why do you bother to lovingly coach your children for Little League and make sure their mask is over their nose and make sure they go to the best school they can get to if on the macro through your politics you are sending them into a world that essentially has no space for their flourishing.  This is Rob Johnson, president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. I'm here today with Anand Giridardas who wrote a book that I say turned me inside out a couple a few years ago. Winner take all the elite charade of changing of the world kind of how do I say it raised so many questions that I actually think are even more vivid now and in need of exploration as a result of the pandemic and some of the other things that we've experienced that have been so unsettling for society both in the United States and around the world. Anand thank you for joining me today. I'm happy to be with you again. It's very it's very powerful what I will call the the kind of the musical inspiration not necessarily the lyrics but when I was thinking about today I kept hearing this song that Bob Dylan wrote last year called I contain multitudes and in many ways the many multidimensionality of awareness, psychological, political, how media, various institutions work. I just see you have a lateral pattern recognition type skill that's extraordinary and I hope my young scholars will not only tune in today but continue to learn from you. I know you have a very nourishing sub-stack site called the Inc which I subscribe to and I not only enjoy you I enjoy the people you attract to that site and I hope it continues to thrive. Thank you that I appreciate it. I remember our first conversation from three or four years ago and it still it still stands out to me so glad to be back in conversation with you. Yeah and I would say to you given having worked in government in the private sector with very wealthy billionaires etc throughout my life you're helping me navigate on my path and how'd I say unmask within my own heart what I think goodness is as opposed to dodging and avoiding things and as you know when you avoid things you end up in a crisis you gotta you gotta embrace the challenges. So right now we're coming through a pandemic of fear that the Biden administration is losing momentum as the midterm elections approach in the United States. We're seeing a lot of concern about US-China relations. We're seeing a lot of concern about the Ukraine and we're seeing a lot of anxiety. I just made a podcast with AJ Chibber about the reinvigoration of India and I know my I think I remember from our first time talking my mother grew up in Rocky River Ohio and I think you said something like you were born in Cleveland or lived in Cleveland and I knew you were a Wolverine at one point University of Michigan it's where my dad went to college but I just remember thinking that you had been in Mumbai though that's not where you started and then to the New York Times which I think where you were coming out of when we first met. But from those different backgrounds those different places Cleveland Detroit and Arbor that wasn't a part of the world I used to say that that's that's the region of the world America divorced when the auto industry went down they didn't come to the assistance and when you're thinking of healing now seeing what's happening seeing the dysfunction seeing the attraction to authoritarian alternative. What's the picture you would paint of what you might call the the road and the light at the end of the tunnel. Well I'm glad we're glad we're doing an easy start easy on look I think this could not be a moment of higher stakes you know this is a moment way and not just high stakes on one thing or two things or three things this is a moment in time in which some of the most vital questions of how we are going to live together within the United States in the family of nations are up for grabs and there is a wider range of answers possible on offer for people possible could be you know in place in five years or ten years or 20 years then I think it's typically possible in a given era so just to take a few you know climate it is genuinely possible that we will make choices that allow the planet to be a place we can continue to live and it is genuinely possible that we will not make choices to keep the world being a habitable place to live and it will no longer be a habitable place and I can't tell you nor can you tell me which of those we're gonna do right that is a live discussion and contest the the end of civilization on earth or should we or should we keep going that is a I mean in in how many eras has that been a live fraught subject of of deliberation but it is we are in a conversation in the United States and not only in the United States about whether we should attempt to realize the promise of democracy in this country be a liberal democracy that has peaceful transitions of power through respecting the will of the people in elections or whether maybe we should not be that again in your in my life and they haven't been that many moments when that kind of question should we do peaceful transitions of power should we not has been elevated literally to the presented in that way with a kind of 50 50 view on it in the country we are having a reckoning around race and understanding the bone deep nature of racism in this country in a way that has normally been you know buried marginalized hidden in in subtext talked around through these kind of proxy you know coded things like deficits and welfare and these kind of issues that allow people to talk about race without talking about race well that's over we are now explicitly talking about you know a kind of things like the 1619 project views of the United States as being flawed from the beginning in their in their endemic racism and on the other hand the attempts to kind of purge honest history have book bans ban critical race theory and these other useful contributions to understanding ourselves so we're not having a 1990s like welfare argument as a prop we are talking about whether we are an irredeemably racist country or whether anybody who thinks we are a racist country should essentially be banned from teaching and banned from public life in different ways so on that level again we are having the highest stakes version of the argument with covid you know we have really had dramatized the questions around what kind of economy and safety net and the basic question of what we owe each other all we a society that leaves people to their own devices which again has always kind of been the question but has been really dramatized when for a lot of people just work was taken away for a two-year period opportunity was taken away a home's were taken away and on the other hand people arguing with a new skip in their step because of the the teaching moment of the last two years that there is a case for having real solidarity in this country for doing things like health care together for having real labor protection you know with the Ukraine Russia situation and I think the Afghanistan withdrawal some months earlier we are facing a real question about what does the world look like when the country that has in recent decades and you're in my lifetime been the self-appointed kind of arbiter of the packs Americana that was named after it what happens when that country our country still kind of remains the only country that can throw its weight around on a situation like Russia that can you know try to beat back the terrible things Vladimir Putin is doing but at the same time is a country that is kind of stripped of all authority to say anything about anything to anyone else it's just not clear who the hell we are what our standing is in the world if if we don't even do peaceful transfers of power anymore as a kind of guaranteed bedrock thing what are we talking about when we talk about democracy around the world if we you know don't if we cannot go into a society like Afghanistan 20 years and understand that country with the just the barest enough understanding of social dynamics in that society that frankly every writer I know who moved to that country and wrote a book about it understood it much better than the entire security apparatus of the United States that spent 20 years and trillions of dollars attempting to understand it like literally every writer who went there understood it on their own just by walking around and talking to people so I don't understand the trillions of dollars we spent trying to not understand it but if we don't if we're able to understand the society like Afghanistan in a way to have basically any influence there besides just bleeding money there then what gives us an understanding about how to out strategize Vladimir Putin what gives us any kind of insight into what is actually motivating the Chinese so we could go on but on every level what I see is the highest stakes imaginable and the last thing I'll say is I think there was a way that you could listen to what I just said over the last few minutes as saying as a case for despair but I actually think if you if you heard the kind of various versions of the dilemmas they all contain a very positive potential scenario also and I am not clear which way we're gonna go I think we could come out of COVID with a new understanding of the safety net I think we could come out of COVID with a desire to bring down plutocracy in a way that there wasn't when you and I talked last on this show I think there is a possibility that climate change will wake us up not only to beating back climate change but to creating a way of living with the planet and with each other that is better than the way we've ever lived with each other on the planet before I think it is possible that we come out of Afghanistan we deal with this Russia situation in a way that has actually more humility because we