Sundar Kondur: what AI changes—and what it does not

We are not a pizza delivery company. We are a technology based company. They said 30 minutes delivery or free. That's the promise that they made. Somewhere along the line, I think we need to not just forget the HI which is the human intelligence. The problem is not customizing the content. The problem is delivery. What are your top 3 recommendations for harnessing the power of AI in the next 30 days to elevate our conversational marketing game? 30 days? I think Dominos, prime example. Many years back, they started out saying and they did various things from the back end to ensure that happens. I think the first thing they did was what we call today the fast and furious service 10 minutes and 12 minutes and so on and so forth. What it meant

was not just the speed which means they had to work backwards and say how can I get the process right for me to ensure that I deliver something to somebody else and that's the promise that they made. And obviously there will be some losses some free pizzas being given because they can't deliver on time. But that's irrelevant. I think the premise that everybody understood was 30 minutes. And I think it required a lot of intelligence a lot of understanding of how to get things right. Which is why they were so successful and today I think a lot of people have copied I would say, copied is the wrong word maybe learnt from their adapted playbook. Which is good for all of us. But if you ask me what should we do the next 30 days, I'm clueless.

Top 3 recommendations. Yeah, top 3 recommendations I would say is not just forget HI, which is the human intelligence and I think both should coexist for quite some time. When it will taper off and become fully AI or 80, 20 or 70, 30 or whatever, I don't know. But I think we should give the benefit of doubt to both and continue to do we can't eliminate HI. Now the question that I have is that what are the best practices on this AI marketing thing? Because fundamentally we are talking about scale right? And that's why we are able to bring down the cost. Let's accept it. It's not by choice. We are able to operate at such a planet scale or like all India scale is because this is possible with that. How do we manage and how do we ensure

that the efficacy of this remains while we are ethical about it? Any examples you guys, any of you want to share? I don't have an example but I can tell you some of the challenges in our company that we face. I work with a media company at Times of India and Economic Times. Now most brands, if you look at it, consumer brands or any brands, packaging is the same wherever you buy it. Colour is the same, brand name, everything is the same. For us the master's remains the same but the news changes every day. Now the news changes every day to keep the brand ethos and to stand for what you have with minor deviations but overall it needs to be perceived is very difficult. Just think about it. How much of local, how much of national, international,

how much of whatever sport, business. It's very difficult to maintain a product mix and show the brand in the same light. The second challenge is, different readers want different things. I don't want IBM, I hate cricket. Or somebody says, I want only local news, I need to know what's happening in my neighborhood. So there are different challenges, you get what I'm saying. Now how do you customize a newspaper for a person? Or he says, this is not relevant to me, I can't relate to this. So the brand faces challenges from millions of people who read our paper every day. Now that's a massive conflict. Now, we are also a company who give news in different forms, we deliver news in different forms. On mobile, on television, on digital,

and so on and so forth. At times we try and do an integrated newsroom where the content comes into one place and you try and push the content to different people, different platforms, in different formats, and in different bite-sized pieces, or long copy, and so on and so forth. But then how do you customize a news to each individual? It's possible to do not for one individual, maybe cohorts of, let's say, for example, a thousand or so. I'm just taking a random number. The problem is not customizing the content, So I think a lot of AI can be used and is being used. It has to go to the next level. Maybe not with the current AI, maybe stage one, stage two, whatever it is that you want to call it. It's okay to do it. But then delivery is an issue

in the current scheme of things. But I'm sure ingenious human beings will figure out a way of doing it in the next few years. But we, one of the challenges as we go along, if you notice, one of the things that we try and do is we never carry gore on the front page. Death, decay, destruction is never carried as a brand philosophy. When you wake up in the morning, you don't want to see dead bodies, you don't want stuff like that. Somehow, when you give it to the machine to do it, it's not able to do it. It's like the Sugi example or whatever. It can happen, right? You can't be 100% accurate. But just to answer your question, to circle back, AI can be used phenomenally well for things that how much percentage of local, how much of what I like,

what it's our business and so on and so forth. Bringing it to close, we heard a lot of people, a lot of different point of views. But definitely AI is going to continue to play a critical role in the world of marketing. People who can use it intelligently, whether they believe it is dumb or not, will definitely create the competitive edge. So just want to ask the panel and each of you can answer it one by one. What do you think your predictions that this conversational marketing and keeping the focus sharply on conversational marketing because AI today is impacting so many aspects of business, so just focusing on conversational marketing, what are your predictions for next five years? What all can happen or what all is possible to happen?

And I could tell you, what's all of mentioning over breakfast saying, I said, look very tired. And he says, yeah, man, first send emails, WhatsApp informing people. And then, so he said doing this, the WhatsApp at 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock, disputable, but still, the bigger point is that, so I was telling Watson, I said, if somebody was really interested in an event, why do you need to keep reminding them? They need to block the calendar, right? And just imagine there was a concert of what direction. Won't you just put in a calendar and… So I'm saying, the biggest challenge right now, it has always been, which doesn't get talked about much, the biggest challenge for marketers is, I think, what's the biggest challenge for marketers? Any hands up?

The biggest challenge for marketers, universally. universally. Our biggest challenge for marketers right now is to finish the meeting and go. Correct. I'll take one minute. I'm going to take two more. I think the biggest challenge for marketers in my opinion is apathy. Is apathy. Which way you look at it, which means that, if the content or the brand, or what it stands for is compelling to me, I will make it a point to engage. It's as simple as that. Interesting. I think the latest thing that's being talked about right now, world over is what is known as mental availability. If mental availability is there for something, you'll ensure that it happens. And, how much of our AI will do a lot of stuff, it will help ease a lot of process.

But I think creating that particular space in your mind, I'm not so sure if AI can do it right now. I can't predict the future five years down, ten years down, but as of now, I think it needs AI. Great. So, thank you very much, the panel, each of you. And thank you. Thank you so much.