so even today people are lining up with the requirements and we are keeping a track of everything and as soon as you know things come to normalcy we'll be able to honor all the commitments what people have required and we will fulfill that. On the part of advertising what we have done is we have tried to you know portray the brand ethos in communication here. So instead of you know talking about products what you're offering we are talking about how as a brand we have seen worse times than this because as you know PNG has been there from 1832. So secular crisis had happened 100 years ago when almost half of the world population had you know was dead because the Spanish flu and that time people had panicked the end of the world after second world war so we're trying to give people hopes as a brand we're telling people tough time will not last and giving people the hopes of you know how things are going to come back to normalcy Solving a lot of people's ideas on gold investment a lot of confusion today in the market about what will happen post COVID lockdown goes up how will the economies face what will happen in terms of stock market gold investments so we have set up a dedicated cell where we're answering all these queries of people communicating to them and as a brand we are trying to keep them assured on not to really rely on rumors fake news and to look at gold and to look at your jewelry as an investment look at it as a long-term strategy and how as a jeweler we are with them in the entire journey is what we're trying to communicate this is being done through a lot of mediums we are using some outdoor mediums for this we are doing a lot of work on social mediums so all our social platform being Instagram Facebook Twitter we are talking to customers it's educating as well as trying to answer their queries and to be able to stay in touch with them during the during the tough times you know let me try to direct my next question to Mr. Ja you know I was speaking to a couple of marketers and they told me that for the April June period they flashed pens to the June of 60 almost 60 percent now as far as automobile brands are concerned I mean it's been a bigger blow for you because you've already been experiencing a slowdown for the past one year so what has the situation been for you as far as advertising is concerned see must be the advertising has been stopped completely because all showrooms are shut all workshops are shut people would not even be able to step out of their homes we had three launches lined up for quarter two they're still lined up we are waiting waiting and watching basically to see when this lockdown is lifted because after because a car launch takes about three years of planning we have to launch the cars but we will be able to launch it only when things normalize a bit and people are able to step out of their homes and we can ship the cars from the plants to the dealerships and the trucks can move around the country so as of now all mass media advertising has been stopped completely the moment it opens up we are going to re-evaluate and two things will be critical one is the mood of the buyer post the lockdown is lifted and the second thing would be the media consumption patterns how they change which will decide how much and where we spend our money okay and let me bring in Mr Shukla Mr Shukla are you there of course okay so also you know there are also brands that completely withdrawn advertising from a couple of mediums like print there is radio and to an extent even TV but digital is still there so would you say now all brands are like slowly moving towards digital and digital is finally arrived in India yeah I think you know we've been the demon period we saw how payment channels kind of like you using your words finally arrived and they've been growing since then I think yes digital has had arrived sometime back but yes I would say finally finally kind of arrived and all aspects of digital so just share with you and flip your question first question and like Abhishek said we we were not caught unaware we shouldn't be saying we were caught unaware but we were caught I would say lazy and also the fact that you know okay you know this is not in our neighborhood it's fine you know it's too shall pass and so on and so on but one of the first things we started and we've been struggling with that for quite some time is because we are into lending business primarily and to the con man who needs money but so both our people on the ground which is almost 15,000 people on the ground and our customers are just too reluctant and not so keen and don't find it they find it risky to kind of use digital channels for for financial transactions they use it for everything else for watching videos and so on and so forth but not necessarily for digital transactions by the second week of March itself even before the lockdown and all that happened we had started communicating on our digital channels to our internal team as well as to customers you know please use the app please use the e-pay facility on the website and we have a product called 24 by 7 whereby you can SMS and get money if you're known has headroom you can get the money in your bank account you don't have to come to the branch and so on and so forth so we started doing that mid march onwards itself and we are hoping in fact it has already seen almost 42% jump in terms of usage all these three channels put together have seen a 42% jump in the usage in these two weeks itself post the lockdown but still the overall penetration of this network 4% of the total base