Revolutionizing Digital Branding: Aman Joshi from Shemaroo | The Growth Genius

Aman Joshi:- But my larger difference that I’ve seen because of the OT industry is the fact that you know relatable stories came to the FL it opened Horizons people started looking at content and saying that what I do is also stuff that other people do you know they they started relating to this content new behaviors were discovered uh cultural barriers were broken you know one thing that entertainment does to you is it brings out a lot of cultures to you one of the forums I was speaking to some of the uh Insurance folks and they were telling me that now when it comes to renewals we don’t say hi hello we just send them uh the best costs for his insurance renewal on WhatsApp that the consumer is still in love with the content and he is not in love with the platform today when you have a conversation with your friends it’s very easy to say that oh I saw s of film it’s really good or I saw s of web series it’s really good but start asking this question where did you see it and it takes you a couple of seconds and suddenly you go like oh where did I see it or you know when you’re talking about upcoming content you’re constantly thinking which platform do you see it on typically a consumer in India would have about 2 2 and a half on an average uh OTT apps on his  phone.

Mehul Ashar:- Ladies and gentlemen welcome to yet another episode of the growth genius powered by infidigit this is where we bring to you growth stories and marketing and business today’s growth genius is someone who started his career in it but eventually the marketing bug bit him and he then played important roles in marketing across various Industries today he’s in a very interesting space in the entertainment industry and in this episode I got to learn a lot about how marketing and technology is being used in the entertainment industry to build a brand per se we are talking about one of the most respected entertainment brands in this country without further Ado please join me in welcoming Mr Aman Joshi who is the digital marketing lead at shemaroo entertainment limited Aman welcome to the growth genius and thanks a lot for your time it’s a pleasure to have you here on our podcast.

Aman:- Thanks I’m very happy that you invited me it’s a pleasure for me to be here actually.

Mehul:- Great thank you thank you so much to start with Aman I would like to understand you know what what is your current role at shemaroo?

Aman:- Sure so at shemaroo I lead the digital marketing team and shemaroo as you know is a large media conglomerate so it’s spread across businesses my team largely supports three very critical businesses of shemaroo one is the OTT which is called shemaroo Mi it’s the largest content OTT app in Gujarat so we are a regional OTT app and that’s where you know we’ve the the flagship product is all Gujarati and that’s where we’ve you know gained maximum market share the the second large business that my team supports is YouTube you must have seen uh a lot of shimaru videos come up on YouTube uh YouTube is a large business for us and requires good amount of digital marketing support about 200 million subscribers span these channels and you know some some of our at least I know the top two channels are in the top 25 channels of the world so you know you you will find all the biggest names and then you’ll see Bollywood and filmy Ghan from sharu and the third business my team supports is the broadcast business which is largely our TV channels so Shemaroo Hindi TV channels shimaru TV shimaru shimaru chumbak and shimaru marati B which is a marati channel and Beyond these of course as a media company there are various other businesses which need digital marketing support So digital syndication inlight entertainment the content that you see while you’re traveling on flight our music business B2B sales uh that’s what my team looks at my team largely you know is divided into three pieces there’s largely the social media team because our social media pages for all these businesses now span across 25 million subscribers put together um and a creative team because digital is all about creative and there’s so much creative CH that’s that’s happening and of course the third piece is the performance marketing team which is you know the wins that we’re immediately trying to get from the digital media space.

Mehul:- Amazing so that captures a lot of ground so to say as far as entertainment is concerned per se and obviously everybody all of us grew up seeing shemaroo videos in various formats so yeah it’s it’s quite an interesting place to be thanks thanks for that and Aman my next question is about your professional Journey per se you know you have had a very interesting journey across various Industries so please tell us something more about that?