understand what we don't understand and we realize that you know if you are not a strong democracy at home it really limits your ability to talk about protecting other democracies there is in each of these scenarios a hope that this is actually one of those moments in societies I think like the moment coming out of World War I the moment coming out of World War II where there is actually this greater than usual space to rethink to reimagine to build something different to go a different way and I think the other half of each of those dilemmas is that we may really mess it up and we may be the people who made the planet you know go to hell who basically squandered whatever measure of democracy we had and who left life worse for everybody who has come after us and that is a real and and and fraught choice that I think haunts us on every level of political question we have yeah I'm I'm always informed by musical lyrics as I listen to my guests Bob Dylan in 1962 at a time when the Sputnik polarity and fear of nuclear war arose had a song called Masters of War you've thrown the worst fear that can ever be hurled fear to bring children into the world for threatening my baby unborn and unnamed you ain't worth the blood that runs in your veins that fear like you said crisis is opportunity but people like Daniel Ellsberg who had done a very nice job I made a three-part series for my young scholars with him last year have talked about with the scale and size of these arsenals if these people unleash on each other we destroy the upper atmosphere and 95% of life on earth and he's not what you might call conjectural these are things that are published in nature and science magazine and there in other words the dispassionate experts in some realms of this science see the danger of nuclear war which was always hideous vis-a-vis the two places fighting but it's now a planetary destruction that makes me worry a little bit about the Taiwan Straits or Ukraine you've got all of these very very Chimaco lots of momentum in the political economy the strength of pharma and insurance making their medical care in America cost about twice what it does for everybody per capita in the OECD but being ranked by the World Health Organization is 38th in quality there are better models existing that we're not emulating and I don't I don't understand all the sources of resistance you know you mentioned the notion plutocracy and I don't understand how would I say how how you let things go down the drain while making money and when you're talking about the stakes being as high as you are nuclear war climate destruction how can you not shift gears I understand from listening to one of your earlier audio podcast that you have two children I've got four children and two grandchildren that's really something worth fighting for it is not just about money and I don't know you know there are people from my generation I mean I don't take this view but there are people from my generation people I know and respect who otherwise want children but are not having them because of the nature of the world that those children and again that's an individual choice a private choice and who knows what else may be going on there but you know and while it's not a choice I share I think it's a it's a wake-up call what kind of what does it say about our stewardship of our institutions this society the world that people are not confident it would be ethical to introduce a human being into it Dylan has a lyric in that same song let me ask you a question is your money that good will it buy you free forgiveness do you think that it could I think you will find when your death takes its toll all the money made will never buy back your soul that's that's sounds like he shares my views on philanthropy and this how you say doing good and doing well the question is doing well financially accompanied by doing good is that doing good or feeling good about your intent yeah I mean you know to I think to step back we have all these problems a lot of these problems that these they have multiple causes but a very common cause behind a lot of them is the richest and most powerful people wanting to run the society like a casino where they're the only people who win and that shows up in why we don't have health care it shows up more than a safety net they would rather not pay taxes pay what they owe it shows up in why we are so ready to go to war and so loath to make peace it shows up in the kind of you know kneecapping of Joe Biden's agenda to you know spend a lot of money protecting this country in the world against climate change and and tightening the safety net and so on and so forth and the very same plutocratic forces the billionaire class the Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk's and others of that ilk who have spent this pandemic seeing their fortunes just mushroom will do everything they can to resist any checks on their wealth and power resist anti-monopoly scrutiny resist regulation you see Elon Musk taking government money for his projects and then and then you know decrying government spending as an ingrate so on and so forth and then to your point they turn around having plundered having gut punched the state that is really the best chance the rest of us have to have something of a level playing field with them and then they turn around and they say they want to do well by doing good they actually want to help us Rob didn't you know they want to help us they want to they want to give back they want to change the world they want to make the world a better place they want to solve this problem they want to solve that problem you have Jeff Bezos not long ago donating money to create a free preschool for poor children another way to say poor children is the children of the people Jeff Bezos and people like him underpay so you build a fortune in this way where you cut every moral corner you can you underpay people if you can you underpay taxes if you can you avoid regulation you avoid antitrust scrutiny you avoid you avoid you take that surplus profits that you make doing that and pump it back into the political process a slice of it back into the political process buying donations to buy off politicians from both parties so that they don't you know catch you in Washington Post exactly you just get a newspaper if you want and then you launder your reputation using the drive-through reputational laundromat of philanthropy you start a foundation you give back and you turn yourself in the public imagination in the eyes of enough people into not only not the problem into the solution the deliverance you are now if we're gonna have racial justice in this country you are now a funder of it you are now someone racial justice organizations need to fund your efforts if we're gonna have you know new economic ideas you are someone who is gonna get a phone call to support those ideas if we're gonna have you know a kind of renewed worker social contract around work and workers and unions you're gonna be someone funding those initiatives and so you become the person kind of most at risk of being resented for deforming this society becomes the savior or at least the person people cannot pretend as you know cannot be honest about not being the savior and so it is a remarkable game they play and it's a game that I tried to expose and explain in winners take all and I will say four years later thanks to any number of you know larger forces in American life and I think above all the pandemic I think that has become much clearer to people I think the pandemic in particular made it clear to people that well literally everybody else was suffering and struggling it was this group of plutes at the top grabbing and hoarding and living living their best their best eras and that actually does give me hope that there has been more clarity around that I think the average kind of the average persons I felt this very strongly when I was writing winners take all and even talking to people about it in the aftermath of it I think the often I would encounter people very average Americans who's kind of reflexive feeling about the billionaire was not any particular one just kind of the average billionaire average person's attitudes the average billionaire was like yeah they work really hard and they're very lucky and you know they should probably like pay more their fair share but like you know like not right that they were kind of innocent until proven guilty and that they must have they must have done something right and I would say as I look at the culture now I feel like the average person's reflex on who and what a billionaire is is someone who did something personally or systemically shady to get in that situation and I and I may not be right and it'd be interesting to do opinion polling on it you know but there there has been some favorable polling already that I've seen I think there has been a real shift in how the average American conceives of their plutocratic overlords conceiving the most people who not just don't just happen to be kind of high above them but people who are high above because they're kind of standing on them and I think some of the mechanisms of standing have become clearer to people and that actually gives me quite a bit of hope there's a kind of dilemma that I've talked about with some of the other guests on this podcast which was I'll just start with in the era of FDR and others there were people who believed in markets but thought the state was always a source of inefficiency and corruption on the other side of the pendulum there were people who believed in the state and thought that you needed to with whether it's antitrust or whatever constrain concentrations of wealth and power what I saw during the Obama years with the great financial crisis and as Joe Stiglitz often said the polluters got paid in the bailout