What this BrandMasters episode teaches about brand purpose

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to part 2 of our episode called The Wellness Generation, where we are discussing health and wellness and a new emerging India. I'm Ramit Arora and I'm joined by a fantastic set of Brandmasters today. This is, after all, the series that brings together the country's top CXOs to share their insights into the hottest topics in marketing, branding and business. A small recap on our premise from part 1. A simple look around reveals many Indias. One India is chasing aspiration, ambition and pace.

It's friends with various screens of various sizes. India is expected to record over a billion lifestyle disease incidents by 2022, not surprisingly. And then there is the India where healthcare continues to be a challenge, complicated further by a breakdown in the traditional relationship with the healthcare provider. And in all this, there is a wellness generation. A report by Red Seer estimates 100 million health-conscious individuals in just urban India, a base of uncompromising consumers, empowered by choice, technology, personalization

and a determination to take health and wellness into their own hands, whether it's food, nutrition, mental health, fitness or just tracking. It is at this incredulous juncture, when many Indias meet Bharat, that we are having today's discussion. It's also an opportune moment as we at HT embark on a new product offering for the new India and it's called HT Health Shorts. Watch this space. More on that. I'm going to invite my next guest. She's a Director and Head Marketing, Digital and Direct Sales, Max Bupa Health Insurance.

Anika Agrawal joined Max Bupa in 2011 and has been instrumental in positioning the brand as a top-notch family health insurer in India. She conceptualized Max Bupa Walk for Health, which was one of the most successful health initiatives in the country. Welcome back to the show, Anika. Thank you so much, Rameet. Thank you for having me. Is it fair to say that India has maybe one of the lowest penetrations of health insurance by a global benchmark and is that changing? Are more young people buying health insurance? And if yes, then what's driving it?

Is it fear? Is it awareness? Is it just the fact that it's getting cheaper and it's one thing to checkbox? So I think health insurance, one, was never very expensive in the country. That was not the problem. We look at it globally, health insurance is actually a significant portion of the annual health, of the annual expenditure of any household. That's not the case for India. I think there are two shifts which are happening. The first is a social shift. You know, insurance or hospitalization was always a black swan event.

Muchko nahi hoga, usko hoga because main toh healthy hun. Nothing happens to me. Nothing happens to me, right? So that was the first thing. The second which was happening was, I have a family ecosystem which is going to help me in my hour of need if it so happens. I think the social fabric is changing and so is the economic dynamics. You look at healthcare costs in the country, they're spiraling, right? So first is access to healthcare. You did not have good quality hospitals. Now you have super speciality hospitals mushrooming in tier 2, tier 3 towns.

So you have access to healthcare but with access to healthcare, you also have the cost of healthcare growing. So there is that growing cost. There is also, you know, a higher disease incidence. We talked a lot today about, you know, wellness products, people wanting to stay healthy, adopting healthy lifestyles. But you also have on the other hand, a generation which is being brought up amongst rampant lifestyle diseases. A customer who is slowly understanding the changing dynamics of his socio-economic environment.

So I think you should see the industry leapfrog actually in the next decade or so. You know, I saw your campaign, which I think is a 2018 campaign, 2018-19 campaign. It was called the Go Active Plan. And it tried getting young people to look beyond hospitalization. And it actually got people thinking wellness, pre-diagnostic. Is wellness really now part of the whole health equation even for you? So I think it's not a campaign. It's actually the entire ecosystem shifting. You look at the definition of health that was there, you know, some time ago.

I have no pain. I have no disability. And I have no disease. Hence, I'm healthy. Today, a lot of us don't have any pain, disability or disease. But can I call myself healthy? So, you know, the meaning of health today is actually being top-notch in terms of both emotional and my physical well-being. So the definition itself of health has changed. Gymming is increasing. But the fact is that, you know, we all lead sedentary lifestyles today. And we try and compensate for that by doing a 30-minute or a one-hour exercise.

So you have an attitudinal health consciousness, but you also have lifestyle diseases plaguing us. So for the health insurance industry to actually move forward, not just for the younger generation, if you create an ecosystem or participate in the ecosystem of prevention, wellness, or even disease management, it's not just about staying healthy. If you have a lifestyle disease like diabetes, today you have opportunity to do chronic care management outside the hospital.

