A very warm welcome to all of you. And it's my privilege to anchor this post-lunch session. The beauty of this segment is that you get a niche audience. So let's have a quick quiz that will increase your attention span further. So can you guess on average how much mobile data an Indian consumes per month? Can anyone guess? So it's 20 GB. As per a Nokia report that came out in 2022, and it is likely to be doubled by 2024. Let's begin the session. So our guests for the panel are Shaya Khokharji, is the co-founder, co-founder and director of Brandways Communication, Pramod Maloo, founder and CEO of Creative Machines, Nimesh Shah, founder of WinChime, communications, Kuntal Chatterjee, CEO of DigitalGoogle, and Jason Thomas, co-founder CMO, Blue Steak Media. A very warm welcome to all of you. And absolutely an honor to have you here on this panel. And Priyanka has given us a really interesting topic, balancing technology and creativity in terms of digital marketing in regional parts of India. As we all have seen that how digital landscape of the country has undergone significant change in terms of audience, content, format, and consumption pattern, from English speaking India to Bharat with diverse languages, and from small data packs to 24 by 7 Wi-Fi, and from media to a bookie of social media platforms, short videos. So digital ecosystem has evolved quickly over a decade, I guess. And the number of internet consumers have also gone up to 750 million as per a Kandar report. And there is a strong adoption of 5G as well. I mean, according to report, the 70 million devices were shipped in India in 2022. So of course, I think there is a huge scope for brands in terms of digital. And we would like to understand from our panelists how brands are navigating this digital landscape. Shaiq, my first question goes to you. What is the major difference between the marketing approaches of the national and regional brands? Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. Thanks, Kanchin, for welcoming us. I would first respond to your question. So I think national brands have a more 360 degree approach when it comes to taking their campaigns ahead, be it like television, outdoor, radio, and digital, and multiple channels. Whereas because regional brands are limited in terms of their market presence, their channel distribution, they opt for more, I think, targeted communication, which are like sponsorships and local community events getting associated with cultural festivals specific to a particular region, which has a larger impact, I believe. But then regional brands also have to justify their brand ambassador costs and sponsorships because they are limited by the markets that they operate. However, one thing that we distinctly find is, I think, local brands or regional brands because of their language and cultural connect, I think they create more brand affinity within that local region among themselves. I think there are a lot of examples of brands from East, which enjoys a huge market share in that market, whereas there are other brands nationally who find it difficult penetrating into that particular region. So this, I think, by far, culture and economics are two distinct things which make sure that the national strategies and regional strategies are very different from one another. Yeah, interesting. So how do urban, semi-urban, and rural markets differ from each other when it comes to ad-spent? So I think if I were to respond to this, first we need to understand the different kind of audiences. It boils down to the basic formula that we use whenever we have to look at a campaign. The formula is ABC, understanding the audience, understanding the brand, and then understanding the category that it represents. To respond to this question, I think that A becomes more important than the B and C. It is about the kind of audience which is in the urban market, whether it's semi-urban and rural markets. And the difference can be represented by the kind of audience size to the taste and preferences, the way they consume content, and so on and so forth. But I would sum it up in one word, which is the cosmopolitan crowd in case of a urban case, whether it's a semi-urban and rural. And with the cosmopolitan crowd coming into consideration, I think you get better results if you're looking at the same budgets in the two contexts because of one language that can work in case of a rural market vis-a-vis multiple languages that you need to run the ads in case of a cosmopolitan, in case of urban market. So ad spend needs to be worked around considering the key objective and the kind of audiences that we are catering to if anybody wants to add something to this. Yeah, Namesh, yeah. Well, I think the audience part is totally taken into account. I think people in the room would say that any market you're right now would know that if you wanna tap into a tier two, tier three, or a rural market, you typically have four A's that you need to look at. You have awareness, availability, your acceptability, and affordability. These are the four A's that you need to tap into if you really wanna make any kind of dent in that market. So if you see right now the aspiration level in the rural market has, or the tier two, three, four markets has really gone up.  So I think that when you have that audience that is changing now, people in that area are moving from becoming price conscious to more value conscious, right? There is lower persuasion now. Earlier in the smaller markets, you would see a lot more persuasion required, so that's kind of, you know, come down. So I think that we see a lot of newness now, you know, that's coming into those new trends coming in. I see also in these tier three and four markets the rise of nano-influencers. Like, you know, if you ask me what are some things, the new trends that are coming up, you know, one of them would be that where we've seen brands who have now worked at connecting with Sarpanch, you know, at that level, connecting with who you would have like a master in every village, and they've made WhatsApp groups with them. And they've been building communication now through WhatsApp. And they're realizing that while ATL does its job, you support it with these kind of WhatsApp communities. Then you have a good blend of offline, online, you know, I mean, both the things moving in together. I mean, so you have multi-mediums that are at play. I've also seen, you know, the rise of targeted advertising. Like, when you're working for a lot of these tier two brands, I mean, brands catering to tier two, three markets, I saw micro-influent insurance, sorry, you know, growing a lot. So you had guys who were reaching out to small outlets and getting them to do insurance for their entire outlet. And they were using advertising, digital ads, in local online versions of newspapers and all, and tapping into those small shops and giving them insurance for, you know, 50,000 or one like the summer short of 50,000 to one like. So they were insuring and all of that. And they were using targeted digital advertising. So, you know, you see these kind of very interesting trends and patterns coming in to, you know, which the brands are able to now tap into. Very interesting insight, Namesh, thank you. And Kuntil, how do you optimize ads? How do you optimize ads? When you look at India's geography, look at diversity, the cultural differences, how do you optimize that? Hello. Right now, the internet user and smartphone user is increasing day by day. So, we can easily reach right now. And right now, the rural and village area, the internet and smartphone users are also increasing. So, they are know about the brand. People's lifestyle is also changing. So, it's not difficult to reach here. But here, my experience and what I feel is, I think we should highlight three things so that we can optimize the ad. And we can engage that customer. One is the local language. We are talking about Bengali. Whenever we do a campaign in a rural area, we use Bengali language. We use English, what about the ad copy of Arban, and the copy of rural language? There are a lot of differences. One thing is, second, we have culture, rural area culture, they have emotions. If we find these three things and make some advertising and campaign, it will be very easy to engage them. So, in today's date, reaching is not a factor. How to engage, that is our biggest challenge. But the budget will be less if we talk about rural. In tier 2, 3 cities, the ad budget will be less. How can you do this? Is it easy to do that in a limited budget? Your product, service, budget, target audience is rural area. So, maybe this budget, we are not talking about the budget here. We are talking about ad optimized. We are talking about language. And until we can't engage it, your budget will be wasted. Can I add? I think that the fact that national brands come with a lot of budget when it comes to a pan India campaign, they are aware that the spillage is very high. The sheer fact that regional brands don't have that high volume of budget, even they don't have the, you know, mind space to really go off that kind of a spillage, the pressure is on the marketing team and the agency to optimize the campaign as much as possible and maximize the results in terms of maybe impression or, you know, engagement. I think that is what Kuntul is trying to say. That's where we have to, you know, for example, what works in Bengal will not work in Orissa. It's so complicated. What works in Orissa will not work in Jharkhand. So, for example, Kolkata is a very strong headquarter for the entire east and northeast. Almost operate campaigns for brands in this larger region. We face the heat of customizing state-wise communications so much because we strongly know that, you know, what works here will not, just a few kilometers apart, it will not work. It's a very interesting point here.  Yeah. So we work with both, you know, big and small brands in the commercial space space and also in the performance marketing space. So what I have seen is that when it comes to bigger brands, we usually sign off a 12-month contract, at least, and we have to forecast and media spends and everything for 12 months. So it is not flexible after that. It is very hard to add a new platform to optimize something new extra into that because it has a bigger hierarchy, and at the point of contact that we have, might not have the, you know, the, you know, the ambition or something like that to go ahead and change that, right? So there are both pros and cons for that. Like, we can test with a huge budget and as the budget goes higher and when the brand becomes, you know, more, you know, when the brand is bigger, the CTRs, for example, the click-through rates, the engagement also grows because it's very familiar, right? People already know about the brand, so we don't really need to optimize the ads that much because whenever they see that the logo is there, there will be a brand ambassador. For example, we are working with one client who has 13 different brand ambassadors and we are marketing it in 13 different languages all across India. And we can see that from each state, they are using the prime superstar. Like, for example, from Caroline, it's the biggest star, Mohanlal, or from Tamil Nadu, it could be the biggest star there, right? So that is there. The con is that it's not flexible. There is no room for experimentation. We have to, if we give a word, we have to do that for the next 12 months until the next renewal comes, right? And the other part comes, right? When it comes to small businesses, experimentation, right? That's where we actually learn. We learn a lot of... We make a lot of mistakes with smaller brands because we are in touch with maybe the brand owner itself, and they can feel our passion and they can really feel that we want to, you know, do a lot of experiments and bring results, right? So we can do a lot of new experiments and we learn from these small brands and we apply to bigger brands, right? But the other part is that smaller businesses want quicker, tangible results faster. For example, when we work with a D2C company, they want to give... They want, even before we getting onboarded, they want us to give them exact figures on how much return on ad spend are you going to give us, et cetera, right? And if everybody knows that when we start a campaign, we at least need 15 to 20 years, even a month's time to understand what works and what doesn't, right? So sometimes smaller brands are not that patient enough, right? So there are a lot of pros and cons and we learn from both, but I think smaller brands are more exciting to work with because our impact really comes there and then bigger brands, definitely, we need that also, right, to make sure that everything goes well in the agency. Pramod, Shaheq or maybe Kuntal, would you like to share some perspective from eastern parts of the country? I mean, he's sharing from south, right? Look, so whenever... I completely agree with what he's saying that when you work with a smaller brand, A, there is a better coordination and the results, when you're able to