was a cynicism develop on both left and right and there was a very kind of tense situation and there was a gentleman named Stuart Zekman who I've talked to on line and on the phone but I've never met he's a musical artist in New York and he talked about how the Obama administration said we can't go back to being like FDR because nobody trusts the government and he went into the Gallup Pulse which were the source of this person's anonymous presentation I believe it was on political and he said when you read the Gallup report it's they don't trust the government because they don't think the government governs the powerful structures the plutocrats and the corporations they think that the are subordinates now and they are captured and they are accelerating amplifying the concentration it's a power and I guess where I'm going with this in a question to you is the fear of that process creates a despair because nobody thinks there's any place to go to heal things and you see people like Donald Trump getting elected saying the system is rigged and people reacting to that positively I read a essay that you wrote a little while ago and you said we live in a time in which generosity has come to function as a wingman to injustice in many cases which giving back has come to function as a wingman to taking too much and which talking about changing the world is all too often serving as a wingman for keeping your world at the top the same so that's that resistance from plutocracy but then what you recommend later in another writing is part of what I'm here to say whether you like it or not is that it is much more important in my view to make bad harder it requires doing it over people's objections it requires kicking and screaming from the owner CEOs and investors it requires doing things they hate to see to achieve a fairer society and so the question at some level is is I'm seeing this distrust in government I'm wondering what organization what institutional force or collective we can put together to create that counterbalance to the plutocratic capture and control I actually don't think that's possible I think you can't I don't think that capture of government and discrediting of government is a reason to to do an alternative to government I think you just have to take your government back okay you know it's a little bit the way I see my family when I have problems with my family I don't get another family maybe if they got really bad you got you got to fix the problems in your family because they're your family and the government is you know is us and the one of the last lines of my book is the government is us and Joe Biden's had something similar in March 2021 after he took office unlikely for you know a guy who was much more of a centrist moderate Democrat to the government is us so this right wing notion that the government is this kind of foreign occupying force in a society that is that is hostile to the interests of people that's a right wing talking point that as you say has in some ways found a certain kind of mirror image purchase on the on the left understandably which is kind of that you know if government is fully bought and paid for by the plutocrats there can be a kind of anti-government sentiment on the left as well but I think at the end of the day if we're talking about how do you deliver this country from the legacy of 400 years of racial plunder and injustice embedded in every system and fabric of this country if you're asking a question of how do you make the planet habitable or not if you're dealing with a question of how do you empower women through policy to play all of the roles they can play and want to play if you're asking a question like what does a modern safety net look like in the age of Grubhub and Uber and a kind of precariat economy if you're asking those kinds of questions the only answer the only kinds of solutions are public democratic institutional and universal solutions as the feminists said a generation ago there are no personal solutions at this time only political solutions there are no personal solutions to the precarious gig economy there are no personal solutions to climate change whatever light bulb they may be trying to sell you there are no personal solutions to the empowerment of women whatever Cheryl Sandberg might be trying to tell you would lean in while she's kind of selling most women into a into a kind of authoritarian misogynistic future so I am a deep believer in government but not in the government we happen to have today in the idea of government as the only place where we can solve the biggest problems we share because the government is us to believe in government the way I do is simply to believe in us I believe that we can come together through common institutions to solve problems the way we have in the past I believe we are not doing that very effectively right now I believe we can do it again and I think it's quite clear the obstacles to doing that which are very very powerful people who want to divide and distract us and pit us against each other and feed us with bogus information and any number of other sins make us think they you know are the are the saviors when in fact they're the trouble their motives are clear how they do it is clear and I am trying to suggest that they are only doing this they only go to the lengths to do this because they understand how absolutely dire it would be for them if we got our act together and and made government work for us made it work for most people made it serve the interests of all if that wasn't such a powerful force such a powerful mechanism for human betterment for the achievement of solidarity for the realization of democracy they wouldn't spend so much of their time and money rigging the society they're rigging for a reason they're afraid of you and you should take that seriously and do the thing they're most afraid of which is organized through democracy for a government that fights for you and everyone like you and everyone at large mm-hmm I guess one of the questions I'm often asked is how do you get an existing legislature to vote to change let's say the the role of money in politics when it is actually something that gives an incumbent an advantage relative to a challenger because they have policy to self and so there there are obstacles there's resistance in the way and being mindful of that I think is important but those are the hard you're right those are the hardest issues you know where the judge and jury are kind of the guilty party they're kind of the defendants and the judge and jury at the same time at the same time I would say you know I I do not believe on most of those issues including money in politics I don't believe it's the case that we only have a problem of the people in power not wanting to do these things you know if you were to come to me with polling data that said 99% of Americans want to get rid of money in politics right but only 40 senators out of 100 I would say okay and then there may be some issues that that you know that that fit that bill I think in the United States of America and this is often something I think the left doesn't confront as honestly as it could you know we don't just have a powerful interests problem we often have a lay people public opinion problem consciousness we have one that argument and a lot of that consciousness is is driven by those powerful actors and the media they own and the manufacturing of consent they do but it's not just that this is a as people have said a center right country it is certainly a country with a history in many in many communities in many parts of country particularly more rural regions of real esteem in anti-government feeling a real sense of like we're still trying to get rid of the king of England like that revolution is kind of never done for a lot of people that's not just the Murdoch's ginning up stuff right that's been with us very deeply for a very long time this country does have a somewhat unique history of the large numbers of people came here to get away from some other thing and the kind of people who are who were happy to like live alone in places with zero community and zero anything zero history you know they of their communities wiping out other communities that have been living there for a long time and trying to begin their own history there that was a kind of weird a weird setup that a lot of people were attracted to in Europe and so I think from the beginning this country has had this kind of rugged individualist fantasy of you know kind of grafted on to this settler colonial reality that I think goes deeper than our couple of corporations pushing a right-wing agenda they are and they're shoring that thing up but there's a very primordial American desire to be left the hell alone you know that don't tread on me flag from from the war of independent that that's it right I mean like is that because in the years ago or slogan from the American Revolution right every school room in the world is repeating that year after year for our children it's it's in bake it's baked in by the time you're a young adult and perhaps when you're anxious as a young adult I'm always citing the book of the late Jane Jacobs called Dark Age Ahead it was the last book she wrote published in 2004 and she said we have to worry about when it when we are credentializing not educating because people are so afraid they're not becoming citizens they're not trying to understand the scope of the possible they're trying to conform to get a job and I'm curious what you think as a parent of young children regarding what do you hope for them to have and what would you like to see in the education system as we're growing the next generation of I mean I think the biggest the biggest concern I have with them is is just the world we are leaving them overall feels indefensible I and my I have a