So I think what we are trying to do, not necessarily as market share leaders, but thought leaders in the category, is to actually participate and create that ecosystem for the customer. See, finally, health insurance, you know, we are a pair, right? We pay money when you fall sick. In some cases, we pay for your preventive and wellness needs. But we also provide access to quality health care. That's not just for the millennials or the Gen Z, by the way. It's for everybody now. It's for everybody now.

So you see it going mainstream, not as fast as you would like, but with this fabric changing, it will eventually. Very interesting. Questions? Hi, Annika. So when you are talking to millennials versus when you are talking to other generations, is there a significant difference in the way you communicate about the importance of health insurance? Sure. So, you know, it's about the life stage that you are in. If we talked about, you know, Gen X earlier, if I am in a life stage where for me it is important that I manage my disease well,

because you will have some form of lifestyle disease, let's say at the age of 40 or 50, the conversation will be different. Yes, you know, there the worry is about the financial burden because you're also running a family, right? So there we talk about the financial burden and how we will ease that financial burden. If somebody who is not sick, but living in this ecosystem and this lifestyle, where he's at least a lot more aware of his own self and his body, there is a lot of conversation around prevention.

So it is about relevance in his current stage and lifestyle, not so much in terms of tone of communication. When you get into the area of mental health, you have that to be an increasing and a disproportionate incidence, even undiagnosed that happens into India. But how do you help support from your perspective for mental health issues, not just curative, but also preventative? So, you know, there what we are facing not so much is from an access point of view, you have a lot of partners and providers today who are able to offer help there.

I think the question, as you spoke about earlier, is the taboo of whether the person wants to open up and share that issue with us. If you look at all health insurance plan, actually recently it's been mandated by the government, by the regulator, that you will cover for any ailment which arises due to mental diseases. Do we see a lot of adoption and customers coming forward and asking for help? The answer is no. So I think what we need to do as brands and businesses is to actually make the conversation more open.

I think that's the journey that this industry at least has not started. We should, from a product access point of view, availability is there. As an insurance company, is there an offering that you have which rewards or is there a mechanism for you to reward people who care about preventive care as opposed to curative approach? Sure. So I think it's also a journey. If you look at our GoActive plan, we've actually created that ecosystem where we are telling the customers that if you do your preventive health checkups, if you set up your health goals

and you actually work on them and get us the right health score, you will get premium discounts on your health insurance policy for next year. So that is available for the customer. In terms of adoption and understanding, it's a gradual journey. But yes, we've taken the first step to at least incentivize the customer to stay healthy and share that data. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for adding a lovely dimension to this conversation. I'm very pleased to welcome my next guest, Manoj Garg, co-founder of MyOpchar.

MyOpchar.com is the country's biggest multilingual online health information platform. Manoj previously worked with the Boston Consulting Group in San Francisco where he focused on healthcare delivery in the bottom half of the pyramid in India for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Manoj, non-English, tier 2, 6 languages, brief choice, interesting choice. Tell us a little more about this strategy because you're clearly doing something that most of us are still thinking of doing. So we started about three years back. It came from a very simple insight

that the need for healthcare information is universal. Go anywhere in the world, you'll find that there is a health property that gives you that information. When you come to India, there is nothing in Indian languages. Early on when we started making this content, it's all done by doctors, it's real medical content, it's not chamatkari remedies. We found amazing reaction to that and people started reading a lot. So we've just gone ahead and done that in multiple languages. It didn't matter if not everybody was online, things would get there,

if you're patient enough. So that's the route we went. Is small city India on the same health curve as the big cities? Is it on a completely different health curve? Is the kind of questions you're getting radically different or is it actually the same thing, different languages? No, I think it's completely different. So when we create content, we don't just create one thing in English and then translate it into multiple languages. We create different content for different languages because it's not a language, it's a culture, it's a different people.

