What this BrandMasters episode teaches about brand purpose

Ladies and gentlemen, hello and welcome back to Brand Studio Live. The show in which India's top CXOs share their insights into the hottest topics in marketing, branding and business. I'm Rameet Arora and I'm with a brand new set of brand leaders or brand masters as we call them in the newsroom today. Our brand masters don't just inspire us with their ideas and their perspective. They open up new ways of thinking and give us lots to learn. Without further ado, let's get to today's episode. Thank you.

We're going to engage with brands that go beyond expectations or push their boundaries. Also, studies tell us that the new age consumer, if there's anything like that, want to associate with brands that break the status quo, are not afraid to change or speak to them in a language that they understand. But are brands ready? Are they willing to take the risk? Our brand masters today are leaders and influencers who challenge themselves and are constantly asking themselves the question, how can I break new ground?

And on that note, our first brand master and I'm very pleased to invite Dillian Gandhi, Senior Director and Category Head Foods for PepsiCo India. Dillian is an accomplished international marketer with more than 15 years of successful brand building, marketing and sales experience at blue chip FMCGs like PepsiCo, P&G and Gillette. Having been associated with PepsiCo for over three years, Dillian has led the flagship brand's brand lays to double digit growth.

Differentiating idea that you could take to market and make relevant has always been what has broken new ground. Does it continue to be so in an era where it's so easy to copy ideas, to replicate them? Does the idea still remain the core of where new ground is broken? Oh, absolutely. I think that the set of principles that drive marketing have remained the same all the way since, you know, the 1920s when people were walking the boardwalk. The application of those ideas has always changed and there's always changed with new technology coming in.

But fundamentally, whenever we've seen, you know, what you call breaking new ground, it's always been rooted in an idea. And the technology of that time, whether it's product technology or information technology, has only enabled that manifestation of that idea to be stronger. So to my mind, if anything, the primacy of the idea is even more now than it was in the past. An example of that is, you know, what we have done on lays with a recent campaign that we did. We actually started with the idea of, and it was a very simple idea.

The idea is, smile leads to connections. And when you have a bag of lays, it brings a smile to your face. And with that simple idea, you could create a world which could then translate into digital. It could go into packaging, so in the physical world. And of course, in traditional communication. To me, if we had not started with the idea and gone only to the packaging and only to, you know, the new technology, we would not probably have had the same level of response that we have gotten on the campaign.

I know there are many examples in your portfolio of big ideas and how they have come to life. And Kurkure is one. It's a homegrown idea and a homegrown brand. Tell us, bringing an idea to life and to scale, what's the mantras from the Dilan's table? Right. I think, Kurkure is a fantastic story. It's unique in many ways. It's unique because here is a multinational, which instead of bringing in just global brands into India, has created a brand for the market. And it started with a very simple idea.

How could you take Indian flavors and combine them with Western format of snacking? So, I mean, the Kurkure example itself tells you three, you know, what I would call the three big things. Number one is the primacy of the idea itself. And we've talked a lot about that. Number two, in my view, is the inside the underlines the idea. I believe that the strongest ideas are rooted in insights. And in this case, the insight was people love Indian flavors, but they love trying stuff that's new, that's coming in.

And the third is always adopting that idea to the technology that's available at that point of time. In Kurkure, we've been able to leverage technology as it has evolved, both from a product technology point of view, but also from a communication technology point of view. So earlier we were telling stories on television largely, but we have now started telling stories on Instagram. Interesting. Questions? Packaging. Obviously a big conversation globally around packaging and its effect on the environment.

What are the kinds of things you're thinking about in terms of ideas or innovations around packaging? The idea ultimately, as our goals have stated, is to get into 100% of either recyclable, biodegradable packaging by 2025 globally. So that's our commitment that we've made. There are several steps that we've taken in India already. Number one is we've reduced the size of our bags. That not only reduces the amount of packaging material that we use, but also reduces carbon footprint because smaller bags take less fuel to travel.

