 Welcome to another very special episode of our series Beating All Odds. In this series, we are honoring leaders who despite so many challenges thrown at us by COVID-19 are standing tall. The leader I have today is indeed a special one. He is a media maven, a creative thinker, a trendsetter and the most cheerful leader media and entertainment industry has ever had. A 10 minute conversation with him and the life suddenly looks very good. So in these times of despair and anxiety, he is someone you must listen to. Please welcome Mr Raj Nayak, founder and managing director of House of Chairs. Welcome to the show Mr Nayak. Yes, I can hear you and thank you so much Nazia. That was a too fabulous introduction. I mean, you made me cheerful just by the introduction. I'm feeling on top of the world. But you are very kind and really nice of you. Thank you. So, you know, these are actually very difficult times for the industry. You know it better than me. The business has come to a halt. How will this crisis change broader dynamics of our entertainment industry? I think there is going to be a change. If we think that the future is going to be the same, I don't think so. At least not the near future. The long-term future, I don't know. And so I don't profess to know something that I don't know. But the long-term, it will leave a psychological impact on everybody's mind, you know, in some way or the other. And if you're speaking about our industry in particular, the advertising and marketing industry, if you're speaking about the entertainment industry, you've seen today a new movie is going directly on Amazon. I forget the name of the movie, Gulab something, you know. And I think the dynamics of the business is going to change. I was reading today's, I think either you posted it or some other publication posted it saying that broadcasters are already asking production houses to cut costs. I saw an interview with Uday Shankar where he mentioned that, you know, I just need to find people who have access to mobile phones. So I think the whole thing is going to change because advertisers have suddenly realized one of the things is, you can make the same thing so cheaply and it works. So why should I go to Switzerland and shoot? Why should I do this? Why should I do that? That is why. Cash is a big problem today. And because of which I think immediately people will be a little averse to opening their purse strings. They'll be a little tight-fisted, I would say. Having said that, the entertainment industry content consumption is going to go up, it's gone up tremendously. But at the same time the economics of it, the dynamics of it in terms of monetization is a challenge. So I know some broadcasters who mentioned to some production houses who have been in touch with me saying that we are not going to commission too much. So it's a chicken and egg situation. I'm very optimistic. I'm a very eternal optimist, my heart. So I would like to believe that things will come back to some kind of a normal, but it'll take time. It ain't going to be nahari. I think smaller production houses will gain from the situation because they are... Somebody who has, one of the things this COVID has done, it's even made people like me who's a tech dinosaur, tech savvy. I mean, in the sense I'm learning something every day. You know, this show that I put up, I mean the live chat, I wouldn't call it a show, a live chat that I started is something that I did it all on my own. I mean, I'm a guy who didn't know how to actually even put together a presentation on a computer. And I know grandparents and parents and everybody are now getting on their mobile phone, doing FaceTime, doing Zoom calls, playing Ludo King with one another and all kinds of things. So I think people who are digitally savvy, people who are able to produce stuff at an economical cost, great quality, I think they have a huge future, huge, huge future. And one of the things I was thinking in my mind is I don't have the skill set, but how can I leverage? A lot of people having the skill sets with the skill set that I have with my relationship with all the brand managers or marketing directors and companies. I've just been thinking in my head because everybody needs a bridge. You know, and there are lots of people, I was speaking to one of the marketing head of a broadcasting company yesterday and she told me, she said, somebody reached out to her and said, I made this film. Would you like to look at it? And she bought it for 50,000 rupees. And they commissioned the film to an agency for 4.5 lakh rupees. And she said that was crap and I got somebody who reached out to me offering me a film. We just put our logo on it, we branded it and we put it out for 50,000 rupees. I think that kind of opportunity for people who are really talented. And talented individuals. You know, sitting at home, they can turn out stuff and if they have the right bridge to be able to find the right buyer, I think there's a huge opportunity. In fact, I wanted to understand from you because you have also