bring some results with the limited budgets and optimizing those budgets, you can see the visible results and not just visible results on the Excel sheet but also on the face of the client. So that is where working with a smaller client, SME segment, to say so, is more satisfying as an agency, I would say. Yeah, thank you so much. I just want to add here that, you know, a lot of times, you know, digital is technology and technology is science and science cannot work without experimentation, right? What works for one client will never work for maybe the same client in the same category. That's one of the challenges, like every business is very different from each other, be it its audience, its pitch, its positioning, everything. But, you know, a lot of clients do, like smaller clients do come with the gap of faith that, you know, media spends would, like we have had clients who have, say, 400 CR annual budget in marketing and next year they're making it 550 CR. This is purely from their faith which they have gained in the last few years. But for a new start-up to really start-up with even a 25 CR media budget is very, very difficult unless they get that. And that is where, you know, a lot of, like, we collaborating with PR agency, with the media agency, coming together, maybe a mainline agency and giving that faith to the client becomes very, very important. I think that's where even the CMO's role becomes very, very important to, you know, motivate the promoter of the business. Brands and CMOs are listening to this. Just a thought, I know. Slightly different one as that. So, you know, we started out with Bombay Delhi, right, for quite a few years and then as we started growing, we started getting into the more tier two, three markets to set up our branches out there. Trust me, between whether it's a Bombay-based client or, you know, another state capital client, all clients really want bang for the buck. You know, so I've really not come across any client who's been, you know, less enthusiastic or less demanding from the kind of results that they would want. As an agency, our job is to be very honest to the brand and to them, right, to be able to say that, look, this is what is going to work and, or this is not going to work and only spend X amount and don't spend more. So it's their ability to kind of work with them, be it from a metro client or a small client, a small city client. It's building that trust, showing them results along the way and we've seen huge budgets even coming from regional brands. So long as you're able to deliver results, be honest with them, guide them properly, those rules remain the same, you know, irrespective of a national brand or a regional brand at play. Yeah, money is important for everyone, I guess, yeah. Moving on to the second round and Shaiyat, how do regional markets, you know, differ, you know, from the national in terms of brand communication? Okay, so I would like to start off with something amazing that is going on in our country right now, right? Like when we were growing up, the heroes of yesterday's years used to sing songs in OTA and Darjeeling, right? And then in the 90s, we saw them go out to Switzerland and New York and all these places. All of a sudden, you know, if you see in the last three, four years, the heroes are from Bareilly and Ranchi and, you know, Mirzapur and that's a huge shift that is happening. People are unable to relate with Switzerland anymore. I don't see those visuals in any of the recent movies, even the top stars understand that very, very well, right? So, you know, regions are very different from each other. We, as I said, like, we have offices in Kolkata and Hyderabad. Kolkata is a very different region because from Kolkata we cater to Assam market as well as Orissa market. But sitting in Hyderabad, it's very challenging for us to even cater to Karnataka, which is just maybe a few kilometers away because, you know, we don't understand anything about that side of the border. Even Maharashtra is closed. However, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana share the same culture. Like you can have a brand who signs up junior NTR and who goes massively, you know, that campaign will be successful in these two markets, but it will absolutely have no impact in Karnataka, Nerala, Tamil Nadu, anywhere. And you have to have, like, you know, Jason mentioned, you have to have separate faces for different. This is completely different from North. You know, you can have one superstar and it will cut through the entire North market. So, regions do vary in terms of, you know, not just culture, language, but also, you know, how these festivals come up. For example, like, if you know Bengal market, Durga Puja, of course, is not just a five-day festival, but the entire shopping season is just pre-Durga Puja. So, most of our clients have started their campaigns and, you know, they will have a huge sales season coming up. Whereas this kind of a phenomena where almost, I would say that brands spend 50 to 60 percent of their annual budget in this period because they do make 50, 60 percent of their entire sales in this tenure. This is completely, you know, like a season like Ganesh Chaturthi has no impact in Bengal at all, right? And that kind of a Durga Puja festival is not replicated anywhere in the country. So, every region is very different and that's where today you see a lot of national brands approaching regional agencies to, you know, help them out, extend their communication. Maybe the routes have been set nationally, but you extend those campaigns and help us penetrate into the rural mindsets. That's where I think most of the regional agencies play a very, very important role. Pramod, would you like to add something? Just to add to the last point that Shaikh made, we are in talks with CRED trying to get them, you know, CRED has recently introduced UPI transactions as part of the offerings and, you know, looking at the madness of Durga Puja, we're trying to, you know, do something in terms of brand awareness, in terms of increasing the app installs, in terms of increasing the transactions made via UPI of CRED. So, absolutely, regional agencies have the ability to do something which the main stream, central agencies cannot. This is one of the classic examples that CRED is trying to work with creative machines in collaboration to activate the UPI transaction offerings that they have launched very recently, just about two months back. Pramod, would you also, you know, like you to explain the importance of rich media content and videos in marketing? Rich media content, videos is one of the most efficient ways in which an advertiser is able to, A, increase the awareness, brand awareness, improve the conversions and get better attention. Why so? Because the attention span of users is just decreasing with every passing year. I remember seven, eight years back, it used to be 15 seconds from there, it came down to 12, 10, 8, and now in our agency at Creative Machines, we have a clear mandate, 2.5 seconds. Yes, 2.5 seconds. If you get the customer on your side, it's a win, otherwise, you know, there's something wrong. We are at the strategy level deciding on the communication, the creative, and the overall process. We always keep that in mind that it has to create an impact in 2.5 seconds precisely. Thank you, Pramod. Nimesh, I mean, do consumers' sensibilities and creatives vary, you know, from state to state? Yeah, I think India is one of the most heterogeneous market ever, right? I mean, in terms of not just creatives, but you look at the copy, you look at the mediums that are there.  They wanted to do a national campaign, a digital campaign. So we were running ads on multiple sites and catering to the metros and also the tier 2 and 3 cities, right? So these ads, while they were running, we got a very good response from the metro audience first. We could see a lot of conversions happening. And mind you, the creatives were fairly simple, but just an example, this shows, you know, you need to understand your consumer mindset.  So we got a good response from the women or the moms, the new moms, who were residing in metros. But we were not getting such a good response from the tier 2 and 3 cities. So we started figuring out what's going on. And we realized that in a lot of those cities, they were relying on the digital behavior. So they were relying on surfing at late evenings or night. So either when their kids who are using desktops at their home have, you know, post their dinner or when their husbands typically would come back and they would now get the laptop to themselves. So you would see a lot of women in tier 2 and 3 cities who were digitally savvy, but they were getting access to the machine only later in the evening or night. So when they would finish dinner and the kids, you know, would be put to sleep, they would actually log on and they would surf from 10 p.m. to midnight. And we saw a far higher conversion of those baby care products during that time. Right? So, I mean, it's just one of those examples. I once even, I'll just give you another one pretty quickly too. I remember once while traveling in Tamil Nadu for one of the beauty brands.  Now in Tamil Nadu, again, in the smaller towns, we could see a lot of women making at home a turmeric paste. You know, because turmeric is like, the yellow color is very auspicious, right? And they make this paste and they apply it on their face for a better skin. And so the beauty queue for a brand was that if it's slightly yellow in color, it would have a much better impact for me and it would hold a high beauty value. But the same yellow color, if you were to show it in your creatives in, let's say, a northern or a western region, it would mean completely different. Right? So I think the, there's a very high level of understanding required from your Indian consumer how they operate, how they react to different color schemes, copy, content, media vehicles. So it's very important to kind of understand that and then do the campaigns. We nicely put. Kuntil, come on, let's understand the brand, understand your consumer. But brands say for digital spending, it's very tough.  See, now the regional brand, they are understood that digital marketing is required for them. So they are come we are getting for marketing.  So we have to work hard in this. Like a hotel management school, how much leads are coming, leads are okay, whether it's being converted or not, we have to see that too. Because until it's converted, even I won't be a business secret for the next month. So we work like a chain, we maintain our software, how much money the client is spending, how much leads are coming and how it's converted. So here we do this too, the sales of the client, we have started training that too. So that the client gets results. Like I have a super detection company. We are working last 6 years. Last 3 years they have stopped the ATL budget and shifted the entire budget to digital marketing. That's why the marketing cost is less and the return is more. So the market area we are focusing on where the product is available. So this is one thing but we have to see whether the client is getting business-generated or not. We have to work hard until the next month. Very interesting point. What is your feedback on this? Yeah, I think probably I would say that before COVID was very hard whenever we see a brand we had to pitch what digital marketing was. That was the first one hour conversation like this is digital marketing you can put ads here and there people are actually using it etc. But post COVID that conversation has ended. And especially internet usage has exceeded a lot of even after COVID, the graph has gone I don't think it is linear. I think it has gone kind of exponential. So I don't think even especially in my region, Kerala Kerala has the most amount of internet users in terms of population percentage I think after so it's kind of already the space is already established and they are okay right now if you take an example last month two clients came to us and said that they both are South India clients they said that we are not spending anything on TV or ads or offline or OOH and we are experimenting this year with just digital and we are interesting you guys we don't know what is exactly that but everybody around us they have a lot of people maybe friends or other brands or consultants everybody is telling them to just stop TV and invest everything on I don't absolutely agree to that I believe that sometimes some use cases digital cannot give you all kind of solutions for example if you want to build a national brand you need to advertise on IPL or something like that I think it differs from state to state as you rightly mentioned that Kerala has inviting one of the highest internet penetration one more thing I wanted to add is I think the chief marketing officer has to play a very big role where I feel that and this is my experience personally that in the regional markets it's very difficult for a brand to get a good CMO because as a digital agent we also work in mainline but I know that when we