Indian Brands Are Winning on Design, Quality and Competitiveness Globally Says FCB CEO Dheeraj Sinha

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Thank you so much for joining me. We're going to talk about a few things. We're going to talk about how do you take Indian brands which are growing and maturing and developing overseas. Were they always ready for it? Do they become ready for it by the virtue of attributing or bringing in those brand aura and so on? And the second part is what is the organisation of today, an advertising organisation of today, that drives this or takes this or helps you do this? So we'll talk about both. So let's talk about brands. And you were telling me in our conversation earlier that this is an interesting time. You've spent the last 20 years or so bringing overseas brands into India and then building them, you know, connecting them with Indian audiences and consumers. Now you're doing the reverse. So tell us about what it takes.

I think a couple of things have happened, right? A, the state of the economy, consumer, the way we are looking at our own quality has changed, right? I would say about two decades ago, our brands as well lived with a sense of inferiority, right?

We never thought we were as good. We never thought we could be as good, right? In some categories which were quintessentially Indian, say Khadi, Yoga, Ayurveda, we had that confidence.

But even there, what we sold for was the Indian rawness. What we sold for was the authenticity of India, so to say. So it did not need the global practises in manufacturing, packaging, marketing that other categories did, right?

To my mind, the biggest shift today, Govind, is that in categories where we did not get natural credit, where we were one notch lower than global brands. So there would be Indian brands and there would be international brands, say automotive, say mobile phones, you know, say two wheelers, you know, categories such as these or say single malls, right? Where you had to be global, to be sexy, to be on the table.

There, India is winning. Indian brands are winning. The principles of marketing are a little different.

So you're not selling, say, a Mahindra automotive globally, saying it's Indian. Or you're not selling Hero globally, saying it's an Indian brand. You're selling it on the global merit, right?

And that, to my mind, is a big inflexion point because in terms of design, in terms of marketing, in terms of packaging, I think India has now come of age. It's a change at the level of how our leaders are thinking in business. The new age entrepreneurs is a change in the way our talent is working, right?

Say Amul, for example, now going global with a tie-up to America, looking at Europe. But it's not going there as an Indian brand alone. It's going there on the merit of the cooperative society.

Model has got the product quality, building its own differentiator. So competitiveness from India is a big departure of this decade, I would say. And the idea is world class in India and world class from India.

So when you say a brand is now pushing ahead or forging ahead on its merit, I'm talking about an Indian brand. So does that mean that the Indianness is not being projected deliberately or, yeah.

Well, in most cases, in these categories, we would not project Indianness, right? So the way we're selling is not a country of origin. Unlike, say, in a khadi or a yoga, we would sell country of origin.

What matters is the country of origin matters. Here, we are selling on global excellence. We are selling on the products.

They are world class. They are sexy. In fact, if you look at Amul, they launched a six SNF product in America.

It is doing very well. And America is a 3.5 SNF market. It's a low fat content market.

They went on a limb. They differentiated their product. And it's doing so well.

So it's being competitive in that market, sourcing locally, being competitive in the market, using your... I think what's also helping us is that about, say, two to three decades of building, manufacturing, designing, innovating for one billion people, right? That muscle has helped us build products, categories, models, which can now be tested on six billion audience, right? And I think that's beginning to kick in as well.

So let me ask you a slightly, maybe one even tangential question. When you do surveys, and I'm sure you do them for brands before you launch something into a new market globally, what do those surveys tell you in terms of the potential receptivity for a brand that's coming from India in any category, service or product?

So I think the quality of make in India has definitely shifted in last two decades. There's far more respect. There's far more acceptance.

I mean, for example, even things like getting dealerships internationally is not that hard anymore. I mean, two decades ago, nobody will look at a manufacturer coming from India wanting to open shop. So all of that has become far more easier because of the culture product, talent product, going out, making that name.

But I think what's helping us is the design, right? Traditionally, we were weak in design. We were weak in extrinsic properties, in packaging, in marketing, right?

Some of those aspects we've gone a big leap today. I mean, look at design of our cars. We look at the Mahindra products being designed today.

Look at the Hero products being designed today. Look at Boat as a lineup being designed today. It's out there.

It's at par. It's not better. In some cases, even better.

But I think some of that is helping us lead the game.

