What this BrandMasters episode teaches about digital transformation

Ladies and gentlemen, hello and welcome back to HD 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 perspectives. They open up new ways of thinking, give us a lot to learn. Without further ado, let's get to today's episode. Thank you.

As it may sound, many of us were continuously making choices. India or Bharat, mass or class, English or Hindi, metro or non-metro, even urban or rural. I'm oversimplifying, but the choices were real. It would be the understatement of the year to say that the marketplace has been well and truly disrupted and so has the marketeer's life and work. Somewhere between India and Bharat, a new world order has emerged. It's not a different India. It's not even a different Bharat, which incidentally has moved much closer to India in my view.

It's just a different marketplace. It's younger. It's more aspirational. It's more willing to spend. It's more accepting. More risk averse. And it's embraced technology. It's far more democratic as a marketplace with both information and access. And we've chosen to call it the new Bharat. At this point, I'd like to introduce my first guest, Nimisha Jain, Managing Director and Partner of the Boston Consulting Group. She's also the global leader of BCG's Center for Customer Insight and leads BCG's marketing and sales practice. Welcome.

In Asia Pacific, Nimisha focuses on helping organizations drive breakout growth, leveraging deep consumer insight, marketing, innovation, digital and GTM transformations. You know, you've had the benefit of both extensive insight work and exposure to companies and brands. A new Bharat, is that a reality? And can you set some contours or themes for us to start this episode? Sure. Firstly, thank you, Ramit. And thank you for having me. It's an absolute pleasure to be here. New Bharat? Absolutely.

I think that is, we are undergoing today what I see as a period of unprecedented change. I've been shacking the Indian consumer for 22 years now. I started as a marketeer selling Maggi noodles. And what I see today is a period that we've just never seen before. And let me start with a little story. You know, this weekend, there were, we got three packages delivered from Amazon at our doorstep at home. The first was a rice cooker that was ordered by my 70-year-old mother-in-law. The second was a book that was ordered by my 10-year-old.

And the third was shampoo and hair oil that was ordered by my domestic help. All three, three different people, three different orders made independently to the same address. And that really is the new Bharat. And let me talk about a few themes that really exemplify this for me. The first is affluence. Today, 12% of Indian households are affluent. They make an annual household income of greater than 10 lakhs. These households already account for 35% of the consumption in the country.

Over the course of the next decade, they will account for two-thirds of the consumption in the country. Winning with those households, knowing how to win with them is going to be critical. But that's not all. If you combine that with my second favorite theme, digital. Digital is not just restricted to these households. It is ubiquitous today. There are 450 million people who are online every day, spending between one and a half to two hours, consuming media, looking at things, deciding what brands to buy, and making purchases online.

The third thing that's happening is that over the last five years, India has reached a point where the enrollment of girls into high schools, for the first time in its history, is higher than it is for boys. What that means is over the next decade, there will be more women, educated women entering the consuming class. There will be more working women entering the working population than ever before. This has profound implications on the kinds of products that they buy. They will spend more on education. They will spend on health and wellness.

They will make educated choices on what they buy for themselves, the convenient products that they're looking for, but also what they want for their children, what they want for their households. And last but not the least, my favorite theme is what I call pride in India. These consumers today are choosing to buy Indian products. In a recent research that we did, over 50% of urban consumers said that they're choosing Indian brands over multinationals. So, New Bharat, absolutely, period of absolutely unprecedented change.

And most importantly, the past will not be a predictor of the future. Understanding how these changes are going to happen is just going to be completely critical. But if you had to pick one thing that's really disrupted our lives, it would be the mobile phone. I think that's a fair point, absolutely. The mobile phone has done three very important things. It has created a personal device, not a household device. The second thing it's done is it's made access ubiquitous. It doesn't matter whether you live in a small rural village

where products are not available on your doorstep. But with the mobile phone, with vernacular, with voice, not just text, you are able to now get the same information as everybody else anywhere in the country, in the deepest hinterlands, even without the highest education. And the third thing that it's done is it's allowed you to converse. For the longest time, ever since I started my career in marketing, the biggest source of influence for any brand was what we called word of mouth. Word of mouth was you spoke to your friends, you spoke to your family,

and you decided what to buy. Today, the internet and the mobile phone is allowing you to converse with a much broader set of friends and family, and a much broader network of people who are experts on certain topics, and helping them influence you. And so we are seeing unprecedented growth coming out of tier 2 and tier 3 cities as well. Yes, we are seeing. So I talked about affluence. I talked about the fact that today we already have a third of our consumption coming from affluent households.