seven-year-old who's old enough to understand the ways in which we are leaving him an indefensible world he's starting to you know ask about whether we have a gasoline car or an electric car and why one or why the other he's he's old enough to be puzzled by a lot of the choices that adults seem to make I mean he was born in 2015 so the kind of a grave authoritarian threat either being kind of on the margins or in power or looking off stage has been the kind of you know dominant message of his lifetime I mean my daughter was born in 2018 and effectively has not been conscious outside of a pandemic and so you know she neither of them really remembers life without masks neither of them remembers you know a kind of moment in which voting was not you know is this like the end of the Republic or not so I I often think about with them is this the kind of moment that we can bend in a direction that will kind of redeem adults in their mind and their friends minds because right now I think we're you know we're failing them and it is not clear to me that that my fellow parents out there many large numbers of them have any intention of making this the kind of world the kind of country that their children would be proud of them for yes let me share something with you because my children were born in 2010 and 2012 it's gonna be 2029 and 2012 and so they're 12 and 9 now but when my oldest of these two was I guess nine years old and just as background Naomi Klein and her husband Avi Lewis are friends of the family and she my daughter was very inspired by Greta Thunberg and so forth but she's nine years old I took her to the climate strike about three weeks later I held a board meeting of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and afterwards couple of board members came over to dinner who know my daughter and we talked about climate change my daughter went quiet went to bed next day didn't talk when I drove her to school which is very uncharacteristic and at the end of her second hour I got something sent on a text which is a poem that she wrote during her study hall what is everything by Sarah what is everything is it all essence or is it all answers is there more why am I all covered up never seeing past or present or future is it all an illusion why is it all collapsing destroyed all those lives not knowing will we ever know wow I was haunted the nine-year-old child would feel that kind of weight because some of what I thought were outstanding thinkers people like John Paul who's at Berkeley and Drummond Pike who founded the Tides Foundation were at this dinner she knew them from summer times and holidays and stuff but she was so haunted when we talked about climate change having done the climate strike and not seeing anything that was a real wake-up call to me in the sense that I felt like I'm I'm in this pathway in my own career and so forth but that's the awareness of disorientation by a nine-year-old child was they as that home beautifully made clear they know what we are up to and they know what we're not up to and I think they feel and you there's a lot of mental health data to back this up I think they feel very acutely this young generation our failure to leave them a half a decent world and I don't it's very hard to appeal to people who are on the other side of these issues of climate and and economic injustice etc because people feel so immovable but even if you don't come at these issues from a policy or ideological perspective in the place I do I think it's very important for people to realize that their children will not respect them for the world they left their children yes if these trends continue because unfortunately if you're a climate denier on the right you don't get to opt out of your kids suffering from climate change it just means you don't believe in it and your kid will one day lose a house they may lose a house and you know a few years they may lose a house in 40 years when you're long gone but your kids are gonna suffer from climate change whether or not you believe in reality and they're gonna think of you they're gonna think of you they're gonna think of how you used to watch Fox News all the time and rant about the climate hoax and they're gonna think of you as their house is burning or as the water is coming in through the windows and they're gonna resent you they might even hate you for contributing to a world in which that kind of violence was possible on them yes and I think millions and millions of people need to really reckon with apart from the ideology of this why do you bother to lovingly coach your children for Little League and make sure their mask is over their nose and make sure they go to the best school they can get to if on the macro through your politics you are sending them into a world that essentially has no space for their flourishing mm-hmm yeah what is the point of catching a ball well on a planet you can't live on and I think a lot of parents are gonna need to reckon with that not like it's like parents it's like teaching them how to kayak and then have them go over a waterfall it's it's not it doesn't call our teaching about a kayak and and voting for there to be a world without rivers yeah yeah the an interesting dimension of this you know you're talking I think about a core of what's wholesome and good in America when people seem to be what you might call following the sarin songs of temptation of plutocracy but one of the other dramas that's taking place now is what I'll call the realm of Asian geopolitics where people like Orwell shell have written the Cartesian enlightenment way of seeing and the Eastern philosophy Taoism and Hindu and Buddhism and so forth are in conflict and China which was wounded by the opium Wars Japanese invasion is trying to regain I won't call it unilateral leadership but at least front row partnership and a man named Kishore Mabubani has just released a book called Asia 21st century and he essentially says in a chapter called democracy versus plutocracy with the Eastern philosophy which has a little bit more of a flavor of accepting uncertainty and common good than the individualism model and individual freedom like you were referring to that from our founding experience in America we trumpet but it it gets to the place where Mabubani says do you have a republic of by and for the 1% and how do you expect other countries want to get in line and follow that given the number of people in prisons given the problems in schools the given the concentration of wealth given what the pandemic is revealed and given the failures in climate change I thought it was fascinating for him to which you might call ask the same kind of questions about the moral fabric of the society that you and I are exploring in the context of our children in terms of what is the comparative magnet that people want to aspire to and at the same time I just saw a film called Ascension which was the grand prize winner at the Tribeca Film Festival where a woman from China really made a very hard and cold film about what's happening to people who are all becoming subservient to plutocracy within China is that really economic development so it seems like there's an awful lot of cards on the table for what I'll call reshuffling or reorganizing at this place all over the world and I think part of what you're raising to go back to the beginning of the conversation is the question of standing the United States I think has a desire to be in conversations like what is the best system of government in the world I mean there's a lot of shy timid countries out there they have their system they have their way but they don't they don't talk about it much they don't try to spread it they don't have institutes promoting it they just are who they are you know Bulgaria is who Bulgaria is Bulgaria is not trying to make anybody else like Bulgaria it's just being Bulgaria is enough for Bulgaria well we're not like that we think we have something to say to the world we think that our system is a better system and China it is worth saying I don't think at any moment you could look at the Soviet Union and say you know as an outsider to that this is providing a real question of whether liberal democracy is a better system or not but I think the rise of China has been a much more powerful challenge to the hegemony of liberal democratic society and I'll say why from a kind of more personal point of view I think the real comparison with China is not the United States which is a very rich highly successful imperial power you know I think it's India India is right next to China was in a very similar place in the 1970s both very poor countries mostly rural agrarian and if you look at the trajectories of and India basically went on the American model liberal democracy universal suffering in a way it did universal suffrage before getting rich in the way the United States did not you know raucous messy decentralized heavily federalized democracy and China did it through in a kind of authoritarian system and I'm still a deep partisan for democracy but if you look at that experiment what the Chinese have done for human dignity and living standards and the kind of scourges of disease and want in their country I think is a real challenge to those of us who would say doesn't matter what the consequences are always go with democracy I was a reporter in India for several years I have seen and I've also spent time reporting in China I have seen those villages in India where you are lucky if you escape all the way to your first birthday right they have eliminated problems like that in China to a great degree I have seen the places in India where there's just really no elementary education the Chinese really had an educational revolution focusing on primary school whereas India really focus on higher education to cultivate a kind of more educated elite and so