Aman:- Sure so you know interestingly while I in marketing I started off as a as an IT engineer I studied engineering but I was very entrepreneurial in nature and by the time uh you know I started working at PCS back then Putney computers was a major IT company so I had a tech background but then post MBA you know during my MBA days I could see that digital marketing is you know within marketing digital is going to take up a large part of um you know Focus effort budgets everything so that’s where I started my journey and U digital marketing as a subject then applies itself to various Industries so my uh first job post MBA was uh I worked in tatac chroma where digital marketing means a lot of customer service means a lot of new product launches means a lot of online plus BTL because you need to get so many people at your stores at least back then it was such because uh online buying was still in its nent stages from there I hopped over to Tata housing and tata housing is again b2c but uh largely real estate based so some of the best camp campaigns that I got to work on were basically making people do bookings for houses online and that’s a consumer change that we could see back then that people were okay to at least plan buying a house online and pay a pay a booking amount and then do a conversation and then I moved into edel wise which was again real estate and finance and finally all of it came together when I joined shimaru it’s been close to 5 years now which is absolutely b2c media and entertainment it’s constant consumer touch points it’s constant content launches it’s constant communication in the middle of working in tata EB and shemaroo I also did a stint in one of the agencies and I largely did that because you know back then it was essential that to get a better hold on digital marketing it’s a great idea to understand this subject from the agency side as well so my career largely was you know a lot of learning and consolidation in the first two phases and right now it’s more of application so everything that I’ve learned over a little over a decade and a half now is all getting into practice with application directly.

Mehul:- Wonderful so somewhere the circle is getting complete so to say you know and culmination of this journey is actually you know uh taking shape now right yeah wonderful wonderful and OT you know as you said shemaroo is in the OT space and it’s a very interesting space right now uh tell us something more about Ott in terms of its importance and and the challenges that it faces so we would love to hear your perspective on this?

Aman:- Sure I mean the Advent of OTT has impacted uh you me and everyone around us in various ways I mean uh Ott has impacted us it it’s impacted businesses like the television business theaters and more importantly this has happened I think a large catalist to the OTT industry and its importance in our lives today comes from the fact that there was a big leap there was a Big Boost that Co did to us which actually induced the habit of watching more content into us which induced the habit of watching content while we traveling in our free time even planning family get togethers became about watching content together so I I cannot even talk about how big OTT has an impact on our lives but I’ll put in some very interesting points on the subject the Advent of the OTT industry has done for consumers is the fact that it’s brought about entertainment without inhibitions to people you know content watching for the longest was television and theaters which was about viewing content with people around you India for the longest has been a single TV home and single screen TVs you know watching means that you’re sitting with your spouse your parents your children and you’re watching content together the change that OTT brought in was that now I have a screen for myself it’s my personal space which led to a lot of changes in consumer Behavior now people want to watch content which is even related to sensitive topics which are related to differentiated career choices which they didn’t want to see with their parents which are related to personalized content you know with the Advent of OTT there was a lot of content which was created specifically very well targeted for Gen X Gen Y Gen Z and everybody could connect to what was happening this is more from the consumer side from the from the supplier side also there’s been a huge impact the freedom of speech that directors producers got was immense you know look at the content today there is such a strong intensity of emotions that directors producers are able to create that you know whether it’s language sometimes it’s even violence sometimes even deeper emotions which can be shown so clearly because there’s a personal viewing that’s happening and of course the OTT industry has done a lot in terms of you know bringing content anytime on demand no appointment viewing all of those things are very much up there for people but my larger difference that I’ve seen because of the OT industry is the fact that you know relatable stories came to the FL it opened Horizons people started looking at content and saying that what I do is also stuff that other people do you know they they started relating to this content new behaviors were discovered cultural barriers were broken you know one thing that entertainment does to you is it brings out a lot of cultures to you and the OTT industry played a very strong role because a lot of global content started coming to people so you know it breaks barriers you know culturally things that you did not accept started getting into the roots of acceptance things that you didn’t know of existed you suddenly knew about them and suddenly a lot of these things also started getting emed in our own lives so the fabric of culture also starts changing you know when when an industry like this hits consumers that’s largely how importantly you know it’s changing everything that’s happening around us amazing of course it comes with challenges too yeah what’s also happening is with so much International content the consumer’s expectation is that today you know if he’s if he’s seen a Game of Thrones he’s expecting the same thing to get produced in India he wants to see it in OTT and Indian consumer is also a little different he believes that while I want to get the best content I also don’t want to pay as much for it in fact I want to share passwords and you and I can keep our hands on our heart and say how many passwords we’ve shared and it’s it’s honestly out there so of course the challenge is how do you create content for people who are going to share your content share their passwords uh typically the OTT industry works at an arpo of you know 500 to th000 bucks so that’s the average revenue you’re making per user in a year but uh the consumer also wants the spectacle in that amount so if he pays that amount you know he comes to watch content because he wants something spectacular and that something spectacular means bigger Stars bigger locations bigger Graphics but all at that same packaged cost so the challenge in the industry is that of course there’s so much clutter there is there is great content that you have to make you have very little you know you have to play in certain budgets your competition you know a typical otd player launches about anything between 50 to 500 titles a year so there’s just so much content being created the point is how do you stand out while all this is is happening that’s become very important today.