The number two thing that we've done again in India is we've made progress on the recyclable journey. One of the big challenges, as you can imagine, on recycling is how do you make material which is recyclable but still maintains shelf life in the conditions that our products have to live in. And that's progress that we have made. Inherently, snack foods are all about fun, but there is this underlying trend about building health and kind of cues in it. So is that balanceable and how do you kind of find that bridge?

There are certain base level things that we do that we don't talk about. For example, we are already on a reduction, sodium reduction and sat fat reduction journey. And we have taken steps towards that which we don't publicize necessarily. But then there are product offerings that we bring into the market which can help you make better choices. So for example, we did kurkure multi-grain last year, which was we introduced ragi into a base which had rice, corn and dal. A few years back, we had done leis baked, which offers 50% less fat than regular chips.

So we are in a position to offer a variety of products for the entire continuum or the entire spectrum of health and wellness kind of insights that exist in the country. Thank you so much. What a fantastic example of a brand that's traveled and a great way to start today's session. One big well-funded advertising plan and a B2C campaign is off the ground and I'm oversimplifying this. Sometimes in orbit. And we're all talking about it over coffee and dinner. That's not always the case with B2B brands.

These are brands that are much harder work, as Virginia will tell us. Sometimes actually built customer by customer and the fame is built over a lot of bricks. And on that note, I'd like to invite Virginia Sharma, Director of Marketing Solutions, LinkedIn India and Veteran B2B Marketer. Previously, Director of Marketing for LinkedIn APAC, where she designed and drove effective marketing campaigns to grow the LinkedIn talent solutions business.

She's won several awards, including Asia's most influential CMOs in 2015 by CMO Asia, the 2017 DMAI Knight Award and the ET Women Ahead list in 2018. There's a lot of action in the B2B space and even in the B2B startup space. But we don't often talk about it. Before we get to today's agenda, paint a picture for us. Tell us how big this is. There's lots of people listening to this show, young marketeers. Tell us why it's exciting. Yeah, so, you know, some less known facts about B2B. One is it's a trillion dollar industry.

We like to keep it quiet, so we keep the money to ourselves. But, you know, between things really got heated up in India with B2B around 2014. Between 2014 and 2018, we tripled the number of B2B startups from 900 to 3,200. And you must wonder, why has B2B gotten so hot? Now, if you think about it as an investor, they're easier to scale.

If you think about the sheer amount of management talents now available, people like our brand masters that are spending 20 years in industry, whether it be in banking or et cetera, moving into entrepreneurship, bringing their domain skills, combining it with technology. And VCs are very excited about management experience now, right? So people who have a little more tenure under their age. And then most importantly, you know, the ability to scale globally is very compelling, right? That's what investment seeks, is the ability to grow.

We've recently chatted about a research that you actually exposed me to. It's a research done by Benetton Field with LinkedIn. And it's very exciting work. I know they've laid out a few principles, not trends, to anchor B2B marketing. And when I read them, I felt they were counterintuitive. They're not what we thought they would be. Take us through those and tell us, for B2B marketers today, what are those five principles and why they make sense?

Yeah, so, you know, when I first saw the study and they talked about the principles, we realized that around the same time we released the B2B trend study. And they almost contradict each other. And you sit there and say, okay, should we be really doing this, going out there with trends and going out there with principles? Now, trends are what we are doing, right? It's what in surveys of B2B marketers we are doing. But what is trendy is not always right.

So the first thing that I want to say about the study is that having both B2B and B2C in the same analysis allows us to really answer the question, is B2B really different than B2C? And you'll talk to a B2B marketer and we'll say, we're really different. So the three things that I think that really can be brought over is, you know, it's not about just products. It's about, you know, it's about emotion. And emotional marketing is not really associated with B2B. It's all about functionality and product education.

But the reality is, you know, B2B marketers and B2B buyers are human. So heuristics has a role to play. And so really the first principle is bringing emotion into the marketing. The second is really around the concept of share of voice has been very well regarded and understood in B2C. And has been measured frequently in B2C.