while I will always defend a liberal democratic order over any alternative I think those of us who want to do that it's gotten harder with the challenge China has posed with the contrast with places like India like the United States that are nominally liberal democratic but have strayed so far from the actual practice of those values institutions that it kind of makes the Chinese alternative look good to a lot of countries around the world that used to be a much clearer choice for a lot of places for you see it now in a lot of places in Africa and Latin America it's not a clear choice they look at these models and it's not just the money in power it's not just Chinese buying them bridges and building stadiums and it is that but it is also the model right it is looking at an India and looking at a China as a as an African head of state and and making an honest choice about where you want to see your country in 20 years and we are not helping by be fouling our own democracy such as it is every day we are we are whispering into the ear of every aspiring autocrat or wannabe autocrat or fair-minded leader of a poor country that maybe you should try their way right because we have lost our own and so the conversation that we normally have within this country about democracy and strengthening institutions and inequality I think it's just important to remind people that is also a global conversation if we don't really have standing as the United States to defend the idea of liberal democracy because we're not even really adhering to it ourselves the world starts to look very very dark and there are real forces in Russia and China elsewhere who are very happy to step in and offer a kind of Beijing consensus model to counter the Washington one and that is I think something that has kind of century-long consequences potentially yeah I about two and a half years ago I was invited to the Swedish consulate in New York for our luncheon and all of these people Swedish economists and former government officials some of whom I knew really were putting it there weren't too many Americans there and they really put it on me and they said in Sweden we love the robots because we see the potential but we also know that when there's a transformation of how we produce things to make things better or more efficient people will have health care people will have pensions they will get adjustment assistance and they are members of the society so you have a very large consensus within Sweden about what you do for the common good in order to achieve the most productive and vital society and economy you can have and then they went on about and you're watching the power of Donald Trump this was put just before the year or so before the election and you're seeing in America people are terrified of automation machine learning what happened to places like Detroit and Cleveland and recently somebody brought to my attention that I had written something about this and then Peter Goodman who wrote the book Dobblesman had written an article called we love the robots about the character of the characteristics of the Scandinavian collective transfers in order to make change and how it was absent in America and it was very how would I say haunting to me when somebody came to me and said people in West Virginia now which is not a big group of people but they're the coal miners are saying look at what they did to the Midwest in manufacturing you all talk in climate change now nobody's gonna help us we're gonna be losers we're gonna resist it and as you've emphasized several times we can't afford to resist climate change and I always said that Joe Manchin seems to be blocking everything it would be nice if he had a positive vision of something he could construct to make transformational assistance of the state of West Virginia which is his home state and set a new example for America that could be a very constructive element within the Democratic Party but we just don't seem to be getting off the launching pad of transformation that is inclusive and I think again going back to the point about organizing this is a problem of people like Joe Manchin but I think we fetishize these handful of obstructionist leaders and kind of treat them as alibis for much deeper deeper problems I don't think we have actually won these arguments among ourselves right and I mean that in an optimistic way there's potential that portray something like Medicare for all is being overwhelmingly popular with people but for our leaders I actually don't think that's true I think of very large number of regular people in this country incorrectly fear universal healthcare as kind of socialized medicine but to me that's optimistic because that's an argument we got to have I don't think we've won them over I think we need to but I don't think we've done that work and it is work and similarly on climate it's not just the oil companies blocking that's a very big part of the story and they're ginning up all this fake stuff but you know there is a genuine view out in the country of the being left alone by central authorities telling you what to do is the highest form of human existence and we gotta we gotta argue with those people we got to talk to them we have to play some things they believe against other things they believe we can't just say Joe Manchin Joe Manchin Joe Manchin in a way that lets us off as if we've done all the work to lay the groundwork of these changes except one guy we haven't we haven't done that work and it's very important to do that work and not let yourself off the hook


This, it is time for us to move on to our first panel discussion. We've got the business leaders round table and they're going to be talking about building brands that Bharat Trust businesses do not need to spend too much money acquiring new customers. All they need to do is a plan. So this session shows how to optimize your marketing budget to increase a profit margins and make your brand that Bharat Trust. While we're getting the stage ready for our panel discussion, I'm going to be taking the liberty of introducing to you all our panelists and our moderator. So please do give them a huge round of applause once they join us on stage. Well, the session is going to be moderated by our moderator, Aftab Naqwida, Group CEO of Gozoop and we're going to be having our panel members shortly joining us. First up, we're going to have Ashwinder R Singh, CEO, Residential Bhaltia Urban. We've got Mr. K.R. Nagarajan, Chairman Ramraj Kottan who's going to be also joined by his son who's the CEO of Ramraj Kottan, Arun Ishwar. We've got Mr. Utsav Malhotra, COO of Noise. We've got Mr. Rishi Sharma, VP of Bedinath and we've got Mr. Chai Bhuvan, the partner digital of Deloitte. So with this, we're going to be shortly once we have all our chairs being placed on the stage. But meanwhile, we hope you all are having a great time and do keep tweeting about the event. Do let the word go out. Of course, we'd love the shares of all these learnings to reach as much of audiences possible beyond this room. So while we have the stage getting ready, so just allow us a moment while we get it ready to be on the stage. Meanwhile, thank you all once again for joining us and we're going to be once again announcing the moderator and our panelists, our moderator being Aftab Naakwi, the group CEO of Gozoop. We've got our panelists, Mr. Shwinder Arsingh, CEO, Residential Bharatiya Urban. We've got Mr. K.R. Nagarajan, Chairman, Ramraj Kottan, who's going to be also joined with his son, Arun Ishwar, CEO of Ramraj Kottan, who's going to be helping in the translating. We've got Mr. Utsav Malhotra, COO of Noise. We've got Mr. Rishi Sharma, VP of Bedinath. And we've got Mr. Chheb, who are the partner, Digital Deloitte. So with this, as we can see the stage shortly being ready, we're going to be just requesting one by one our panelists and our moderator to join us. So ladies and gentlemen, with a huge round of applause, first up could we have our moderator, Aftab Naakwi, Group CEO, Gozoop, to please join us. Thank you so much. We'd give it a liberty to choose a table for yourself, a chair whichever you'd like, being in the center. We've got seven of you, so I believe a center would work perfectly for you. So while we have, of course, our moderator, Aftab Naakwi, Group CEO, Gozoop. I just shortly request Mr. Ashwinder Arsing, CEO, Residential Bharati Urban, to kindly join us. Ladies and gentlemen, a huge, huge round of applause for Mr. Ashwinder Arsing, CEO, Residential Bharati Urban. As we've got our two dignitaries on the stage, I'm going to be taking the liberty of now calling upon Mr. K. R. Nagarajan, Chairman, Ramraj Kottan, who's also going to be accompanied with his son, Arun Nishwa, CEO, Ramraj Kottan. A huge, huge round of applause for both our gentlemen for joining us, the Chairman and the CEO of Ramraj Kottan. Thank you so much for your valuable time. With this, I'd now like to, along with your applause, ladies and gentlemen, call upon Mr. Utsav Malhotra. He's delayed a little. Okay, he's going to be joining us shortly. We're going to be now, okay, perfect. Mr. Utsav Malhotra, CEO of Noise. Could we have a huge round of applause? And if I can just say, could we have some noise for him? Yes, certain funds will keep coming, and I hope the brands appreciate on that. Well, with this, we're going to be having Mr. Rishi Sharma, VP, Bedenath, if you could have the honor of having him on stage. Ladies and gentlemen, a huge, huge round of applause. And I'd now like to take the honor of calling Mr. Jeb, who our partner, Digital Deloitte, to now join us. Ladies and gentlemen, a huge, huge round of applause, please. As well as our stage is set, it is time for me to pass on the live bait into our moderator. It's going to be a tough task ahead of us to take forth with this glorious panel of yours. Over