Mehul:- Yes very interesting and yeah it has it has multifold uh effects on our lives per se if you look at like you rightly said you know the behavior and the culture and so on and so forth and has there it is is becoming more and more clutter so looking at you know Regional content per se you know so and it is it is you know growing in importance day by day so what is your perspective on the increasing demand of regional content?

Aman:- I think you know what’s happening with the especially in the OTT industry and actually in all Industries which are entertainment related is that there is a certain level of maturity that the consumer has when he consumes content and hence great content today doesn’t need a language language is no more a barrier if the content is great people will watch it in whatever language the biggest example are the international examples of the acceptance of Korean content in India for example people have watched this content in Subs with subtitles with dubs with with dubbing content so first of all there is acceptance because now the focus is on content the other thing that’s important is when you look at Regional content per se what you actually bringing for the consumer is how relatable is this content for him because there are there’s already one thing you know especially in India in the HSM markets the consumer is exposed to International content that’s that’s a different thing but more importantly here is exposed to Bollywood and Bollywood makes the best kind of content honestly it’s one of the best Industries globally so you’re competing with Bollywood when you’re making Regional content but Regional content is winning everywhere there is relatability with the consumer so you know I’ll give you an example look at we work in the Gujarati Regional content space very very strongly and you even look at Bollywood films and you look at some of our shows and TV serials and soaps and all of them they will have a Gujarati setup food some part of language clothing very essentially and that’s bringing in relatability now this combined with the Gujarati language itself appeals to a lot of people so the only only thing you have to find is that there should be acceptability and relatability for the content you create and people whatever resonates with their normal life and their culture will accept it even if you create stories which are very different to what’s happening in their cultures so you have to be a little you know aware of these nuances and then create content which people start accepting of course constant measurement calibration looking at your penetration brand tracking feedback these are hygiene factors which have led to the growth of the regional content space in India.

Mehul:- Absolutely thanks thanks for sharing those uh inputs uh Aman coming to the next question you know wanted to understand uh your outlook on the changing consumer needs specifically in this age of digitalization?

Aman:- The consumer needs are changing very fast and that’s largely because the digital consumer today is smarter and he’s always on the go so you know uh the first thought that today’s digital consumer has is is there an easier way to do this or is there an easier way to access this is there an easier way to you know there are easier payment methods is there easier way to pay is there also an easier way of findability you as a content provider are you providing me the right suggestions at the right time are your notifications are your social media posts telling me the right things at the right time his expectation is very high today even from an SEO perspective his expectation is that the most relevant thing shows up to me as soon as I search for it you know considering my background considering what I’m looking for it has to be apt for what I need the second thing the consumer is also looking at today is that with the Advent of so much digitization around him is my life getting enriched and he needs content not just for entertainment it’s a way of life honestly you know content is a conversation starter today your content choices Define you it helps you create influence about on your friends you know when you meet a set of people today the consumer is such that he’s so exposed to so many things digitally that he starts conversations of a certain type within content because that’s his strong point that’s what he believes in that’s how he’s defined amongst his friends so what he’s looking forward to is that search engines gave me the right suggestions you know I know what is the trending content and these are things that you’ll see on most applications you know you will see trending content what’s number one in your country what are your friends watching the consumer today needs all types of content he needs snackable content he needs binge worthy content in fact on our own app on shemaroo one of the buttons that we put up was the best clip of only comedy scenes or the best scenes of all the content put together and it’s just so beautiful because you know you’ve seen the whole film you’ve seen the whole web series but there are certain points that you really remember and this what this content does is it’s just thumb stopping content he just keeps scrolling to look at the best scenes and that’s how the consumer has changed today.

Mehul:- Yeah yeah very true those probably have a lot of views and likes as well maybe because very interesting and obviously you touched the on search and you know coming to advertising you know advertising per se has changed a lot in the digital age so what are the benefits and pitfalls that you see because of this change?