The well-hidden fact is that these affluent households are not concentrated in the metros. They exist today in 150 cities, and if in the next decade, they will exist in 400 cities. Questions? How do you see the impact of Gen Z over a period of time versus the millennials who are disrupting the marketplace today? When we've looked at digital consumption, we've looked at digital influence, we found that age is actually not the best predictor of how people consume and how influenced they are. The predictor is what we call digital age.

And digital age is defined as how long you have been on the internet, and how active you've been. So it's really a matter of time, whether you're a millennial or a Gen Z, or even someone older. It's how long you've been, and therefore the role that you play in influencing others. But as you spend more and more time, it's such an intuitive medium. And all the digital pure play players out there are increasingly working to make it more and more intuitive. You spoke about the affluent households

and how they are going to take over the consumer ecosystem landscape in the next decade. How discerning do you think these set of customers are? Is it because they've come into new money or new disposable, high levels of disposable income, and therefore they're focused more on spending? Or are they equally discerning at the same point in time, which would prompt the brands to be, you know, more careful about what they speak, how they speak, whether they solve for customer tensions, and so on and so forth? Yeah, that's an excellent question.

These consumers have new money. They are upwardly mobile. And most importantly, they are very positive about the future. They actually haven't seen as many downturns as some of us have. And they haven't seen the period of scarcity where you have to wait for months to get your next gas connection. And as a result of which, they are much more open to spending. And they see the need to save a lot less. They are choosing to spend on experiences rather than products. Thank you so much. It's been wonderful having you here.

And thank you for kicking us off with such a lovely session. Thank you. Thanks. I'd now like to welcome my next guest, Dheerat Sinha, Managing Director, India, and Chief Strategy Officer, Leo Burnett, South Asia. An advertising veteran, Dheeraj has led his teams to wins of over 50 effectiveness awards, including a gold for effectiveness at Kans Lions 2017, and a grand F.E. at the India F.E.s in 2017. He's won the J. Chayat Planning Award and the Asian Marketing Effectiveness Award. Dheeraj, delighted to have you here. Getting to the show,

in so many ways, the advertising agency, the creative agency is at the edge of the battle, is at the forefront of the battle, has the clearest view of the marketplace because that solution that you will provide is what's going to fight a large part of the battle for the marketeer or for the brand. From your lens, how do you see the new Bharat consumer having evolved, the marketplace having evolved? What does it look like? So, our understanding is that a new Bharat is more an attitude than a demography. Right? We're seeing, you know,

very unapologetic, almost an arrogant India kind of emerge from the underfolds of Bharat. And just to put that in perspective, if you look at India classically, right, most narratives in India were derived and run by a very small, privileged, advantaged minority. Right? So, whether you look at politics, it was being run by people from Oxford in Rajasabha. If you look at cricket was being run by the Mumbai clique. If you look at Bollywood was run by a few surnames. Right? So, across the board, English was the language of membership.

And therefore, for far long, right, the access to this whole world of power was limited to very, very few. And about in last five, six years, we've seen that overturn in a huge way. And what we're seeing is a huge, what was the disadvantaged majority is now rising up. Right? They are unapologetic. They are not saying I need any sanctions. They're not saying I need any empowerment. But they are so confident. The confidence almost brimming on arrogance. India became independent and our independent speech was in English. Right? 70 years later,

you're a new prime minister and I have no political issues. But in Madison Square, the Indian speech was in Hindi. Right? So, that kind of reflects the coming of age of India. We're realizing that brands who become too focused on the individual and the change payoff are actually falling off. Right? So, several very, very sharply youth brands are very, very small. But brands who are about rootedness and are about collectiveness. So, you have the Patanjali, the Amul, the Bajaj, BJP as a brand. They are doing really well. So, the whole idea