That's interesting. So design is one differentiator. So now let's go back to, let's say, the drawing board. A brand comes to you and says, I want to take my brand global. Now, this could be an existing brand or a company like Mahindra's, or it could be maybe someone like Boat, who's a new one and maybe wanting to take the global and the domestic stage at the same time, almost. So how does your brief sort of start flowing?

Yeah. So in many cases, Govind, now, even when we're designing for India, we are designing more from a universal mindset. And that's changed dramatically, right? About a decade ago, the whole trope was that, oh, India is different. India behaves different. Let's slap some Bollywood on it.

And we made a meal of that. We made a meal of global brands having to come to India and do things very, very differently. I remember in every advertising agency and marketing department, there was an India presentation.

And when the global teams would come visiting, we'll stand up and make that India presentation, like 60 slides of why India is different. Today, when we are designing campaigns or when I'm designing strategies, I'm designing for a universal mindset, which includes India. So even if my brief is, this will sell only in India, I will make sure that the shoot is sexy, the product looks world class, the music is absolutely awesome.

I might still put a remix of a Bollywood for the Indian market and change that for the international market. But the base ingredients of most of the thinking at an agency level, from inciting to strategy to communication and more so, as I said, in terms of our design look, feel, shoot, is very, very global. Because within India, we are competing with the same products and same mindsets.

And give us a couple of illustrations.

For example, the work we've done for Mahindra Electric Vehicles, if you look at how they've been put together, the shoot, it happened globally, the way, the rendition of the brand, the design principle of, you know, we were inspired by Northern Lights, the play of colours and so on and so forth, and going with the predominant red as a code, whereas EV globally has been either seen as blue. So differentiating it from that, because we are very, very mindful of having a global strand to that differentiation right from the very beginning. That's one example.

Amul is another example. Amul is one example of success from Amul and where they managed to do a cooperative tie up, managed to put it in the shops, including Costco in the US. But, and interestingly, you know, the packaging there again has elements of Amul, but it's in that sense, very global, look, feel is very international.

So you take the core and the code of the brand still, you don't compromise on that, you don't design completely afresh, because those brands can't look completely different from how they're looking in Indian market. But you do, do a right from the beginning, design it with international sensibilities, and then make sure that they get tweaked to the global audiences.

And within that, what's changed, let's say, in the last few years, between the way you position and let me illustrate that. For example, if you take two wheeler, two wheeler classically in India sells on efficiency, I'm not saying it only sells on efficiency, but fuel efficiency is a critical aspect. The overarching philosophy is value for money.

Everyone says India is a value for money country and consumers are different. So these are a few of the attributes that I'm sure you know more, which are sort of specific or somewhat specific to India, which may not be so specific to the rest of the world. So how do you then adjust your messaging?

So those things definitely change for sure. So again, they're, you know, strangely even the Indian market is changing, right? Again, a decade ago, they say, oh, let's design for a frugal middle class Indian, a 35 year old middle class man, do not over style it, he will he will feel out of the bag, they will not buy.

And I've been in those meetings that, oh my God, this design of a two wheeler is over style. And it doesn't go with a 35 year old Indian middle class. That has changed as well.

You look at the design of a 125 cc bike today, right? You wouldn't sell. So some of those have changed for Indian markets as well.

And therefore, some of these products are therefore globally more competitive. But even then, when you go to a global market, you look at maybe a 450 cc if that's the rule. So you definitely make a change to your product mix and your marketing mix from that perspective.

You look at that market as a local market, you do not try and say, this is what I have and this is what I'll slap you on that.

And I mean, global is not all global. I mean, there are so many markets within that. But I'll come to that in a second, because it's an interesting point. You talked about the designing the bike for the 35 year old Indian male. So could one conclude, therefore, that the reason why bikes were not stylishly designed is because they thought the consumer is not going to like it, not the other way around?

Yeah, I mean, there was...

I mean, they could have designed it earlier.

Yeah, they could have. There was a fear of rejection, they'll get rejected, right? Because we don't want to show off, we don't want to be flashy, we want to be understated, right?

At a 35 year age, you can't be seen riding a jazzy, fluorescent colour bike. People will judge you and therefore you would understyle it. And this has changed in the last?

I would say in the last 10 years. I mean, say, imagine Bajaj coming out with Pulsar 160, building a huge success of that. And then, for example, Hero has a whole segment called Maverick, which is a more high-end and doing very well.

