India Inc hails Modi’s return, sees Digital adding more muscle in 2.0 rule

India Inc. is in a buoyant mood with Narendra Modi and the BJP returning to power for a second term. They see further fortification of the business ecosystem for Digital as well as for start-ups. Adgully brings the reactions from a wide cross-section of India’s industry leaders...

 

 

 

Punit Goenka, MD & CEO, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd:

“Transparency and Technology, in my opinion, are the two key important aspects which will boost the Media & Entertainment sector and hence, the Government should continue its efforts in enabling this convergence. Our nation is blessed with rich and immense creative potential, which needs to be further unleashed and capitalised in order to drive innovation and above all, generate employment. I congratulate Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his victory. Corporate Inc. must together join this era of transformation and march ahead towards making the nation a global superpower.”

Ashish Bhasin, CEO, Dentsu Aegis Network Greater South and Chairman and CEO of India:

As far as businesses are concerned they dont like uncertainity. Whether it is A party or B party, somebody needs to win with a decisive mandate and that now has happened with the NDA now getting a clear mandate. Lot of reforms which were held up will now come up hopefully in a bold manner and pretty rapidly. For example cutting down of Corporate tax rates, lowering of personal income tax rates, land reforms, labour reforms, ease of doing business, ease of payment of taxes and removal of complexities. Business doesnt mind paying tax but the hassles around it wastes a lot of productive time. Now that this govt has a distinct mandate and a significant majority, the hope is that they quickly get on with these reforms as the Economy needs to be boosted.

Vivek Bhargava, CEO, DAN Performance Group:

“The mood of the nation is awesome... I think it was high time that the country got rid of caste/ religion based politics and focused on development and progress of the nation as the key reason to choose our leaders and political parties. I am happy that the Nation has given a firm mandate to Narendra Modi and the BJP to continue their focus on building India as a great nation.”

Shrenik Gandhi, CEO & Co-Founder, White Rivers Media:
“Continuity of the current government shall be a great boost for the digital ecosystem. The Modi-led Government has been pro digital and undoubtedly, digital and digitally connected industries shall witness a disproportionate growth in the next 5 years. Continuity of the government for the next 5 years is a great sign of stability and the world will look up upon India all the more for digital. These Elections shall have a big impact on the global digital economy and India will soon be in centre stage of a lot of digital innovations and transformations which change the way the world lives and does business. For the next few years, India is the place to be for this industry!”

Bindu Balakrishnan, Country Head, DCMN India:

“The exit polls already showed that the current government was going to come back into power.  On that expectation alone, we saw that the markets were rallying with Sensex and NIFTY hitting highs in the last couple of days.  When vote counting started today and the results showed an even a better performance by the Modi government, the Sensex surged and breached the 40,000 mark. Any government which gets a second term and an vote of confidence from the general public also gets the opportunity to complete policies and development plans that it started in its first term.  This in turn will give a good push to the economy leading to high consumer confidence as well as investor confidence.  The brands in turn, flush with more investments, will want to capitalize on this sentiment and will spend big bucks on marketing and advertising.  We are going to see this advertising surge across offline and digital media.”

Himanshu Arya, Founder and CEO, Grapes Digital:
“Well, Modi’s win was well expected post the exit polls and now with the massive victory of the party, has put all the speculations of so many months to rest. An interesting point to make here is that, with Modi, there has been an upsurge and upswing in way the digital content is being consumed by our audiences which it was not seen earlier. As we have all witnessed how the #Chowkidaar campaign was unexpectedly a huge hit. With the new government swearing in, we can now expect more stringent laws and policies in place, good governance, strong and steady industrial growth in various sectors. The new government does believe in the power of digital transformations and hence, we can expect this sector to grow manifold in future.”

 

Arnab Mitra, Managing Director, LIQVD Asia:
“It would be wrong to say that I am not surprised, and more so because a national party like the Congress can be marginalised to this size is not something anybody could have thought of! But if you analyse deeply, as Joseph de Maistre once said, “every country has the govt it deserves”, may be this is what is! May be this is really what the mandate is. As a country, we need self-made hard working leaders and not some privileged heirs of dynasties! And that you can probably call the “wind of change”. May be this is the beginning of a new India. Quite honestly, I am just happy that the markets are soaring high today.”

Mayank Bhangadia, CEO & Co-Founder, Roposo:
“The current government’s Digital India campaign was a really good initiative. We need more such initiatives from the new government, to take the country forward. From ‘Make in India’, which promoted manufacturing in India, we need to shift to ‘Made in India’, where we boost indigenous companies. I believe this would better solve the current problem of unemployment and would generate a demandfor Indian products and services. It would help put India on the map as the top net exporter.”

Roopak Saluja, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, The 120 Media Collective:
“The return of Modi is the best option we could have asked for as far as the economy and the ad industry are concerned. While the government made some seriously bad economic decisions the last time around, there was some significant structural progress too. The more important point is that there’s no better alternative on the economy front. 