recently ventured into a new company which also was supposed to get into production, right? So what kind of content will you look into now? I started with something when I quit my job. I quit my job without anything in hand. I didn't think what I'm going to do. But that's me, that's my nature. I'm impulsive. Even my business or people who know me will tell you, Raj makes decisions like this. So I quit my jobs also many times, still like this, which is a good thing and a bad thing. But some of it works for me. So I'm blessed that way. So when I quit, I started House of Cheer with a specific intent of doing something in the business of happiness and I actually built something. It is still built, so it's not going to go waste. Only thing is I need to probably redesign it and probably the timing for me may not be the right time to launch. I was planning to launch it on my mother's birthday on 22nd of March, but then everything has gone for a sixer now. In content, I had strategically taken a decision that I will go into content slowly because I didn't want to get into it. I didn't want to be a production house because that's not my skill set. I don't have that skill set at all. But I wanted to be a curator of good content and I wanted to create a studio model where I would outsource the line production and take some good projects to some big OTT platforms. That was the thought, but I had put it on hold because I was focusing on something else. And content business, you know, it's a... Complete, complete. Go on, I mean, complete your sentence. I said content business, there's a lot of gestation period. Yeah, so content business, there's a lot of gestation period. It just doesn't happen all night. And so I was very clear that I wanted to have some business which gave me a stable cash flow on a regular basis. Then I would focus on content and that would be an idea. I was not interested in doing too many things, doing one show at a time or things like that. Coming back to the happiness product which you were supposed to launch last month. I mean, I feel you were pretty ahead of time because this year, there's so much anxiety. These are such gloomy times that everyone would need some kind of happiness product. Do you agree with me? I totally agree with you. My only challenge is going to be lots of companies who will want my product may not want to spend that money. So again, I'll have to find a way of finding the balance between... And also need to redesign the product a little bit. And I'm working on it. So the way I look at it is in every adversity, there's an opportunity. I'm a firm believer that every cloud has a silver lining. I come from that school of thought. So I'm looking at it. So I'm not saying that things won't happen. Maybe I may just launch anything two months from now or I may wait for another six months to launch. We are not in any big hurry. I'm here to stay. Also, in these difficult times, how are you keeping yourself motivated and how are you keeping your team motivated? I don't have a very large team. So that's a good thing. You do have a team. Yeah, I do have a team. And I have a very large team outside of who are not working with me. All my colleagues or my people, I work in different organizations. So they keep me entertained. They keep giving me stuff, what's happening and what's not happening and things like that. I think they also call me to prep themselves up. So it's mutual. They prep me up and they prep themselves up. So I'm getting a lot of feedback. I'm connected with a lot of people I was not connected with for many years. I destroyed some people whom I have not been in touch for many years. But other than that, I've been busy. I've been busy doing. In fact, it's funny that I'm more busy now doing nothing. What have I been busy about? But time has just flown by. Because there's no demarcation between your home and office. You left home around 9 o'clock or 9.15 in the morning. You reached office by 9.30, 9.45 because my office is close by. But now that it's not there. So there's no demarcation between person and professional. It's 24 hours. And it can consume you. I'm sure you are more tired. I can with conviction tell you, even though I don't know much about you, you are working even harder than what you used to work. Okay, going to office. But that's a reality for everybody. That's a reality for everybody. Yeah, that's a reality. But I've been doing a little bit of reading. I've been doing a bit of watching. And now that I've done my light chat, I'm doing a little bit of research on my guest. And I've been doing exercising, which I know. I mean, I was not prompt with it, but I've been extremely prompt now because and I spend a lot of time with my little doggy, Meredith. You can see her. I hope I can show you. Let me take this to her. Can you see her? Not yet. Yes. Can you see her? Yeah. Can you see her? Yeah, she's sleeping. Yeah. Yeah, she's sleeping on my bed. Nicely sleeping. So that was Meredith for you. So she keeps me entertained. She follows me all around the house. So