that we move forward, we move forward, bases are roots rather than bases the change. In advertising and marketing, we always use the lens of change that what new is happening and the best articulation was that we are changing but we are taking tradition with us. So, what's happening, therefore, in marketing and branding is we are selling a lot more, as Nimesha said, bases Indian pride. We are seeing a huge rise of arrogance. So, don't empower me, don't give me gyan, but solve my problems. That's the way we are looking at the new,

as I call the arrogant class. Is the agency changing as well to reflect some of the sensitivities? Is it becoming younger? What are the other cultural changes creative agencies going through? I mean, in many ways, right? One is that, I mean, earlier we would create a master copy and do translation. We are now thinking vernacular. Right? So, when we launched the campaign for Car Dekho, we thought and shot the master in five languages. Right? So, we are thinking vernacular. Right up front, we have that talent on board in the agency who thinks like that.

That's one big change. The other big change is bringing younger talent. Right? And willy nilly, if you hire today from the best colleges, undergrads, and postgrads, you will end up having a bulk of this, what we call the arrogant class, either which way. So, we are getting a huge sample of that. We were in a pitch for a big client and there was this three year old, three year inexperienced. And he's got a, he's got a five million followership on Instagram and he's making a presentation to the CMO and the CMO is saying, but we've never

cracked social media and he's saying, you don't have to worry about it, you have me. This is a pitch situation. Now, that's the confidence, the arrogance that this generation has. The other thing we have is what we call the Apollo 11, which is the innovation lab. Right? So, Apollo has engineers from IITs, designers from NID, etc, etc. And their job is to take up problems that this India has and solve them in non-advertising ways. Questions? I've seen the quality of creative thinking on the part of agencies actually going down. The commercials

that we remember, the jingles that we remember, the ones that continue to play in our memories were the ones that were done in 80s and 90s. Right? Why do you think that change is happening? One is, I feel, can also be a part of a media bias. Right? We were all brought and, you know, bred in an era where there was one television channel. We had the same jingle, washing powder, Nirma, beamed to us 25 times in a day and that's etched in my memory. So, you have 200 channels today. You spend about three hours on social media today. You have at least

a million more stimuli hitting you today than it was when we were growing up. Has advertising today's time created memorable work? I think they have. I mean, we have something called as Aardh or Dikhao. But yes, the industry has been at fault as well. Right? What happened for the last two decades was we did not invest in quality talent. Right? I mean, I have a bone to pick with a lot of industry veterans who made a good name, good success basis this business but did not add back as much as they perhaps should have. So, what we've started at Leo Burnett

now, we have two levels of recruitment program. So, we have an undergrad program, we are going to the best of the schools, we're recruiting 92 percentile people. We have a career path for them. My promise to them is in three years they'll be director and they will make more money than they would if they were to go to a top-notch MBA school. So, we have that program running A. We have a post-grad program running where we are hiring from the top-most colleges and we have a similar program for them. And we're not hiring four or five people, we're hiring 30

of those people every year. So, unless you change the input, the quality input, you will not change the game. Also, a lot of new work in advertising is in solving problems. It's not essentially a jingle, but rose that honk is a pair of technology which solves accidents at a U-pin bend. So, you will not hum that jingle but you see the solution. Yeah, that's something well done. Long answer. No, but thank you. So, the arrogant young Indian is what we'll take forth into the news next session. Thank you so much. Thank you, sir. Lovely. Thank you. Yes.

My next guest is Archana Agarwal, VP Media at Airtel. Archana is a passionate media advocate with over 20 years of experience. Previous assignment was as country media manager of PNG where she was instrumental in winning their first Khan in India, for India. She also led the media for the high decibel launch of 4G and payments bank in India. Welcome back to the show, Archana. It's a pleasure to have you again. You know, there is this, I don't know if it's myth or fact, but the mobile phone is replacing TV, the mobile phone is replacing newspapers.