So you have to address it differently. In tier one, it's sort of like a nice to have. It's like, I don't want to go to the chemist. I'll get the medicine delivered. I'll open an app. Over there, there is spurious medicine. It's like saying, I don't want to go to a doctor. It takes too much time. There isn't a doctor there. So we actually connect patients to doctors. We do about 100,000 teleconsultations a month. Isn't an area in the whole health and wellness space that's emerging is very large or... Yeah,

so I was deliberately trying to stay away from that because a lot of that also is a function of the content that we create. So we started with women's health. For us, it was obvious like, that's the biggest patient group, so to speak, and also the most neglected. So first we started with text. Then we did video. Whenever we... When we did video also, we started with women's health only. And like you find that the most basic things are unknown. Now there is this whole movement against fake news. I think there is more fake information in health,

misinformation in health, than in news media. I'll probably take a bet on it. Sorry, you have a question. So the whole thing is completely online. There is no offline interaction at all. Pretty much it's online, but now we are going offline as well. Because, see, it is healthcare. You do need a physical touch point. So when we try to partner with others in the ecosystem, we found a huge problem with quality. So we figured we'd roll up our sleeves and build it ourselves. So in Lucknow, we have a full stack.

But do you see monetization being a challenge here? Or do you think it's going to be... It's going to follow similar... You know the answer to me. It is a challenge. I don't think there's a problem with willingness to pay. There is a problem with means to pay. So, like one thing that we noticed is, so anywhere in the world, the woman in the house is the caregiver, right? In our case, she needs a smartphone. So, smartphones have penetrated, but in many cases, a family still has one smartphone. So, when the husband comes back home,

that's when we see a spike in all activity online. When the husband is in home and the phone is just there, they don't know how to pay digitally. So, even though they know Paytm exists, they know Google Pay exists, they don't know how to use it. But we are trying to figure that piece out. So, there is definitely willingness to pay and we made it so cheap that there really should not be a problem with ability to pay. It's just a matter of means to pay. More power to you. And, we are looking forward to the six languages becoming 12

and then going all the way. Thank you so much. Thank you. Wonderful having you on the show. Thank you. I'd like to welcome my next guest, Sanjeev Chopra, Senior Vice President and Head, McCann Health. Sanjeev has been part of many award-winning health campaigns and is particularly proud of winning the gold for the campaign, Diabetes Can Be In Anybody's Destiny. He's also worked with pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly, Walkheart and Ranbaxy. Welcome, Sanjeev. It's great to have you here. McCann Health has done enormous amount of research

with doctors, not just in India but around the world. I'm curious to know what's happening to the role of doctors, their relationship with patients, our relationship with doctors, what's happening there? A, that, and B, I want to add to that question from the point of view of our other brand masters and those who are listening to the show. The relationship between doctors and pharma companies or let me put it the other way, between pharma companies and doctors, I have a feeling both questions are connected in some way. Let me say that

doctors have always been the face of healthcare across the world. Yes, there has been a change in equation as far as, you know, their relationship with the current patient set or the caregiver set is there. General practitioner or a family doctor would be the one go-to person for any healthcare requirement. Whether it was information, whether it was anything for your day-to-day ailments, the treatment was provided by the GP. Today, with the advent of internet and so much stuff which is available for information reasons, I mean, requirements,

people are no longer going to a GP. They get enough and more information from the internet. So, slowly and gradually, you can say the GP's role is getting diminished now. The other important aspect as far as doctors are concerned is that doctor at any given time was always considered to be someone who was a knowledgeable professional. You know, his competency was unquestionable. But today, if we see, this doctor has to justify no matter how qualified, no matter how specialized this doctor is, he or she has to justify whatever decision this doctor

is taking for the patient, whether it is with respect to a diagnosis or a treatment. Another important aspect is no matter how qualified the doctor is, today, he should have a perfect online profile. professional. You know, there has to be a long list of qualifications which he has to showcase. People don't understand anything majority of the times but they just compare. Oh, this one has 15 degrees, this guy has 7, so this guy would be better. Another important aspect is the price discussion. Earlier, you know, price discussion with respect