made so 42% of us on a small base but we are hoping that this will really catch on as soon as we kind of reopen and the bear and the good part would be that now even our teams on ground convinced and as long as the list hopefully the customers you know another another thing that we've seen in the past is you know movement marketing you know a brand like Beethoven you don't think would have thought twice before you know using demonetization to the advantage but at the same time if if one were to say that you know somebody wants to exploit covid you it would be looked upon as a cardinal sin right so where does where does a brand draw the line between informing promoting itself and you know the rest so here I would actually look at going back to basics you know what does the brand stand for what are the brand values as long as you are sticking true to your brand values and it is a part of what you stand for then I don't see it being seen as a situation we are trying to milk the situation over here so you have to take care that you have to true to your values you suddenly can't doing something we are not doing earlier that is one second is at point of time these are situations that nobody has thought that would ever come so as so the mindset and the mindset of people itself is also fairly I would say they themselves are not very sure what is happening or how to react to it at this point of time if you're seen as a brand which is trying to milk the situation and do something it's not to be done you would obviously be seen in a negative light on the other hand if you are able to do something which you meaningfully are able to do so it is not just about doing movement marketing it is actually doing something about it as a brand you are doing something about it which is I mean true to your actual question you should definitely go and do it but don't just do it for lip service and don't just do it for let me give you one example now what demonetization was for these digital payment apps I think lockdown is for the edu tech apps right now in a very basic way so by choose very smartly I mean very nicely also as soon as a lockdown was announced they made their app open for everybody for the next two months now I saw reports saying that there's been a 150% rise in the number of new users on their on their app now would you see a situation like this to be an opportunistic one or something as which is very helpful as a marketer and a consumer so as a parent if you see one of the biggest challenges that parents are facing is keeping the kids occupied also ensuring that they are also because it is very difficult to go into watch tv and being on net and do a lot of binge watching kids also so how do I ensure as a parent that my kids are engaged and as they're meaningfully engaged in something that is adding value to them I think it was a very good one out of my juice for moving from a certain section which is paid to moving it free to give them enormous goodwill but more important is get more new users to their platform who in turn will go pay its oppression at a later stage I think it's a start move I'll come back to what I was saying earlier what are you doing about it not just doing a lip service are you meaningful I think Bejews has done that. Mr. Ahmed, would you like to comment? Yeah you know I really believe in what our previous panelist said that you know just doing anything at one day of situation is is definitely a complete no-no see demon has had two sides to it there are people who are supporting demon and people who are against demon this is one situation where the entire world is suffering there is no one who's going to benefit from this it's a global disaster it's a global pandemic and so we all have to be sensitive towards people's feelings there are people who are suffering the world is right now in a complete standstill mode so I think what we're seeing also if you look at last year's IPL 2019 IPL finals the viewership was 13 crores and if you look at PM Modi's address last time for the lockdown it was 20 crores so the seriousness people have towards this entire thing can be evident from the number of people who have tuned on to it and I really think during this time brand have to be conscious brand have to try to help the community so if you look at most of these streaming apps a lot of apps are giving content free like free content free this content for entertainment this content for education there is content which can be because right now at home people are limitation so I think what can a brand do to try to bring happiness bring positivity and bring a divergent people's sorrow right now I think is going to be very crucial and brand which have the platform and the ability to do that should definitely go and you know do such things because a short term sacrifice right now will be a huge brand building exercise in the coming times so I think every brand which has a social platform wherein they can try to engage with consumers and try to be meaningful to them without hard selling I think right now in need of that and we're seeing a lot of brands are doing this even auto brand like I was just seeing BMW the way they're trying to engage with the customers and trying to so the whole thing was the joy of buying a car now currently joy is missing in home's life so how can I make the how can I make try to make something joyful for them sharing you know motivations stories videos but not hard selling and not trying to do any sales push right now I think is what branding should be about and I think every brand has to right now understand