And the study really says that share of voice should be the true north metric for B2B marketers as well, which is very different than what we're measuring right now, which is short term, you know, revenue metrics or lead generation metrics. The third thing that can really be borrowed is this idea of really building brands, not just at one stage when you launch a product, but throughout to build a relationship with the market, whether it be with your existing users or with potentially new buyers in the future. And, you know, advertising.

There's a role for advertising. So those are the things to borrow. The things that are new for me, though, is, which I need to change my thinking is, we always talked about customer retention. You know, it's seven times more expensive to acquire a new customer, protect your customers, do those, you know, make sure you're existing customers. And the research really says that B2B has to focus on activation. So you have to hunt or you will die. And then the second area is really an introspection about as we think about becoming growth officers.

We're seeing this trend in B2C that it's not just about owning marketing but owning growth. There is a direct correlation between market share growth and share of voice. All these are principles. I think I need to work on changing some of my own habits in B2B and I encourage my peers to do the same. Awesome. Questions? I wanted to ask a little bit about the share of voice. How does that get measured in the context of B2B? Is there a measuring system in place? And how do you see that evolving? Because I think the data is very compelling.

You go after that. You know, share of voice, at least in the digital space, because there's so much content being consumed throughout the buyer journey. We measure it based on something called the topic ownership index. And there's others, you know, based on you can sort of look at keywords, etc. and word clouds. But for us at LinkedIn, so topic ownership is basically saying as we look at all the content on LinkedIn around, let's say, cloud. Organic, paid, through the news, through influencers, through, you know, regular members blogging.

Where does your brand show up and how many of those posts and those conversations compared to where that conversation shows up? Virginia, on that note, I have to say thank you for opening our minds to new possibilities. Lovely. Thank you. Thanks a lot. I'd like to welcome my next guest, Shashank Srivastav, Executive Director, Maruti Suzuki. Shashank has been with the company for over 30 years, having worked extensively in sales and marketing across various departments.

As we walk into 2020, it's fair to look at a marketing leader, a market leader and ask the question, what's next? What's going to break new ground? Because it is a leader's prerogative. What's the one innovation from Maruti Suzuki? If you look at automobile industries, really quite a simple one. It's been there for more than 100 years. So you have a product. So you make a product. You then have a distribution. So you have dealerships, etc. Then you have communication to the consumer.

You keep on once you sell the vehicle, you keep on being in touch with the consumer to drive the next purchase of services or product. But here is where the simplicity ends. Because over these years, what has really happened is the consumer themselves change of course, the choices. In each of these factors, whether it's technology, whether it is the product technology, even distribution or communication, it's all changing. And my feel is that in the last couple of years, it has changed extremely fast.

And the real reason for that is the huge amount of digitization which we find across all these activities. And so you have now machines which are able to absorb and process more data. And then you have more digitization at each aspect which enables you to collect and push that data in that data lake. And I think going forward, you will see tectonic shifts in how this industry will behave. And I think this market leader will continue to be a market leader only if he is able to understand what these shifts are.

And that's what I think Maruti Suzuki will be doing extensively. And I think it's being done across the world by all auto manufacturers are actually in the, they feel the same thing. But we're really not sure which direction it will go. Very interesting. And you alluded to technology as well. Through the customer's journey and through his life, the ability to build a single view of the customer. Yeah. And build products around that single view, communicate around that single view. Is that part of the tectonic shift that we are talking about?

Yes, absolutely. Because it's driven by it. So it is this consumer which is driving every change, whether it's technology, whether it's communication. I'll give you an example to make it more clear. For example, over these years, Maruti Suzuki last 30 years actually built up a huge network in both urban areas, rural areas, physical dealerships. The reason was that when a consumer buys a car, there are 27 touch points with a dealer before he purchase the car.