Got it. So I'll come back to domestic in a moment. So when we look at global now, there are many markets. Global is East of India, West of India, within West, there are so many. So how do you then, as an agency and...

I think the easier ones are, say, Africa, South America, etc. Those are easier ones. And that's where it started, it's about five years ago.

Because they're similar to India.

Yeah, similar to India, right? Easier to capture those markets. But I mean, now we are seeing clients wanting to go to all markets, right?

And venturing in the US, venturing in Europe, and so on and so forth. But this is off late. This is a very recent pattern.

I think what helps for us is that, A, on ground, we have very global sensibilities. So the way the agency is structured, if you look at our art directors, our designers, they all have global sensibilities. We've built the team, even creatively, our ambition is to be the best in the world.

So our pitch is not that we want to be best in India, we want to be best in the world, right? So we've hired talent, which is globally sexy. Some of these talent has worked abroad, or studied abroad, they understand that the talent is constantly mapping what's the best in the world.

So when we are walking to clients today to, say, sell a packaging or sell an identity or sell an art or design guideline, we're not saying this is what's working in India, we're saying this is globally the best, this is where the world is headed and we should do that. And that's being received very, very well. So is your talent globally orientated?

Is your work globally orientated? Are your ideas competitive internationally as well? And that, Govind, you again see, you know, for example, Indian agencies winning at global platforms such as CAN, D&AD, etc.

has also gone up dramatically in last decade, right? Earlier, we would say, oh, my God, the global audiences don't understand the work from India. And therefore, we'll either not participate or go but not win.

But today, our work is winning because it is globally competitive. There's innovation from India, which is at par, if not better than the innovation happening in the world.

So I'm going to come to that, which leads to the larger issue of how the organisation is delivering to all of this. But let me come back to the global product and the global service. How, again, are you seeing, if so, a distinction within products or between products and services?

And the reason I'm asking this is, is some of this to do with the companies. So you'll always have outlier companies. So Amul could be an outlier company.

And therefore, they define and set everything. Yeah. But what you're saying is that this is also a larger trend, again, of Indian brands going global, which means there is a gentle tide, which is rising and lifting everyone.

So if that's the case, then how is it between products or types of products and products and services?

Yeah. So I would, I would happen as a woman that the service revolution happened a decade ago, right, with ECS and Infosys of the world. That piece happened much earlier.

I mean, even if you land up globally, you see large Infosys consulting hoardings, and so on and so forth. And the idea of an Indian man who's an engineer and an IT person is a cultural export of the last decade. That happened.

I think the breakthrough is in manufacturing and real products. I also feel, Govind, that for the next 10 years coming for us, this is a necessity, right? Because there's X amount of what you can do when you innovate for a billion.

And even when you're innovating for a billion, the real market is 50 million, right? It's not really a billion market. That constrains you in terms of how much you can spend upfront in design, in capacity building, and so on and so forth.

But if you feel that I can go for a market for 6 billion, and maybe 10% of that, that changes the perspective on what you can invest in design, development, innovation, and all of that. And if for 10 years, you have to compete with global products, even in our home ground, we have to have this mindset. And I think people are realising that.

Manufacturers are realising that it's possible not to look at a larger market and help amortise the investment around that market than just look at India.

How are media plans being built between let's say North America, Western Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, and India? I mean, what are the differences?

You can in today's time start with digital in most of the places. So that's easy to do. We have global systems, data, data is much more easily available in all of these markets.

So it's much more easier. I mean, in fact, there are a lot of GCCs, right, global centres.

Capability centres, yeah.

Which are doing media for the world over. Because I mean, somebody crunching data in America or South America or Africa is same as somebody sitting in Bangalore and crunching data. So those are in fact the easier parts, because it's mathematical, it's data led, very, very easy.

The culture insight rendition is where it has always been tricky. But working with global talent, sometimes our shoots are done globally. That's where the big delta is happening, I would say in today's time.

Okay. So now if you were to look at the organisation that's delivering to it, so tell us about FCB and how you're distributed in terms of talent, creativity and the processes that bring it all together.

So we have four agencies, right. Connect is a digital company that we've been acquiring and we're in the process of acquiring. Then we have FCB Ulka, which is our traditional legacy agency, which has done work with Amul, Tata Motors, ICICI, ITC, et cetera, et cetera.

Then we have FCB India, which is the youngest. That's the 60-year-old. Yes, yes.

