Singapore to India: AI, Brands, and a Sporting Revolution ft. Prantik Mazumdar

What is your perspective on the India Singapore corridor? >> A lot of Indian professionals come to Singapore or I don't think it's been bilateral. >> Where do you see this passion leading to? What are your plans around this? A lot of people don't realize but semiconductor is massive contributor to Singapore's economy. You know, for a long time marketing sort of relied on the crutches of art and creativity and you know, tearjerking ads. What do you think is the future of marketing given all the evolution in AI that we seeing?

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AIdriven tech company that helps brands and retailers recover hidden dollars from overp payments and leakages. Docs now intelligent platform empowers businesses of all sizes to rapidly collect, manage, govern, and collaborate on the data front, transforming your documents and making sure there's an impact on the business bottom line all in a secure and a single environment. >> Hi Franek, uh, welcome to the show. I'm so glad to have met you in Singapore. For people who do not know, branding is an amazing leader based out of Singapore. He's also the president of

Singapore, has spent a lot of time doing a lot of amazing stuff in the world of marketing, advertising and brand building and of course a lot more as well. So, thank you so much Prant for taking our time today. >> Thanks a welcome to Singapore. Good to be on your show. I've seen some clips and episodes and uh happy to be doing this from Singapore. >> Thank you so much. So prantic I'm just going to ask you a few quick questions get your perspectives in because a lot of people would love to hear from you and you're going to get those insights

and wisdom as well. Uh I'll start with this. Uh probably you spent a lot of years in marketing you know building a lot of amazing brands and building for a lot of amazing brands as well. Uh what do you think is the future of marketing given all the evolution in AI that we are seeing? How does this go from here on? You know, I think the the the core more than technology and AI, the core objective and KPI of marketing, I think that's what sort of interests me is I think you know for a long time marketing sort of relied on the crutches of just art and creativity and you know clear

jerking ads and the objective was purely at the top of the funnel to create awareness uh and engagement which is important. Absolutely. Brand salience, brand affinity matters, brand recall matters. But I think over the last couple of decades, thanks to the internet, mobile tech, social media. I think one thing that we have seen is marketing can do a lot more in terms of the entire funnel, right? Right. From top to middle to consideration to sales to purchase to after sales to loyalty and this is true in B2C or B2B. So I think that objective to me still remains

true whether with or without AI. I think with AI and tech what I'm excited is I think you'll see a lot of automation across the board whether it's media creative CRM you will see a lot of automation so I think just this week Zuckerberg there's an article in Wall Street Journal where he says you know Facebook or the Googles of the world the platform in itself will create the creatives on its own with Google VO that's going to happen on its own right so I think the video music and text creation and synergization into creative making optimization of campaigns,

reporting of campaigns. I think you will see a lot of automation happen. To me, that's exciting that if that automation genuinely is true, suddenly not just big brands butmemes and startups can leverage that at scale and so it becomes a level playing field. So to me I think the two things that I will say is I think brands, business owners whether large, medium, small need to realize that marketing is a toolkit not just to build the product but to create good customer experience to ensure that that skill set is used to build the brand to create purchase funnel decisions to

create loyalty as well as good customer service. So it cuts across not just at the top of the funnel and I'm really excited about automation across the entire process of creative generation, media buying, CRM and the works from a lens of it becoming democratized and accessible. >> Amazing. And that of course leads into a much stronger customer experience as well. So >> yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for that. Uh Prantik, you are also the president of TA Singapore. You've yourself invested in a bunch of

companies. uh what is your perspective uh on the India Singapore corridor? Do you think there's a lot of exchange that's happening right now or do you think there's a scope for a lot more? >> So you know I've lived in Singapore for 24 years. I served in the government where I helped local companies internationalize and I think I've always observed the Singapore India linkages. I think historically culturally there's a lot of affinity and close ties. I mean in terms of trade uh you know there's been a lot of trade over the years given ports and all of that. If I look back, I

still feel that commercially the relationship is underleveraged and it's underperformed. Why do I say so? Because I think fundamentally over the last two, three decades, we've seen a lot of Indian companies, Indian businesses come to Singapore. A lot of Indian professionals come to Singapore. But I don't think it's been bilateral. I don't think we've seen the movement the other way around. We have seen movement of capital. But we have not seen movement of companies. At best you have seen large government link companies, corporates like your capital lands,