You actually represent a product category that's at the cusp of this revolution and you're a media person yourself. Tell us a little about that. Also, while we're at it, you know, I've done some media planning as well and it used to be fairly easy and fairly challenging. Targeting audiences was both art and science and I say that very responsibly but the internet should have changed that, right? Now, you know, every single customer, you can identify 400 million cell phones. Have the media plans become easier, more challenging, more exciting? You know,

as you said that, you know, there are 400 million smartphones but if you actually look at how many of them have actually cut the cord, it's around, stats say it's around 2 million only. I was looking at some stats of the US. The projected 2022 cord cutters in the US is going to be 21% of the population. So, even in US, it's not like as if everybody's moved to digital. The second big thing is the fact that cable TV or rather DTH or TV subscriptions are far more cheaper than any OTT subscription, right? So, given that today, television still continues

to play a very large role in even talking to the New Bharat, okay? If I look at again, some stats on TV penetration, 92% are single TV homes still, at least 92%, of which around 82% watch TV as a family. I was reading some stats from BARC, BRC, the TV Measurement Audience System, the fact that 77% of the NCCSA, which is the affluent audiences, are watching television together, right? So, that means TV is here to stay. I don't see TV dying. I think every medium, be it print, TV, digital, out of home, all of them have a role to play and the role keeps

evolving as time goes. Yes, digital has come in. Basically, people who, these 400 million people who have these smartphones, they've added screens, right? It's not that most of them are replacing screens, they've added a screen. So, what is this added screen, it's actually complementing television. It's not supplementing. So, in that sense, TV is here to, Myth busted, the television here. If you today see, even the large OTT players or even if you see the digital players like a Googles of the world, use traditional media to advertise their product

because of digital discoverability become, is the biggest issue and challenge, right? Now, what the mobile revolution has done is it's become a great equalizer, right? It's allowed audiences from different sets of, you know, geographies to come together or be on a platform that they can all converse, right? But what has changed is it's changed the way people now consume media, right? And because of that, there are a lot more challenges for a marketer to how do you now reach out to these audiences. I think the biggest challenge is how do you reach out?

If I look at digital, there are lots of challenges, right? Digital is supposed to be the most measurable medium, but actually the most unmeasurable medium because there are walled gardens. So there are lots of platforms where I can't take the audience from one, I can't look at the consumer journey from one platform to the second platform. There are un-numerable metrics to measure digital like CPM, CTR, CPV, CPEs and they're endless, right? Television has one metric. You look at GRPs, you look at reach and you know how you can evaluate your media plans.

In digital, every platform looks, you buy a platform differently, you evaluate the platform differently. So you're not able to create one measurement metric to say that if I need to evaluate platform A versus platform B, how do I do it? This is the classical reach frequency challenge, right? it is the reach frequency challenge because it's because as on television it's so much more easier, right? You know that you can choose between channel A versus channel B or program A versus program B and you'll see I want to target somebody in the UP,

so these are the channels which deliver well in a UP versus in a Bombay, but in digital it becomes very difficult, there's no measurement systems, right? So there's no third party measurement. So digital's actually made your life tougher, but you're still at the cusp of revolution. Airtel sits on that edge. Yes. As a brand, how are you evolving? How are the media plans evolving? What's happening? What are the changes you're making? So, you know, before I come to some of the examples, I just want to say that what we keep trying to do at Airtel is we

keep trying to, we work with a lot of partners to pilot and to learn, test and learn. We've experimented, you know, when everybody on TikTok was going through hashtag challenges, we went and did advertising with them to see how did that work. We have a product called international roaming, needs to be very targeted because a large section of the audience, it's irrelevant product because if they're not traveling abroad, it's not relevant. Obviously, television doesn't make sense because there'll be too much of wastage and spillover. So, obviously,

digital was the right route to go. Now, how do you get the right target? So, you can target on interest, on psychographics. So, what we did was we looked at signals of travel. You know, we used behavioral signals of when, you know, they're looking at travel as an option. And we obviously then looked at a lot of travel sites and contextual advertising on that. But the challenge we still face, and we don't know whether this really unlocked the full potential or it was just a part potential that we've unlocked, is that the kind of audiences that you were

targeting would be people who have an interest to travel. Do they really have the affordability to travel? We don't know that. We are never able to get that correctly. So, you're obviously having some amount of wastage. You don't again, you know, the classical marketing thing, the glass half full versus the glass half empty. Is there a question? In telecom, the big challenge is how do you get the bottom coming up, the upgrade from feature to smartphone, right? And that segment is fairly digital dark as well, right? Because they're not on smartphones.