to health requirement was something which was discussed at the end or it was also discussed in a very subtle way. Today, it happens up front that, okay, doctor, if I am getting this procedure done, how much will it be costing me? And then, there is comparison but that other, you know, hospital or other doctor is providing this. The second aspect. The third, very important aspect and which is very core to this new generation is the advent of digital applications are there, online, you know, booking should happen, there has to be, you know, the reports

should be checked by the doctor online and respond to it and e-consultation and everything happening around it. Interestingly, as an agency, what is happening is that we are getting a lot of briefs from older hospitals which were run by entrepreneur-driven, you can say, doctors setting up a large hospital and those are old hospitals. Now, we are getting briefs for revamping and repositioning and the interesting thing which we found is that why they are asking for this is because their doctors, these doctors' children have joined them and because

they want everything to be because they are of the millennial age, they are the ones who are making this change happen. The second question is about the pharmaceutical company but today, what will make a difference for any pharmaceutical company is that how can we help the doctor to integrate digital in their practice? My question to you is, it's interesting that doctors themselves are struggling and this whole doctor-patient relationship is not strained but it's very different in its character. Do you also see a lot of cynicism building into

this relationship as a result of privatization of healthcare and healthcare infrastructure? To some extent, I would say yes but what is happening is again, it is because of there's a lot of conversations which are happening online and there are a lot of these negative things which are coming up. Because digital, as we all know, it has positive, it has negative also. But how the consumer is taking? Today, if I have to spend X amount of money and which I was otherwise not expecting to, you know, there would be a lot of conversation around that fact.

There is, it's a saying that there's nothing absolute in medicine. Now, what forbid if the patient was not treated for some reason or the other? I mean, again, is the doctor responsible for that? Earlier times, this used to happen in a very, you can say, smaller environment. Today, it is happening openly and that is the reason probably that there is a lot of word of mouth around this. Challenging times clearly, you know, this whole relationship is a critical relationship, both for the ecosystem and in general for society. But thank you for having

talked us through this because that certainly brings a dimension to this discussion that we won't have otherwise. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'd like to invite my next guest, Mohan Menon, VP Head of Marketing and Digital at Max Healthcare. At Max, Mohan was pivotal in repositioning the brand and launching the more of healthcare campaign that won the gold at the annual healthcare advertising awards. what is this whole millennial wellness generation? Is there a new expectation from healthcare? Absolutely. I mean, you know,

millennials, where they come from, really stuck between the old and the new. And they've seen this whole change happen in their generation and they're expecting the same from healthcare. Unfortunately, the healthcare sector, so to say, is, you know, designed for the, you know, generation X or the baby boomers and it's kind of stuck there. I can say it's kind of a laggard in terms of adopting technology and adopting this change. And millennials are pretty impatient about this whole change. They simply don't trust. Now, it's not just generally from

healthcare, but they simply don't trust. There's this mistrust for authority or this, you know, with disillusionment with institutions and that also translates to doctors. You know, they've done their homework before, they've done their research online. The one resource that they trust with their health is Dr. Google. So the whole experience at times is pretty unsettling for the clinician because, you know, the clinician is coming from years of experience and this whole, you know, traditional thinking, evidence-based practice. While as the generation now

wants the response here and now, a more detailed explanation of, you know, why a procedure has been recommended, why a test is being given, why a medicine is being given. The other is definitely they're becoming much more watchful in terms of their own health. So yes, they are taking up, you know, health tech, you know, very strongly, wearable devices, apps, they've got an app that monitors their own sleep patterns, how much water they've had in the day. While as the healthcare industry is still kind of slowly, if I may say, breathlessly kind

of trying to catch up to this particular change. What's the single biggest argument that you see, which most recurring argument between the recipient of the patient and the healthcare infrastructure that you represent? What's the one recurring argument? Single biggest point of conflict is this, you know, lack of transparency, lack of transparency and trust as to do you have an ulterior motive? You know, have you recommended what you've recommended because I need it? You know, whatever you've recommended, is it at the right cost? You need hospitals,