Then we have FCB India, which is the youngest, where we do work for brands such as KFC, Google, Uber, Adidas, et cetera. And there's FCB Interface, where we do, again, it was set up for Mahindra and Mahindra, so Mahindra and Hero and so on and so forth. So there are four independent creative agencies with their CEOs, CCOs, because there are also a lot of conflict work that happens.

So there are Chinese wars between them and so on and so forth. But more importantly, the investment, A, in strategy, Govind, right, where we're saying strategy now leads from data. So we now have a full data centre of excellence where we're looking at all data, all strategies inspired by data.

And that's a gap that agencies lost in the last one decade, right, became very, very creative. And I'm all for peak creativity, but led by strategy. And when I'm meaning strategy, it's not just comps based strategy.

It's like, what's the game you want to play in the market? That kind of strategy, real strategy. So we invested a lot in that, in processes, tools.

I personally have a learning of a decade in building brands out of India. So there's a theory we have from there that we use for clients. So that's one gap we filled in a big way.

Second is design, right? If you look at today, everything is on Instagram, everything is on digital, right? And everything is visual, right?

And I feel bad for copywriters, because nobody has the patience to read so much, right? Everything is a 10 second medium today. So you have to design for that.

So huge emphasis on art and design. So we invested dramatically on that. Even when we are hiring right now from campuses, we are hiring a lot of design people, motion graphic people, video people.

So that's the second big investment. Third is total upgradation of your current talent to think digital. So we are running huge upskilling programmes.

We are hiring from companies. So everything is digital. I mean, there is nothing called as traditional and digital.

Everything is digital and mainline. So for a client will go from very high end strategy to digital, to data, to CRM, and all the way to production. So classically, if you look at things like production stayed out of the agency system, right?

So we would do a script and then hire a production house from outside to execute it. And we still do a lot of that. But we are realising that if we want to deliver peak creativity to the client, and we want to give them one throat to choke, then we need to have that within the system.

So we have a very strong production setup now, which can go right from small content to large TV as well. So full backward and forward integration, which happened in manufacturing, has happened with agencies as well. The reason is for quality control and peak creativity.

Okay, I'll come to that, the creativity part in some detail in a bit. But if I were to go back to the data example that you used, what is a good example of something which has influenced you in terms of strategy, because of the data, and or because you looked at the data and said, we either do it this way, or we do not do it this way.

Yeah, lots of I mean, the one which comes straight to my mind was we were, we were doing a pitch for be natural, which is the juice venture for ITC. And it's a very simple data point going, we looked at the data point and realised the organised juice market at that point in time was 2000 crores, and the unorganised juice market was actually 15,000 crores. Right, the whole roadside juice vendor, and that led us to a chase of how the texture of juices in the unorganised, you don't just drink it, you in fact, also eat it and, and the masala mix and the anar mix and all of that.

And that led to a road to product development, to how you market the brand and all of that. So sometimes a very small piece of data can completely change the trajectory. I mean, for example, again, I was doing work for for radio, Red FM, younger.

And you always tell the radio is being listened by elite people in cars when they're commuting in metro, wrong, right? 90% of radio in India is heard by SSE, BNC, in shops in homes, right? And from there came this whole idea of saying, can radio be the voice to the people who don't have a voice.

So a lot of small pieces of data lead to large, large breakthroughs. Right.

And do your teams constantly score a given set of or a bunch of data sets and then keep coming out with things? Or are you responding to a client or a set of clients?

No, we are proactively doing it. So we have a data centre of excellence, we are constantly monitoring. So if we have a brief on a client or a pitch, we will monitor all the data available from a social perspective, from category perspective, we'll take as much data as the client can give us.

Sometimes they are very stringy, sometimes they are more generous, depends on the category, depends on who you are talking to. The new age guys are very, very stringy. We get a lot more data from FMCG, etc.

So we will score all that data for insights. And begin to build strategy there. And that's again a big difference today, because earlier you would just build strategy on anecdotes.

Right. And when these people are looking at data sets, are there some specific areas that they track more than that? Because I'm sure at the bottom of all of this is consumer behaviour. Yeah. Or the propensity to consume. So what are the things that link to it?

See, one is broad understanding of patterns, right? Because sometimes we can get swayed away by anecdotes. So for example, if you look at food in India, right?

If you look at deliveries on quick sashimi, zomato, all of that. Between biryani and paneer, right? And maybe Chinese.