Aman:- I’ll take some of the pitfalls first there’s there’s a whole lot of benefits but there are some things that we need to First establish and understand uh in today’s age uh the the one thing that everybody is fighting is the Clutter undoubtedly I saw a report which says that a consumer looks at his phone even if he doesn’t want to use his phone looks at his phone at least 150 times a day this morning I read another report which says that the American Consumer is exposed to 10,000 ads in a day so there are ads everywhere basically you know there is there’s advertising even on lock screens there is advertising in apps in browsers there’s there’s just advertising everywhere so the problem is that Brands need to identify how to innovatively communicate so that they find some visibility uh one interesting thing that I’ve seen is that a lot of brands use shock value as a great uh method of you know standing out in the Clutter you’ve seen the cred ads you’ve seen you know Mr Dependable Rahul Dravid ads and all these are different and that’s how they stand through the challenge is that how do you invest how do you constantly innovate and how do you obviously stand out uh there are obviously benefits uh undoubtedly with the digital age targeting has become extremely intrusive uh it’s fantastic for advertisers it’s also scary for some consumers but that’s the truth of Life uh we keep meeting the Facebook and Google folks all the time and every time we meet them they keep telling us of how they’ve added newer signals to identify consumer behavior and how we are able to Target those particular signals in in such a way that you know we right find the right consumer at the right time in the digital age today advertising is also seeing a lot of personalized communication which is beautiful today you can talk to Consumers basis uh the language that they choose to listen to you in you can do a lot of conversation marketing you can address people by name you can address people by anything I you know in one of the forums I was speaking to some of the uh Insurance folks and they were telling me that now when it comes to renewals we don’t say hi hello we just send them the best costs for his insurance renewal on WhatsApp so there’s there’s no conversation it just says that you know here are the best options what do you want to do this year it’s become as you know intrusive as that AI has improved in advertising very heavily great example is Google’s performance Max uh Facebook’s AI algorithm so a lot of conversion based targeting has helped the whole industry as such so just from moving from identifying pockets of people that we want to advertise uh now we just have to keep the product in front of a Google or Facebook and say that this is my product find me the right audiences and AI takes care of that so that’s a huge difference that AI has created in advertising and of course platforms are working on a lot of tools to develop this also so let’s take for examples Google’s ga4 which basically combines the insights from web and app put together and now for a marketeer it’s easy to look at his consumer from what he’s doing on the app and what he’s doing on the web so technology itself has uh you know leveraged the whole digital marketing piece in advertising today.

Mehul:- Yes it does plays a very important role in advertising and marketing per se has changed a lot and uh I would like to understand from you you know how do you build a entertainment brand ground up in you know today’s age of the new kind of marketing that we are seeing?

Aman:- Sure you know for for building an entertainment brand I think the key primary focus is actually the consumer and the consumer conser and finding consumer insights is extremely important you know in the digital age there’s just so much data there’s data everywhere there’s numbers all over the job of a smart marketeer hence today at least for an entertainment company is to find the nuances and the insights in that data so consumer Insight his said and unsaid needs but it’s important for us to identify these nuances and then build content accordingly the second Focus for an entertainment company is obviously the content itself undoubtedly while you know OTT platforms television theaters these are all mediums the primary product is the content itself so constant Innovation is extremely important bringing new ideas Concepts is important being contemporary is very important because consumers want to consume content but they want to consume content and say what’s next where is the world going how is the world changing those are the places that they want to constantly you know they that that’s the kind of content they want to consume so for an entertainment brand it becomes extremely essential to cater to all these needs find the right insights have your tent pole properties in place so you will see that every entertainment and Media company is doing this they have one big tent pole big property which is which is actually the bait the clickbait to bring people in and then there is sustainance content which is well advertised it’s very nuanced it’s very well created very well crafted not as heavily advertised as a tent pole but it keeps the guy into coming back and that’s the essential thing you know in in building an entertainment brand today you need so much of retention of people because the money is is in the retention and that’s how you get lifetime value from them and to get that lifetime value you have to balance your content in such a fashion thats will come out and then my sustainance content will come out but will keep the consumer with me which also means that we have to do very good advertising and marketing in terms of the kind of touch points we create with him so very large plans happen in terms of putting Journeys together in terms of emails SMS obviously targeting from Facebook Google everything that’s happening in that space but more importantly identifying the right touch points and doing some meaningful touch Point communication with him what he wants to consume on what platform is essential and finally building brand love is very important because what’s happening in the entertainment space today is that the consumer is still in love with the content and he is not in love with the platform today when you have a conversation with your friends it’s very easy to say that oh I saw s of film it’s really good or I saw s of web series it’s really good but start asking this question where did you see it and it takes you a couple of seconds and suddenly you go like oh where did I see it or you know when you’re talking about upcoming content you’re constantly thinking which platform do you see it on typically a consumer in India would have about 2 2 and a half on an average uh Ott apps on his phone and of course the upwardly mobile consumer has four and five so he’s lost in it he doesn’t remember the platform unless you create very strong brand love which means for every brand it’s become essential to create a brand Persona people need to understand a persona for that platform and then they start remembering that oh this brand makes this kind of content constantly and hence a straight straight straightly aligned content pipeline which is also in the guard rails of the kind of communication you do every time is essential and that starts building brand love so these are larger my larger thoughts on how do you build the brand you know from the ground and then eventually the numbers start unfolding.