work as a digital agency and there is a mainline you need a CMO who needs to strategize because digital agencies don't set the path the brands need to come across and share the guidelines with us which a lot of brands do face that difficulty I think a lot of founders and entrepreneurs don't have that skill in them and they need a good CMO within their brand manager to really pull forward but the problem is that it's very difficult to retain a brand manager most of them have career aspirations and they will move towards Bangalore and Bombay and all where on the other side when you meet such brands where they understand the importance that this category is a marketing driven category and we need a CMO as maybe co-founder or on the board it becomes very easy for agencies to engage because you don't need to do the hard work of convincing the client that why should you invest in marketing that's an added struggle which we all face where we kind of have a co-founder or a founder in front of us instead of a CMO so if anyone wishes to see the job you know where to apply thank you for this insight and I had just one question I mean as Kaila has one of the highest penetration in India so how do brands look at the internet penetration and high speed internet and also we have a lot of AI virtual influence a lot of things are coming how do brands look at this the numbers are great as you said I think in India there are about 750 million people online but still I think it's about 50% of the population so there is room for improvement but it is the biggest market in the globe when it comes to if you want views or downloads or numbers right so that's why you know India is the biggest market for Facebook WhatsApp or any kind of consumer facing apps but the one thing is that the conversion percentage or the viewership to payment or viewership to subscription or click to purchase these kind of matrices are still not there yet when you compare it with the US or UK definitely not there yet I heard the CEO of Spotify India talking about the percentage of people who are actively subscribed to the 50 rupee per month stat right that is just 12% in India right so but if you look at the number of users for Spotify India is in the top 5 of the countries but if you look at the people who are paying for that subscription it is in the other countries section right so that is a problem that I think we need to fix because we need to make maybe still you know people need to need some offline convincing to make a purchase right so that is one thing there are two parts of the coin one is really great like the numbers are great now if we get at least you know 100 million or 200 million people who are willing to pay for all kind of services online then it will be like brands will be like brands will go crazy globally so let's have a rapid fire round it's a fun round and I wish you answer you know no sugar coating so I will start with Shia so two most promising independent agencies apart from your own of course okay it's a very tricky question see I personally I think when we started as a web design company we used to follow BC web wise a lot from Bombay they were doing some really good work now of course you know I am a big fan of Shabang and social beat I think I know they are here they do a great work I think I personally follow them a lot a huge round of applause for both of you please Kunthal when brands don't give money then who makes the best two excuses payments are delayed everywhere who makes the best sir is not here sir is outside you get such an answer like this business is not good you have to provide these are the excuses I think one of the biggest things is there is a server issue in net banking server issue okay interesting I think the most complex is payment is in process you know you don't know when that process will end you understand I think all of these are put together the question for you is have you ever blacklisted any brands because of payment or other issues quite a few please don't ask me to name them because I am sure if their CMOs change they could still become good brands they would go off the blacklist but surely otherwise quite a few Pramod giving a chance which agency you would like to lead independent or otherwise which agency I would like to take lead I would like to lead apart from mine of course so I think I just go down to my memory lane and go back to the agency where I started my career while pursuing my MBA I was fortunate enough one of the 820 students who had a chance to intern during the program at net elixir hydra bar still remains very close to my heart net elixir founded by Mr. Udayan Bose doing fantastic work in paid performance campaigns I think given a chance net elixir has given me best of the memories so why not net elixir Jason how do you feel you know when you learn that your family members and maybe friends they have they are using ad blockers oh last day when I was looking at the threads right new app that sakra work recently launched so one of my friends first post was that hey these are the best ad block that you can use and he was naming some ad blockers so my first thread comment was that hey please don't use ad blockers thank you so moving on to the third round Nishayak I think you just mentioned that you have a couple of your offices in different states so what prompted you to set up offices in hydra bar then as we discussed that the importance of regional agencies are really going big and we have had a long experience in Kolkata for almost like 15 16 years we were in Kolkata after that we started going into another territory that's primarily because of the kind of clientele we were working say from Bombay or Delhi whom we were representing in Bengal or Assam or Orissa we were you know we could understand that they are still facing a lot of challenges I think you know brands in the north have a lot of challenge penetrating in the south and you know though it sounds like digital agencies you can sit in one location and do ban India you can do that only when the brand communicates in English if you have to get regional you know you cannot google and understand the culture of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu you need to be there and trust me when we swear we first started with Hyderabad now we are by the end of this year we will get into Bangalore we know that we have understood that you know we cannot play any role there you know we don't know anything about that market right we just know that maybe Ugari is a holiday but nothing more than that you know what does that culture work and how does it work and that's not our job so getting the best of local talent I think plays a very very important role and you know when you when we went outside Bengal we just found that you know the collaboration of these talents from multiple regions have a huge impact on how you know what we serve to our clients today we have started using our you know team from Hyderabad for some campaigns in Bengal also and you know that really really helps a lot I think certainly for I don't want to say this but we have seen a lot of brain drain from the east because of opportunities but when we as an agency move to another territory we could find some talent maybe in terms of not just creative area but also in technology and digital and that's where you know we are focusing more on building that sort of a team from Hyderabad who could help brands in the east also so this is one of the key I think it is a very significant trend you have pointed out and Pramod we have seen a lot of merger and acquisitions happening in the ad sector what do you feel when you see some acquisitions and you feel threatened or maybe you feel happy whatever so you know mostly mostly national agencies they acquire regional agencies okay so I understand you are saying when a national agency acquires a regional agency I think it's a fantastic thing it's a win-win the regional agency benefits by getting to know more about the better practices better systems the learning curve is faster and the bigger agency which is acquiring gets to you know play an important role in the campaigns that they are delivering in the regional markets they can never understand sitting in Delhi what's happening what is going to work the psyche of the consumers in Hyderabad or in Kolkata so I think it's a win-win and at the end why I think it's a win-win not just for the two parties but for the consumer more than anybody else because at the end in a partnership like this the value that a consumer gets what better than a consumer getting the maximum bucks for the money as you rightly pointed that's the only thing that matters and as a smaller agency bigger agency if a collaboration is able to derive that for the consumer nothing better than that but what about the other agencies in the market I mean referring to independent agencies yeah yeah I think independent agencies if they strive to see it's all about your personal goal and the choices that you make to reach your goal so if a agency a smaller agency is looking to be part of one of these dense shoes and the WPPs and so on and so forth there are opportunities and that could be the winning formula for them and on the other side there are agencies like ours we are dominating the eastern India market we are one of the fastest growing in spite of not being part of any of these bigger agencies and it's working fine for us you know it's totally purely a call of the founder of the company what is the route that he wants to take to excel move ahead and make progress thank you Pramod my question is how challenging is to acquire skill man power in smaller cities after we set up our presence in Bombay and Gurgaon we then move to Guwahati Guwahati was we got a huge government project and we set up shop there and I was amazed with the kind of talent that's available in the northern east and I feel a little ashamed to admit that initially that area was such a like a blind spot for us but once we set up shop over there we saw the kind of especially in the space of designers video editors graphic animation artist the entire region, northeast region was just amazing with the kind of people and the talent that they had similarly later when we set up a branch in Bhopal and we came across a huge set of people so well versed with writing scripts and especially in Hindi Hindi was just so brilliant that you could write scripts very well they could write you know and it's just amazing the kind of talent that is available right now in a lot of these cities a little bit of grooming is required if you want to keep them in the client facing role but that's true with everyone right so even if you hire from a metro you still need to do a bit of grooming for the team but I think we are blessed with some really talented people across the country you know be it that or at least part where we face that or you know middle of the country in Bhopal where the writers and script writers and the poets you know were brilliant so no problem at all in recruiting just to add to what Mr. Shah said I think one of the key positions where the grooming and nurturing of the resource becomes the most important is the client facing individual if that aspect is taken care we can manage with a little bit of less and more. I think Kuntal would like to respond to this question I think he is setting up an institution to train people right Kuntal can you please quickly first the challenges we are facing that is skill and train manpower so that's why we are planning training already we are planning how to work in the industry how to train the client's behaviour the client's requirement we are training on that so that we can train the people for industry industry how to train manpower the client's requirement the client's behaviour depending on that we will train the manpower we will start training in a few months thank you Kuntal just two biggest opportunities and two constraints just quickly you mean two biggest opportunities in regional parts opportunities are the same as national light in terms of you know what you say like the creatives the creatives are the opportunities the key that differentiates it's not about technical stuff but it's about creatives that is the biggest opportunity and the next opportunity is that lesser competition everybody knows each other in my area we almost know each other we know which brand is working with and anyways that brand if they didn't get the brand they will come to us so we know what's happening in the industry the cons it's really hard to get a national brand who is based out of Mumbai or Delhi they would want us to be here but still we have managed to grab some clients from Mumbai and Delhi but that works given that the CMO is good with working remotely with the team any questions from the audience thank you we really enjoyed talking to you thank you


Okay so it's another night and this is another farm, this one here is a broiler farm with birds used for meat, their bodies are used for meat. So we're about to go in and have a look, it looks massive and let's go and see what's happening inside.