to you. Great. Thank you very much. A very warm welcome to everyone present here. Mr. Elvi Christian just shared some very valuable insights as to how the contribution of SMBs to ADEX is increasing. What looked even more promising is the growth over the next four years. And for me personally, it was a contribution of digital and how that is growing as a percentage of the total ADEX. We're very interesting to know that, in fact, our country is the ninth fastest growing market for digital advertising spends in the world. And that is also growing extremely, extremely fast. Today we'll deep dive a bit further and with all the fantastic panelists that we have here, we're going to get deeper into figuring out strategies as to what they're using to acquire customers more effectively and efficiently in a connected world in Bharat. We'll also be asking them about questions as to how they're optimizing their marketing spends, how the skewers happen for them over the years, especially in the past 24 months. And most importantly, we'll be asking them as to how they're truly building a brand that Bharat loves. So with that, a very warm welcome to all the panelists here once again. Before we deep dive into the questions, I think it's important to just mention that the past 24 months have been challenging for a lot of people. But while the challenges were there, there were also a lot of opportunities. And the brands that really took these opportunities are the ones which zoomed ahead and today possibly are becoming the pride of our nation. With that, let me get in Rishi into the conversation. Rishi, in the past 24 months, we have seen that consumers have become more and more mindful about their health and being more concerned about it. How has that really impacted Bedinath as a business and what have you done to navigate that? Thank you, Aftab. That was a great question. So definitely the consumers have realized that their health and wellness is of utmost importance and they want to learn more about it. They want to read up more about it. It actually led us to have a complete digital transformation within the organization, whether it comes to the consumer-facing side or it is the company-facing side. Consumer-facing side, especially at D2C website, which was primarily more of information-giving, had to be really revamped to provide the right information that the consumers were looking for. They were looking for specific details on specific products, specific details on raw materials, specific details for specific ailments. We, as an Ayurvedic house, had to provide that information to the consumers and ensure that the right information reaches them. At the same time, we also had to revamp our complete digital presence so that they could reach us in the right way no matter where they start up from. So whether that's social media integration, whether that's SEO, whether it's linking our website to our various other channels. So ensuring that the consumer had a very easy journey to reach the right information that they were looking for and also to provide a seamless experience for them to actually purchase the products online because as we are aware, during lockdown, during the past 24 months, e-com sales were actually boosted a lot and we wanted to ensure that the consumer was able to get those products in the right way, in the fastest way and be able to buy the right product for themselves. So that complete digital transformation actually helped us provide the right guidance and the right products to our audience in the past 24 months. Rishi, I'm gonna come back to the point you made about e-commerce and D2C and I would be interested to know more about how you're leveraging D2C in Bharat but I'll come to that in a moment. Let me take the same question to Mr. Nagarajan. Mr. Nagarajan, for your company, how did COVID impact? And how did you navigate that entire thing? Did you do anything differently? You can speak in Tamil and then you can talk. Good afternoon to all. My name is Nagarajan, Founder and Chairman, Ramraj Gattan. Our total business in traditional wear of dhoti and the COVID time, we are man-featuring mask and supplied to whole South India. Tamil is really tough. It's a disaster. In the COVID time, in our company, we didn't tell anyone that we don't have a job. We gave the criteria permission to ask for mask. We made the mask and gave the market and the whole South India. No one took a job for that. Even though we were close to our roots, good afternoon everyone basically what he's saying is during the COVID times we never took a pessimistic view first thing what we did was that we decided that we are going to pay everybody the salary and we did not have a single layoff so that was a very positive intent that he had he said that I'm not going to do any of such decisions and he also saw COVID as an opportunity he didn't see that yet nearly 200 stores all those stores were closed but he never again took it in a negative way what he did was he tried to build the e-commerce site so within two months we saw our e-commerce site actually increase in volume by 100 times not by just a few percentages 100 times the volume grew and further what he did was he he had a lot of stock of fabrics so he wanted to actually you know utilize them and create masks and I don't know how many people from South India are here but in South India if you go to any temple in Tirupati or anywhere you will only see Ram Rathmas it's such a dominant position in the market because the main reason is his whole mantra was first positivity and affordability those two things is what he showed to the consumers and automatically consumers embraced it and what he wanted to say was in that financial year the COVID financial year also the business grew by 25 percent we never actually had any sales degrowth in that in spite of having four months our entire stores not operating lovely positivity and affordability great mantras for success let me take this to itself would serve past 24 months would have been very disruptive for your organization and how did you really navigate and made the best out of the situation so noise those who may not know is a smart wearables business and for us COVID had a very different impact the last 24 months almost certainly assured that India woke up to monitoring health which was let's say two years ago a case of us educating the consumer today it was more a benefits approach to be migrated the funnel dramatically where the consumers were willing to accept but more proactively come and ask for a product that existed for us I think it was a huge learning experience to adapt and I think I don't think it was a disruptor I think it was really an opportunity for businesses to reorient themselves take a step back and not be caught in the rigmarole of the daily chores and the business is usual operations that we kind of surround ourselves with for us I think what was a revelation was that we managed to connect with our consumers a lot closely we engage in weekly zoom call focus groups of sorts with our consumers to take insights and those insights translated into products that we'd never done before new use cases started emerging where consumers basically said you know what we are at home and now the battery life needed on a an earbud is a lot higher because the work from home need has has changed how we're using the product stuff like now that we are at home we need noise cancellation because you are surrounded by 20 other people and therefore a solve is needed so when we actually did that I think not only were we serving a solution for the consumer I think the result was in how the sales translated noise today is not only India's number one smart watch brand and we've been so in the last seven quarters on the trot we are now in the basic smart watch category the number one brand in a pack and number three globally and for a homegrown brand to put India on the global map during this period I think is no mean feat most importantly our business grew 240% we registered profits the employee fold grew by almost 100% and we did all of this whilst remaining bootstrapped so I think for us it was a blessing lovely there's a way to go what's up you mentioned a lot of things including how you're getting insights from your customers and I think that was a very interesting way to do it but you also mentioned about work from home and will be interesting to understand how work from home has impacted the real estate industry so Ashwinder how is code impacted and work from home becoming mainstream did that impact in any manner your potential customers thank you actually just to give everyone a brief introduction Bhartya city is now India's largest integrated township around 150 acres of development our concept always was that it is a city within a city and at core design was an important aspect so a lot of focus was there on design we have now six thousand families staying there and somehow you know we always felt that home is not just the four walls but it is what inside those four walls and what is outside that four walls and how do you design how do you kind of design something which is 700 square feet but looks like thousand square feet because we've seen a lot of 1500 square feet it's looking like thousand square feet and as we say roti kapra Makhan this is a very sensitive subject and real estate went through the toughest phase in the last decade however COVID had a brilliant and COVID was very unfortunate but it had a brilliant impact on the millennials because that was the segment which was always talking about the shared economy and suddenly home became a very important aspect of it because of work from home and the time that was being spent on home spent in home like in Mumbai because most of the people in the family were working they would leave in the morning and come back in the evening