So, he visits it, buys it, takes a brochure, he will say so on, there communicates, comes finance, payment, etc, etc. 21 of them are now digital. In other words, the consumer is now no longer walking in the showroom. So, his showroom has actually shifted to his screen. Screen. Screen. And when you look at, we know the consumer for example, we have technologies by which we know exactly what Ramit would want to see in an ad. So, you can actually personalize it. So, no longer is for example, ad buying about space, it is about buying audiences.

So, I would like to you for example, I know that you want you see the ad in a particular format. So, if you are getting into this on the digital space, I will target you with those particular ads. So, it ignites that emotion much more. And I think going forward in automobile industry, this deep learning as they call it of the machines, they are going to strike at every aspect of automobile, whether it is design or communication or distribution. And that's the new ground which I think would be, we would be also breaking. Awesome. We can take one question.

You all are very well immersed into the digital ecosystem. So, my question is about AI, ML and all. We hear a lot about it. But from a marketer's perspective, are you seeing practical utilization of that now or coming up? Yes, actually, absolutely. Actually, it is already happening to some extent. For example, if you look at a consumer who walks in a showroom, you can study online their expressions, do an online research and say this guy is going to more interested in a red color, see us, which he may actually be inquiring for a desire or something.

And it's happening already. And when you walk in, suppose I have enough data about you, I don't mean to scare, but if I have enough data about you, when you walk in, then I know this guy has got a history, has bought the car three years back. So, you will know exactly what the person wants. So, this is already happening to a large extent. But of course, we are still at the beginning of it. And I think as machines become better and as data points become more extensive, you will find it growing really big. On that note, Rishank, thank you. Thank you.

We are looking forward to seeing lots of more ground being broken. Thanks a lot for today. Thank you. I am delighted to introduce my next guest, Priyanka Gale, founder and CEO of PopXO, which is India's largest digital community for women. An ambitious and very effective entrepreneur. She has built the company into a highly data-driven media tech platform. Priyanka, welcome back to Brand Studio Live. We met last year in Season 1. I see that you've now entered the private label space in the beauty category. Skincare quality. Skincare, alright.

Aren't you taking on the big boys now? And what's the strategy? I think it's a dream for every content company to do the content community commerce model. What's the experience been like? Talk us through all of this because you've certainly broken new ground for many of us. I think a lot of the way that women, we create brands, they're monolithic. Right? And all the traditional brands that were created were created to be and they were very successful as giant monoliths. But that's not how the consumer is today.

The consumer today is actually a lot of large specific niches all kind of coming together. And especially when you're looking at beauty and if you're looking at skincare and makeup, all the traditional brands that we have today are all the brands that women have used for many, many, many decades and they're still continuing to do so. LACME for example, right? Fantastic brand. My grandmother probably used it. My mom used it. I've used it. And my daughter can also use it today as well.

But the consumer and specifically the female consumer does not like thinking like that. She wants something that's personal to her. And today we have technologies available and we have platforms available where we can quickly launch a brand, bring it to market, market it all over and then the brand is live. So our beauty collection that we launched in start to finish it took us three months. Right? From saying, hey guys, we're going to launch a beauty collection. That's the next thing we're going to do. Which is obviously backed by data that we had seen.

From getting the formulations right, getting it produced, vendors to make it, getting the marketing right. Every single word that you see on the packaging is all devised by us. So I think that is the exciting part of being a content platform that has a lot of distribution, a lot of marketing chops and then adding product and sales into it. We're having a lot of fun doing that at Poppins. A lot of people are experimenting with content and content to commerce. Is your competitive advantage really the community and the engaged community?

Our ability to create a lot of content, have a large distribution system to a lot of, to all of our audience, millions of women in India, getting reaction from them in real time. Like I have marketers here and I'm sure you guys would appreciate how exciting it is to get a real time reaction before even the product is made and then putting the product out and selling it back to that particular consumer group, cohort that really liked that particular meme.

