 Ladies and gentlemen, moving ahead with our first panel discussion for the day, this is going to be an interesting discussion on three piece of communication, pandemic perseverance and PR, how communication plays a vital role in crisis. Now ladies and gentlemen, join me as we welcome our session chair for the panel discussion, Taranjit Ratan, founder PR, POI. I would request Taranjit to kindly take over the charge. A very warm welcome to you. Hey, hi, Cathy. Thank you. Thank you so much. A very warm welcome, firstly. Thank you. Good to see you in the morning. OK, so welcome. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this panel discussion. And it's the first one of the day. And in this panel, I'm going to draw the PR realign across the pandemic and draw a line of continuation to the Indian PR industry's performance. And it is a good crisis as an opportunity for a PR team to be able to do a good success. Can I request everybody who's watching this? I think it's much easier. There's a lot of background noise. Excellent. And when somebody wants to kind of contribute to an answer or is answering, please switch it on. It'll be easier for all our audiences to listen to. So if I may restate, it's often said in PR that a good crisis is an opportunity for a PR team to prove its perseverance and move toward success. But how has our PR industry fared in this crisis? Did it embrace the three piece of communication, pandemic, perseverance in PR? And what and how did this showcase and enhance the value of distrust currency? To discuss this today on our E4M panel at the 11th edition of IPRCCA conference, we have with us an illustrious panel who will share their views with us today. Let me introduce our panel who all come with vast experience across different sectors and have been weathered by many a crisis. I did get a chance to meet a few of them at the awards yesterday and I'm hoping that they will be able to share a lot of their experience in our discussion today. So today we have with us Deep Shikha Dharamraj, CEO of Genesis BCW, Dilip Yadav, founding partner, first partners, Udip Parthak, director of Media Mantra, Deepak Jolly, founder and director of Consortia Advisory, Aman Gupta, co-founder and managing director, FPAG Asia, along with Raji Chibbar, the vice president, external affairs of Sahajnand, medical technologies, private limited. So let's start with Shikha. Shikha, could you share with us how crisis management, deep pillar in PR, transforms a team's position at the brand table? You know, crisis has always been critical in any PR professional's life. In the last 26 plus years that I've been in PR, it was interesting. PR people are most remembered when a crisis happens in an organization. And I still remember the early days, right? You know how it is that, oh, otherwise I don't want PR and we're all good and everything is working and having a long, but God forbid a crisis happens. That's when you go running saying, I need a good PR agency. So the role of PR in crisis, I think it's undeniable. The good news is that today we have matured as PR professionals and having faced so many crises and our clients over the years. We today know and understand what it takes to provide the right kind of counsel and advice. And I think that's what every PR professional aims to do is we should be sitting at the board table at that time to be able to give the right counsel and advice. And the second thing, which I think is important is look holistically at all the stakeholders who are affected by that issue or crisis. It's never going to be the most obvious consumer or customer, but there are a whole lot of others stakeholders. So I believe PR professionals really did live up to their ask during this crisis because there was not just one client in crisis, which is normally the case one or two. This time we had probably all clients in crisis at the same time. So it was a tough task and I think the industry did well in this time. Absolutely. Amun, would you want to add to that? Sure. I think Deep Sikha definitely covered in terms of the role of the PR firms in the crisis. But what I want to add to that is that while we as PR communicators understand the role, I think there is still a long way from the client side to understand that it's not just about when the crisis hits you when you need us. I think the important part is that this is an ongoing exercise. How you really build a risk insurance within the system so that when the crisis happens, you're able to mitigate it at a very, very early stage. You don't need to really reach the level where it starts to hurt the brand. It starts to hurt the operations. And I think that is something which during this pandemic clients started to realize. And I think that is how a more investment has started to happen. Which is not just in terms of having PR firms on the board but also to build internal systems so that you could have an early warning systems of how a crisis is coming in and can I really reduce something at a very, very early stage. And it's something where the top leadership is getting more involved into. So I think that's something which we have seen happening in the last, say, couple of quarters of the pandemic. Absolutely. So you know, Sikha mentioned a very interesting point that it's not just one client who was in crisis