I want to just right now show you six signals or red flags that you have to pay attention to to avoid ending up with someone who is not comparable to you. The first one is when you start dating without getting over your ex. You typically are going to make a wrong decision anytime you're going into the relationship with someone and you didn't take at least 12 months for separation emotionally and with your heart to disconnect completely. One of the biggest mistakes people make is that they when the relationship ended and things didn't work out they right away look for a band-aid to put a healing on that hurting heart and they go to the next relationship in reality they're not looking for love they're looking for healing and so the person that you might be dating is actually you're not dating them you are their band-aid until they truly recover and when you recover you usually throw away the band-aids and they'll dump you the same way they dumped the other way because they needed you during the healing and you get hurt you're like man but I thought they loved me they were hurting and you were so insecure because you have nothing going on in your life so you were really like oh they need me makes me feel good your identity is not supposed to be in the fact you need it but in the fact you're loved by God come on somebody when an instrument stops playing music the strings do not get disconnected right away when the relationship ends that does not mean the strings are detached it takes minimum from six to twelve months for your emotions to bounce back most of wrong relationships I've seen and you will witness and if you've ever made a mistake you will find out this rule was broken people break up and two months later they quickly go into some other relationship instead of taking time to pause what went wrong to pause and to ponder so that their heart gets healed so they don't go into a band-aid but they go into something that God called them to do number two is when you date someone who believes in God but they don't follow Jesus Christ believing in God is not enough demons believe in God and they're still going to hell and they not only believe in God the Bible says they tremble the person you're dating don't even tremble they just believe in God so it's better to date a demon because demons at least tremble mm-hmm but you don't want to date a demon you want to date somebody that God has for you are you with me and for that to happen as a Christian you got to look not only do not only do they believe in God do they follow Jesus Christ a statistic says that a divorce is sliced in the half for those people who have these three things in common they go to the same church together they share the same theology meaning if you believe is speaking in tongues they believe is speaking in tongues because if they believe in miracles and the other one doesn't believe in miracles you're gonna have friction so they have same theology so divorce rate is completely different for those who go to the same church who believe in the same theology and thirdly they practice their faith outside of the walls of the church so they're not just Catholic on Sunday and alcoholical on Saturday but they're practicing their faith and there are many Christians who do the same thing they come on Sunday God Jesus and they do exactly same moves on the club on Friday that's not that's gonna you're gonna fall into the same statistic as the world because you're no different in the world the only difference you just put a spiritual makeup and a cover on but you're a fake Christian but when you marry a genuine believer and you are a genuine as well and these three things are in place your relationship is not gonna be like the rest of the relationship even in church because you go under the Lordship of Jesus Christ can somebody say amen how to avoid ending up with the wrong person the third one is when you ignore your gut your gut when your gut tells you to okay let's just focus on the number three then when you expect a marriage to fix the person I already kind of mentioned that how to avoid ending up with the wrong person is to don't and don't marry someone don't even date someone that you're hoping will change after you get married and guys can be such a liars I will change I'll stop dealing drugs just get married to me listen if they never stop dealing drugs because of Christ you are not Jesus they'll never stop do it stop doing anything for you the only reason I'm looking at porn is because I don't have intimacy in my life but when we get married I promise porn will be out of the window the reason why you look at porn is because you're looking at porn period although the only reason why I'm still doing this I'm hanging out with my old friends is because I'm doing no no no never marry someone who promises to change after you get married a side note marriage don't change people marriage reveals people if the person you are with has a messy car they can only change temporarily so that you will go on a date with them but when you marry the car will be more messy than you ever seen in your life they would drive worse than they ever drove in their life because now they got you they don't have to they don't have to pursue you they can relax and be who they are whom you thought they'll change are you with me number four when your God tells you this is not right when you are in a relationship and you have no peace about it and your God says run not after them from them and there's one thing about your peace there's no one thing about your heart and your consciousness you can shut people down you can block people on your phone you can never go to your parents house because they're reminding you that you're making wrong decisions you can switch churches because you know that the pastor doesn't approve that you're doing what you're doing you can do whatever you can run from everyone you can run from yourself and see and God uses your spirit and your conscience as a communication point the spirit of a man is a lamp of the Lord means if God wants to get the message across he troubles you he gives you no peace he creates tension that's why I tell single people pay attention to your tension because it's the way God might protect you it's the way that God might guide you in your relationship don't ignore your conscience don't ignore the fact that you don't have peace about it but everything looks right but it feels wrong and the women especially they got that feeling worked up so good if a woman says that you can expect trouble I would I would encourage every woman here follow your intuition if your intuition is submitted to the Holy Spirit now if your intuition is not submitted to the Holy Spirit then submit it to the Holy Spirit because if you follow your God but your God doesn't follow your God then you will end up in a rut are you with me the Bible says don't follow your heart why because our heart has to be submitted to God we follow God but God uses sometimes our heart to communicate to us I know all process that you have to follow your heart my God tells us to follow the Lord and because I'm following the Lord he's able to communicate to me by taking away my peace so that I could pause and ponder and see could it be a different way that I might go are you with me number five how to avoid ending up with the wrong person is that when your mentors don't support you in this now there are mentors in your life and there are tour mentors in your life I'm not talking about the haters right now I'm talking about the people who love you people who genuinely care for you and you meet with them or people that you respect people that are are not just gonna be like you know whoever says they will agree with popular opinion but they'll tell you the truth even if you don't like it they're not winning your approval they know that they already want that and they will give you the feedback they won't reject you for that they were just simply saying you know I don't know why I just I just if they say I just this is the time to go praying fast this is the time to simply saying you know what God that's it because they might be seeing something you don't they might be seeing something you will only see six months after you get married and you realize maybe it's too late you gotta pay attention the Bible says in the multitude of counselors there is safety I know some people here you watch too much of Romeo and Juliet and so we have this thing where in our culture where the more people are against this the more romantic it is the more sexy it is because we watch so much Hollywood it's like yeah everybody's against they're awesome this is where the real love is let me tell you something about relationships that everyone is against when everybody starts being for it is when you lose the love because that love is not based on each other it's only based on the fact you are in a position to everyone and that's where that love is I've seen relationships where they die the day everyone stopped being against them because the only to defend that love is the fact that you had to fight against the world and the moment you don't have to fight against the world you begin to fight against each other a gentleman that was getting married here won't mention his name and he when he was a teenager he had few infatuations with some people that his mentors were not supporting well the Lord wasn't supporting his mentors were not supporting he wasn't even in support of that he just was a little bit infatuated and but he was obedient to the Lord and he didn't pursue any of those relationships they were not good for him and then finally a time came he finished his education and he fell in love and he was pursuing this person and they were about to get married and I remember he told me something that stuck with me he said this feels weird and I said how so I was like are you getting cold feet he said no no no no he said nobody's against me I was like it's because you're not in high school I was like because you're not you're not trying to go against the world he's like it is this normal that like the pastor is for it that the parents are for it the circumstances are falling into place and I said this is the right way and whatever you were doing in high school was not a right way come on somebody are you with me and number six when there is no mutual attraction it might be a wrong relationship for you if you're not mutually attracted to each other attraction is not the most important but it's important I know in some cultures attraction doesn't matter Isaac married Rebecca never even seen her never even had a chance to like her he saw her for the first time he was she was introduced as his wife he's like well it is what it is and the Bible says he loved her for most of us we don't live in the culture where parents choose marriage for you based on how the businesses will go you have a chance to choose someone based on your attraction that you have for them it's very important that you don't choose someone based just on their education based just on their appearance or based on how the kids will turn out you know how girls do that they're like they're ready a fourth dimension is like well our kids will look like this and stuff yeah he's the pick I don't like him but we'll have good kids they'll make up the kids will make up for the the fact we don't have no flow here if a lady gets married to a guy and she knows he has no attraction for her it causes her insecurities to go through the roof when a guy gets married to a lady and he doesn't have the attraction the lust that he already fights with it becomes a lot harder to overcome and so I challenge people that if you are in a dating relationship and there is no attraction listen turn it to the friendship and and don't pursue any further because attraction is very important if you don't have it now the chances of that having later sometimes god does miracles but it's better to lead those miracles to someone else


The global economy is not something that has emerged from the laws of nature. Like we, human beings, have decided how it is and made the rules and it emerges from that. And because we invented it, we can change it. We were inspired by this offline sort of participatory budgeting process that an intentional community used. What we've done is taken the form of an LLC and used it to create sort of a walled garden, a bubble, within which we can make our own economy. But I think unlike some other organizations, we were ready to like make it real. You know, really start experimenting. I just felt like I had this little flame inside me for wanting to make a difference, wanting to care about what I was doing and do something meaningful in my work.  And I get to decide. I don't have to ask anyone's permission to do that stuff. It's like I'm the boss of my own business unit and that's the budget. Inspiro's grown now to about 300 people and any one of them can come into co-budget and propose an idea for funding. And we don't have to wait for the world out there to change for us to start living in the transition economy right now.