Mehul:- Very interesting yeah you’re very right I mean as a platform you need to create that brand and that is always uh marketer challenge in terms of you know how you make the OTT brand or the platform form brand Pur stick in the minds of the consumers very interesting obviously coming to digital marketing we have to talk about influencers so what do you think of influencers you know what are the what I mean what is the role they play as for your thoughts?

Aman:- You know uh there’s a trust barometer report that comes uh every year and a couple of years back I was looking at the trust barometer and for years it would say that people believe reviews from their friends family parents teachers Etc and I’ll tell you what’s changed now when I look at the report it says that people believe people and and that means they believe anybody and that’s how we are today you know when we try to buy a product from Amazon we read all the reviews but we never see who’s written the review or we never click on that profile to see what other things has he bought or who is he except none of it matters what matters is the review yeah influencers hence have become so important today because people are just following to get a quick advice from the right people immediately now I also said from the right people so what’s happening in the influencer space is look at how we are using social media today social medium social platforms for the longest were about you know following what’s happening in the life of our friends family and all of that but today the consumers changed again today social media platform are following a set of influencers and that’s the site you know kind of influencers I follow so if you go to your insta account you’ll have you know about 5 or 10 influencers and you’ll constantly see content from them and you’ll constantly follow only those 10 people and once in a while someone new will get added very rarely you’ll unfollow an influencer and that’s the power the influencer holds now that friend Circle has become an influencer Circle for me that’s the kind of guy I keep following all the time for Brands it’s extremely important because these influencers are obviously influencing people but the important thing over there is how can that influence that they’re creating come out as authentic when the content comes out as authentic to people then the believability is very high when the influencer is not trying to sell me a story but he’s trying to just tell me a story is when I start believing in what he’s what he’s advertising so again and again in the influencer world also everybody’s an influencer you know today everybody’s trying to grow their fans followers and they just everybody’s trying to influence somebody so there’s a clutter there too so for Brands it’s become important that how do you influence the influencer itself influencing the influencer is a key Moto for us as well where we try to convince the influencer first that this is a great product for the TG who follows you and we go to those influencers whose TG matches the TG that we are going after and hence a duration of influencers becomes critical and then convincing the influencer that this is a great product becomes critical when he’s convinced automatically authentic honest reviews come out of him how do we do that well everybody is doing it the same way they’re writing great briefs they’re calling influencers they’re doing product demos for free gifting products everything is happening for us in the media and entertainment space of course previews reviews everything is getting shared with them they’re doing exclusive reviews as well they’re being called in to see content all of that happens in the media space because they need to be convinced first and once you’ve passed that level of influences then you start doing it with your consumers also because like I said everyone can influence someone so the consumer starts becoming an influencer or he becomes a flag bearer for you so you start developing him then with so much of you know knowledge about your product that it is the right product for him and his TG that he starts to write authentic reviews for you.

Mehul:- Very interesting so that actually is a start of a virtuous cycle so to say where it has a snowballing effect of building the brand so the influencer is probably let’s say a starter or a spark plug so to say in that whole process right we can probably you know visualize it that way.

Aman:- Yeah yeah yeah absolutely absolutely it’s it’s like a network that’s spreading so fast.

Mehul:- Very interesting where do you see organic search in the Journey of building and growing an entertainment brand?