That said, I am greatly concerned by the egregious erosion of the secular fabric of this country and the general assault on freedom of speech, along with the polarisation that has occurred during Modi’s first term. I fear, without a credible opposition, things will just get worse on this front over the next five years. The most urgent crisis we will face, however, that no one seems to have the answer to is how we are going to create 200 million jobs over the next 10 years. If we don’t resolve this – and perhaps Modi is best placed to – there will be hell to pay as a nation.” 

Sabyasachi Mitter, Founder and MD, Fulcro:
“These elections have seen probably one of the most well organised marketing campaign from the BJP that every marketer could take inspiration from. From star campaigner Modi’s blitzkrieg of mass outreach to a meticulous micro campaign planning by Amit Shah that ensured the correct candidate selection and booth worker engagement, the campaign was an example that every management professional could learn from. Turning every opposition challenge into an opportunity with elan as seen from the ‘Main Bhi Chowkidar’ campaign, the party deployed an amazing sense of timing and creative excellence. The resonance of its campaigns and the amplification through social media and WhatsApp groups was a lesson any marketer could draw inspiration from. All in all this was one campaign that could well be a case study that every management text book could do well to incorporate.”

Mayank Bhangadia, CEO & Co-Founder, Roposo:
“The current government’s Digital India campaign was a really good initiative. We need more such initiatives from the new government, to take the country forward. From ‘Make in India’, which promoted manufacturing in India, we need to shift to ‘Made in India’, where we boost indigenous companies. I believe this would better solve the current problem of unemployment and would generate a demandfor Indian products and services. It would help put India on the map as the top net exporter.”

 

Prashant Deorah, CEO & MD, Puretech Digital:
“Well, we were all expecting this. Good to have a solid government with full majority once again. Congratulations to Shri Modiji and the BJP. We, as part of the digital industry, were enthused when the Digital India initiative was launched in 2014. With so much leverage on social media for all elections by most of the major political parties, we really hope that the same platforms which digital marketing and communications agencies use to build brands and engage with customers gets some recognition, which helps set standards and best practices and establishes benchmarks, allowing health competition and bringing out their best for the customer by these agencies. Be it quality standards, or usage of license tools and software, cost matrix. 

Also, we hope this being a working capital intensive business, some norms are set for receipt of payments in time and/or making GST payments on receivable basis and not on billings.”

 

Hiren Shah, Founder and Chairman, Vertoz:
“We look forward to the newly elected Government’s support towards digitisation of the country with respect to “Digital India” scheme, which includes Digital Infrastructure and Digital Economy. With this victory, a stable political environment will be maintained, making way for further growth and easy implementation of policies that are highly beneficial for the economy. This will holistically help many sectors for digitalisation of businesses and operating towards ‘Industry 4.0’, and in turn, the digital advertising sector. It will broaden the horizon for digital advertising and help the industry reach its full potential in terms of market penetration, thus enabling brands to offer customer-centric bespoke solutions. 

With effective adoption of digital technologies across sectors in the country, India has the potential to target 275 million more, addition to current 520+ million internet subscribers by 2023, as per a McKinsey Global Institute report. Moreover, from a national perspective, we expect that the NDA Government's internet penetration programmes will help transform a large segment of rural India into digital villages, thus opening up the market.

N Chandramouli, CEO, TRA Research:

“The mood of the nation is split and divided, euphoric in some parts and despondent and sombre in others. The country was splintered in its party-of-choice during the elections, and the feeling of the people is resonant with the mood of the party.”

Armand Poonawala, Founder & CEO @:
“The positive effect is definitely stability that results in more money being pumped into Indian markets in general. On the downside, I’m not expecting any policies from this government that will actually make any significant positive difference on the ground level for start-ups.”

Jitendra Chaturvedi, Director and Co-founder, Batooni Mobile Advertising:

“The government had started smoothening the tax issues in start-up funding. Continuation of the regime will hopefully hasten the change in the procedures and laws helping startup funding. BJP’s known penchant for advertising is very good news for adtech start-ups.”

Pranshh Sikka, CEO and Founder, The Pivotals:
“#ElectionResults2019 have once again reiterated the traction of Brand Modi over everything else and redefined ‘Branding’ in political parlance forever. Brand Modi seems to have created an invincible connect that has superseded every recorded barometer for political supremacy in this country.”

Sameer Vakil, Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer, GlobalLinker:
“NDA-I had worked to address many fundamentals of the economy and business environment – introducing GST and rationalising rate structures, demonetization, ease of doing business, the 59 minute elements amongst other matters.”

Ashutosh Harbola, CEO & Co-founder, Buzzoka:

“The re-elected government will have a lot more on their shoulder as new India has higher expectations this term. While digital India saw a mammoth growth in the last term, we expect the same to continue with higher investments in Digital India etc. Also, on the front of ease of doing business, the government took some major steps last term and we expect even simpler processes should be implemented. And finally, on the GST front, I would appeal the government to introduce simpler filing processes for start-ups and MSMEs.”

 

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