So there's a lot of loops that we can build into it and we enter into a product with a fair degree of certainty that we know that these are the people who are going to buy this. And that's all technology, it's data and it's also really understanding to Virginia's point, the consumer and what she is looking for at this point in time and not treating all of them the same. Questions anybody? Yeah. But in your experience, can you think of any examples where traditional brick and mortar companies have been able to harness that power of data?

Sure. I mean, I'll just give you some, it's a high end example, but if you take the Four Seasons brand, so they have this fantastic way of collecting and using any form of interaction that you've had with anyone when you are at the properties. And every time you enter there, they'll kind of greet you by name and if you went in with your kids and it's a year later, oh my God, I mean, Rhea is seven now or she's six now or she's eight now. So they have that memory that they've built into their data systems.

But the point there is not the fact that they actually have the data collection that is down pat. The really impressive thing about them is that they have the usage of the data and they do it in the best way possible. So I think that is the kind of the soul of what smart, intelligent and sensitive data systems should be about. So Rihanna has just come out and there's been a lot of coverage about her coming out with, I think, 40 shades of brown. So versus taking on L'Oreal, who has four shades total.

And, you know, in the context of India and fairness, what are, you know, Indian women saying about complexion and the diversity of India? And, you know, how is your product reflecting the next generation's attitude towards complexion and diversity? Sure. I think this is one of those thorny subjects. The topics of brand pillars are about what we are, but they're most importantly about what we are not.

So fairness creams, for example, we really don't work with them, no matter how much money, much to my sales teams, the stress, no matter how much money a fairness cream will give to us, we really won't work with you because we don't believe that that is something that kind of aligns with our brand principles. But those brand principles exist because our audience also feels the same as well. Products have the power of communicating who you want to be to the world.

If I'm wearing a particular thing, if I'm carrying a particular thing, it tells the world who I would like to be. So Indian women today really want to own who they are. And more importantly, they want to be vocal about who they are. On that note, thank you so much. It's always wonderful to have you, Anish. Thank you. My next guest is Nitesh Tiwari, an old friend and colleague, filmmaker, writer and director. Nitesh's Wikipedia page describes him as an Indian film director, screenwriter and lyricist known for his work in Bollywood.

Nitesh made his directorial debut by co-directing Chiller Party, which won the National Film Award for the best children's film for that year, and then directed Bhutnath Returns. In 2016, he scripted and directed Dungal, the fifth highest grossing non-English film ever, that collected over 2,000 crores. Nitesh has a bunch of very prestigious awards on his CV, including a film fair for best director. He's co-written the critically acclaimed Neel Bhatte Sannata and the much loved Barele Ki Barfi. And very recently, Chichore.

Congrats on that Nitesh and welcome to Brand Studio Live. Thank you so much. So, you know, Dungal, Chichore, like everything you do, massively entertaining, as it should be. But path breaking, certainly not formula films, maybe a little risky? Is that a conscious choice? Yes, maybe, you know, if I look back. Yes. Yes. But at that point of time, I thought that was the only right thing to do. If I really look back, if I look back, yes, you know, both the projects were pretty risky because they were very unconventional.

And they were trying to break new grounds. Dungal, for example, we are not used to seeing our heroes as fat and old. For his young girls. And a film which had none of the boxes ticked. It was a very different story. So it did seem like a project which was risky. And Aamir sir used to joke with me. He used to say that, You have an alternate career, right? I will teach weight loss. So, I mean, between you realize. But we made it purely for the belief which we had in the script. It was the same with also. When you have as a backdrop,

And most of the people would say, What is the next big project which you are going to do? And you end up doing relatively smaller so-called, you know, film. That is completely against the norms which is there. And that too on a theme which is pretty risky. Where you are showing that the heroes are losing. And so, yes, you know. But at that point of time, as I said, those seemed like the best choices. They had to lose. There was no other way out. It would have become a very conventional cliched film if they had won. So, they had to lose.

But yeah, it was risky for sure. That's really the life of a creative person. You put an idea out. You are putting yourself on the line. You are constantly trying to do new things. Yes. Hoping the world will receive new things and lord you for them. It doesn't always happen. But that's the life of a creative person. It doesn't always happen. But at least you should be giving it a shot. Also, the way times have changed. It's very heartening to see how new content is being embraced by the audience. People are saying that content has become the king.