We explain 90% of all the deliveries, right? But I didn't know you guys, oh my god, Mexican is doing so well in India. It's not, I'm sorry, nobody's asking for it.

Right? Nobody's calling for it. So some of the large pattern implications become very, easy to understand when you look at data.

I mean, you look at Amazon data of stuff earlier, being things, being home delivered. I mean, there were a large part of Amazon in early times was because of access, not because of convenience, right? Because you can't get that product in a small town, say in Patna, Muzaffarpur, Faridabad, and so on and so forth.

So when you look at data, it allows you to bust a lot of anecdotal myths that you might have. That's one thing. Second is, of course, performance of the brand, right?

What's the chatter around the brand? I mean, if there's a huge amount of negative chatter for an auto brand around service, you know that it's impacting the market share. You know it needs to be acted upon.

So sometimes the implication... Is that a real example?

Without quoting it, but it is a real example.

It is a real example. We know of a brand where we've grown hugely, and the service chatter is so high. And we know that it's impacting the market share and acceptability of the new launches.

So conversely, it also means that a brand or a car or a two-wheeler will do well if there is a perception of an assured service network.

Yeah, for sure. And a lot of times, therefore, we also, what we say is, take it till we make it. So when we launch something, we also try to create a positive buzz, a positive narrative around the brand through various ways, through content, through influencers, and that always works for us.

So let's talk about creativity since we're talking about content influencers. When influencers and others are really their own masters in a way, I mean, often creating their own content, their own creativity, and you've got your entire organisation sitting here. So how do these two forces work together if they do? And I'm sure they collide somewhere too.

Yeah. So, I mean, if you talk to influencers, and we talk a lot to them, they would say that do not try and cramp on my style of delivering what I want to deliver because I work because I work for a certain reason, right? So it's a middle ground that you have to strike.

And honestly, I'd say that we haven't cracked that yet. Because if you look at clients, right, brand managers, they're called managers, which means that they have to very strictly hold the brand and the values and the guidelines, right? At the same time, the traction you can get through influencers because of the audiences they have, especially in the early stage of launch is mammoth, right?

You can't miss that. So we still issue guidelines. We work with them very, very closely.

Our creative teams, et cetera, work very closely. And therefore, the role of the agency still exists. A lot of times, still, oh, my God, we don't need agencies anymore.

Everybody's a creator. I'm sorry. No, because they will create something that will damage your brand or will not amplify a message.

So we have a very strong influencer desk at FCB Group, and we do a lot of work with influencers. But we guide that. Our creative guys, our influencer heads, they work very closely with influencers to make sure that we do not compromise on the authenticity of the influencers, yet we are able to push through the brand values and the personality and the messaging of the brand.

And it's an interesting point. You're saying that they are more useful at launch, not necessarily at launch.

Yes. So I think the biggest usage or success cases of influencers in India has been, if you're a startup, then for the first 10 million customers, right? Because you don't, for the first 10 million customers, you can take it off with just influencers, right?

You don't need to. See, because the next level is when you begin to pay YouTube advertising, and that begins to suddenly become costly. And you need a certain base to be able to monetise a YouTube investment, right?

So typically, for a startup or for a launch, we start with influencer, and then we move on to digital paid media, and everything else then follows.

So coming back to being the most creative agency worldwide and the design and art part, which sort of flows into it or connects with it. How do you, let's say, set the process for doing that today? And when I say today, I mean, this is a 2025 question, as opposed to how this could have been answered, let's say, even five years ago, pre-COVID or 10 years ago.

So I think one is the first answer is in talent, right? And in our industry, we are notorious that last decade, again, a lot of talent either flew out. So they took, I mean, even clients have set up their own agencies and paid a lot of money and so on and so forth.

So it was a constant drain of talent. So the first thing we fix is talent. So A, we've got some great talent back. Some of them have left the industry. They've all come back, and they're enjoying A. So why did they come back?

I think they came back with, again, the promise of doing great world-class work, Govind, because if you look at the creative talent, they are inspired by what they are able to make, right? And the drain happened because they were not able to make what they wanted to make. So we have someone who went to art, right?

And she's come back to us now and so on and so forth. We were able to hold back a lot of talent because they're saying, wow, suddenly now I'm making for brands which are succeeding in India, number one in India. They're giving me a possibility to do global world-class work.