the seriousness of the situation be sensitive and being able to in some way try to bring happiness in this entire boomy atmosphere he spoke about automobile brands and my next question is to you Mr. Jha for most brands I think except media FMCG to an extent there's absolutely no way of ensuring that the purchase cycle is complete especially automobiles now let me ask you considering that you literally stop production for some time till this lockdown gets over and done with what do you do as a brand do you continue in the mass media and you know you you try and engage with the people to some extent do you completely disappear till you can actually start selling your brand again no so we have not disappeared we are not using mass media because like you said we can't sell cars people can't buy a car what we're doing is engaging with our customers using social media and digital also trying to help people like you said earlier that this when you can't earn money at least you can earn goodwill by doing certain things for your existing customers as well as your channel partners and employees so that is what we are focusing right now on so what we've done for instance is that we have extended the deadline for our customers whose annual service whose warranty claims and all we're getting were expiring in the month of March and April we've extended the deadline so that they don't feel the pinch when business comes back to normal it's not their fault that the workshop is shut right now so those are things plus we're also trying to help our channel partners because it's not just the company with its 5000 employees our channel partners across the brands of the group who have thousands and thousands of employees who are dependent on this one brand so we're trying to do a lot for them also in helping our channel partners plus also for employees for instance training this is the time when you're at home a lot of people are doing work from home but there is only this much you can do from home so what we're doing is utilizing this opportunity for training them on certain things for which we either don't find the time or the inclination during normal course of work so like I said if you can't earn money at least you can earn good will by doing these things and yes don't disappear completely so we also have social messages on distancing on keeping your cars clean and how to sanitize your cars if you have to step out and how to maintain your car because if a car is parked for three weeks there could be some damage to it how can you keep your car protected in this time plus for instance for doctors I was just telling before the session started that we went to our database and we have close to 8000 doctors on our database who are Shkoda customers we have reached out to all of them to our dealers and dealers are working with local administration for special permissions so that if these doctors need help with their cars our dealerships can arrange people to go and service their cars because doctors need to move they have to be mobile so these emergency services as we call it is what we're doing to help our people right now selling cars is something which will not happen till the lockdown is lifted and you all know about it I'll take this opportunity to remind people to please tweet show us some love love it hate it tweet it okay let me come to Mr. Shukla you know he I mean Mr. Joy explained how he's trying to keep his brand relevant at such times but there are also brands like Dine Out you know the whole purpose behind their brand is to you know get people to get out of their homes and you know go to the restaurants and eat now these guys are actually coming up with a very diverse kind of messaging right now saying that Dine Out later stay home now so is that something that is really going to make their customer respect you can do without it's okay what do you think? I think like Tarun mentioned and Abhishek also mentioned and all of us know you can't just suddenly disappear from from the customer's minds so there is this question of somebody said that you know if how do you stay relevant when there are no transactions happening right so it might sound opportunistic or even otherwise but I don't I don't think and particularly those which are purely dependent upon experience like Dine Out kind of service they can't really necessarily disappear completely from the from the customer's mind so even here and I'm kind of old up all alone in Trivandrum so even here there is there is a restaurant which I have been once and they have my number or whatever in the database so they have been sending WhatsApp messages talking about sharing the menu and saying I can order food and talking about you know the food is hygienically made and you don't have to worry and you can if you don't don't have facility to cook food or food is not available please order and so on and so forth so that is also relevant at the same time so I think it is important for brands not to necessarily disappear but of course not make a mockery out of the situation because it is as compared to any other moment it is kind of rather serious but yeah I think also the other part is as long as it is pure charity and which like the room spoke about and we were not aware till he told us about how he's trying to help doctors and and and also his dealership employees and so on as long as you do something and it is I won't say publicized but it is disseminated or shared in the media whether it is mass media or digital or whatever it doesn't necessarily remain the just charity you know it is building