Hello and welcome to CMC Markets on Friday the 29th of March and this quick look at the week ahead beginning the 1st of April and today was supposed to be the day that the UK left the European Union but as we all know that date has been postponed to the 12th of April in the interim but overall it's been a fairly decent quarter for European equity markets and global markets in general and certainly been a welcome respite after the large downdraft that we saw at the end of Q4. There is a word of warning to that we haven't as yet been unable to unwind all of those losses and there is some evidence that equity markets are starting to run out of a little bit of steam. If we look at the S&P 500 if we look at the German DAX we can still see that there is some evidence that we could well be due for a little bit of consolidation as we head into Q2. So let's look at some of the key levels for the key indices as we look ahead to Q2 and the upcoming week of the 1st of April. Currently with the German DAX we remain below the 200 day moving average. We posted in the middle of March a bearish reversal on the daily charts we have tested to support the 50 day moving average. We are starting to edge higher and there is some evidence that we could look to retest the 200 day moving average and that remains I think for me on the DAX a very key level going forward and a key arbiter of future direction. If we then cast our attention to the S&P 500 we can see that on the daily charts here we've posted a very big daily reversal but we haven't really pushed significantly below that 2780 level which has been the lows of the past week or so. So for me I think on on the S&P 2780 remains the key level as well as obviously the peaks that we saw in the middle of March in and around the 2860 level on the top side. What has been particularly interesting and something that I'm paying particular attention to is the tech stocks and the NASDAQ 100 in particular because we posted a very strong key day reversal on the daily charts there and if we actually look at the weekly chart there is potentially a gravestone doji or shooting star on the weekly and we do appear to be looking to roll over so I think how the NASDAQ reacts below 7500 is likely to be a key arbiter in terms of the tech sector as we head in to April and we head into Q2. On the plus side there does seem to be some evidence of a potential golden cross where the 50 day moving average crosses above the 200 day moving average on the NASDAQ 100 and the S&P 500. So we've got conflicting signals playing out on US equity so some caution I think is warranted on these but certainly in terms of the daily indicators while we're below the recent highs on the NASDAQ and the S&P then the bias I think is probably towards sell the rally in the short term until such times as we break above those highs. If we look at the UK 100 the FTSE 100 again here posted a very strong down move in the middle of in the middle of March we have started to claw back some of those and we remain very much in an uptrend but again the 50 day moving average is starting to turn towards 200 day moving average so there is some evidence that we could be seeing a turnaround in sentiment but we really need to see evidence of a move through the previous highs for the for the for the turnaround that we've seen in Q1 to start to gain some traction as we head in to Q2. We've also seen some decent rebound in bond markets as well yields have fallen quite sharply so in that context if yields continue to fall then stock markets are likely to reap the benefits of a fall in yields probably less obvious in US markets where bond yields are much much higher in and around two and a half percent less so in European markets where German 10-year bond yields are now in negative territory so certainly in terms of asset flow and asset allocation there could be some divergence between what US markets are doing and what European markets are doing so let's look ahead to the week coming up and we've got a plethora of data coming out and we've got non-farm payrolls at the back end of the week and in terms of the headline number the February payrolls report was as bad as the January number was good again of 20,000 new jobs missed expectations by a huge amount when compared to the 311,000 new jobs that we saw in January however I think it's hard to really read too much into one month's numbers given the government shut down that we saw at the beginning of the year and just because we got a low headline number doesn't necessarily mean that the US economy is slowing down it could just mean that the US labor market is tight because certainly if you look at the wages numbers they've continued to edge higher 3.4% the highest in 10 years that's been reflected in the performance of the dollar index despite the decline in US yields that is still in the range the key level on the dollar index remains around about 97, 18, 98 so any move towards those upper echelons could well act as a floor in euro dollar and could well act as a floor in dollar yen as well so keeping on that we've also got the prospect of yet more Brexit votes as I speak there's potentially another meaningful vote going through the House of Commons that's likely to go the same way as the previous two but as I speak that is by no means certain but certainly I think if the DUP are unable to come on board that it's unlikely that will get through which is likely to mean that will we see more indicative votes in the coming week as the binary nature of the UK Parliament's decision to whether or not either go with a no deal or revoke article 50 comes into sharper focus that is certainly weighing on the pound against the dollar we can see here that it's heading back to very key support in and around the 250 day moving averages a concerted move below 129.80 could well signal a final topping pattern in place for the cable and precipitate a broader lower down move towards 127.80 on the flip side of that though a lot of this is a little bit of a dollar move because Euro dollar is also looking similarly weak which means that if we get a break below 111.80 111.70 then we could well see further declines towards the 110 level in Euro dollar as well so I'll be paying particular attention to those key levels on the downside in Euro dollar and cable we've also got a host of global manufacturing and services PMI numbers out on the 1st of April for manufacturing for services PMI's on the 3rd of April and I'll be paying particular attention to the manufacturing numbers in light of those really shocking German PMI's that we saw flash PMI's that we saw out at the end of March which saw German manufacturing PMI's fall to the lowest levels since 2016 around about 44.7 with Chinese with Chinese economic activity also muted due to Chinese New Year I think in terms of expectations management there is a risk that actually we could see a surprise to the upside but ultimately these numbers are not likely to remain particularly positive when set against a backdrop of a weak manufacturing outlook. Services PMI's I look to be slightly more positive if you actually look at the economies and split them out on a sector by sector basis I think in terms of services services actually looks in slightly better shape so you could actually look for silver linings there we've also got Canada payrolls and we've also got an RBA rate meeting as well and certainly I think in terms of the recent meetings that we've seen from central banks in general there has been a significant shift to the dovish side the slowdown in China does appear to be having a significantly negative spillover into the Australian economy a slide in Sydney house prices which have dropped over 13% from their recent peers from the recent peaks does appear to be knocking consumer confidence so the big level on the Aussie dollar is around about 70 cents will be keeping a significant eye out on that but certainly in terms of the lower highs the direction of travel does appear to suggest we could see a lower Aussie over time looking at dollar CAD Canada payrolls we've seen a weak Canadian dollar over the course of the last few weeks and if that continues we could well see a retest of 135.05 from the current levels of around about 134 so that's it for this week once again thank you very much for listening to Michael Houston talking to you from CMC Markets


the intestine has a unique ability to regenerate itself quickly due to its fast cycling stem cells. These stem cells are controlled by a mosaic pattern at their base, which is maintained by a complex network of signals. A new study suggests that the stem cells use a positive feedback loop to maintain their mosaic pattern, which helps them respond quickly to changes in the environment. By disrupting this feedback loop, researchers were able to alter the mosaic pattern and reduce the organ's ability to regenerate. This study provides insight into how the intestines can be better understood and manipulated for therapeutic purposes. This article was authored by Kaiyuan Chen, Tara Shrinivasan, Kuei Lingting, and others.