in the last couple of quarters. I think it was every client who was on fire. And if I were to add one more P to the three P's that we are discussing, it would be people, right? Because I believe it's people on both ends that need to be managed to be able to handle a crisis. So Udi, this question is for you. Can you help us understand how you managed people during this crisis? So Taranjit, what we did as an organization and as a firm was give power, more power to people, right? And since we work with a very decent amount in startups, our people were very interested as well, right? So we gave more power to them. And you know, I was amazed at the level of maturity these guys showed during the time of crisis and they are showing it right now as well. And the innovation which was sending a different idea as to the client side, you know, I was actually amazed. So, you know, when we gave more power, we realized that, you know, people have a lot of potential and I'm talking about my internal, my organization, right? And we built a lot of leaders during these times that, you know, well, we will be now set for the next one soon, but we have already identified at least five to seven new leaders in the organization. Long way to go with us. So I think this crisis gave us an opportunity, right? This was an event of such big magnitude, right? So what we realized was that, okay, we need to create, you know, build leaders and we need to make sure that it's an opportunity for us as an organization. And that's, here we are, you know, we have already identified our people and I think, you know, this was good for us, you know, in a way, because we realize the potential as well. Absolutely. So we can look forward to a lot of interesting leaders coming from your organization and I'm sure you'll get a lot of promotions this year. Yeah. Yeah, you're also equally surprised at, you know, a kind of, I'm coming from the client center as well. Dilip? Okay. Okay, you know, so I would say that, yes, there was a lot of, I think, you know, fast action that a lot of clients took. And so not just kind of managing things from the crisis, but some of the clients were responding extremely fast to the whole thing. And that was only a reflection of how prepared they were. And we were supposed to kind of manage that and that is exactly what we were able to do. You know, I also want to make another point, which is that, like you spoke about the opportunity part and this is what we saw with many big clients as well. And every crisis will bring an opportunity along with it. If we look at the historical perspective, disasters and walls have been the biggest ground for sharp recovery from a lot of innovation and for a lot of reconstruction. And we did see that coming from many of our organizations. So if we go back, for example, you know, post-war World War, Italy had, you know, products, new products coming out, which we never anticipated. People thought that it would be the era of, you know, more economical cars, but we saw a lot of luxury cars like the Maserati and Lamborghini and all of that coming out from that era. So, you know, so crisis will also bring its own set of close crisis opportunities, which I think the organizations with a vision would be focused on. And as a communication partner, you have to be, you know, going along with that vision and just managing the immediate, but also preparing for the future. Absolutely. And I think we've seen a lot of innovation coming from, you know, our clients as well in terms of how to handle the crisis and move on. Rajiv, I would like to direct the next question to you. What is the disadvantageous approach that you have to handle a crisis in the last year? Well, hi. Good morning, everyone. So, actually, are you in my order? Thank you. Rajiv, you're right. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I directly come from the healthcare sector and that was the sector which was like focused at that point of time. And, you know, comms emerged as the front runner to the fight against COVID. In fact, I would really want to tell you that the day the government started the lockdown, the day they were, you know, interactions happening. The first thing which I got as a message from the Department of Pharmaceuticals, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, since we were into, you know, medical devices. And at that point of time, there was a dearth of medical devices, tickets, masks, nothing was there in India, which was being produced. And they had to really, you know, raise that industry. The other part was the whole, you know, hospitals which were now going to be overburdened and the entire health landscape which had to be re-looked by the government. So, buying time was something which the government wanted. And at that point of time, all these ministries, including the Prime Minister's office, reached out to us and they said that we want to maintain an FIR. And we were like all looking at each other, what's an FIR? And they said, in a time of crisis, what we call this is the first information and response mechanism team which is going to be made. So, I was fortunate that, you know, I was a part of the entire kitchen cabinet with the Department of Pharmaceuticals, with the Ministry of Health, with the industry and trade ministry, et cetera, to really