your brand at the end of the day and it's a good way of building the brand so there's nothing wrong with it but yes you got to build it in a in a sensitive manner empathetic manner and not necessarily be too opportunistic but that's a very fine line and and it's something that one could kind of look at case to case basis but yeah one has to be both conscious about the fact that you can't disappear at the same time you can't really be seen as opportunistic you know also in these times it's kind of difficult to you know get agency and talking about the agency side of it it's very difficult to get your agency to talk to come up with interesting brand campaigns you know again drawing that line between you know sensitivity and actually promoting so but they're actually coming up with really good stuff if you've seen that the ad the Kalyan dwellers work which has Mr. Bachchan and Priyanka Chopra and everybody else you wouldn't say that it was something that was created from home so and and done in record time of less than a week so now these kind of opportunities are coming up and agencies are actually you know putting out work in record time what does it mean for a marketer is this a way to go yeah so I think it was it is really stupendous for and you know and I don't know who in the entire whether it was Pius Pandey himself or whosoever else or Prasoon Joshi or whatever because they are personalities and they all write and I'm sure they can yeah they can they have they have it all to connect with Amitabh Bachchan and so on so forth what I heard about it was informed that in fact it was their idea in in line with Amitabh Bachchan and which is how they could get all the celebrities together and they would have perhaps conjuncture that if they would have perhaps approached Kalyan dwellers or since Amitabh Bachchan is a brand ambassador for Kalyan he would have suggested Kalyan dwellers to kind of bear the bill and the cost and all that but I think it's a massive thing for Kalyan dwellers you know in a certain manner not just the recall but in a certain manner you have all the biggies of of the entire film industry kind of endorsing you in a certain sense not only Amitabh Bachchan but even biggies who hardly come as brand ambassadors including Rajnikant and Mohanlal and Mamuthi and I mean almost everybody was there right if you have to go and even kind of look at them for a day it would cost you some billions so I think it's something really good for Kalyan dwellers of course and I would say that they need to build upon this take this further because you know that's something that kind of will given the barrage of communication going on even that would get forgotten in some time but they need to build upon it but I think it's a it's a massive start for them can you to add to this I would say after this whenever agencies will say he will take this much time not only timelines with the kind of equipments you need to shoot as well as people you need to yeah it has become a benchmark I don't know for good or bad for the yeah advertising industry but it has created a new it is you right because you know in a lockdown situation you need to get all the crew sound people camera people makeup people light people all those stuff it's it isn't really easy um yeah at all guys we keep tweeting on e4m webinar please that's a hashtag also let me let me come to each of you what are your learnings from this episode the COVID-19 outbreak and the lockdown what are you going to take home from this setting the important learning for all of us here is life is uncertain and challenges can come from from your any sides most of us think that you know we we can overcome all challenges but nature has shown that in this kind such kind of crisis whatever you plan everything goes against you so I think the important thing right now right here is to try to be able to be look at long term I think is like a three-year period short term for me six months don't make two long plans try to keep plans for short term plans for six months long term plan for three for three years and other important thing is the way people would adapt to new changes it is phenomenal if you read the data the most downloaded app today on social media is zoom it is not tiktok today it is zoom in India realize people moving on to video conferencing so easily but they have caught on so I think a new trends a brand will now have to be really on its toes be able to follow new trends accept new trends and to be able to be flexible enough to be changing the business model as the consumer demand changes now we no longer can take the consumer granted we no longer can say that things will be done in a particular way uh India has shown that even rural India over India they are very very fast in changing and when crisis happens we get the best out of us so I think as a brand what I learned is now to be resilient to be flexible and to be forward looking but with the eye on the near future and and being able to catch up trends and being able to be a little ahead of the curve and and one more thing which is very brightly in this thing is being sensitive what is being appreciated today appreciating brand which are sensitive which are humane and which are caring for its customers so I think as a market we will evolve from just pricing and just discounting to being able to look at brand values and being somebody who's more socially responsible so I think it's a great time for for brand great time for marketers and we should be able to communicate our values to the end consumer and this will also add to brand