Hello everyone welcome back to another CapCut tutorial and this one I'm going to show you how to stack videos on top of each other so basically we've got three videos instead of one and this is basically going to be using the overlay functionality it's pretty simple to do let me show you how to do it I'm just going to go ahead and show you what we got here we got me telling jokes and then there's some puppy dogs up at the top there I'm going to click out we're going to start from the beginning okay first step click new project as we do and then I'm going to go ahead and click on add one on my little puppy dog now the first step before we get going is we want to change the aspect ratio I brought in a horizontal or a landscape style but we're going vertical so what we want to do is we want to go to the bottom here click on format and then click from fit to 916 when we do that you're going to see that we've got a black bar on the top and a black bar on the bottom that's where we're going to put the other videos okay and if I hit play give there we go there I am just encouraging my puppy dog as I do okay this is looking good we're in good shape the next step is we're going to go down to the bottom and we're going to click on overlay this is where the magic happens when we click on overlay we now click on add overlay and we can add in some more footage so I'm just going to scroll through for some more um horizontal-ish style footage that's going to work and I've got some stuff here I've got this nightclub looking thing so I'm just going to add that and presto it adds it but it adds it over top of the puppy dog so I click on it and then now I'm going to move it up to the top and not only that I'm going to click on it and I'm going to use two fingers and now I'm going to go ahead and increase its size so that it basically fits kind of where I want it to be so something like that now I'm going to click outside of it and we've got the dance floor at the top we got the puppy dog in the middle and we are on our way if we want to do another third video we're just going to go back here we're going to click on overlay click on add overlay like we did last time and then I'm going to add in this person who's rapping into a microphone and or maybe he's not even saying anything just making hand gestures which is awesome by the way so I'm just going to click on this one and then I'm going to go ahead and double finger it oh geez that's what I got to leave that joke alone okay yeah I'm going to use two fingers on it because I'm a bowler and presto uh there we go now I'm going to hit play give him and it's all overlayed now if you wanted to do this and get rid of all the audio just click on each track individually take the volume down to zero so I'm going to click on the second track click on volume goes down to zero click on the first track click on volume down to zero all the volume is gone and we've got three people we've got three different videos rolling at the same time and of course if you want to go even further you can go ahead click on let's click out of this we're going to get out of there we're going to go to what do you want to add do you want to add in some music or not I don't even know I click on audio click on sounds and then let's go ahead and use uh this you ever look at your dog and think your contact doesn't matter I clicked on that and I added that so that's how you do it guys in about two minutes that's how you do the overlay effect and add them and make them like that thanks for watching tell more stuff coming up stay tuned


Hello everyone and welcome to the first installment of town meeting day 2023 election coverage by town meeting TV Tonight's presentation is part of a series of forums. We're bringing you in advance of town meeting day on March 7 town meeting TV hosts forums and with all of our candidates and covers all items on the ballot so that You can learn about What is on your ballot before you head to the polls and make informed decisions now tonight? I'm joined by South Burlington City Manager Jesse Baker Community Development Director Alana Blanchard as well as public work to Public Works Director Tom DiPetro and they will be giving a presentation on South Burlington's budget and Ballot items so If you're tuning in live tonight, we welcome your questions at<PHONE_NUMBER> Feel free to call in and we'll prioritize prioritize those questions for you and What you can watch town meeting TV on Comcast channel 1087 Burlington telecom 17 and 217 as well as on our YouTube channel YouTube comm slash town meeting TV with that being said we can go ahead and get started and Jesse I'll let you take it away. Great. Thank you so much for having us tonight This is such a huge opportunity for us to talk with your viewers and talk with our residents about what they'll see on time Meeting Day this year. We do have a lot on the South Burlington town meeting day ballot this year So we're going to try to fly through a bunch of content But also really encourage any questions that our community members may want to pose or you would like to pose So tonight I have the privilege of talking about the FY 24 municipal budget But really that budget is developed in partnership with the leadership team with my amazing colleagues and of course with the city council Ultimately, this is the budget they have approved to send to the voters So I'm going to talk through the city budget and then we're going to learn a little about the Bartlett Bay wastewater treatment Improvement bond vote and then the tax increment financing bond vote We do have a ton of information on our website. That's at our South Burlington vt. Gov slash TMD town meeting day 2023 Website so if folks are watching this later and really want to dive into all the line item budgets They can explore at that site and find all the information So to dive right into our FY 24 budget, this is the budget that the voters Will vote on on town meeting day It's it's Specifically tonight. I'm going to be talking about the general fund budget Which is the the dollars that support municipal operations public safety police fire EM that EMT services public works administration community development recreation libraries We have tried to between the leadership team and council achieve Several really important goals through this budget One as we all know from living in households and living in families right now We as society are facing really significant inflation rates cost of living increases that obviously is reflected in our expenses as well We're trying to be sensitive to that by presenting a two-year budget to the council and to the voters Having said that we are a growing community and we do have some significant operational needs So this budget achieves adding Park maintenance person we heard through COVID that folks spent a lot of time in our parks and open spaces And we really need to make sure those are maintained to the standard that our community is expecting We also know that we need to be incrementally investing in our capital improvement plan to really make sure that we're investing in our infrastructure We can maintain our infrastructure well And we continue that legacy over time. We are also investing in a GIS data analyst position to make sure That we are making data-driven decisions We're growing into quite a city and we have a lot of data available We want to be able to use that data to make decisions With this budget, we're also investing pretty heavily in public safety So we're restoring funding for a number of public safety positions that during the lean COVID years We had to reduce to really make that budget work for the taxpayers during those lean years So with this budget, we are restoring funding for a police officer in a deputy chief position Within our police department. We are also restoring funding for one fire fighter EMT As well as starting big news is starting January 1st, 2024 Stepping up standing up a second ambulance in the city of South Burlington Right now we only run one ambulance at a time and about 23% of the time people call 911 in South Burlington Another entity is responding to that call because we don't have the folks to do it So with all of that here are the big exciting numbers Lots of numbers on this screen. So I'll highlight the important ones To invest in those things as a city. We are increasing the tax rate by 5.75 percent or about two and a half pennies on the tax rate What that means is about a seventy eight dollar increase for the average condo owner and about a hundred and seventeen dollar increase for the average Homeowner so with that increase we are achieving those goals for the community that I previously mentioned and really investing in that core municipal government I do want to call out our community did a huge amount of work in the last year to adopt its first-ever climate action plan The council has been very intentional about this priority while there is not funding to implement that plan in this budget We still do have two million dollars of ARPA funding remaining And there are conversations happening at the council level to invest all or some of that funding in implementing our climate action plan And then finally I do want to mention and you'll hear much more about this from Tom Our utility rate increases each of our utilities that we operate our stormwater utility wastewater water Utility and water utility are also seeing rate increases this year Those are primarily driven by the need to invest in our capital projects Both our Bartlett Bay wastewater treatment bond vote that Tom will talk about as well as upcoming water capacity on that side of the utility So that's your municipal budget for FY 24 in South Burlington With that it's my honor to turn it over to Tom DiPietro He is our new this budget season public works director for the city of South Burlington Although has been in South Burlington for a decade and a half and is really the expert in all things Infrastructure in our community and he will take it from here. Thank you Jesse Yes, so on the ballot Voters will be asked if they support a thirty three point eight million dollar bond vote for upgrade of the Bartlett Bay Wastewater treatment facility and some related infrastructure. There are three components to this first is reconstruction of the facility itself The second component is improvements to help handle the solids that are generated through the wastewater treatment process and then Finally refurbishment and upgrade of four pump stations throughout the city. So I'm going to talk a little bit about each of those So the major part of this is the treatment facility upgrade We have two wastewater treatment facilities in South Burlington Bartlett Bay and Airport Parkway The Bartlett Bay facility was first constructed in 1970. It saw its last upgrade in 1999 These facilities are designed to have a design life about 50 years with upgrades every 20 to 30 years And the existing plant is certainly showing its age. There's some kind of wear and tear on the facility Some of our systems are still original like our head works Screening filtering system. Those are original to the first plant in 1970 was first constructed So that's sort of opportunity to put new technology and to improve