look at that. But then, you know, it was largely to demystify any rumors, any misinformation at that point of time. It was largely to also look at the role of a comms person from a corporate affairs perspective also. And that time, you know, we understood the role of really working with the government, really working as a corporate affairs professional, not to only position our companies in that sense, but also work towards as a domestic company and Atma Nirbhar Bharat, which was the clarion call made later. So, you know, I feel there was an immense task which was cut out. The way, you know, everything was managed and everything was really shared on a common platform. And what Udit said or what Dilip said and Aman Debshika said, people was first, then came the policies, then came the, you know, entire programmatic value of spreading out communications. So, this was a real eye opener at that point of time. And I'm still, I mean, we're still working and grappling with it. It's not that the pandemic is over. Now we have a new challenge of demystifying the entire, you know, the COVID shots. I had taken pride in calling that I'm the first private cop comms person who's got shot the first time, but both cleared from my side got both the shots. But yeah, I mean, it's still a long journey. I mean, the normalcy will really touch by the quarter. I just want to sort of add to what Rajiv's talked about. I think one of the things which has emerged and, you know, we were fortunate to work with WHO during the whole pandemic was one of the key things with Dr. Rajiv talked about was the misinformation, the rumors, which were floating around because more than anything else, there was this whole conversation happening in social media space. And not just talking about India, we were working with WHO for a whole Southeast Asia. And one of the biggest challenge was that how do you really sort of, you know, tackle that thing almost on a real time basis? And one of the new sciences which has emerged from there is called infodemiology. So WHO has come out with a new department altogether, which is looking at how you look at information as it's floating in social media, and how do you manage to use this misinformation, a new department has been created. And we were fortunate to develop this whole ecosystem, you know, with WHO and how you sort of do it almost in a real time across multiple languages and ensure that we are able to mitigate any crisis emerging from this kind of a rumors, which could have a multiple impact, not just from a virus, but the information related to the virus. Brilliant. That's really brilliant. So, you know, this is an open question to all the panelists. While there have been a lot of innovation that has happened on the client as well to handle this, and I think the PR industry as a whole has touched their entire country on how they would like to handle a crisis. I want to understand from the panel, if there is any new innovation that has happened on an agency end, right, apart from what we typically do to handle a crisis, what is it that you have focused on that innovating deeper? Yeah. So, you know, I think this was a time, can you put on mute please? Thank you. So, you know, this is a time when you had to reorient and rethink about, as the panelists have said, about people. People in your agency needed to be first given an assurance, guys. We are with you and we are going to operate in a completely different paradigm shift. Like the first, I think the second one was, for me, who was a bit tech challenged. How do I use technology in my system quickly? So, you know, how do you get to do Microsoft, WebEx, you name it, and use the best telecom equipment, the best broadband, and make sure that everybody in my 30 member team are well networked and well engaged. I think that was the first challenge, that was the first challenge. The second was that if you have to, you know, reorient yourself, then you have to reorient your customers. Right. And many of the customers and the clients said, if there's no more brand promotion, no more this, no more that, no more events. So, you went into a completely, you shifted the gear and you had to tell the client it's not about your crisis. It's a national crisis. It's a global crisis. And the narrative has to fit into the global crisis, then the Indian crisis, then your city crisis. So, you know, so you have, you had, yeah, basically, so the, and that, so I'm glad that at least 12 new clients came to different pandemic. And that they said, my quotes are can you help me to move? It was a lighting client and he wrote all their narratives to the government, went to the government, wrote the letters, got the clearances done, the movements of the goods had. Second, the industry was shut down, everything was shut down, hotels were shut, malls were shut, multiplexes were shut. Entertainment said, how do you open that? I think the biggest thing where my adrenaline rush happens when a crisis happens. And I said, in your narrative, it is all about SOPs for your sector. People didn't agree with, in the beginning when I said, you will, we will write your narrative. We will make films. We will make sure that we are responsible, safe, and making sure that when we open, we will adhere. And if the idea shut us down. And I'm so glad that on June 