Aman:- Very interesting question honestly you know organic search uh I I sometimes feel is very under played in our industry but it’s one of the most critical parameters of identifying product pull you know it’s it’s the moment of truth it’s your report card if organic searches are not happening then you know your content is not working because you know at least in the media and entertainment industry one important critical Factor about content is the fact that it needs Word of Mouth you know you can mount a piece of content really well and you can advertise it very well and you can give it a great launch but it only sustains when people start talking about it and when people start talking about your content that’s when your organic searches start to see a spike there’s a very interesting debate that we used to have internally in our company also and we could see it outside also uh people would say that you know whe even if it’s organic search you should advertise on brand keywords you know you should run your ads on your own brand and there was always that conversation that if you don’t run it somebody else will run it on your keywords and all of that but honestly we one day we finally took a call and we said you know we’re not going to spend advertising money to cannibalize our own organic search because organic search is actually a true true report card of how your new launch has been and hence we started focusing on two things very clearly one is how organically a content is growing within our masses and secondly how are we doing the right SEO to ensure that the content shows up when the organic search is happening so these two things have to work together to actually bring your content up to people uh as I said people don’t remember platforms they remember content so you have to find a way to insert your platform everywhere to a point that we started realizing that it’s not just online you know off page or on page or off page SEO we started working on things like Wikipedia Pages knowledge boxes on Google we started working on every single place where we know content search is going to happen uh but what about our product what about our platform so in my view organic search is as I said the report card and that’s the best way to identify if you are doing a great job on your product or not.

Mehul:- Very well put very well put am uh you touched upon AI you know when you spoke about marketing so uh can you elaborate on that in terms of you know what is your take on AI in marketing and especially uh in relation to an entertainment brand like shemaroo?

Aman:- Sure um you know obviously AI has very useful applications in in the entertainment space uh recently I was uh you know at the face we had a creative workshop at Facebook at meta and they were telling us about how they’re using AI to not just create dubs in different language of an English piece of content but they’re using AI to also change the lip sying so that the English content is has a dub in Spanish as well as the lips move for the Spanish words so in the media and entertainment space the next wave is going to have a lot of AI in liping audio I’m sure you’re reading about it you can see everywhere it’s already happening you know they need about 6 seconds of your voice to emulate your voice completely through AI so that’s already happening dialog delivery is happening now video lip syncing is already happening that’s a space that’s very big in the media space it’s coming up uh there’s al already like I said AI there’s a lot of AI that’s already happening in the suggestion engine space to ensure that bases your browsing Behavior you are fed the right things to ensure that there’s a lot of creative analysis that AI is doing to identify what kind of creatives will you react to faster those are things where the concentration is and obviously the obvious question that every everybody’s asking is that is a I want to take my job but uh that’s that’s honestly not the case I think that a is not going to replace jobs maybe it’s going to replace some menial jobs that’s what it’s going to do it’ll still require a lot of resources to learn how to run AI successfully people need to know how to ride the tiger.

Mehul:- Yeah I me it’s it’s kind of an enabler rather than a thread so to say right now that is what people are talking about and can you share some examples of you know AI that you have you used in your marketing activities?

Aman:- So for us uh of course in the creative space AI has already taken made a good foothold uh we’ve been using some AI tools like invento and a lot of other tools honestly to in the creative space so a lot of our visuals that we put out on social media a lot of our promos that we create uh they’re not fully created in house because a lot lot of uh delivery is already present we are just layering it with our product our colors Our Brands and everything on top of it so a lot of motion graphic that you see today is already AI generated that’s already happening okay Performance Marketing I can’t even tell you Performance Marketing is extremely AI based today you know this about about a year back everybody was talking about identifying the right cohorts and going after them and you know a lot of research that you need to do to understand your consumer and cohort so well for targeting or all of that is kind of thinly Vanishing because all of that is now becoming AI performance algorithms are finding you the right consumers they already they’re looking at you your competition your competition’s consumers they’re bringing them to you so audience finding and you know conversion based campaigning is taken a huge step there and that’s something that we are also riding on very heavily and of course there chat GPT I can’t speak of AI and in the copy space my team are writing content out of chat GPT and other such platforms everybody is you know running their content and copies through them to write the best creative ways in which they can obviously they’re also checking that this is not copied content and all of that but in-house I can I can see that there’s a huge dependence on AI That’s developing within people.

Mehul:- Wow that’s a lot of I would say applications as far as AI is concerned and somewhere you feel you know kind of you know this is getting more and more intrusive when you talk about lip syncing where you I mean we don’t know what next true interesting Aman we are in the last leg of uh the podcast so you know I would like to know from you if you can share some specific growth stories from your uh illustrious career.