And so-called small and medium budget films are doing big box office numbers. It's a very, you know, liberating kind of feeling for somebody like me who always believes in trying to tell something which is different. And try to bring something which is interesting yet meaningful to the audiences. The same hair raising sort of feeling that it gives us that Dangal may have inspired a generation of young women and girls. I have heard it from many people. And to me this is the most liberating feeling.

I always tell my team when we were making Dangal and when we were making Chichore that primarily people come to consume cinema for entertainment. Let's entertain them for show. But if the film makes a difference to one person's life. One person. I'm not even saying hundreds. Then our job is done. It was the same with Chichore also. And I can't tell you the number of messages I have got from people. Not saying that you've made a good film. But saying thank you for making this film. Because it's very important.

To me as a creative person I can't ask for anything more than that. That's totally the best reward you can get. But over the last few years content seems to have become bigger than star value. The superstars. Suddenly you know films with real content are doing really well. People keep talking about the millennial and new age audiences. The internet. OTT. Is something really changing or is it just that the movies are getting better? No I think it's a mix of both. What has happened is the penetration of this digital medium has brought a lot of fabulous

international experiences to our doorstep. Where you wouldn't believe you know. I have now common people talking to me in movie terms. People talk about BGM which is background music. People talk about production values. People talk about the character development in the scripts. This is these are the terms I am hearing from common people. Which is you know something which is very new. But yes you know these shows have brought in terrific awareness about the kind of stuff which is happening around the world. People have slowly started expecting that.

Not so much in terms of production values and VFX's. I am saying our expectations are still very low. We are very easily forgiving when it comes to production values and VFX's. But people have started having lot of expectations when it comes to content. Because there is so much content which is there out there for them to consume. That you need to give them a very strong reason why this movie is going to be worth your time and money. I am going to stick my neck on the line and say that Dangal was a global success in so many ways.

Yes I would like to believe that. It worked in many countries. Yes. It's one of the highest grossing films in China ever. Yeah. Which is very interesting. Which just tells you that a story can travel. It can travel anywhere in the world if it inspires you. Yet we don't really have any Pan India movies. We have Hindi cinema and that's very Hindi. We've never really had a movie which we can call you know Pan India from top to bottom and from left to right. Very few of them. Very few of them.

This is the classic dilemma which we have been struggling since our advertising days. I think a lot of my advertising friends would agree. We used to make two masters. You will make a Tamil master and you will make a Hindi master. That's because you don't really have you know stuff which cuts across the entire nation. That's because of the diversity of the country. You know like that Korkare masala has to be added into the south to make it look cater to that particular region. So we are yet waiting for that phenomena to start happening.

Barring a few movies like say for example I can say Bahubali in a true sense is a Pan India phenomena. You know. Irrespective of who the stars were there it did phenomenally well across the whole country. Questions? Sorry. Yes. There's a question. My question is about inspiration for ideas. Where do you get the inspiration for your ideas when you write your stories? My first loyalty is always towards the story. Which is whether do I have a story which I want to tell. And then the most important part comes which is the crafting of it.

I put a lot of stress and give a lot of importance to crafting. And most of my characters if you have seen the films which I have either directed or written. They all stem from real life. I have either borrowed characters who I have met in my real life. I have I borrow characters who I have either observed in my real life. I even name them around the people who I have met. Like say for example in Barili ki Burfi Bitti Mishra is my nani's name. So I like to keep them very real. What's the next project? That's fine.

No I'm doing you know I'm doing Ramayana next. Which is our very own version of Ramayana. So yeah very excited about it. Everyone's kind of going into this OTT space. It's a huge huge space. And Dharma is kind of partnering up with other with a platform as well. So is that a distribution model that excites you? Along with cinema of course. As of now it's purely cinema. I'll tell you the simple reason. Is that the kind of feedback which you get from a movie. Is not the same kind of feedback which you get from a digital platform.