8th, as a shopping sector organization, we were able to open all this, so we got a central notification. And then it was, we had to escalate or de-escalate it to the state level. So I wrote 2,700 letters to different stakeholders. While Deepak is talking about some of this, I think what's important is to also understand the innovations in our sector. I think, you know, and everything is very, very critical, as Deepak has pointed out. But I think the biggest area of difference, one was our adoption of digital. And it's not just meeting platforms. But I think it was understanding social media and being able to listen into sentiment and then being able to respond appropriately to that. So data and analytics was a big one. I think a lot of us were sort of slowly creeping along that journey of trying to figure out how data analytics works in our business. But the last year forced us to do it really quickly. And I think the most innovative part is how we then able to use that data and analytics. And which brings me to the second big thing that happened as a trend was the idea of purpose. Saying very clearly that do you have a core purpose at the thought of your campaign, at the heart of your strategy? Because gone are the days when you just, you know, do nice lip service and say, okay, buy my product because of benefits ABCD. The pandemic really did teach us that it has to be purpose led creativity. If you're going to survive this, and if you're going to thrive in a future growth mindset, you have to think through your not just your communication, but even your business strategies. I think that was another big trend and innovation that we saw. So for me, these two are the big ones of using digital data and analytics to the benefit of communication. And the second one was getting purpose led creativity going for organizations. One point here, you know, you had to think about loss of lives and unemployment much more than, you know, that your business earlier, the business, you know, because what used to happen was when you're in a crisis, you start talking about your mounting losses. Your mounting losses narrative will not work. You have to come out with, you know, positive, future looking growth, absolutely. That narrative helped in opening up the economy. And that narrative helped our bureaucrats are government. And I must say, they were very helpful. And they used to say how people can create a win-win? How can we make sure sectors grow? And that was a very, very helpful way. Yeah, I think PM Modi is already talking about how the private sector has such a strong role to play in the revival of an of our economy. Now, where we're talking about the recovery and just in his speech, I think they were talking about how don't look to the government only for all the solutions. The private sector has so many solutions. And I think we all know from our work that we are doing. And the government also recognizes that that it has to be a joint effort often led possibly by the private sector, and then supported adequately by the government by doing the right things. You know, as community, the biggest contribution that as communicators that we make is through the intellectual contribution. And it's not that we come with huge processes, we need a tremendous amount of technology and all of that to really do a good job at what we do. So I think the biggest innovation that I saw and we kind of pushing it at our end as well, was the way we kind of intellectually kind of re-oriented the communication piece with our clients because a lot of activities were shut down. And I think trust, there were a lot of rumors like what Amit Muhammad wanted out. And trust was something which was missing, I think the most. It was important that there was a need for communication coming from credible sources. So just to getting, for example, and I'm giving this as one of the examples, there were many things, getting the company's leaders to become the source of communication and maybe over communicate a little bit. And sometimes with the background kind of videos and calls and to kind of shed the corporate bloke of trying to do it in a very prim and proper manner, but to do it in human kind of communication was very important. And that is something that we should come up with. Leadership communication, I think leadership communication has kind of taken provenance for every kind of other vertical that we would earlier talk about. I think leaders now have to get comfortable being the face of the company whether they like it or not. Having said that, policy making is also an essential point. I mean, this question is directed to you. You've been speaking a lot about policy making, government advocacy, and brand crisis communication. How intricately are the leaders at what point does the PR team need to activate it? Well, I think one thing which we have seen in the pandemic happening is that it's now become a more of a multi-stakeholder approach. So the government, and I think Bivak talked about the fact that the government and its role during the pandemic was very important. For example, and as a healthcare person, one of the big things was how do you ensure supply chain of pharmaceuticals, drugs, and not just in India, but globally as we realize that Indian pharma industry rose to the occasion and became the