I'm shooting globally with the best talent. So A, getting the talent back. Second is at the funnel, hiring the best talent. We are hiring 110 young people this year. We're going to all campuses, design campuses, MBA schools, all of that. That's the second piece.

Third is the process internally, right? So we don't work in a bait-and-handling process. I mean, earlier, for example, 10 years back, the clients would bring the brief.

Planning would write a brief. It'll go to the copywriter. Copywriter will write copies, send it to art. We've collapsed all of that, right? They are campuses which are being led by an art director. Why not, right?

Why is there a campus where the copywriter is playing second fiddle? And that's totally all right. So who leads a certain project depends on what that brand needs.

There's no zero internal hierarchy. And that, to my mind, is the biggest shift that we've made, right? That anybody can be a leader.

A strategy person can be a leader on a project. An account management can be a leader on a project. A copy, a technologist can be a leader on a project because that project is all about innovation.

And then everybody plays second fiddle to that. So cracking that process, that sense of egolessness, zero hierarchy, to my mind, is the key to success.

But can you give me an example? So let's say in a brand where a technologist, if you want to call it that, has led a project versus another brand or a campaign where a copywriter or an art director is led.

So again, the Mahindra campaign is completely led by Anushila, who's our national leader of art at FCB India, right?

And that's because design and creativity was the bigger ask.

Yeah. More than ask, we said that this is how we should do it. In the classical sense, it would be led by a copywriter, right?

But because our ideas and our ambition for the brand were led by design and art, right? And Yuri, who's a partner, is also part of the game. But yeah, I mean, it's been led by that team.

But definitely you can see the work is led by art. On technology, for example, we have a couple of innovation projects in pipeline, which I can't talk about right now, but led completely by a tech person because it is about solving a real problem using tech piece. And therefore, you need somebody who can be the interface with the tech guys on the innovation.

So let me try and come to the present. The Indian market, we are seeing things slowing down a little bit. Growth is slowing down.

The market is obviously still, it's still growing, but it's slowing down. Globally, it's some markets like the United States are still very strong. Others are more steady, middling, and there may be even others which are slowing down again, like India.

So in a time like this, how do you allocate your creative energies for a brand or a product launch and so on? And how do you, differently in each case, how do you reach out to the consumer? What is the kind of proposition to think of? And many of these answers may lie in history as well, because it's not the first time things are slowing down.

Yeah. So I think, say about again, from a five year perspective, say five years ago, there's so much investment flowing into the country, right? I mean, you're launching a phone pay, launching a Spotify, launching, there's so much money in gaming apps, Avinzo, the money in health, health insurance, and so on and so forth, FarmEasy.

Everybody's flushed. I used to be in a situation where founders just secured some money saying, we have 150 crores to spend. How do we spend it?

And I'm saying, don't spend it. Keep it right now. So we were in that situation, say about five years ago, or even two years ago, right?

And the category was growing, everybody was growing. And it was a category growth game. I think very, very suddenly, the whole market is shift to market share game, right?

Almost overnight. So our clients will win, if their products are better and their marketing is superior to somebody else in the category, because it's a market share win game. Somebody is winning, and somebody else is losing.

We saw that happening last year across categories. And same will work out for agencies as well. So some agencies will win, and some agencies will have to lose, because suddenly the pie has shrunk, and it's a market share game.

So what it means is, therefore, peak strategy and peak creativity go in. You cannot get away today with five on 10. If you're not eight on 10 on the sharpness of your thinking, on how you're, you have to pre-ensure success mentally and physically, even before the product and brand is launched.

So we are optimising everything, right from strategy to creative. It has to be best in class, bar none. Only then will our clients succeed, and only then will we succeed.

So when you say categories have stopped growing, it's worrying actually to hear that coming from you. What are the categories that come to mind first?

I think, for sure, there is stress on consumer products, right? At the bottom of the pyramid, there's definite stress, say biscuits as a category. Across FMCG, I think there is pain, because my sense is that, A, the wallet has shrunk, and the wallet has also been redistributed.

So the same family may say that I may trade down on biscuit, but may still go and pay for education, or even pay for a Vivo mobile phone, or buy a two-wheeler in the family, because that also leads to progress and productivity, right?

Which is also a reflection of income stress.

Yes. So there is income stress. The middle class probably hasn't fired because there's no manufacturing revolution.