The feedback is very personal. Thank you so much Nitesh. Finally we got you on this show and I'm so happy with it. Thanks a lot. Yes. I'd like to introduce my next guest. Mandar Natekar, Chief Business Officer of Kidzainia India. Mandar has two decades of work experience in the media and entertainment industry. He's worked with brands like Sony, Biggadda, HBO and MTV. Welcome back to the show Mandar. Thank you. Before we begin our conversation with Mandar I'd like to briefly explain what Kidzainia is.

Kidzainia is a scaled down city with children where they participate in role playing activities that are inspired by the real world. And these help children be more socially responsible. Now that's a lot of responsibility. And it's a global brand which probably has no parallel and nothing like it. So you've already broken every ground there is to break in so many ways because there's real competitive pressure. How does a brand like that continue to break new ground?

See one of the largest challenges of being the only player is the expansion of the category and the business and breaking new grounds is your own responsibility. So and Kidzainia has always solved for that in quotes dilemma which is experiential marketing. So every brand today wants to tell narratives of their brand in a very very different way. So for example we know that what we're going through is a real crisis right. But it all has to start I mean we've all lived some part of our lives and we have done nothing

about it but it's the kids today who have a strong voice and who will do something about it. Now that's a new insight that we have. What we want to do is create in Kidzainia an experience that can teach kids a for example how to harvest water. So there is wastage that happens everywhere right. So one experience could be teaching kids how water harvesting helps. Teaching kids how recycling helps. Educating kids about maintaining biodiversity. Now if we are not sustainable I think we are going to leave the world in a very different shape in years to come.

Even if one child today decides that he or she will not waste water not waste food and be more aware of the environment and work towards it. That's something that will be very impactful and that is where we want to build that experience. So the sustainability initiative is it a global program? It is in India first. So you are breaking new ground in the... Yes, so if you are able to kind of crack it and I think every single person with a person or organization needs to build awareness for that.

And if it means that you know when we are drinking water out of those bottles we don't leave water behind. Now these are strong small cues and values and unfortunately as a generation we have kind of failed to understand that because it was easily available. But when we are facing a crisis today it's important that every single person is aware of that. So like I said we want to do it with the right partner to ensure that we at least grow up being aware of the world around us. Clearly doing a lot of fascinating work and a unique business model as well.

So from an outreach and scale perspective are you looking at the classic outreach programs or the digital or is it restricted to your two centers? No, we do a lot of our communication happens through digital platforms whether it's Instagram or Facebook. We are using LinkedIn a lot to drive a lot of B2B communication and largely our partnerships business is largely B2B. business where we need to find an equal partner who is as involved in what we want to do.

How you know are you going to make sure that more and more kids get which is in your interest only. How do more kids get to come to KidsZania through whatever model possible. So that you know as I said you know I want more and more kids to come and see. So is it you are purely relying on word of mouth or is there a lot which is happening below the line which is going to ensure that lot of kids come to KidsZania. Sure. So kids come to KidsZania pretty much in these three ways.

One is parents get them to KidsZania and we have a very strong communication that we drive towards parents. Another part is the school trips so between Mumbai and Delhi and the ancillary regions every single school in these cities and we get schools from from from from distances to who have visited KidsZania and continue to visit it. And we are amplifying our communication and we want to keep it simple right Nitesh you know we want to tell parents that hey look whilst you do a lot of things with your kids.

Why don't you kind of visit KidsZania at least once for a gadget free experience. I mean where is where is where is the place today that you can go to and have a great time with your kids with no interference of technology. On that note Mandar thank you so much. Thank you very much. You are breaking new ground. Thank you very much. Thank you for that. Thank you very much. Thanks. I am very pleased to welcome my next guest Amit Ramani founder and CEO Office which is India's largest shared workspace company.