supplier across the world. And despite the fact that it was a lockdown, everything moved. And the reason why it moved was because there was a complete cohesiveness between industry and the policy makers. And how do you ensure that communication is that thread which is able to connect all of these stakeholders to ensure that the right communication is going out, it's the right positivity which is coming out. And you're able to trickle down this messaging to all different stakeholders, not just from a central to the stage, to the people at a district level, because you need to sort of work with stakeholders which are multiple layered and everybody is trying to ensure things sort of, you know, and that is where the role of a communicator to ensure that he's able to connect all these dots became a very, very important aspect. So another point, Aman, great point I would just like to add here. One of the things when you communicate during a crisis, you have to be very short and precise. Right. And you have to, in case you are asking the stakeholders, then what is the answer? If you are communicating, you are in trouble, then what is the top two points? Don't, because people don't have the time to listen. Crisis come, then crisis doesn't knock on your door and crisis happens. And people have the people and in panic they do wrong things and speak wrong things. The first and foremost is make sure during a crisis, guys, hold your horses. So that's why we need to pre-train our people who handle crisis. That's the other big thing, right? And we all as PR professionals do what is called the crisis preparedness. So in the earlier days, you remember, Deepak, when you used to tell a managing director, chairman that we need to pre-train you for a crisis. And they'd be like, no, no, no, don't say crisis word. If you say it, it'll happen. And I don't want to believe it. Today, you remember those days, this is superstitiously crisis, but Bolo is boardroom. And if you're adding to the thing, the complexity of the social media nowadays. See, if I, we just look at from the last, all of us has been in the industry for more than 20 years. Earlier, it was much more simple. The fact that the social media, as it happens, this in real time, and the leadership is exposed to that. What do you say? If you're not saying that's also not right. If you have to say, you have to say the right thing, build up on the purpose what you talk about on here. Also trust authenticity as the other big one. Because in a crisis, if you speak and try to spin it, you could actually be in bigger trouble. It has to be genuine. It has to be genuine. It has to be authentic. And it should be something which follows from an action, not just the talk. You have to act and then showcase, you've been able to make a difference in the lives of the people. So I would want to add a very important thing. So while there was this entire cabinet, which was formed the prime minister's office, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and WHO and the Department of Pharmaceuticals created an Eagle's Nest. At the Eagle's Nest, one way to look at COVID, which is C-O-V-I-D, which was dispel, which was actually told to us that use this acronym when you are doing communication was clear communication for opportunity, voice first, identify relevance and information, dispel and display solidarity. So this was C-O-V-I-D. And it was actually, we call that center, the Eagle's Nest. That's where it is. I'm curious why they called it Eagle's Nest. Eagle's Nest was Hitler's special place of history during World War II. Well, you know, it was a warfare acronym. Actually, this was warfare. Yeah. This was genuine information warfare, which was being handled at the government's level with every stakeholder in mind. So I think the piece which we're talking about, the three piece or we talk about five piece, that completely covered the entire COVID pandemic. And we were all, I mean, I was fortunate. I learned a lot. I mean, we've all gone through crisis. We've all been crisis communications experts at one time or the other. But over a decade or over multiple decades, this kind of crisis comes. And we were fortunate to write the diet today. So we are going to do it now. I think that's the end of the fact. I was saying that, you know, it was more the focus on the facts rather than the perspectives, which becomes important in a crisis situation. So, you know, for example, a simple innovation run by a student at Johns Hopkins University, which actually became then the global source for people to track what's going on and where in pandemic became, you know, people are tracking John Hopkins site and information more than the government and their source, because they trusted it more. And even WHO, because that trust was more. Sorry about that, you know, but... So this was a simple example of what was the focus. Focus was on facts. If you can stay close to the facts, be very brief. Like Deepak rightly said, keep it very short and stay factual. People will follow. And that is, I think, an opportunity window for you to then kind of bring in concern then can bring in perspective what you call the cap concern action perspective. Absolutely. I would like to add here. I'll just like to add one more point. I'd just like to add one more point because two lessons, which you need to learn in a crisis. One, you need to have a war room. And the war room concept is not understood by many and they fail and then the crisis keeps multiplying. So one is the war room. The second most important is the crisis management team. Who in the crisis management team will do what? Not more than six to seven members. And those six to seven members will then lead to whether it is people, what is to be said outside, what is to be said to everyone. That role has to be identified very quickly. