Rammohan Sundaram on innovation and data and measurement

You've got a few of the DDB alumni in the room today, but you've done innovation across the spectrum. You've been an entrepreneur many times, you've been on the agency side, principal side, and you're in a kind of unique position. I know you're a man that loves research and academia. What's your starting out? What is your personal philosophy of innovation, Ram? So I have a very strong sense of belief on what can be invented and what only can be innovated. For example, we got people from the mobile phone industry, but if you look at mobility as a space, there was wireless, everything on top of it is actually innovation. So if you look at it, the airways, which we keep talking about, it started with 2G, edge, you went to 3G, 4G, 5G,

but all of the fundamentals were invented, which was mobility. That was the core, right? And therefore, I strongly believe that you don't come with inventions every second day. There is a big possibility of innovating on what already exists. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. So my perception around that, or philosophy, not perception, because that's what I believe in. I think innovation is at the heart of a human being from the time he's born. So it depends on how you look at it. You start crawling and eventually you walk and then you run, but you keep moving forward. So different ways of how you look at it. It's very interesting, isn't it, Ram? Because you're absolutely right. So mobility is the need

or the human topic in the same way that empowerment might be the topic. Do you feel fundamentally that when it comes to innovation, it's all about solving fundamental human things as opposed to making new things more or less? There will be needs, which we very let in mind, for example, the vaccine that got that got invented for for all of us globally on COVID had to be invented because there's nothing like that which existed to arrest that that that virus. But everything otherwise, like I said, is normally you're going to be on fundamentals that exist and you innovate on top of it. So there is if there is a you you have cars now you have EV. But again, it's the the fundamental of the mobility aspect of

mobility when I say mobility, not not the mobile phone solution. I'm saying transportation existed for the last 100 plus years. But the forms of it have changed. How do you I mean, we we interview on we on Ram a lot of entrepreneurs and we're always startled by how they've built big big businesses just by observing something that is needed, right? It could be a shopping experience. We we interviewed the families of Laundry Mate the other day who basically, you know, realized that laundry was a kind of pain in the air. But how do you personally keep yourself loose enough or keep your clients loose enough to see what problems are out there to solve and innovate against?

That's a very tough question to answer simply because you're you you're solving for very different problems for very different clients in different categories if you have to look work wise. In terms of remaining fluid is is a very it's another important aspect for you to be successful when you're looking to solve for problems for clients because they're looking up to you and for that you need to continuously be reading a lot researching a lot understanding a particular category which which at the heart makes makes you you know confident when you deal with with clients who are looking for solving problems and they're expecting you to do that. So you have to be curious in the first place. So it's very difficult.

That's why a lot of people think that the agency side of it the business is very diff you know it's you know it might be a little easier it is not because you got 20 different brands that you're handling each of them are very different and then you're solving for different problems. And there's pressure right? I mean massive pressure all the time. Yeah it's interesting there's points about you know Covid created the pressure for a vaccine in the same way that being client facing right you can't just you sit on your back side right is pressure a big part of innovation? No I think that innovation comes out of of a need which exists but you've not somebody has not actually cared at looking at it deeply right.

I mean look at all the innovations that are happening at scale in India whether it's through the QR code which Paytm came up with or the Covid innovation on I mean when I say Covid I'm saying the solve for the problem. Bad innovation. No but I'm saying I'm not talking about the disease but yeah but no I'm saying the solution for it you know was was digitized across India I mean if you look at it there were no medical records so I'm not talking about the vaccine here I'm talking about the records that that were digitized I mean we never had this kind of solution in India before. So it's what you're saying it's kind of adjacent innovation right it's it's it's innovation that sits on top of another form of innovation. Tell us about the whole GEO thing

right because you know talk about a scale I mean that's an awesome example of something that kind of well it didn't come from nowhere but it came very quickly very fast and very widely. So when it did come people don't realize that you know it was in the making for five six years I mean GEO acquired a license in 2010 and launched in late 2016 but there was so much of work that had to get done so during all of this people who worked there seriously didn't know how this is all going to pan out when you launch because you typically when you launch something you you have a traditional marketing plan going in there you you're looking at several different aspects of you know reaching looking at all

the touch points that could possibly exist for you to get your consumer acquisition going and things like that but you know I was so taken aback when I realized that we are I mean at the scale at which legends like Mukesh and his team which we are part of can think was unprecedented because we never imagined that there could be an other solution where you could put a finger and then that gets connected back into the other database and you could activate your sim card immediately that that that phenomena did not exist until the time GEO launched we could not believe I mean Apple or for that matter even Google Play store never had a multiple app solution on a single app so the my

GEO app that you're currently seeing earlier when you when you downloaded when you I mean you had to ideally you had to download several apps from if you if you need to access an app you need to go to the store download the app but on GEO you download a my GEO app and there were a lot of other apps within my GEO which were already activated the only thing that you had to do was you the discovery part of it was made so so easy in the sense you don't you didn't need to go and find out for GEO music you didn't need to go and find out for GEO cinema all of it existed in my GEO and then you had to just activate it by clicking on it and that was another innovation there were like 15 different apps within

my GEO which never was we had not thought about something like that could happen we thought that we had to discover each of these apps when you when you probably loaded up on on on the apps but it's interesting listening to you because you're kind of positing an idea ram of you know the enabling thing is the really thinking big the mr. and barney thing oh it's the same thing isn't it there's sort of you know john kennedy sponsors the moon launch not because it's easy but because it's hard right is there something about these characters that can allow people to think big they don't look for solving for problems uh i i don't think the kennedy example is the right example uh if you have to

compare these two because they they hold significance uh during that period i mean uh if you look at you know mukesh ambani uh the impact that he creates for 130 crore indians uh is actually far more powerful than a kennedy launch i mean if you have to compare it i mean what did what did they achieve by going to the moon just just till the world that we we were the first to go to the moon i mean i don't know what impact it did i mean it took 50 years for india to send a chandrayana after that i mean the significance of uh of landing on the moon vis-a-vis water geo is is way too different because geo's launch impacted not just 130 crore indians or their experiences on 4g but also created a whole host of

startups which otherwise would not have existed whether in all the technology that we're seeing as solutions yeah i mean this is we're not a political show but but this is a very fair point in the sense that you know innovation is only as good as the benefits it provides it has to impact human lives um so these are these are the perils of trying to compare john kennedy with mukesh ambani i think uh it's uh it doesn't happen very often we're um let's wrap it up here but i want to wrap it up um ram with with this something kind of looking looking to our viewers what's your advice to up and coming marketeers about how they become more innovative you know some people might think that uh this might

be a very lame answer but i honestly believe that it starts with the gut instinct to begin with it comes not from your brain or how it actually comes from your gut you know that you need to do this so that you're going to solve for a whole host of issues that you're probably addressing and then how you refine it becomes part of that solution that you're looking for as answer and the final outcome could be through various methodologies and one of that could be innovation so the first thing is to get the gut to feel that what you're going to do is okay innovative enough well as a as a restaurant man i'm i'm totally pro gut um ram i liked all your breakfast you've been thank you very much

you've been a great guest thank you so much my pleasure thank you so much you