They're maybe doing TikTok on a friend's phone, but not on their own phone. And media is difficult as well. So, how do you crack for that? One, you could send them SMSs, then there's outbound calls which go to them. So, there's a way of targeting them. But again, a lot of them are on television. So, if you can't target them through digital, you can definitely target them through television. And maybe out-of-home media like wall paintings or if there are no regular sites but then wall paintings and other things like that. Airtel's obviously done great

advertising work, creative work. Some of the campaigns have been phenomenal. Very television, Her Friend, and you know, so many campaigns that I can think of which are very television campaigns. How do they translate to digital? I mean, because they seem to be created for TV. Okay, so what you're talking about, that's true, like if you talk about the Her Friend and all, yeah, but I'm saying in the last... The brand campaign. Yeah, in the last two to three years, what we've been doing is while there is a television campaign and some of the television

campaigns are also repurposed for digital from a video standpoint because at the end of it, there is a story that you want to talk about, so there's long format advertising that you use. So we do a fair amount of long format advertising, but we've also started doing a lot more short formats which are your 6 seconders, 10 seconders, which could definitely get created largely for digital only. I think it's a learning process because what works, what doesn't work is very different. So for example, long format takes a lot more time to build reach

because today people skip ads, I mean, you can, you have a skip button, people wait for the 5 second, the timer and you're ready to skip and hence if you want to build quick reach, you do the 6 seconders because that helps you get a lot more audiences, gets your message out there. We also test different formats of assets because this medium is evolving, right? You can never say you know everything. You have to keep learning on the way. And we learn every day and we've learned lots from you today and lots of myths busted. Thank you so much. Thank you.

It's been lovely having you. It was great. Thank you. My next guest, Puneet Das is Vice President Marketing India, Tata Global Privileges. Puneet has been a marketing professional for 20 years. His previous work experience includes senior marketing roles across FMCG companies like Marico, PepsiCo and GSK Consumer Healthcare. Welcome to the show, Puneet. Thanks, good to be here. Love your campaigns. You've built this great India brand evoking lots of pride and belief. But India or Bharat is actually not one India. Every few kilometers there's

literally a new Bharat. And food and beverage, tough category because tastes change. FMCG, it's known challenges with localization, with managing local palate. But the real battle is won on the ground, is won in these hundreds and thousands of different Bharats. And I know you've done lots of work on that. And Tata Tee has done enormous amount of work in winning the battle on ground. Talk to us a little bit about that. Operate obviously the T category which is as penetrated as mass as it gets. Over 90% penetration pretty much after water, Tee is present

in all household. So even at a national level, while you are one of the top two national players, when you boil down to small regions and small pocket, there's still so much opportunity to grow. And I think Tata Tee has been at the forefront of it. I mean, that's... So what is basically, you know, our expertise has been is understanding the taste preferences at a very local and hyper-local level. For example, you know, we are a sort of tea player. We understand that in India and especially across India, cardamom as ingredient is added in the kitchen.

You know, all of us have grown with it, which I'm talking about Eli-chi. Now, how do you marry the expertise of Tata Tee, which is our tea expertise, and take this insight? And we actually did that with one of our brands, and we launched Eli-chi chai, which is so intuitive. But as a branded player offering, we offered that about three years back, and today it is one of our fastest growing, till date, one of the fastest growing brands that we have. So that is at a product level, you know, understanding taste palettes and how are you sort of curating that.

I think the other is about, and it's not just about being present in vernacular, it's really about understanding regional insight, culture context, and actually, you know, sort of connecting with your audience. And I'll give you an example. We have very strong regional brands also, you know, who have a very strong regional footprint because as a category, that's sort of how the codes of the category are. So in fact, just few days back, we have actually launched a Tamil Nadu specific campaign for one of our brands, Chakra Gold, where it has

actually looked at, you know, the inside, the culture inside of Tamil Nadu. It's about people, how as Tamil people are very proud of their culture and the fact that they're very process-oriented, you know, and actually, we have used this insight to come up with a communication which talks about how, you know, how sort of it evokes the regional pride of Tamil being very process-oriented and how the fact, of course, that, you know, as a tea brand also, we are very process-oriented and hence have connected the two. and we have done a specific AP campaign