you need healthcare once in a very long time. Yeah. And, you know, everybody hopes that they don't. Absolutely. And when they do, they want to go to the most convenient but most trusted or most comfortable place that they go to. But for the rest of the time, do you feel the need to build a brand and in doing so, there are other needs, their wellness needs, their diagnostic needs. As a brand, do you feel the need to keep fitting into them just to stay alive, to stay? Healthcare conversation is happening literally 24 by 7. You know, they're putting,

like I said, they're seeking information online, they're going on social, they're talking about their healthcare need, they're researching online. It is for organization, it is for healthcare brands to ride on that conversation and really bring out this thought leadership, ensure that the content that is there outside is medically correct content, it's not fake content like someone was saying because there's tons of that, you know, outside. That becomes imperative for us to keep engaging with this consumer. so interestingly, even formats like

this, you know, we do on our social media with a doctor on the other side because nobody wants to read, you know, a lot of content that's there. Problems which people don't want to come and talk about in women, you know, very technical topic like urinary incontinence, it's not a topic that today women would, you know, step out and talk to their family members and want to go and consult a doctor. But if that topic, you know, is happening online, they are open to go and, you know, put in their questions or just hear the doctor as to what

is it that they can do. Interesting. Questions? Just to back up what Mohan said, not a question. So we recently did this research. There is data on suicides worldwide. Globally, there are 8 lakh suicides. There are more than 2 lakh in India. more than 25% of suicides in the world are in India. So I'm actually like not surprised that you got a lot of engagement on that. In fact, one of the data point was that 95% of Indian millennials are burnt out versus an 86% global average. You know, that's thanks to work pressure, lifestyle pressures,

just trying to keep up with the lifestyle that they have. just trying to keep up with that. That itself is kind of putting that pressure. So mental health, depression, alcohol, substance abuse, disorders, you know, coming out of that. A startling number was that we see as many millennials as we see Gen Xers in our hospitals. What are organized players like Max Healthcare doing to address this trust deficit from a long-term perspective? A couple of things that, you know, one is actively doing. One is this whole awareness building on why is a

certain procedure a certain needed or why is it a certain procedure costed at a certain, you know, price point. Cost and price is one big area that breeds this whole trust issue. So one is looking at fixed price packages. You know, where we say that this is, for this treatment, this is the fixed price and how many such fixed price packages could be made where this is a fixed price for a certain treatment module. You know, even if your stay extends or is below, this is the price that one is going to charge. The other is, like I said,

this whole information asymmetry that we are trying to, you know, address on this front. Thank you so much, Mohan. Thank you. It's been awesome having you here and added lots of strategies to this conversation. Thank you. I'm pleased to welcome my next guest, Vishal Gondal, founder and CEO of Goki. Vishal's passion for technology, fitness and gaming led him to this venture, which is focused on helping people adopt a healthier lifestyle. Currently, he hosts a podcast series which is called Beneath the Force, the Vishal Gondal show, where he

has conversations with personalities from various walks of life. We hear lots of great slogans from and, you know, call to action from the government. We've heard about Fit India. We've heard about the whole yoga movement. Lots of cultural things fitting into your philosophy, which is empowering customers to get fitter, to take fitness into their own hands. Is it working? So there is massive traction today from a consumer to take his own health in his own hands. And I think that's really stemmed from the challenges in the healthcare industry.

The real problem is that healthcare is truly not healthcare. It's largely sick care. It is fragmented, conflicted, and completely non-transparent. And consumers don't trust it. When we researched almost 700,000 users, 97% people said they don't trust healthcare. But you know who they actually trust? Last year, the number one trusted person was Baba Ram Deva. And number two was Akshay Kumar. This year, number one trusted person is our Prime Minister PM Modi. And he's becoming, along with Akshay and Baba Ram Deva, and all the chefs and celebrities,

are becoming the icons which masses are really following. And I think, you know, after looking at this research, I was very clear on the success of a brand like Patanjali, because people are not really buying Patanjali. They were buying the trust. They were saying, I trust what Baba Ram Deva is telling me. And I think if you look at that same thing, and I think PM Modi has taken that same wave of fitness. And interestingly, it is not just an Indian wave. Same campaign is happening in China, Singapore, Japan is about to launch a campaign where

they are all saying, governments are saying that if I have to spend billions, I'm not going to spend it on hospitals and medicines. I will rather spend it on the consumers themselves and motivate them and make them do things from a prevention perspective. So it is a mass movement and it's one of the global things which is really happening. I know I've spoken to you and I know your vision is to change behavior, to move India. Tell us, how is the vision coming into play? What is the strategies to make this mass? How are you taking it to the country?