The Indian revolution is a white-collar revolution. So therefore, you see that top 50 million is where the consuming class is. It drops dramatically after that.

So there is the shrinking of the wallet, and there's redistribution of the wallet. There is definitely inflation. So consumer products are suffering.

My sense is they will stay that way. It's not changing dramatically. Aspirational products are doing well, because the same consumer is pinching the wallet to go for the aspiration.

Give me an example.

Two-wheelers, mobile phones, still doing very well. Consumer durables will still do very well, because we're still in the aspiration game.

So a couple of years ago, building on what you said, creating a category itself was a challenge or an opportunity and a challenge. So you're saying today, of course, that opportunity has shrunk, if not maybe even disappeared for now. So can we, therefore, as you mine your data, as you talk to your folks, both on the creative side as well as on the data intelligence side, do you get a sense that we can still create new categories if the market looks up?

Or do people come to you, for example, saying that, okay, I have come up with this new, let's say, cold-pressed coconut oil, and I want to create this as a new category. I mean, it's very small, but it's a new category. So do you still see, I mean, and this is more about a here and now question.

I think lesser so. So say about five years back, I would have been, I mean, I'm a jockey. Let's create the e-commerce category in India.

Wow. Amazing. We took them to, say, 120 million, right?

And then suddenly you realise that now there's not much gain by building more of a say phone pay. Again, you go 120, 130, 140 million, and then you realise that there's not this 30% cap, and there's not more acquisition you can do. Again, gone.

So five years back, many more breeds like that. Let's create payments category. Let's create e-commerce category.

Today, fewer. I mean, today, it's more transference to say, okay, a certain online player is now getting into health insurance as well. Category is the same, but some behaviours are changing that don't just buy from a traditional player, buy from a new age brand.

I think those are about it, but largely the problems we have at this point in time are market share gain problems.

So, and this is one of my last questions. So in this market share battle, what is going to determine success from your point of view and as well as the brand's own product and service offering? 

Yeah. I think it's a combination. So I think products and services have to be best in class, right? I mean, gone are the days.

Easier said.

Easier said, but I think there's also a mindset shift going. I think earlier we would compromise consciously on a few things. I mean, I even remember some of the global brands would send inferior lineups to India.

You can't do that anymore. Gone are those days. I mean, B products will not sell, whether from Indian manufacturers or from global manufacturers, for sure.

That's one starting point. Second, I think very, very sharp strategy and strategy today is not just one strategy. How do you launch?

How do you sustain? How do you bring back? So it's 0-3-6.

It's not, you keep stepping up. It's not like, oh my God, launch is up and now let's go back to the pillow and sleep. I mean, the day after the launch, we are creating new work, right?

And then when the launch happens, we're creating new work for pricing and so on and so forth. So it's a continuous engagement on strategy and on creativity, right? Again, you cannot anymore say, oh, we've done a good job of explaining what we have.

You have to do a good job of floating in people's timelines, right? So if your work doesn't create conversations, if it doesn't remove the load from paid media, then it's a weak job.

So you're saying the one recipe for success in a market-shared game is to ensure that you're constantly staying in touch with your consumers, present and potential through social media, or could there be other ways?

There are other ways. I mean, today you get market response every day. I mean, you launch a car brand, you get response from influencers or auto journalists.

That's your first port of sales. You launch pricing. So every day you are tweaking your strategy.

Every day you're tweaking your content to succeed. And so strategy and content today is not one campaign. It's multiple campaigns, multiple touch points leading to success on any category.

Last question. So in recent months, what's the one campaign that you've really enjoyed working on and why?

I think the Mahindra Bev campaign has come out very well. We've done a campaign for Uber, which has come out very well. Again, a campaign for Android has done very well.

There's some work we've done for Flipkart, which is looking very good. So there are a couple of pieces.

So Uber is now an old brand, an older brand. So what was your messaging and what was your brief?

So the Uber brand is for the, it's a brand campaign for India to make Uber get the credibility that it gets. And we worked with celebrities on that. So there's a brand piece.

There's also a social piece and we've embedded features in that. So Uber is again very, very bullish in the Indian market. And category leadership again is the thinking that we're going with there.

Right. And in the case of Flipkart, again, it's a brand that's been around. So is it market share led or is it?

It's again market share led. It's again market share led, less of category expansion led.

Yeah. Yeah. Dheeraj, we're running out of time. Thank you so much for joining.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.