which is very different. So, that is about understanding the culture nuances and using them in your communication and, you know, speaking to the audience and connecting with them. I think at the third level, it's about activating it on ground. You know, it's about being part of the fabric of the region. It's being, sort of, celebrating with them when it comes to, say, festivals. I think the trick is about how do you balance, you know, the natural, the national sort of aspiration that people aspire for. I mean, obviously, you need to be

aspirational as a brand but at the same time, hint that you are also the regional, you know, expert and that balance is actually what will make you very successful. But also, the activation piece that you spoke about, right? I have noticed that the execution character of your campaigns has also changed a little bit over the last few years. I know that the last Jagore campaign that you did actually had this huge, you know, build the activists on ground, get them to petition on the internet, almost, sort of, involve people. So, the character

of your campaigns has actually also changed. Does that reflect your understanding of a new customer, of a new consumer? Absolutely, absolutely. I think, again, I think speakers, you know, there was a day and age when advertising was about giving a one-way message. It was giving information. The consumer was a receptive audience. There were no other options available. Today, it is about fitting into their world. It is about mirroring, you know, their beliefs and aspirations and as a brand standing out and saying, what is my point of view on today's world

and how I can... Jagore is a great example. Yeah, Jagore, I think, I mean, much before brand purpose and all became, you know, what, you know, became a flavor, Jagore was actually there from 2006 onwards, 2007 onwards. Was talking, took on themes like corruption, elections, etc. That's how we have evolved Jagore. Today, it's not just about standing and, you know, what we call armchair activism. It's actually about, as we called it, you know, changing things before they become incident and hence, Jagore, we evolved it to make it called pre-activism

as we call it. Don't wait for things to happen. I mean, and that's what today millennials and everybody are talking about, you know. It is, the nature of communication is not about giving information these days. It's about having a point of view and then working with the consumers and walking the talk, so to speak. And winning ground. And winning ground. Absolutely. Sorry, questions? Does it keep adding to your brand building cost to do so much of specific creation of brand and marketing it to those specific areas and then doing the whole 360 and so on?

That's actually, absolutely, very, very pertinent question. In fact, one of the challenges is that, you know, how do you win at a local, hyper-local level? I mean, you know, and one of the ways that we have sort of, because, I mean, it's a genuine challenge, right? You're not just doing one ad. Or one piece of communication. You're activating pretty much, you know, key markets all across. And I think that also, actually, had to fundamentally, we had to rethink our approach. And the standard approach is, you take a campaign, which is, say,

a Hindi-speaking campaign, HSM markets, you optimize it for states, etc. we actually flipped the whole thing. We said, if I want to win in this geography, what marketing mix, what media mix does it allow me to win? You know, and which is curated for that region. And once you flip it, you realize that, you know, rather than having this one cookie cutter approach, which is optimized, you actually start winning at a state level, you start evaluating choices. It broadly adds up, you know, around the same, sort of, if not, maybe a 10-20% increase.

But the efficiencies that come in, when you approach from there, actually takes care of a lot of these issues. So, I was wondering, we've heard about hyperlocalism, about national pride, regional relevance. Right. It can't have hurt to have a brand like Tata in that mix. So, how has that experience been and how you leverage that? And do you see a resurgence in values that are relevant to the brand? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, the whole, I mean, and that, that obviously is at the legacy and the heart of what we are, you know. So, what it gives you

is immediately the trust factor, the dependability. You know, that if it comes from the house of Tata or if, you know, the moment you have the word Tata on it, it gives you that trust and that trust translates not just with consumers, at all across. It also with the trade. So, do you see trust making a big resurgence? I mean, in consumer language? So, trust has always, trust has always been at the forefront of Indian consumers, you know, you know, and we actually continuously, for many years, keep coming among the most trusted or, you know,