So just to kind of talk about behavior and that's my background in gaming. Behavior change happens with incentivization, putting people in all kinds of what we say habit loops and tricking their mind to feeling that this activity is fun. That's really the concept of behavior change. If you think something is fun, you will do it. If you think it's too hard or too easy, you will stop doing it. That's the basic philosophy. And what we are seeing is that consumers, you know, let's look at the 500 million Indians who are having smartphones and who are active.

Each one of them are consuming content, they all are on the phones, they all are seeing people around them getting active and they all want to get active. But you know what is stopping them? And that was the other insight which we are going to talk about maybe in much detail next year. The number one challenge for healthcare is not going to be doctors and medicine. It's going to be Netflix, Zomato and Swiggy. Because these are the people now, so Netflix's official campaign is we don't want people to sleep. That is what Netflix is trying to do.

And of course we know Swiggy and Zomato are bombarding people with binge eating, junk food. food and that's making consumers lazier. So at one end we are saying fit India, let's walk, let's eat healthy and on the other end you wake up and you see this offer of 90% off and unlimited pizza and then you have this new series on Netflix which you want to watch the whole night. And that's what we are trying to do to make this fun. We are saying how can we counter Netflix which is why we have a video content, how do we counter junk food and that

enticement which we are working on from the food perspective and then think of what we are trying to do is like the pay TM of health where we are saying we will give you cash back but you need to do a health activity and that is what is going to make you richer. So that's really the kind of stuff we are trying to do. Interesting. I've noticed that you have a product portfolio that your product strategy is not one size fits all. Talk to us very briefly about that strategy because you've clearly segmented your consumers in some way. See our consumer is a

couch potato. That's what we are going after which is 99.9% of this country. And a couch potato the biggest win for them is getting up and walking. So that is how we started Goki with steps and walking being the front. But now we are turning to content. And I think with Akshay we launched the whole India health quiz. And the third leg of what we are going to do is going to be food. Where people are going to want healthier snacking options. So healthier snack does not mean bland and not tasty. So it has to be healthier. So it cannot just be

boiled vegetables. So it is kind of getting in the middle. So we are looking at various segments of whether it is food, whether it is content, whether it is all kinds of variables right from something attached to a shoe to an ECG device. Solve the issue of adoption, early adoption and people trying out and actually trying to make it mainstream. But what about sticking to it? So I think the biggest other issue that the country faces is that you try it for some time and then you just leave it. So how do you really ensure that if you are

at it then you actually have meaningful difference to outcomes? So I think if you look at any app, the strategy of sticking is about making you keep doing the transactions again and again. The reason why a Paytm offers you cash back for 25 transactions or other apps are trying to make you use an app because we then know that once you do a particular behavior, you are hooked to it. So what we are really trying to do is and we call this internally motivation mining, figuring out what is going to motivate different people to get hooked. For somebody it is

challenges, for somebody it is prizes, for somebody it is about social causes, for somebody it's about friends, for somebody it's about content. So the minute you start personalizing this experience and you know who is the best at actually this, it's Facebook. Facebook has cracked what they call persuasion behavior. You know they can make you vote for candidates you don't want to vote to. But I wish Facebook could have used their technology for good. Currently they have sold it to whoever wants to pay for clicking their ads. But if you look at

what social media is really doing is influencing behavior at a mass scale. So we are trying to do that but for your good and for your health. That's really what we are trying to do. On that note ladies and gentlemen thank you for joining us on the wellness special edition of Brand Studio Live co-hosted by HD Brand Studio and DMA Asia. A sincere thanks to our friends from DMA Asia and to Vatsal Ashar for helping us power this. A huge round of applause for our brand masters who have taken out their time and shared insights and experience.

A big thank you to Fever FM who is our radio partner. We will be back with another episode soon. Keep watching.