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. These two are very cardinal principles of crisis. I've written many manuals for multinationals on crisis management. But these two come very anti whether it's a pandemic or it is a crisis of a city or a company. Just wanted to add one more point. Absolutely. So you have been talking about policy making. Just to add. Yeah, just to add. Next question would be nice. Sorry, I'm actually not able to hear a lot of people because of some internet issues. But still one thing which I would like to add while we've been talking about crisis at the client side, we need to talk about that we were also in crisis. As leaders, as entrepreneurs, we've been leading firms, we all were into a crisis. So how did we manage the crisis was also a learning because nobody knew about the pandemic. Nobody knew what will be the next steps which we will take. So I think as an industry together, we all spoke with each other on a regular basis. I think we have done really well. We have handled this crisis far from maturely than other industries have handled. And we have connected as an industry together these days. So I think that's important for us to also talk. One learning which completely failed during this crisis. So all our lives and in the last 25 years have been constantly drilled this thing that preparedness is the answer to handling crisis. And this pandemic I think demonstrated very well the best of the minds in the world, the best of the governments in the world, were not prepared. Nobody was prepared. And in whatever preparation they had trained completely. So what do you really do? So I think what we clearly saw it was also the duration of opportunities. So while a lot of businesses were going down, there were businesses which were acquiring. And the biggest of the deals in the country were happening. You know the Facebook deal with clients and all of that. So we also saw that businesses which were more than not just prepared but I think they went beyond preparation to play safe from the very go. So the over-leveraged business models, the high-risk business models were kind of they failed completely. They crashed immediately. So I think there is some sense in Indian frugal approach of following the basics and being careful. And this is even beyond being prepared. You could be prepared. But if you have an averaged model then your preparation can go for a toss because something on who sees happening. You can only prepare for what you can anticipate. But there is something you're going to prepare for something that you can never anticipate. And that is the thing. Yeah. This was like a... I'm taking the question back if I'm taking the question back to the policy making part of it. I'm very intrigued when you guys spoke about it. I want to understand from you how much of it does in policy making, how much of a part does PR play now because I believe it has expanded as Cooper work has expanded to take part in all these larger discussions as well. Earlier it was a specialized team like Deepak's or maybe a couple of verticals that we would say this is government work. But now I think every team is being asked to be a part of it. So how much of a piece for the PR guys? Rajeev, I would like to answer and then Deepak to answer. Okay, sir. Yeah. So there is a theoretical and a practical part but I think I can speak on that. Deepak. Okay. Yeah, I think so. Okay, let me let me. So there is a theoretical part. So theoretically, you know, we are in a democracy and we are about discussions. You know, democracies are about discussions and there is there are windows which are created by the government for discussions to come in for viewpoints to come in. But I think we also live in an environment which where this is a we live in a democracy of verdicts where a verdict is announced that the lockdown has started now. You know, and there is no room for discussion. There is no scope for anything. So I think the policy environment is also changing. So while discussions would be very relevant, but we also need to understand and recognize that there are verdicts which are and which is really the practical part of it. So how do you deal with these verdicts? So I think I heard that there was least amount of feedback or, you know, counter views on the current budget. That was also because this is this is the times of the verdicts. So in an environment like this, I think the policy-making process and the communications role in shaping that also has to become very, I would say, underneath. You cannot make visible communication. You have to go a little invisible. You have to go direct. And so I think the whole landscape has changed from a very direct, sorry, indirect communication using a lot of media power to communicate to more direct communication coming