in the top two, top three hot beverage segment anyway. So, trust has always been there. On that note, thank you so much. It's been lovely having you here. My next guest is Nikhil Kakkar, CEO, Gold's Gym India. Nikhil's journey has been from a person selling medicine to making the country fitter by making Gold's Gym one of the biggest chains in the country. It's been a fascinating journey. He's taken the brand to a whole new orbit with now having a base of, I don't know if I've got this number right, one million subscribers plus. Yeah, from starting

as we speak. That's impressive. Welcome to Brand Studio. Thank you. You're certainly making the country fitter. This is a fitness revolution. It's, you're riding a little wave here, aren't you? I probably would say it's just the beginning actually. We still have a long way to go. If you look at India, where fitness still is perceived as luxury, not the lifestyle. Looking at the numbers, if you look at US, where 12 to 14% of the population goes to the gym, wherein India, not even 1% of the population goes to the gym. Two changes that I have seen

in the past 4-5 years actually has happened actually. New Uber class is looking at basically not only basically a typical cardio or strength workout actually, is looking at new forms of workout actually. Wherein, he would like to try basically his hands on other activities, other activities like a functional training, HIIT or a fast reserved program. So these are the things which are happening now. I agree. So fitness is truly evolving as we speak. But coming to the new Bharat, I've noticed that Gold Gyms is a brand that Gold's Gym is a brand

that's actually grown beyond the metros. Right. So how many gyms now and how many cities? We are 145 right now across 95 cities. 95 cities. So you've actually penetrated tier 2 and tier 3. Is that where the success is? Rather tier 4, I would say. Tier 4. So like I've been to the cities now which are unheard of actually. So when we set up a gym actually and I get to know actually that we have signed this location because we majorly operate on a franchise format actually. So now I ask my team actually where is the city exactly. So the same question was

asked my bosses actually earlier. Now I am asking the same question to my team and this is good actually for the country. As Nimisha rightly said we are having 150 cities actually which are basically cities where people are basically doing things which can go to 400 cities in next 10 years. So for me actually that's the number actually I am looking at now actually. And how many cities have you traveled to? I have been to 150 plus cities actually myself. Tell me the customer in tier 2, tier 3, tier 4 cities very different from Bombay, Delhi, Bangalore.

Do they have the same aspirations? What are they looking for? I mean do you actually learn from here and take stuff there or learn from there bring it back? Is the product different? Are the services different? No you have to customize the product actually because like in a metro when you set up a gym it takes around 3 crore of Indian rupees to set up a gym actually. You cannot replicate the same business model actually in small towns actually because the dynamics and the population density and penetration is different actually. So what we have done is

based on our learnings of 17 years we have curated different different boxes actually. Different different formats actually. So like for Delhi I have a gold gym regular format. When I go to a tier 2 or tier 3 town I have gold gym express which requires 4,000 square feet and investment of 150,000, 50,000, and I have recently introduced basically which is an Indian version of gym actually which is tier 4 model which is gold gym active. So you require only 2,500 square feet of box space and you need to invest under a crore actually to set up a gym actually.

So there is a third business model we have created actually. So because the paying capacity also changes from place to place, location to location actually. So considering the competition, considering the paying capacity of the people, considering the population density of the town actually, we decide actually and arrive on a price point. That's how we work. Is the gym business, it probably is, but is it changing? Is it still very young male centric? Is that demographic changing? No, it is. It is definitely changing actually I would say. In fact, now not

only like earlier we used to have a challenge of male female ratio across gyms actually, where in 80% was male and 20% was female actually. Now the numbers are also changing. In fact, even in smaller towns, I see a basically change basically in the pattern. Now it is typically 70, 30 or in a metro it is 65, 35 types actually. Even a lot of my franchise owners basically are females actually. So somebody is establishing a gym for his wife, he is gifting his gym actually to his wife actually on his anniversary or somebody basically is gifting

to his daughter actually or setting up a business to his daughter actually. So there is a change actually what I am seeing right now in the business. Very interesting. So, you know, with this demographic changing, with the business becoming more and more penetrated, are the services evolving? We have heard lots about fitness going from strength to fitness to wellness to overall health solutions. Is the gym business or is your business also evolving into more holistic solutions? Is there demand for that? There is because now people not only