building and to a very healthy bottom line Mr. Gupta what would you have to say I think the first learning first of all is a lot of work is a lot of work we never realized even a small keeping a house in order is such a big work and take and probably will empathize with our domestic health in a much better way after this so that has been the biggest learning from a personal side I would say from a work wise you know I was always a non-believer in efficiencies in work from home earlier but now since we are forced to do that I am realizing how efficient it is how decision-making has become much more faster me and Tarun Vadeskar you will have a different point of view on this but my view has been decision-making has been much faster the meetings have been shorter the meetings start on time and therefore the work has become much more efficient that is one part second part is slightly on the vulnerability side we are you know our advances we think that has been made in medical science or anything else a thing like this all of us was down and realization is there but at the same time the human spirit you know we are figured out of hate and I'm sure as the entire mankind we will figure out a way to beat this and come out of it even strongly and the work is still going on so even while yes we are vulnerable we are also I would say undefeatable not undefeatable say I think we have a such a high spirit that we can come back whatever happens third is even in business like us which I was saying earlier depends so much on face-to-face interaction the lot of tools that you can develop in very short time which can actually help in advising people how to go out their work and still get business we still continue to write policies we still people continue to buy insurance policies and it is not just consumer who are able to buy once a customer decides to buy there's a huge brand work also to ensure that the policy gets issued even that is going on very well and things like customer service or our call centers which are where customers can call in and since we don't have call centers operating all of our operators are working out of home and they are working from their phones but still we are able to maintain our service levels our tax have actually improved and our NPS scores have improved during this point of time so it is not so and this has been a huge learning for us and that at that whatever said and you always evolve and find out a way to do business it's been good for you in that case Mr. Jha what do you say I think between sort of it now we shake they have kind of captured the essence of what's it's taught us a couple of things important which we've learned is one is the frailty of human beings we are not invincible the other thing which is this crisis has brought out the interdependence that we have in our ecosystem with each other and how we can rally around find solutions now I'm not blowing our own trumpet but our factories are producing breathing apparatus and masks and hand sanitizers and helping feed the local community and helping transport people with our ride-sharing apps in Europe and all that these are not part of our core business but you just you know quickly evolved ourselves to provide these services to people and it's not for publicity like most of my colleagues don't even know what my company is doing right now till I told them but we are doing it and it's not it's not spending money for gaining publicity or gaining goodwill alone we I think as a human race have realized that we have to be together on this planet absolutely Mr. Shukla yeah so just to flip it around I won't say learnings but I would say positive fallouts and and like Abhishek, Saurabh and Tarun have already shared of course a huge amount of huge number of positive fallouts stroke learnings the I would say except for people who are kind of agenda driven human race has actually come closer like Tarun said and and and have realized that there is interdependence family as a unit I would I would you know say that I'm a bit of a nationalist and I would say a lot of Indian values have come to the fore so you know family as a unit you know at least for someone who's kind of fold up all alone you know I believe family as a unit has come to the fore now the value of and then that's a discussion all of us will remember has been going on for a long time journalist versus specialist that discourse has been going on in this country for a long time the value of the specialist whether it is a doctor or a scientist or a technician or a innovator or like Tarun said even the technicians working in the factories has again come to the fore you know and not just not just doctors alone even bankers all those who are kind of as compared to I would say you know a plain and simple IAS or IPS or whatever else of course they all have been doing making immense contribution but I would say the value of the specialist and I would I would say that I think it's it's time about time that we give them more value the composition and everything must be far more than what it is not just at par with the IAS and so on and so forth so there are quite a few learnings I would say that has come around and in fact the other thing that all of us would agree that the importance and the value of technology whether it is digital or whether it is technology at the back end that has become very important and one more thing we spoke about you know doing things and not just you know advertising and so on and so forth I think like Tarun mentioned about their factories or even I've been following Anand Mainz