she keeps me entertained. And that's it. I mean, I play Ludo with my sisters in Bangalore. Sorry. Yes, I play Ludo with my sisters in Bangalore. And so we do all these things. And of course there's a lot of cooking, eating, eating, cooking. I think we've cooked more different dishes in the house during COVID than any other time because half the time you're cooking with stuff that is available to you. So you can't eat what it's not available. So experimenting. So it's been good. And I cooked also. And it's not some, I don't think it's a great batch of dinner that I cooked. But I did that as well. What did you cook? My wife and daughter find it funny. I cooked Thai curry rice. Fried rice and Thai curry. I'm sure it must have been made yesterday. At least that's what your wife and daughter would have told you. No, they actually, they did tell me it was good. So, and let me tell you they are my, they are the biggest honest critic. Honest critic or everything I do. They actually inflate my balloon. You know, every time I'm little, feel little inflated, they just come and poke a hole into it. That is what family is for. I also wanted to talk to you about your new show because you know, it's already created a buzz and the kind of people you are speaking to are very interesting. Tell us a little more about it. Where did the idea come from? I was sitting like this and I should actually give credit to my dear friend Anurag Bhatra. I'm sure. So he called me one day and he said, I want to do it. I want to do Anurag Bhatra and his colleague. I'm just forgetting now. Abhinav. This is age catching up with me that I'm forgetting names. Call me up and said, Pardon? Actually Abhinav called me and said first. Yeah, Abhinav called me and he said, we want to do a call with you. We want to do a Zoom call with you and an interview with you and then Anurag will be joining as well. So I said, okay. So we did that call and then I watched the call and I felt good with myself. I felt good with myself and then I said, why don't I do something? Why don't I do something? And I said maybe first I thought that the business world will carry it on its platform or something like that. Anurag hasn't made me that often. So then I said, okay. I mentioned this to a colleague of mine called Mandy Kulkarni. And I said, I'm thinking of something like that. So what Mandy did was he actually made a poster and sent me. I looked at my own picture and I felt very happy about it and I looked at the poster and I liked the poster. So I said, okay, let me go ahead and do it. And then I spoke to a friend of mine, Jill Mejewski. And I told her this is what I want to do. She said, why don't you do it? If you want to do it, do it. You know, if that's what your heart is telling you, want to do it, do it. And this is a good time to do it. So I said, okay. So I said, will you be my first guest? Now she was put on a spot because she's never given an interview. She's never done a show ever in her life. And so she, I mean, she was encouraging me, telling me do what your heart tells you to do. And then I asked her, will you be my first guest? She couldn't say no. So that's how it started. And actually between the time I decided it was on a Saturday by Sunday evening, I had a poster to Monday. I made the announcement Friday. I was live. But once I went live, I decided, okay, who should I get as my next guest? So I picked up the phone on my friend, because, and, you know, I said, he said, when tell me when, where, I mean, he didn't even think about it in one second, you know. So that happened. So the, so then when, then I said, I should have a guest line up for at least two weeks. Not a couple of weeks. I don't want to make it a couple of weeks because what happens is if something topical comes up and if I may want to change, right? So, so every two, I have two weeks lined up. So I've got my next guest. Same thing. I called a punam. I called a punam because again, I wanted people from different walks of life. I did not want only Bollywood or only politics or things. So my next guest is punam. So again, I called a sent a message and she said, sure, tell me when I said, this is the day. This is the time. She said, anytime for you, Raj. And that's it. So, and now I'm fixing my next guest. Interesting. I mean, as it, you will get to know every Monday. And that's what I've decided in my head. The thought process was Friday will be the show. No matter how much people love you, they will not be able to watch it live, but they've got the weekend to catch up. And Mondays I will announce my new guest. So there's something to look forward to. So Raj, before we close it, I also wanted to, I would want you to go back to like one year back when you were the CEO of, CEO of ICON. What would have been the first few things you would have done after this lockdown, you know, when you would have gone back to office? What do you think anybody who's in that position right now? Yeah, I mean, what are the, what are first of the first few measures that anybody who's in that position, be it