keels in real estate projects like keelpara. You've seen capital land build the IT parks in Bangalore late '90s. You've seen Changangi airport do a lot of consulting work but beyond that not really. So and I think there is an opportunity you know I spoke about this at Thai Delhi's 25th year anniversary earlier in the year. three specific industries I think semicon right a lot of people don't realize but semiconductor is massive contributor to Singapore's economy uh because you know since the last 30 40 years Singapore has been a pioneer a global pioneer when it

comes to semicon so as India looks at that I think there's two way you know India could look at manufacturing Singapore I doubt will get into manufacturing but design and the trading part of it I think Singapore will always be a few steps ahead because of various geopolitical reasons uh I think climate Energy sustainability to me is a massive opportunity. Singapore's policy frameworks have are you know could be leveraged by India. Uh of course India is going through a very different phase of growth where I don't think climate ESG is of core priority. I think we have

basic poverty elevation to sort of take care of. Uh but I think that's an area where you know there could be a two-way sort of dialogue and two-way collaboration. Uh third is I think the element of deep tech. You know you were telling me about we're talking about agnikool space tech etc. I think India is doing some fabulous work but I think Singapore again it's a hidden gem that if you go to the universities in the west of Singapore N US NTU I studied in N US there's some great R&D work when it comes to deep tech I think to me the Indian VCs some of them are doing it so

whether it's growex whether it's special who champion this category I think there's opportunity to invest for Indian VCs there's opportunity for R&B collaboration between deep tech companies of the two nations to me actually amongst the three that probably is a near-term opportunity uh to drive. So I think I would want that beyond basic trading uh I think I would want to see two things capital flow from Singapore from the family offices uh leveraging the India maximizing the India opportunity which I don't think there's too much of right now uh and

other is at an entrepreneurship level how do we get at a deep tech semicon more collaboration between companies early stage ventures between the two nations >> makes a lot of sense thank you so much for that one last question uh prant you've been super passionate about sports and you also come from a world of tech uh tech enablement as well. Where do you see this passion leading to? What are your plans around this? >> Yeah, it's a good question. Look to me grown up loving watching playing cricket but I think in the last decade given my

involvement as a co-founder adviser to ref sports it's opened my eyes to the opportunity as a multisporting nation and I spent 18 days in Paris to watch the Olympics and the parolympics. what I learned and experienced was life-changing literally that I think yes cricket's great uh we you know we are world champs but Olympic and especially parolympics and especially women athletes if I had $100 I would double down on par and women in just a couple of stats to sort of bear this in mind you know India's sports annual budget is around uh $450 odd million but at a per

capita level that's 30 cents per person which is you know in comparison US is nine Australia is 11 so we are way behind our university sports uh sort of opportunity is massive. It's very broken right now unlike US where you have college football, college, right? So you've got to create a grass grassroots movement. You've got to create opportunities for public private capital to come in. You know India's CSR policy is brilliant. India is the only country or the first country to mandate the 2% CSR which is about 30,000 crores a year but only 1.24% to 4% of that comes to

sports and that's understandable because India like I said we have basic challenges of education health sanitation to take care of but I think if you have 30,000 crores even if that 1.24% becomes 5%. you know that's massive capital deployment uh and today there are very interesting social finance instruments social stock exchange instruments that public private sector bodies can come together to raise capital so it's not charity I don't believe in you know donations and charities alone but investment opportunities in public infrastructure

in the my interest is how do I connect the lots of sports tech startups sports media build better narrative around the athletes the non- cricketers who don't get the attention given the rise of OTT and digital platforms and bring in foreign and domestic capital to sort of enable athletes as well as these tech companies so that if India is looking to host the 2036 Olympics even if it's not 2036 and 2050 in the next two decades you know we need to make sure that our athletes get access to capital get access to the best coaches mental health nutrition technology what have you so

that they are at a level playing field you know I'll leave you with the thought that without much. Today the parah contingent is on you know 15th or 17th position globally. You have seen the Asian athletics championship that just happened. We ranked second in Asia. Uh you know we won 24 medals. So a lot is happening. But I genuinely believe what we need to do is increase the funnel. Lot more people from grassroots playing because if that denominator increases I'm sure our programs can make sure that they become world-class athletes. Because to me sports is a microcosm that

reflects society. It is not just about the medal. Sports is a brilliant tool for nation building, for soft power, for economic opportunities for people. Uh so you know uh that's my lens to sport and hopefully in the next two decades I can invest my time and energy and resources there. >> I'm sure that would be superbly helpful to a lot of people out there who were looking for that kind of guidance and support. Thank you so much Panting on that note for taking your time and giving us some amazing pears of wisdom. Thank you.

>> Thanks Abai. Welcome to Singapore and hope to do more of this with you. All the best. >> Thank you. Take care. [Music]