so a home was mostly to be spent during weekends and and to sleep at night but this completely changed so the sales in the last two years overall in the residential sector which is 85% of the total real estate in India have been dramatically high very positive the millennials which is in the age group of 28 to 35 are the biggest segment that have been buying and that requirement of an extra space in the home became very important that is why they wanted to move from a rental home to your own home so work from home actually is now they say you know it's like an hybrid because it will always have some segment of the working economy working from home and they're also talking about a third space now which is neither the home nor the office but somewhere in between so that is also emerging but covered most of the developers reinvented themselves were developers with lot of brand equity it differentiated men from the boys most of the debt in the real estate sector went away in the last two years if you want to go and buy or ready to move in apartment say for example in Mumbai you might not get it today you might have to buy it on resale and not from the developer because there aren't any because everything is sold the requirement of debt from the banking world and the financial services world from developers has reduced drastically so COVID has really turned around the related sector which was going through the worst part in the previous decade so that's how it is great I should there will be very interesting to know later possibly how you mentioned about millennials how did you go about attracting them but I'll come to that in a moment let me get Jay into the conversation Jay you've been advising working with multiple brands clients how have you helped them navigate during COVID and post-COVID times great I think at Deloitte we have been fortunate enough to be part of many success stories or over a long period of time during COVID when we when we looked at most of our clients coming to us most of the brands coming to us the fundamental theme that tied the outcome of their success during COVID time was the why behind their brand communicating in your channel communicating with new product services packaging and delivery and even all things around your product is all of which when the ethos and why you exist if that is consistently represented because that's the soul of your business most companies spend time in getting them yeah most companies got that right during COVID the ones who could not fell behind the ones who are able to utilize their messaging consistently across this and it required a lot of foundational capabilities within the organization and I I think most brands which leapfrogged had some sort of digital capabilities in their organizations. Jayal stay with you for a moment are there any marketing strategies that really stand out for you or possibly any platform which is not the usual platform that your clients use to reach out to Bharat and to really acquire customers would you like to share any example of that. We always say when you buy your platform you can only achieve parity but you have to differentiate yourself that's where your uniqueness your co-competencies needs to come into the come into the play there isn't a silver bullet what we have seen many organizations do and and quite intelligently they've been using the influencers who are not the famous ones but who have the potential in a local market and we saw the TAM report in the in the early part of the presentation turning influencers into creators was one very strong theme for the SMP brands that we worked with and we observed the second thing that stood out was spending time and energy in first party data especially for the direct-to-consumer brands where third party cookies are systematically going away it's a matter of time in in two years time you wouldn't have access to those imagine if you were to start only then and say how do I create a virtuous cycle where better services are offered to my customer when in return I get the better profile of my customer having all of those strategies in place you're not gonna get it right first time but but having small initiatives and moving the needle is very very important okay so leveraging influences as creators also leveraging first-party data making better sense out of it great strategies Jeff Jeff would you like to sorry Rishi would you like to add something to it and also tell us that when you leverage e-commerce to really connect with Bharat what are the marketing strategies that you really deployed and how did it really help sure so bad not has always been more focused on their traditional Ayurvedic medicines which we always felt was more popular on the GT segment and our focus on advertising had always been on GT you know traditional print media radio digital was barely 5 percent of our advertising spends but during COVID we realized that there was an audience in on the digital platforms as well on the digital stage who were interested in Ayurvedic products who were interested in knowing about these Ayurvedic products reading about them and they were more comfortable in ordering them say from marketplace or from the direct website of the brand and who are not really interested in going out to a store say to a chemist or a general store to buy that product and they would always compare products before buying and see whether it actually fulfills their needs and their requirements and Rishi this was not in tier one tier two cities this was in this was in Bharat across India exactly so Delhi Bombay aside we also had to go down to tier three tier four cities and we saw that the same trend actually followed there where the consumer actually wanted knowledge he wanted information and then they would want to compare and buy the right brand the right product for themselves whether it fulfills their needs or not so we realized that we had to also become the information provider and the the person who would actually help them make that decision to ensure that they get the right product and the right ingredients in that so we really pushed our own D2C website by giving them you know a lot of the required information there we'd also leverage social media a lot because especially in say tier two tier three towns Facebook YouTube these are a lot more popular especially with the younger audience and they use it as a medium to say consume data or to sort of like you know browse through videos or photos and as mentioned earlier we use use a lot of video ads then display ads and that actually like helped us grab a lot of share of that audience which helped us drive sales towards our website and during the first lockdown phase itself we saw an 800 percent growth on our D2C website which we had saw continue on for the next two years and just by that organic sort of you know audience that we were gaining through our social media we achieve that and then we started off more on the inorganic front by playing doing display ads and other advertising so I guess for us the key part was getting that organic audience initially who were genuinely looking for a product and we were just there to show to give the right product the right time to them and leveraging that and then using that base to reach the audience who are also looking for a similar sort of product helped us drive that sales to like look like audiences you would have used to leverage that as well to in addition to just two points of influencer and first-party data I think two valuable points here from Rishi one was in making sure that when someone is looking out for you your digital hygiene is in place and you're discoverable mapping the entire customer journey and possibly video ads which is really helped you. Ashwinder would you like to add something to that you mentioned about millennials and attracting them what are the kind of strategies that Bhartya Urban has used? See one of the things that work beautifully well for us was that people wanted to you know either walk to work or they now want to walk to retail hospitality so the second Leela hotel has come up in Bhartya city we have the largest mall of Bengaluru which is in north Bangalore and all of this started playing very well for us and suddenly we saw a spike not just by advertising our homes but advertising what an integrated township offers you so you know you could we saw a lot of people on their calls while walking in our walking in the park or you know just the family was having their picnic and the guy you know just on a distant was was working so the millennials because because the distance from work to home kind of blurred because you are working from home and people wanted to they were not really worried how much distance they have to travel so they wanted to be in an integrated township and that is where the millennials which was the incremental segment that gave that you know positive blip to real estate started looking out and the way we reached out to them is because real estate is a B2B2C kind of an industry in India you know you hardly have clients buying a home directly because they have their own brokers either institutional or neighborhood brokers so our focus was more on training the the channel partners giving them the USPs of what an integrated township offers making them you know just tell a story that how it is going to help the millennials if they kind of shifted to to to an integrated township and obviously we had an advantage because we didn't have competition and the channel partners then started selling quite a bit because the standalone societies weren't doing as well because the moment people had an option that they had a mall and they had a hotel and they had a great school and suddenly from 4,000 families in the last two years we are now 6,000 families so we connected directly through display ads and through