Y Com, be it star, be it any other big broadcasters should do? I think first of, I'm sure most of them are doing that. But first and foremost, I think communication, clear clarity in communication, you know, you have half the things as people assume things. And in today's day and age, and one of the things, because I'm working with a partner in London, and they're doing a lot of work at the corporate there. And he was telling me from some of the keywords and coming things that are coming out, anxiety, his fear is, you know, not knowing what's going on. People are scared and things like that, right? Also a lot of fatigue because people are overworking. Like I told you, people are overworking because there's no, it was given that your boss won't call you at 6 o'clock, you leave office, you go home, 99% you don't get calls. But now there's no, everybody is calling everybody at all the time. So those kind of things. I think clarity in communication. I think first thing any leader should do at this stage is as many times as possible. And clarity in communication and constant feedback because you don't know who is going through what, who lives in what circumstances, what are their personal problems. These are the times when I think being empathetic for a leader is the most important thing. You know, you can't assume because you got living in a 5 bedroom apartment and you got a condition and you can't assume the person at the other end is the same for all that person of yours who's a very excellent employee in office. In today's situation, maybe having a small baby at home, he has to manage his wife, he has to manage the baby, they don't have health, they have to work together. So you have to take into consideration these things. You have to assume that everybody is going through hardships and then work towards it. I think first is being empathetic, second is clarity in communication, getting feedback, feedback is a very important thing and also creating people, sort of people in groups where you have leaders who are there to take care of each other's problems, to find out what are the employees facing, is somebody having a problem, does somebody need help and I think corporate at this time, if you're not there for your people when they need you, see some of the things are going to happen, whether you like it or not, cost-cutting is going to happen, things like that. But that is reality as long as you're being fair and you're, it's fine, it's fine. But I think compassion and empathy is the most important thing for a leader at this stage. This is more on a personal front. What I was trying, also trying to understand is from business perspective, what are some of the key measures that leaders should do in the ME industry right now? I think this is a big learning for corporates. I know somebody told me yesterday and this is damn funny, COVID can be renamed as CTO, because what CTOs have managed to do for organizations, this pandemic has made corporates good digital and good digital and how. I think one of the things corporates will also do and I was, like I said, I was speaking to a colleague of mine in London and he told me Raj, none of my people, and they don't have a very big set up, they have a set up of about say 40 or 60 people, he said none of my colleagues after this want to come back to work, they don't want to come back to work, they say we want to work from home, if the work is getting done, why should we come to work? Now, I think that is going to change. I think one of the things, and I heard Uday also saying that, you know, in one of his, I watched it on some channel, I don't know, but he was saying that. So I think that one of the things that when a person goes back is to see what is important and also prepare for a situation like this for the future. So whether digitally, whether if you can get things done where people don't have to travel, I think as a leader you also have as an organization and as a leader, you have a responsibility towards society. So if you can make sure that your people don't have to travel and if you can get the work done, why have cars on the road and people traveling by trains and things like that, give them the option to work from home. You have done it now and your work is going on smoothly, I assume. So people who have to come to work, you can't help it, but the editing job can be done from anywhere, for example. I'm just giving in my industry. So I think even if you cut 30%, 40%, that will be enough, I mean of workforce coming to office. You can do something. You can say come three days a week and do it in rotation so that you know, so half the population doesn't come. It's so good for the environment of the environment and so many other things. Yes. So I would think that way. I would actually think of policy based on whatever they're doing. They still continue to work that many days a week, but tell them you have to come to office twice a week. You know that kind of thing and rotation so that everybody doesn't come on the same two days of the week. So things like