Amit started office with the vision of revolutionizing the office space delivery ecosystem in India through technology. Amit's contribution to the field of real estate and facility planning has made him the recipient of the prestigious IFMA Foundation Award three years in a row. The co-working culture today is a rage in top metros like Gurgaon, Bangalore. Is it evolving? What's the future? Or is it just a fad in the big cities now going to small cities?

So Ramit I think clearly when we started obviously the territory was unknown right 2015 there were no players. Today there are some 300 players right. We today have close to about 15 million square feet under co-working which is only about 1.5% of the total billion dollar industry commercial real estate. I think as urbanization happens I think clearly there's going to be more and more people that are going to adopt something which is a big challenge in India right. First finding a space then fitting it out and then running it is a big challenge.

It's clearly an emerging market story. So our perspective on this is that you know we are clearly at the ground floor of an opportunity. There's a skyscraper to be built. Clearly there are going to be some consolidation as we go forward but I think brands that stand out will obviously have a large opportunity being curated in this space today. Do you think that when you move to tier 2 and tier 3 that's where you really help startups in the industry break new ground? No.

So I think even if you look at tier 1 industries there was a clear segmentation right. You had the corporate guys going in the grade A plus buildings and you had the startups going into base infrastructure right. You had the SME which is the largest opportunity in the country right and that's where the tier 1 market got established and that's where we sit. Today 50% of our business comes from SMEs. So clearly in the tier 2 and 3 metros when you move into those metros clearly there's going to be a segmentation of who are the players going in.

Because the corporate guys are trying to go into those markets to service those markets. SMEs in those markets are growing and innovation and you know startups in towns like Jaipur and Bhuvneshwar is just taking off. So clearly we feel a big opportunity in those markets as well. Is India different from the rest of the world? Absolutely. Is there some localization that's going to this? Absolutely. If you go to a city like Singapore right, what are you really solving? I can go into any building, I can literally put my furniture down and I'm in business.

You go to a grade A building in India today, you will feel that you have to invest a lot of time and effort to even upgrade the space to a decent standard. And imagine now there is a plug and play space available, there is a far better infrastructure than what you can create on your own and it's available to you readily. So you are actually solving a big problem in India versus the global markets where all you are solving is flexibility for people. In India you are really upgrading the SMEs and the startups into a better infrastructure.

What's the most frequently asked question? Nowadays it's how does we work? IPO bomb impact you. But I think from our standpoint, the frequent asked question is how have you created something in India which the global players are already leading the charge? And I think that's been a very big piece for us because we built something which was focused on India. It was never built on, let's just copy what's happening in the urban, I mean the developed markets and plump it here.

So I think the ability for us to customize and build an indigenous brand that is now a market leader I think has been a big journey for us. Questions? I think it's really interesting the insight that you had which is about having a solution for India and focusing on infrastructure development versus flexibility. What in your opinion will it take for you to break into the large corporate market like for example HD? How would you know what would would that ever be possible and if what would it take to do that?

So today 40% of our business comes from corporates right? Customers such as Vodafone, CNBC, Danik Jagran, I mean companies such as Hitachi. I mean so clearly I think the corporates have figured out that this is something and PepsiCo is a customer in fact. He took seats with us in Hyderabad. So for us I feel that you know clearly if you solve a need in the market because today the corporates what is the biggest challenge right? They are not in the business of managing real estate right?

They are also not in the business of managing specially the non HQ locations. So when PepsiCo came to us they came to us because they said well I need space for three months. Now in a typical scenario 200 seats for three months is not available in the market. So if you've solved that need then obviously the you know the corporate market also comes to us. On that note ladies and gentlemen thank you for joining us on episode 8 of Brand Studio Live Season 2 co-hosted by HD Brand Studio in DMA Asia.

A heartfelt thanks to our friends from DMA Asia for helping power this event. A huge round of applause for our brand masters who took out time to be with us and share their news today in the newsroom. And a big thank you to our radio partner Fever FM for helping evangelize the concept. Stay tuned for our next episode. We'll be back shortly. We'll be back shortly.