Street they have developed a ventilator and so on and so forth I have been in automobile industry for 1920 years and in a manufacturing set up particularly in a lockdown it is impossible to move things like that those things which you your assembly line is not really set up to make so on and so forth but we still have liquor companies making hand sanitizers and automobile companies making ventilators and and the tile companies making masks and so on and so forth I think the the immense learning they have now in terms of agility in terms of flexibility in terms of knowing that yes they can do things it's a long term benefit to many of these companies who went around and did all this now they can quickly wrap themselves to new stuff from what they're doing right now they can go and you know do something else I don't think they would be at all afraid of taking up new stuff or doing new things so I think human race has come together and we've the resilience and the and and the agility and the flexibility has really come to the fore and you know also tell me what would be the first thing that you will do once the lockdown is lifted? Mr. Jaayu, you want to go first for this one? What is the first thing that you will do once the lockdown is lifted? I have to take my family out for dinner because day before was my daughter's birthday next week is my wife's birthday and I think it's a bit unfair so yeah the first thing we'll do is go out for a dinner the family dinner and as a brand marketer what would you do? Well get the team together for lunch and thank all of them and my agencies because they've been working tirelessly get all of them together for a nice meal and thank all of them because they've been great in this in this hard period and until how long are you not going to be using work from home? I don't know I don't know see once a month is good enough but staying for staying home for a month is I think a bit too much. Mr. Gupta, what would your what would you what would be the first thing that you do after the lockdown is lifted? Grab a beer in a bar. Not a bad idea. In a bar and get a beer I think that is something that it is not like that you do it every 15 days it's been only 13 years but since you can't do it I don't suddenly miss a month more and you really want to do it but I fully agree with what Tharun said that the team that has rallied behind and done some things which could not have been done earlier I would love to take you and my agency partners out for a lunch and thank them for the work that they have done that's the first thing. Interdependence has really really like shown out shown and you know literally become the thing of the need of the hour and everybody's really respecting that for a change now. Mr. Shukla, what would your idea of a perfect thing to do would be after the lockdown also as a marketer also as an individual? Mr. Shukla? Yeah sorry, I dropped out. Can you repeat the question? I'm saying what would be the first thing that you do once the lockdown is lifted as a marketer? Yeah. He's adding the weird analogy was for everybody. So that's out. I agree, I agree. So that's by default but as a marketer yeah the first thing I do is and that's an advantage or that's the now the I would say the tailwind that I have now is to push through all my agenda in terms of getting the technology in place. So you know the context is that here in our organization we're dealing with the common man actually even lower than the common man. The thing is that you know we need to serve the customer physically and personally and so on and so forth. So the investment behind technology has been kind of brushed off the carpet for a long time of course because they're always so scrunched but I think this will help me in pushing those things. There are various such investments that we have to make in politics in the RIM and in various other, various tech and decision related. This thing will help me do that so the moment in fact we have already started pushing things and telling you come on now, now is time. So hopefully that'll be done. There was this very interesting question that just popped up one of the viewers has written. Do you see rural marketing becoming important considering that a lot of people have moved back to villages now, back to their hometowns? So it's kind of category specific and I think sooner or later those people are going to come back to wherever they maybe some of but as we all know the you know it's not possible for such a large population to kind of stay in the villages. There isn't enough opportunity as such. So those people will move to but you know there are brands, for instance I was with Hiromu for a long time and other than 50% of our sales comes from villages and not just you know not rural in terms of definition but actually villages come from villages so that continues to be an important, not important perhaps a predominant source and I mean in fact in terms of talking about two villages they have moved back to personal transport and not use public transport that is one of the trends that's going to see. So I think it'll be good for let's say two villages particularly a commuting kind of bike it'll be good. So I think for that kind of category for Hiromu and elsewhere else there it'll be good to go go back and connect with the rural populace. What about you Mr. Jamin? How does it work for the automobiles to your own? See for us as a brand we are not present in too many rural markets to be honest. We are a very metro and big city brand till now. What we started last year was going out as a