that, I think people, leaders have to be more innovative. They have to think differently. One of the things that's not happening today is there are no water cooler conversations in offices. So people are feeling lonely. So can you do some kind of a thing where people come together on a weekly basis digitally because there's no other option digitally. So things like that. I think leaders have to be innovative. Leaders have to think differently. And I once again say the same thing. Leaders have to communicate. Leaders have to get feedback. And leaders have to be empathetic. I think your internet connection is a little slow. Your internet is a little slow. It gets hanged after a few minutes. Oh, I'm so sorry. This is scary for me, especially because if I'm going to do live tomorrow, then it's scary. That is the challenge. Because we are dependent on somebody for the internet connection. So before we close, Raja, I want you to say a couple of things about for those people who perhaps started their own businesses much like you, but they're not as confident or as experienced or they do not have that experience of taking risk like you have. They're younger than you. They've done it for the first time or they've invested too much money. What kind of, I mean, how do you motivate them and what should they do in this situation? Hello. I would say it is very scary. I would be lying if I said it's not scary. It's scary even for me, okay? In spite of having a roof over my head and food on the table, it is scary for me. So I can imagine somebody who's put their life savings and started something or taken debt or borrowed money or things like that. It's very, very scary. But I would say be optimistic because you don't have a choice. You don't have a choice. So be optimistic because what you can't change around you, you can't change around you. So be optimistic. You have to be hopeful, but you have to be also very businesslike. You have to cut your losses. If you feel, don't say, I will, if you, if you can always get out of this, something that you're not able to sustain, shut it down. I mean, shut the warheads down. Wherever you can work from home, do things like that. Cash is king. So whatever you can conserve, conserve, and it is better to cut your losses and still be focused in what you're doing. You know, you never give up hope. You say, okay, sometimes, you know, I never call anything a failure. People don't fail. People have setbacks. So you need to be able to say, okay, it's a setback. I will take a step back and then I will move forward at the right time. You know, when a tsunami is coming at you, you can't stand there and be brave. You have to just, you know, sidestep and let the tsunami pass, and then you go, you know. So that's the way to look at it. But be hopeful. You know, the one thing that, that keeps us going is hope. Poori kaina, what does it say? Umid me. I don't know. I'm very bad with these things, but, uh, uh, so, so that's it. So, so you have to have hope. You have to be positive. Uh, and, uh, say, say, say to yourself, this too shall pass, you know, say that to yourself and it will pass. Believe me, it will pass. I'm very confident. We will bounce back and we, when we bounce back, we will bounce back much, much, much higher. Yes. Inshallah, we all will bounce back. And, uh, on that optimistic note, I have to close this because we are already out of time. And, uh, thank you so much, Raj for speaking to us. This is very inspiring. And I'm sure it'll inspire those who really need inspiration who are feeling very anxious in this moment. And, uh, we will all bounce back soon. Thank you so much. And stay at home. Stay safe. Take care of your health. Thanks a lot for your time. You too. Take care. And thank you for having me on this. And one of the days you're going to, and one of these days you're going to come on my Friday's live. Oh, give me some more years. Let me be, let me reach that level that I come to come on that show. No, no, but what I want to tell my, uh, uh, my friends in the industry on the show is this show will also cover people from the industry. Just for your information. Because that's where my bread and butter came from for many, many years. So they can, and they are, and there are many, many people in the studio inspired me. So they'll be my first time. Thank you, Raj. Raj, you really need to fix your internet connection. It's hanging, uh, it's hanging every few minutes. It becomes a little slow. So, But did you get, did you get what I said just now? Did you get what I said just now? I got it that you, you want to invite people from your industry also because you, that's where you're getting your bread butter from. Yeah. And a lot of people have inspired me and I want to, in some way or the other, get them on my Friday life with Raj. Thank you so much. You've already made my day. You don't know. I'm physically sitting there, but I'm on some another level right now. Thank you, Raj. Thanks a lot. And it was, it was our pleasure speaking to you. Thank you. Thank you very much.