talk about basically their fitness regimes or schedules. They talk about nutrition, they talk about basically dietitians. So they talk of lot of things actually along with the basically gym business actually. And you provide all that as services? We do that actually. Across the board? Across the board actually. So we have nutrition, dietitians across the board, across 145 gyms that we have. In fact, we also run basically a fitness institute because there was a skill set actually requirement because we wanted to have basically certified trainers

inside our gyms actually because there was no such fitness institute or certification program which was running across when we started our journey way back in 2002. actually. So you mentioned about the aggressive growth, the fast growth that you have seen and you spoke about fitness becoming more of a lifestyle choice as against an aspiration or an exclusive thing to do. What do you think actually made this pivot happen? Is it for example and you also spoke about the demographics changing right from 80-20 split to probably getting it more evened out

in some sense. What do you think drove this pivot? Where did it pivot from? What was the say I would say probably 10 years back it was more of Hollywood and Bollywood people used to follow and basically they were used to basically they wanted to basically or they aspired to have such kind of bodies actually. So it started actually from there actually. But with the digital age now they are more basically seeing new forms of basically fitness coming actually across. So this is basically deriving them actually or pushing them actually to achieve what

they are seeing actually and adopt actually. Most gyms still have posters of Salman Khan outside saying yes he would even or other celebrities actually. Customer engagement programs right or acquisition programs reach out programs. I have also paid gym memberships couple of times never gone that's a different story. But in terms of your engagement programs and acquisition programs do you therefore end up customizing your message right when you create the contact programs? So basically what we do is we have started basically a fitness orientation program.

See everybody's fitness goal is different actually and 50% of our consumers basically are the first time consumers actually to the business actually. And what happens is the retention is always a question because you will continue it is decided that either you are going to continue in first 15 days or 20 days actually of the journey actually. Because when you are inside the gym and you are seeing lot of fit people around and if you are by any chance if you are not fit actually. So there is some kind of basically dilemma people have is this the right

place to be actually or should I stay or should I continue actually. And the second thing as I said is qualified trainers. So having right trainers doing right things from day one is very critical because if you get injured you end up basically discontinuing your memberships. So these are the two things actually which are critical actually when it comes to retention of the members. So just building on the theme that many people have been speaking about today which is you know around nationalism and pride in Indian things. As you think about

fitness going forward there is a set of Indian themes in fitness you know yoga and you know Indian foods that are more. Have you thought about expanding your offering to include those? And do you find that consumers are actually interested or do they really think of gymming as the more western concept that it is today? No. So we definitely are evolving actually as I said in terms of our innovation programs we have evolved and curated programs actually. Yeah yoga has gone beyond actually yoga is all across globe right now and thanks to our PM who started

this yoga day concept as well actually. So Indianizing basically the concept is there actually and we are definitely working on the alliance to curate program which is basically as per the needs of the Indian customer so that they achieve their objectives actually at the end of it. On that note and with lots of questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen thank you for joining us for part one of this fantastic episode. A sincere thanks to our friends from DMA Asia and Vatsal Ashar for helping power this event. A huge round of applause for our

brand masters who took out time to be with us, share their insights and experiences in the newsroom today. A big thank you to our radio partner Fever FM. Stay tuned for part two as we continue this insightful discussion on an emerging new Bharat. I think the consumption disruption is something we are experiencing today and that's why brands, you will have bespoke brands in certain markets but guess what those bespoke brands are going to small towns as well. And as I said right like a user gets around 8 to 9 calls in a day which means brand gets 8 to 9

opportunities to talk to a consumer every day right and basis are AI and machine learning algorithms we help our marketers to target the consumers in a more effective and efficient way. As we democratize smartphone access they were predominantly owned and controlled by the men of the house. So women had restricted access to smartphones and data and content at some point in time. But I think over the last few years with women also coming to the fore with the spending power increasing their shifting changes in role in the decision making journey

in the household has also evolved. The tier 2 and tier 3 kids are hungrier than the tier 1 kids about making a difference to their lives and making a difference to their country. And they know that the right education can do that. So they are willing to fight their parents. Many of them come to us for interviews without telling their parents that they have applied. They are willing to do it. They are willing to do it. They are willing to do it. They are willing to do it. They are willing to do it. They are willing to do it. They are willing to do it.

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