branch concept in two tier three and tier four cities also. It's too premature to comment on that one also we'll have to wait and watch and see because we are not hardcore into rural marketing. Yes certain categories for certain categories will be important but not so important for us as a brand. Certainly two-wheelers yes because they have a very very huge market certain for viewers also but I will have to wait and watch and see how it turns out. Mr. Gangil can I get you in here? Yeah there's another question that came in which said you know what is where does the current situation leave traditional mediums like radio and newspaper? See I think newspaper today if you look at most urban cities we're not getting physical newspapers we're getting emails, pdf form and people are happy reading it. This is this trend I think may even continue ahead people may not really now be used to reading newspaper physically every day maybe newspapers for me I think could be weekend activity where you have full-fledged newspaper on a weekend people may have time to browse it and advertisers may be able to really portray all the ads on the weekends but I think weekdays newspapers is looking for a sea change. Radio I think is here to stay because people will have to commute once long you know one thing become normal see people's commute to workplaces is going to happen and like you all are saying right now we can't keep on working from home we'll have to go to our respective workplaces we'll have to travel so radio as a medium is going to be there I'm hoping radio becomes more interactive more complete not not just entertainment but new start coming on radios it becomes live and I think radio is going to be a medium which all advertisers you know beat FMCG auto will be looking at it because it caters to wide range of audience it caters to almost the entire working population male female caters a lot of young people but I think newspapers has its own bit of share of risk attached to it even cost wise the printing cost on newspapers is gone up so high that advertisers would really look at today's times to connect to audience there are much better platforms in my view social media platforms OTT platform will become a very very big source of media entertainment in coming times people would not want to watch cable television to want to see OTT as per their requirement so I think that's going to be a important market for advertisers to display their products to product launches would be virtual online we are in jewelry we are talking about a lot of things not being done also online and each channel which was just a dream in jewelry will not very soon become a reality where your entire showroom will be showcased online people may able to browse jewelry online and just the decision of the payment of money can be done physically but I think the entire selection process will be done online so a lot of brands which are traditionally being used to newspaper being used to advertising will look at this whole phenomenon changing and I personally am for it that you know as we are looking at this COVID has changed a lot of habits of people and even a lot of elderly people who are not on social media have logged on they're enjoying this whole experience and I think it's here it's here to stay we are in a virtual world it's here to stay I think every brand will have to look at it seriously I have to make strategies around that so advertising as a whole concept as a whole reach is going to change and we all have to really wait and watch and keep on keeping our you know plans very flexible and wait and watch how things evolve I personally am very much focused on digital on social I think that's the future you know Mr Gaye we just spoke about you know habits changing Mr Gupta do you think you know this whole COVID episode will lead to an increase in the number of insurance policies bought considering that people are going to you know be afraid about their health you are on absolutely absolutely in fact we have been discussing about what democratization did to payments and therefore what the situation is doing to education apps and video streaming apps I think one industry that will benefit or would gain specific immensely out of this is the insurance industry you know insurance always been has a especially life insurance has always been a category which is sold and not bought but once this is over people and started realizing how vulnerable we are how unpredictable life is and how we cannot plan for everything so once this realization comes automatically the one of the mitigating products for all these factors is life insurance so people will realize life insurance is important and we hope that from being a hardcore push product this will bring some level of within this product people will buy definitely on their own we think and we as an industry as a company we are fully prepared for this but we see a lot of silver lining out of coming out of this situation Mr. Ja do you see any silver lining here it's been a terrible terrible year for your industry the auto industry is waiting for a silver lining for a while it'll take some time because ours our industry is largely dependent on two factors one is absolute requirement for transport which is when you buy a car and for a lot of brands it's also a reward that you give to yourself for doing well in life that updates especially when you buy bigger cars fancy cars premium cars luxury cars you are rewarding yourself we have to wait and see how the people are going to reward themselves how harsh they are on themselves and all