MUMBAI: At the end of every year, experts from various fields decode the year gone by or predict what will happen next. But brand management and consulting firm of the Draftfcb + Ulka group in India - Cogito Consulting - has gone a step ahead by bringing out a tome which has various industry experts forecasting what will happen in their respective fields 50 years from now.
itled India 2061 - A Look at the Future of India, the book has been released as a "special tribute to the nation on its 67th Independence Day celebrations." It features 21 thought leaders from various industries giving their take on the challenges India will face as it gets ready to join the league of developed nations.
Draftfcb+Ulka executive director & chief executive officer MG ‘Ambi‘ Parameswaran elaborates, "We had put down 25 different topics from various sectors and were clear that we wanted only one person to write on a particular topic. So when we sat with the topics, we contacted the first name that popped into our heads who would be able to identify with it."
The professionals from various fields featured in the book are Punit Goenka, RS Sodhi, Ayaz Memon, Ajit Blakrishnan, Dr Ajit Ranade, Anil Sadana, Ashish Chauhan, BS Nagesh, Dileep Ranjekar, Dinesh Kanabar, Dorab Sopariwala, Geet Sethi, Hasit Joshipura, Malini V Shankar, Pavan Sukhdev, Ravi Kant, S Ramadorai, Sanjeev Aga, Shiv Visvanathan, Shivakumar and Thomas Mathew T.
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To summarise, I truly believe that TV will not die. At Zee, we no longer term ourselves as merely broadcasters, but "content creators" and will focus on reaching out to audiences at the end of any screen that they are available on. Some screens may discontinue along the way, but there will be other screens that will emerge as life continues to evolve. The future of television is all about viewers experiencing entertainment and information content on their preferred devices, time and place. Zeel MD and CEO Punit Goenka (Excerpted from the India 2061- A Look at the Future of India Copyright Cogito Consulting Publication) |
It was in 2011 when the idea of writing a forward looking white paper came about just as Draftfcb‘s India arm, Ulka Advertising, was celebrating its golden jubilee. Cogito Consulting and Asterii Analytics were assigned the task of quantitatively forecasting India‘s future in areas like media, economy, internet, automobile, infrastructure, among others. Their labour resulted in a data-centric white paper entitled The India 2061 Report which was released in 2012.
The same report has been packed as a valued-add in the pacily written book which has been edited by Ambi and Kinjal Medh with extremely high production values.
The thought leaders have covered various fields and given various shades of the future. While some are optimistic, others are a little skeptical.
Ambi reveals that a thousand copies of the book have been published so far and sent across to a select bunch of experts in various fields, and will be available on the agency‘s website from 15 August for download at no cost.
"I think it is a great initiative by Draftfcb + Ulka to produce a book of the calibre that it has," says a media observer. "It works well for Cogito Consulting too. It helps position the agency as a thought leader in terms of driving the possible agenda. By getting leading lights of industry to write about the future, it helps further cement that perception. Overall, they are doing a very good job in making people think."