from the right people with right reasons, with right logic which intelligent people can understand. So I think that's a major change that I see. Don't you think that, you know, the PR guys have on the seat at the table and the reputation of the reputation industry has been enhanced from last year. It does not need to be indirect routes anymore. I think it's going very well to make these policy decisions. Your take on it. You know, let's look at the IT industry, for example. Right. You know, there are examples of the IT industry that they will work from home till the end of this year. And maybe in future, the IT industry may work from home. Now these are norms which will change the way of working. And we will have to live. So you will have to, you know, try to work on these points in the future. Technology will have to be adopted. Of course, you can always say, I have my sympathy for the sectors like tourism and hospitality, but the fact is for the next two years, this sector is going very, very badly impacted. So we are helping as consultants. We are trying to see what are the new things? What are the innovations? How do we make sure that this industry survives? And one interesting point I would just like to add, you know, for hotel association of India, we try to make sure that if they are losing jobs, can we get their jobs into some other areas? And Nokia.com is forward. That's right. We will help them to provide the jobs and put the bio data in a manner. This was across India. And this is where the cross-organization of industries will start working and working towards the benefit. Pandemic is still here. It's not gone. Absolutely. Absolutely. We are in the issue. It is looking down, but like many western countries, which is going down completely, you can have a spike again. So we have to be well prepared for any type of issue that may happen in the future. People will 100% attendance in the office. We need to be on the session now. Yeah, I think so. Thank you. Thank you. You are the next question. Rajeev? Yeah. Yeah. I looked at it from a very different angle when I worked with the government and they told me a very clear PPP model. We're talking about three P's here. They had their own PPP model, which we fought. And that was partnership for a public purpose. Now, that was really crystal clear. What you think over, whatever you look at it, it's for public purpose. So I think that was where that will ratified into public policies. So we have a couple, you know, I'm hoping we have five minutes left. I'm going to ask you a few quick questions. I want each one of you to respond for a couple of minutes. Yeah, all of these names are really set for this, which I had almost 20 years ago and it pretty much hit you like a trucker. I would be remiss if I did not ask this. Can't hear you properly, Talin. Can everybody go on to mute, please? Yeah. Really? Now? Better? Awesome. Awesome. So I would be remiss if I did not ask this panel about their first PR crisis case. What was it like? If I can have a quick answer from everyone, though I know it's very difficult, but let's start with our one. Okay. First crisis being in healthcare, it was an issue, it was an issue which was one of, I can't name the client, but one of the leading hospital chains in India at that time, and you had a kind of a death of a politician which happened at the hospital and therefore there was a huge backlash about the conduct of the hospital or the conduct of the doctors and it was something which, I would say I have still not seen it in that kind of a crisis because the client was in the media almost on a daily basis, almost every possible journalist lashed out about how inhuman the whole thing was and it took us about a month to get that whole situation back into control, but we really used the science communication as a way to sort of explain that how what the hospital did was medically the best way to be done. Of course, it's not an exact science and there are things which are unknown still in the medical science part of it, but they did what was the right thing to be done and it's something which globally is accepted. So, but after that, that client was with us for almost 10 years and we did what Deepak talked about, prepared them for the future crisis and after that, they did not have that kind of a crisis. A few minus happened, but they learned the lesson that it needs to be a part of the system now. Absolutely, Shikha. Yeah, I can tell you this and Deepak would probably remember that's when I think we first met. So it was a multinational fast food business which had come into India. I think I was barely two years into the working life of mine and there were a whole lot of NGO and activists and animal rights who were objecting because of the entry of this MNC into the country and they were actually going to spread across the country. They had great plans. It was a very well known and respected business around the world and I still remember we started working on it and we said, okay, the activism and all that, we'll handle it, we had the statements, we had the points of view and all that we were doing. We opened our first store and what we were not ready for was a huge crowd of farmers who appeared and there was stone throwing and belting and the whole store front crashed and broke and I still