treatment processes as well This is a critical piece of core government for the city is wastewater treatment And so this helps also protect our waterways and Lake Champlain Part two are to the second component is the solids that are generated So in the wastewater treatment process solids kind of settle out of the water and those are collected in South Burlington the solids collected at the Bartlett Bay plant get trucked to our other facility where they go through an additional treatment process To create a class a biosolid that can be beneficially reused in certain instances We are at capacity there without getting too technical We have to sort of weigh sort of our waste activated sludge that comes from the Bartlett Bay plant with the volatile solids the more active Biologically active sludge at the Airport Parkway plant We have some challenges right now at our facility. It was designed the Airport Parkway facility I was designed to manage this but one of our clarifiers was sort of it was designed out for Cash reasons for cost reasons. So we'd like to add that in now It's been over a decade and we feel the need we're kind of feeling it to achieve that capacity And then the last portion or the third portion of this is for pump stations that are within the sewer shed Or that drain to the Bartlett Bay treatment facility so These facilities typically have a design life of about 25 years And these four that we're talking about have been in service for over 50 years And so we've done upgrades along the way, but it's really time to take a hard look and replace the components in them And then includes the pumps and the force mains the pipes that lead out of them to the plant as well Critically important the four that we've identified as the greatest need here are located all of them within 250 feet of Lake Champlain So we certainly don't want to see any failures at these pump stations not a lot of room for error So, you know our staff checks on these daily But still it's it's time for upgrades and new pumps and things like that. So that's that's the last piece of the three Talking about sort of how the costs for that 33.8 million dollar bond break down on the upper right of this slide You'll be able to see first the cost of the wastewater treatment facility. It's about 22 million We estimate that the solids handling improvements are about 1.8 and then refurbishment reconstruction of those pump stations is about four and a half About five million dollars worth of engineering over those three components In various permitting and related costs for the project brings us to our total of about 33.8 million which is the bond vote amount What this does to our rates so just support this project it means that our wastewater rates would go up six and three-quarter percent each year over the next four years And that is about a seventy one dollar increase in the fourth year So over four years it'll be a total of seventy one dollars over kind of what our normal rate creases have been over the last decade I'll also note that South Brunken has the lowest wastewater rates in the state of Vermont We called around and got data in fiscal year 22 and you can see us on the bottom there all the way on the right Project schedule wise so we have been working with our city council and city attorney to get bond documents together Now we're out doing these public informational meetings. We've got more coming up, which I'm sure we'll talk about The bond vote in March and then moving forward We'll get into the design phase of all these components final design And then we hope to bid this in summer 24 and start construction later in 2024 Finish up by 2026 and then the city would see its first bond payment in 2027 Keep charging ahead. Yeah before we charge ahead. I'll just remind folks anybody who's watching live We do welcome your questions, and you can call us at<PHONE_NUMBER> and with that being said I'll turn it over to Alana to talk about the tiff bond vote. That's on the ballot. Thank you so the city of South Brunington has a our last Vote or for our last projects so I wanted to show you where our tiff district is and And give you some information about tax increment financing. This is a very strong economic development tool that the state has designated to be able to be used in South Burlington and so This allows us to build projects that benefit our vision for a downtown when I say are I mean the community vision for a downtown that the residents and businesses have been working on for over 40 years or longer And so the district is bounded on the west by Dorset Street on the east by Heinsberg Road the north by Williston Road and Includes to the south San Remo Drive it's about a hundred acres and The way that this economic development tool works Is that when that boundary was set in 2012? The the land within that area All the taxes on the land that existed at that time the buildings that existed at that time Continues to go to where they normally would go so when the municipal tax rate is applied against that land and the State Education Fund tax rate or the school rate is applied against that land It continues to go to the city and to the state Ed fund But over time as land develops in response to the investments that the city has made within that area using Tiff district financing That growth in land value taxes applied against that growth the city gets to keep 75 percent of it to fund projects that the voters have approved So next slide 75 percent goes into the Tiff district fund and then 25 percent of that growth still goes to the State Ed fund and to the city to use the same way that we would use the Existing revenues that are coming from the growth that was there the existing land Development that was there in 2012 So Next slide So there are four projects that are proposed to be funded using this these revenues These include the east-west crossing, which is a walk bike bridge over i-89 It starts at the Staples Plaza. It crosses over i-89 just south of the Cloverleaf interchange And then connects back to Williston Road by the CVS. It will also have a spur that connects to the University Mall The city has a very large federal grant about nine point eight million dollars that will go towards this project and then There the bond vote that is on the ballot article four has 4.3 million that will be that will go towards this project The Williston Road streetscape, which is between Dorset Street and Al's french fries Only on the south side of the road Also has a federal grant about 800,000 Half of it is eligible to be funded with Tiff district financing and so that is on this ballot as well Garden Street is a third project on the ballot that is actually even though it's called Garden Street is the Williston Road intersections so Midas White Street and Williston Road right by Al's french fries over to Patchin Road Hinesburg Road and Williston Road by Gracie's and so these two intersections are addressed as part of this project to add transportation traffic Pedestrian and bicycle capacity to this segment and and really importantly, and I'll show you this I'm sorry really importantly, and I don't have it at the moment But really significantly it will realign the intersection At Al's french fries so that Midas and White Street meet in a T intersection And there will be crossings on all four sides of the intersection and then the last project that would be funded With this bond vote would be city center park phase 2 so city center park already exists And that was a tip district project and then this phase will Connect city center park to market Street and Garden Street via a shared use path And that shared use path will include a boardwalk over the wetlands So if I couldn't just jump in for a quick minute I think that what what is really Powerful about these four projects that a lot has been working to move forward is that it creates that connectivity throughout our city center And our downtown and really focuses on the communities Bike and pedestrian goals our climate change goals really creating that walkable downtown and the investment in all four of these Projects is what allows that kind of loop connectivity to happen around our city center Yeah, and so we will end up with a continuous bicycle pedestrian connection From the west side to the east side on Williston Road, which is a really big change for our downtown And so together these projects are a total bond amount of 15 million eighty six thousand four hundred and thirty dollars and each of these projects This includes only the tip district financed portion of these projects So they also have federal funding coming into them and small amounts of city funding And so, you know, I think what's really important about these projects is that they rely on future development to finance These bonds or this bond so this shows a project that has been in the press a lot lately catamount run And that's shown in red and then the purple buildings some of them have been built and two of them have not been built And so two of the built purple buildings that are under construction, but not yet occupied combined with the red buildings equal 475 units and so that's a tremendous amount of growth that will be completed by 20 excuse me 2026 so just you know right around the corner and that Adds a tremendous amount of value to the tip district and so that because the new growth is used to To generate tax revenues those revenues are allow us to service the tip district With these revenues and not to raise property tax values Which is a really important point about to district financing And I think one of the things that might be interesting to your viewers and it certainly is to our residents About this pipeline development is that reflected here, especially in catamount run and the purple Buildings are a huge investment from our institutional partners So both you VMMC and the University of Vermont have invested in helping our our development partners grow our housing in Our city center and that that vote of confidence in what we're doing in city center What we're doing in our downtown is really is really what is enabling us to move forward with this vision for our city center That's true And so the next slide Oh, we can re-underline this so I guess that will not increase the property tax rate And that's because this is this bond vote article four is a tip district financing bond vote So this is shows you what the question looks like on the ballot, although I would Caution if you are a voter don't expect it to necessarily look like that We've had ballots come back with a question that was nicely spaced out and it comes back as one paragraph so So it but all four Projects are part of one question and the total amount is 14 million four hundred and thirty thousand sixty two dollars This is the last the last These this will complete the tip district financing Projects that the city has been authorized to undertake Thank you So we also want to highlight This is a lot of information a lot of information that realizes many community goals that South Burlington has been working on for decades But we also know it's a lot for voters to take in so while this is a great event And we're so thankful to tell me TV for hosting us and we will link it