video ads so that the end consumer also gets to know about Bhartya city but lot of focus was on the B2B segment where we did lot of marketing and and and to our surprise something as basic as communication through WhatsApp did wonders for us because it was a very focused segment that we wanted to train and educate and tell them what the benefits for an end consumer to stay in an integrated township is always in a standalone you know residential society. Ashwinar I've been reading a bit about Bhartya urban and what really stands out for me is design. Do you think that design played a role in also attracting millennials somewhere? You know it's it's it's something we are very proud of what happened our pitch to the architect was that our chairman's pitch to the architect was that a 680 square feet apartment should give a feel of a 800 square feet apartment and there were architects across the globe working on it because we kind of spoke to and kind of hired you know seven eight architects just on the design aspect and finally what came out was that we created a concept of Bay windows so the window got extended by a foot and that's that design suddenly made a 650 680 odd square feet apartment because in India we have to understand affordability is key you know just to give you a perspective of top the input prices in real estate have gone up by 40 to 50 percent which is steel cement etc this is the only country in the universe where the demand has gone up the input prices have gone up and supply is less because you can't create supply overnight but the prices have not gone up because because the segment or the buyer does not want to kind of there is no scope for the affordable majority mid segment to increase his or her budget so that is where the design element so we created this in Nicu Homes where we had Bay windows in every bedroom where people could spend time with their kids read a book you know watch a web series and that has created a cascading positive impact on our design element and we are now again working on design to see how can we keep on innovating and providing the best to the end consumer because now home has become a big necessity and this demand is going to be quite sustainable at least for the coming decade yeah okay Rishi mentioned about customer journey you added to it with design which plays a very important role in conversions let me take you to Mr. Nagarajan I'm aware that you have substantial marketing budgets in the past 12 months or so and since you mentioned about e-commerce has your marketing budget optimized maybe from print radio more towards digital how have you gone about attracting customers last two years first covid-time level 20% growth of the in the second year look at 50% growth of the business budget number budget room but it would be just a little bit business quarrel what he's saying is that the last two years after the onset of covert the marketing budgets came down traditionally what we were spending pre covert you're only spending 20 to 25% but that did not have any impact on sales because we were already an established brand one thing he failed to add I'll just add on to it is that there in terms of the ad mix you were traditionally before covert we were mostly spending on traditional mediums now print television radio there's the fourth medium in the south which is called wall painting which is not discussed here you want to the pioneers in that but post covert we didn't make a shift in our strategy we were more embracing digital because we noticed that most of our consumers post 2017 when Geo came on board many people were starting to have smartphones and most of our traditional customers were entering the digital space and we also found the ROAs to be much better there so we did increase our budgets in digital but overall our marketing spent was reduced in the last two years compared to what we were doing before covert but our established brand presence in the south helped us in retaining our market share okay great what about you how is the marketing mix looking like at noise so I'll keep it brief but the fact is that I just want to add a dimension where for SMBs or the D2C startups especially in our case when you're a bootstrap business you have to operate with frugality marketing monies are always less you have to make the most of them as a consequence the focus on digital performance advertisement where ROI and ROAs are the holy grail so to say end up being key but I think one needs to constantly have an eye on who you are speaking to and the where and the what kind of emerge from that you start choosing platforms you start getting the messaging right if you have the right eye on who the consumer is and if businesses can actually decode that and get a grip of it I think there are more and enough platforms that do justice today okay Mr. Nagarajan had mentioned about positivity and affordability as is mantra who sir what is your mantra at noise I think for us optimization is the mantra where for every dollar spent unless there is a return attached we kind of blackwallet so we are very very conscious about the money that we spend for us the mantra truly lies in the lifetime value of the consumer and if we can get him back to be able to justify the cost of acquisition and that's that's been the success for us okay great LTV and optimization is with itself Jai what about you if there was a one line mantra what is your one line mantra I would say let your why decide your what let the why decide the what okay Rishi what about you check oh you always believed listen to your consumer you know bed not being a hundred-year-old brand we hello yes sorry so we feel that it's a part of our responsibility to listen to them and give them exactly what they need and that has helped us in the last hundred years okay listening to them Ashwinder what about you see we have always we want the consumer to move away from this square feet discussion of carpet versus super and look at a home in its complete entirety and for us design is at the core of everything and we want to deliver happiness which is worked very well for us great that's the communication we do lovely lovely fantastic great insight thank you very much I'm just gonna leave you with my one line mantra which in fact is the line from Sanskrit which says Sarvam para wasm Dukham Sarvam Atma wasm Sukham and possibly this is the best call to action to Atman Irbar which it simply means that if everything is in someone else's control you'll be unhappy and if things are in your control you'll be happy right so with that I'll just conclude this entire panel discussion and hope that we keep building brands which do not only build trust in loyalty in Bharat but also take Bharat ahead thank you everyone thank you very much thank you ladies and gentlemen a huge round of applause for all our panelists thank you so much and may I request Mr. Navala Hoja to kindly join us to give away the mementos to our panelists so ladies and gentlemen let the applause continue they've given us their valuable time and their keen knowledge and experience while sharing the anecdotes today it's an incredible day and once again a big big thank you to all our panelists ladies and gentlemen let the applause continue and with this if we may request you all to just step a little ahead and if we can have a group photograph would you like to step a little ahead yes so all of you can be in one frame Mr. Hoja yes thank you ladies and gentlemen a huge huge round of applause what an incredible final discussion this has turned out to be and once again a big thank you to all our panelists for their expertise thank you


the start now. The other speakers have really got me thinking creatively which I think is the purpose of the conference to get people sort of inspiring each other. To share your story, to share your own passion with others and hopefully you learn from others and you rub some of your own enthusiasm on to others. I think it's been great being in the darkness. What struck me was every place that I went to to see these telescopes the astronomers and cosmologists are in search of a certain kind of silence whether it's silence from radio pollution or light pollution and it was very obvious that if we destroy these silent places on earth we will be stuck on a planet without the ability to look outwards because we will not be able to understand the signals that come from outer space. Thank you. The power to change the world inside each person in the room is the single most powerful device known to man and that's an idea. An idea can create a movement and it can rewrite our future. The technology and and so you know I've seen that so but this is this is great the local innovations I think those for me were some of the most powerful. This is a police photo that's actually my car and the situation is that a car full of paramedics on their way home from the hospital after work have run across the wreckage and they've advised the police that there are no survivors inside the car that the driver's dead that I'm dead. I'm still kind of speechless right now from the sessions that just happened we're just so inspiring that I was pulling out a pencil and writing down notes. I must say it's a very different conference of the usual ones and as I said interacting with people has been the highlight so far. Timeless. Timeless. That is very very important.   This is how my grandma would tell it. She'd go no Linda. There is a vampire named the Aswang from the Philippines. It's a lady vampire. At night she takes her legs off. She flies over to our house.  I mean everybody in the audience is just as interesting as the people on stage so there's a sort of equality where everybody wants just wants to meet each other and share ideas. I'll be back I know that. Yeah as we say in America hit the ball out of the park it's been great.