Aman:- Wow at least at sharu I’m proud of the fact that you know we are actually the number one app in Gujarat right now this is it’s a significant achievement we have very strong penetration with very few competitors who have such deep libraries as us we do massive advertising targeting the right people it’s interesting you know sometimes when we go to places like Ahmedabad people actually see a film and they say that oh okay I’ll just wait for it to come on shimaru and then I’ll watch it on OTT you know it’s a simple thing but it sounds like a great achievement uh I think over my career you know evolving with technology has played a great great role we’ve done a lot of social media campaign which have used a lot of Technology uh I remember in covid while people could not go to Temples we enabled so many people to do live darshan of temples and not just that you know you know doing Chadava flowers and doing all of those things and you know getting invited to what every time the Mand was doing something new was something that got a lot of people Associated to our brand uh there’s a whole lot of filters that my team created and those filters you know get so much more consumer engagement because of this and Technology played a great role there back at EB at my last job uh we launched something called as a liability index for real estate clients so if you were living in a place you could you know that every house that you chose to buy each house would get a score basis the distance and kind of reviews people wrote about the amenities around that house on Google so schools colleges hospitals everything we called it the liability index project it was an award-winning project and again technology came to the rescue because we were basically parsing or we were uh API pulling all the data from Google Maps and we were just doing basic calculations for people at the back end but what I could see was it was adding a lot of value to our you know to our consumers lives our sales teams were talking to Consumers more in terms of numerically saying that which property is a great property for you to buy and that’s just making technology simpler for people to make decisions so I’m I’m very proud of some of these projects they’ve they’ve helped me grow as well understanding technology better.

Mehul:- Wonderful wonderful thank you so much for uh sharing these nuggets of achievement I would say uh you know it throws a lot of light on you know what can be achieved through technology and through you know persistence in terms of understanding what the consumers want wonderful thanks a lot for that last question is you know we would like you to share some takeaways for wedding professionals you know who would want to uh be successful in their careers?

Aman:- Sure uh you know I also shared these sometimes in class when I teach but more importantly uh I think one major thing that people need to take up is reading and staying up to date uh especially in your own industry I mean the world has come to a point where there is just so much deeper knowledge in every industry that needs to be unfolded and reading is my top priority so knowing each and everything that’s happening in your industry is extremely important the second one is kind of interesting but if I had to talk to any professional who’s you know starting up I would say that Beyond reading assimilation and application is important which means you should be able to analyze a problem from various angles and levers and remember so many multiple angles and levers you know the world is full of complexities there are complex problems they need sometimes the solutions are also very complex but then that solution has so many moving parts and variables to it so your ability to analyze all of this together is extremely important hence remembering all these variables is extremely important they say that you know sometimes you have to fly a plane and repair it to at the same time and to do that you need to know every single part of the plane and what liver Works within it also I think the third important thing is becoming a subject matter expert today you know while you work in your industry and as you grow in your career you will look at multiple things together but in that Journey my advice is if you caught hold of something catch hold of it like a crab and then really know everything about that particular one subject matter become a complete expert and then move on to the next one um and my final you know takeaway is that uh I think the world is needs to become more focused on outcomes today I mean G out the days when people used to say that well you’re very hardworking and that’s that’s that’s really nice uh of course putting good effort is extremely essential but the outcome from that effort is even more essential so my fourth and last point is that becoming outcome oriented is more important than effort oriented today.

Mehul:- Nicely put I think the fourth point hit the nail on the head thank you thank you Aman so much for your insights for your time and as I said valuable nuggets of information that we got from you know chatting with you on this podcast and it was a pleasure having you here uh on the grow genius podcast thank you so much.

Aman:- Same here it it was a pleasure being here a very interesting set of questions you asked me mehul I had fun doing this podcast.

Mehul:- Great great super thank you so much so ladies and gentlemen this brings us to the end of yet another episode of the growth genius I always feel enlightened at the end of such podcast because uh as you see Aman told us a lot of things about how marketing and technology and especially AI being used in building an entertainment brand like shemaroo so I hope you enjoy this as well I’m very thankful to all our growth Geniuses and also also to the audience that is you who keep on liking sharing subscribing and viewing our content that actually encourages us a lot and helps us to build this podcast day on day thanks a lot for your support on that and as you know keep liking sharing subscribing to our content we are available across various social media platforms and also audio platforms The Links of course are mentioned in the description below so till the next episode of the growth genius keep learning keep inspiring thank you.