on our website And it will be available to everybody we do want to call out that there is Several other opportunities to hear from the three of us and hear from other city partners about what is on the ballot So first the next one will be our Love your city event on Valentine's Day come with your sweetie before your dinner reservations from 6 to 7 p.m. In room 301 at City Hall, which is also in our downtown Tiff district And learn about these bond votes and what's on the ballot February 28th, we will have another informational session Same time and same place and then on March 6th the night before town meeting like most communities We do an annual pre town meeting day public presentation and public hearing With the school district so folks can learn right before town meeting About all those details on the ballot and then of course as with all vermont towns polls are open 7 to 7 on march 7th and we really Encourage our residents to get out and vote and have their their voices heard That's what we want to share today. We're happy to dive in deeper to any one of these things. We've been spending a lot of time on it so Well, thank you very much for your presentation on the budget the Tiff votes and the wastewater treatment facilities I suppose since we have a little bit of extra time if there's anything that Um The three of you would like to dive deeper in um into since we do have about uh, we we have some extra time So if there's anything you kind of scripted past, um, other than that, um, we can um wrap it up Well, I I Would open it up to my colleagues here to share anything that they would like to share I think, um, again, I'll I'll start where I started which is um, this This is a huge ask of our community. There's a lot on the ballot A lot of the the leadership team has spent a huge amount of time developing it But also our city council and our committees Have spent a lot of time over decades envisioning what we want our community to be And I think that the product on this ballot, you know that investment in core municipal services through public safety And public infrastructure that investment in our wastewater treatment plant that really allows us to meet our Our our goals of having a clean lake Champlain of not disturbing the environment more than we need to Considering that we are a growing community is really critical to be to maintaining that Growing community and then of course our TIF district that has been a huge part of our conversation South Burlington has wanted a downtown a city center for years for decades And we are seeing it happen. You know, we have we have construction very actively going on around our library and senior center In city hall and in uh in our downtown and we would really love to see that connectivity that bike ped infrastructure Continue and really put the cap on that final project Um, so we're thankful for the voters and the council and our community for spending so much time with us on this Effort and we look forward to hearing what they say on tell meaning day. What what else did I miss guys? What else do we want to highlight? I have one thing I'd like to add that and you maybe think of it Emily So the numbers I presented for the wastewater bond vote the 33.8 million that's all the projects That's our high-end estimate if the city is fortunate enough to obtain grant fundings for that Which is something we're actively pursuing That'll actually reduce the amount that we need to borrow as part of the bond So I think I might skip past that in that slide, but yeah, it's good to note Alana anything else you'd like to add? Yeah, I would just echo what tom said that Any authorization to the council is really allowing the council to issue bond debt, but it's not It doesn't tell the council that they have to do it. So they do not have to issue The full amount or any of it, of course It does signal to them that the voters would if the voters want to see the projects Well, thank you very much jesse tom and alana for coming out tonight and Presenting on the budget and the ballot items. It really helps sort of demystify those um big kind of daunting often daunting ballot questions. Um, and uh Yeah, and like jesse mentioned all of this um is available to be seen and further researched on the south burlington web city website and um Yeah, thank you so much for joining us and thanks to everyone uh for tuning in to tonight's uh, town meeting tv actually the first uh installment of our town meeting day coverage for 2023 and like jesse mentioned, um Polls are open from seven to seven on town meeting day, which is march tuesday march 7th And if you'd like to request an absentee ballot make sure you contact your um city's clerk Um other than that thanks for watching and sharing town meeting tv Please subscribe to us if you haven't already at youtube.com Slash town meeting tv. Thanks and have a great night


What's up everybody, Jason here for jazzy's case breaks.com. We just sold out 20 20 mosaic football 20 bucks blaster case break picker teams number 25 or we're randomizing the bangles If you buy two or more teams, but since the this did fill up tonight guys We were gonna give away the Eagles Washington football team Jaguars and Cardinals just for selling out tonight, which we did so We'll also do that giveaway as well, and we'll give away in this order right here I will put them on this list So coming in the top four will get you that and everybody will have a shot at this You don't have to buy two or more teams. This was just selling out tonight So we'll use a dice roller for the customers about two or more teams will give away the bangles, right? Then we'll grab the customer names all 32 even the winner of the bangles Randomize you guys again the same dice roller and then whoever gets in the top four gets those extra teams There's a little giveaway as well So let's roll the dice and it is a one and a two or two and a one three times and let's go back here And see who's eligible to Win the bangles. So Colin Adams got two That's one entry James got two That's one entry Jeff got two Jimmy got one Leonard got two. That's one entry Mac got one two three four. That's two entries Matthew just got one Micah Galucci got eight. So that's four entries Nigga Las Palmo Joe Ryan arrow got two and Sean got two.  So he's the same dice roller tuna one three times cuz my number one gets the bangles one two and three boom Three times Colin congratulations, you just won the Cincinnati bangles All right now what we're gonna do. So we're gonna get the customer names like this They're actually to keep them more randomized. I guess not just by the name Think it's easier to do this people will think oh man, the names are still too stuck together Let's delete the GA giveaway spots There you go. I'm about three times here One two boom three times Colin Matt and James right it was three giveaway teams are four four teams actually and James Wow, you got two of them man. Congratulations after three times So there you go Colin Didn't you just win the bangles right now? Yeah, you did There you go, you also Just won the Eagles Not too shabby. Nice. It'll come up there Matt you won the Washington football team James with the Jaguars and James with the Cardinals Colin you have the Eagles now Now with the Washington football team And James of the Jaguars and the Cardinals And I Go So we're both in some of these blasters now I Hear the first five boxes guys. Good luck Brian Burns Joe Burrow to start us off JK Dobbins prism silver and it's Smith Jerry Judy Terry McLaren Justin Jefferson and Brett Farr Marlon Mack Henry rugs Danny Jones little silver Henry rugs NFL debut green You got Denzel Mims green Right, and I uke old school Thurman Thomas March on Lynch Jordan love Jeff Saturday This is a Simmons Lamar Jackson Pro Bowl Andres Swift NFL debut AJ Dylan got game JJ Watt Antonio Gandhi Golden Kenneth Murray Sam Darnold Tyler Eifert Jerry Judy NFL debut chase Claypool Nice chase Claypool green. I go with you with the Steelers. Oh good your own bettas I'll tell back in junior I'm Michael P Ryan Brett Farr Yeah, Andres Swift little Michael P Ryan green All right next five boxes I I Guys good luck Tyler Boyd and we got LeVon Kirkland Scripps autograph Pittsburgh Steelers That's something that I'm sure my gullet you would know right or Steelers fans old school ones Cam Acres green Jonathan Taylor Kirk Cousins There when James jr. An old-school hey, manning Andres Swift Juju Chase play Henry Ruggs And Zach Moss rookie scripts for the bills Matt L with that one very nice Wow, and we got a Justin Herbert true silver Matt L with the Chargers God damn Tyler Johnson green Henry Ruggs will to win Patty Mahomes JK Dobbins Are you what I know he's a magnet now Herbert NFL debut Keenan Allen silver Michael Irvin Yeah, that's funny. I got it. I got a text on it earlier. That happened. It was so funny Yeah Yeah, it was really funny, I gotta tell you Matt Jude on Michael Pittman Marganders ready Moss Brandon I you cool Jada. I'll add that to the schedule of probably the last one anyways Let's want to buy out the last seven baseball mixer spots plus another filler Do a j-dub you got the power CV lab got you Josh Allen Oh All right, next five boxes guys Jordan Hicks Devon DuVarnay Lawrence Taylor Todd Gurley Jalen Hurts green Jerome Betts We're better sorry Jalen Hurts Daniel Thompson MVP is Patty Mahomes Johnson Taylor Nick Chubb Nick Chubb Backwards Probo Kaleas Campbell and Jordan Love Green retail Yeah, I'll have some this week for sure. I'm gonna go pick some up on Saturday It was almost two weeks ago now, but yeah, it's just the two of them right there. No worries. It doesn't matter. I'm gonna see him on Saturday, so Teddy Bridgewater Jeff Ocuda Frank Thomas Mark Andrews Cam acres Patty Mahomes Henry rugs green I Try this Kelsey Will Fuller Jim Kelly CD lamb All right Last five boxes here guys Well, yeah, I remember why Yeah, yeah, I'll probably do that He's probably gonna stay here for half the game or he's just gonna want to watch a free piece So that's why he's gonna go that Yeah Wednesday I Have a feeling to it's been like every other game right one win one lose one win one lose Yeah, I would probably be less stressful for him if they went to mom I Guess four more boxes Drew lock Van Jefferson Teddy Bridgewater Jordan love NFL debut. I feel like we've got a lot of Packers Ryan Harrell down Tony Gonzalez Melvin Gordon All right, three more boxes John Owens Zack Moss Tyron Matthew Pro Bowl Harrison Smith Joe Burrow green very nice Broncos remember we're giving away in the break Colin. There you go All right, two more to go The biggest keys of the game Josh Allen All right last box guys good luck boomer Sison Chase Claypool Linvau in Junior Silver Jerry Judy for the Broncos little Winrossa Wilson Justin Justin Jefferson CD Lam Allen Kamara and Joe Burrow NFL debut All right guys well all these will be top loader right here a lot of colors silvers prism silvers rookies That stack over here will be paying sleep to got a couple Joe Burrells Jordan. Love green Joe Burrow green Scripps autograph Justin Herbert silver and LeVon Kirkland autograph. So there you go guys That was a mosaic football 20 box blaster case break pick a change number 25 on Jaspies case breaks