that because a lot of these customers of ours are also entrepreneurs run their own businesses I think they will also look at bringing the business back on tracks you know paying salaries for the people and coming back to normalcy which might affect the demand in the short term at least but in the long term there is still a lot of pent up demand in this country we have one of the lowest penetrations for automotive in the world so there will be a demand it will take some time to settle down but in the long run it will we can't predict the exact timelines I wish we could but it would okay let me ask this one question I think this is an agency guy for sure this is come in the Q&A session he wants to know how do I get the clients to spend now nobody's spending Mr. Shukla do you want to answer that? Well that's an opportunistic stance so it's like saying the brands asking the same question to the customers and saying why don't you spend why are you not buying you know this dress or this t-shirt or this jeans or this car or this whatever so I don't think we can ask the customers as of now and I don't think the agency should be asking us but you know the maybe the way is to you know get the relevant stuff out a lot of initiative has to be taken from everyone get the relevant stuff out in terms of keeping the keeping the brand conversation with its customers alive like we said in the beginning that nobody wants to just really disappear at this point in time and if that works of course it'll be kind of disseminated and whatever comes out of it will come to the agency and will come to all of us but doing it as a planned manner basically to do advertising as such I think that's kind of as of now out of question and also tell me what kind of challenges will brands see after you know I mean everything is settled and you're back to normal what kind of challenges do you foresee in the immediate future so you know but the I think it's one thing that I wanted to say for some time now in this discussion is if you ask me we have just kind of started on this COVID thing you know it's going to it's it's a long haul lest we think otherwise and until we have a specific proper cure or a vaccine or whatever it is supposed to be and it is freely and easily available and it shows real results and without any side effects and so on and so forth people in their minds in terms of the emotions are not necessarily going to return to normal and you know for how long one doesn't know that we will keep ourselves restricted like this whether it is in India or outside and the moment you know travel is open and international flights kind of go on and so on and so forth you might as well see you know for example yesterday or therefore yesterday reports about the fact that China has seen recurrence in terms of imported virus you know infection because they've opened up and so on and so forth so as unless and until you know things really return to normal which I don't see at least a year or so we and like all of us have said let's not plan too much so we should wait for it the other thing is all of us are talking as per our own of course we have experience and that also matters but we haven't really gone out and spoken to the customer as yet of course if it's not the time to speak to the customer but we got to speak to the customer do our classical marketing research whichever way we want to do it whether we want to do it online or offline or whichever way I think we need to speak to the customers when they're in a mood to kind of respond and and get to know as to what they're thinking and what they're doing and it is only then can we say okay this is what but yes otherwise we can continue to do the fundamental stuff like I said you know bring in technology bring in digital and and so on and so forth but from a consumer perspective there is still time for us to learning is not enough as of now for us to really plan and there is another question that came in he says Kalyan Jwellers obviously has come up with this one ad which has got everybody's attention now of course there are a lot of other brands which are not openly advertising coming up with videos in the long run do you think those people will be left behind or it's okay that they don't advertise and they miss Mr. Ja or Mr. Gupta whoever wants to answer this so you I have to advertise for an audience to be ready to receive my advertising I can't be advertising and also answering to the previous question that in a lockdown state where you can't step out of the building what do I advertise for and we don't even know whether it's this this is being lifted on 15th it might be 30th it might be next month or three months so who would like to waste money right now and effort on customers who are not willing to take that message from you so I think we'll have to wait and watch and very rightly said this is this is just the beginning we've just got into it two and a half weeks we still don't know the entire implication we are at the early stages and we have to speak to the customer and understand what they need we can't force a customer to buy a car at this point of time or buy a insurance maybe we can force them to buy but definitely not cars at this point of time so let me conclude if I may whatever the situation now let's hope that years later when we look back at this particular phase we don't say that hey it was all bad let's let's try and find that one silver lining and soon for each of us thank you so much thank you so much for joining us and your friends do well in the thanks so much everyone stay safe thank you