remember I was inside that store with the chief marketing officer and the head of the business standing next to me and we were like completely gone, smacked. Now what? And of course there were the television channels and everybody. I don't think we ever, you know, we acted really fast and it was just pure gut reaction at that time. I mean, nothing in the world could prepare you for, you know, you're standing inside the store inaugurating and the whole thing crashes out and then of course there were various things like the police should have been there for security, for protection. I mean, you go through all those but those are post-evaluation and I think what I learned that day was that exactly this, you can work out various scenarios but what will be required is what is your instant gut reaction which is your training which is your experience which is how do you manage what's happening right there and then and I think that lesson I've used always of what's the first initial, you know, that intuition that comes to you and then of course you back it up with all the right rational logic of all that as you go along. So yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. So my first question was yeah, my sorry if I can because I have something related to what Deepakas has said. So mine was a learning from this I was handling the McDonald's entry into India and what she's talking about the KFC's entry and stoning down of the outlet in Bangalore. So at McDonald's we learned it extremely well. We picked up the lessons from KFC and what has got to be done. Sorry. I like that. I like that. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. You can never talk about the climb. I mean I have something I've been used in for the last couple of years is so I think that was years ago. So the most important part of any crisis lesson is to of course to learn from others mistakes or never repeat that. So I think we were we we spent a lot of time preparing to build the story a credible story so that which farmers would buy which politicians would buy and they would not come back come attacking us because they feel threatened by us. They would they should see value coming to the country. So there's a lot of work that we do. So it was a crisis environment that we entered into with the brand and when we opened there was no crisis because we worked very hard. So that's where this whole thing about you know being better prepared all that really came wrong. Okay. Over to Deepan. Yeah. So one last point again teacher so learning from what happened to KFC we at Pepsi way back in 1995 decided to have a full strategy what has happened to Enron and what has happened to KFC and we started mass contact program with such leaders farmer leaders farming members of parliament we brought out so many different things and look thank God what work we did there and now you know when I look at the Pepsi share price hundred thirty dollars we say wow some contribution plus profit from us so crisis is good that means crisis is good for you it wakes you up it gets you oh that's a lot of crisis absolutely. Absolutely. So Khyati here that's the last question yeah Rajiv and Odit if I can ask you to pick and talk about your face crisis case study my first crisis I was working with a firm I cannot name the firm and I cannot name the client but that was that was really really bad you know when I was talking Aman was talking about you know healthcare and we were working with Dhariana's biggest hospital locally which I have a lot of hospitals in tier two and tier three cities in one of the centers the dead bodies exchanged and we were we were we were called for and that was a crisis and that would you know and we were we were I was actually afraid because I was a young guy at that point I was not aware how media will react to this everybody was standing there electronic media was all over the place you know newspapers and everybody and the president of the hospital was standing right there and I was the only person who was there and you know then the entire strategy happened you know I spoke with the people and everything but then you know one thing was sure that I said you know sorry I'm not going to handle another crisis but then you know when the maturity happened you know you keep on meeting clients which have different you know crisis during the time and I think we learned from that absolutely thinking on your feet and the first time one is the first one is always tough Raji your first crisis I'll just take 10 seconds my first crisis was to handle the intergovernmental panel on climate change India's report and how the government reacted to it and then finally almost a month's time coming up with a productive report for India on climate change and achieving sustainability awesome you know it just listening to all of this just makes you actually aware that everybody has to start somewhere right and crisis communication I think now is part and parcel of what we do so with that I'll bring this discussion to a close and hand it over to Kyati thank you panelists for the wonderful insights and our audience for staying with us for this conversation I wish you thank you thank you it was our pleasure thank you everyone thank you so much thank you thank you thank you thank you Kyati thank you so much thank you bye bye