From Screens to Presence: The Next Disruption in Marketing | e4m TechManch 2026

Thank you. Thank you so much. This like uh Bhavna said this is the fifth year I have been associated with tech munch and every year I'm on the stage with lot of technology trying to demonstrate what's coming up in the space of technology. love to see so many friends and familiar faces and what we've been doing here on the stage is lot of prototyping with uh clients and friends like Sumei and then in another 3 months or 6 months we were seeing those marketeers unleashing those technology experiences what we demonstrate on the stage what we are doing today which is different than what we've been doing for the past 5 years at tech is we've got a use case on a technology which we're going to demonstrate today so there's already a use case not a prototype but a prototype that led to a use case and here we are like trying to present something which is really really fascinating and really excites me. So earlier this year I started my year with lot of inspiration at CES and CES as always was loaded with robotics. This year N is here. You must have followed that in a big way. There was like robotics all over. There was so much learning out there. The robos doing bunch of task right from your daily chores to marketing brand marketing use cases. A lot of enterprise use cases the Hyundai Atlas and we saw the best of robotics in action at CES. A lot of inspiration out there. What I kept doing is I kept creating videos and kept spamming my clients friends like Sumei. So they were getting a flavor in terms of achan and every time I take a video of a robo in action I have my mind which is being now being trained for last decade that how can you use a technology for brand marketing purposes. So every time I was just recording a video and if I'm sending it to Sumeia I will kind of blog and add a narration out there. see look at this we can use it for this purpose and stuff like that I think she would remember and we have these amazing experience centers back home in India which is now completed almost 3 years and we've hosted about 700 odd clients including a lot of my friends in the room here >> so experience centers have now grown in size we've got a th00and ft space and when you came was 300 ft² so obviously it's being supported by global leadership our global CTO our chief of innovation elav we get like tremendous support from all our global leaders and not just support but lot of partnership support and learning which comes in from global clients and global markets out there and that's how we channelize it make it more Indianize those technology stack and see to it that how we leverage the localized partnership agility of startups and all our big tech partnerships how we mash and create more creative experiences out there so 3 years 700 clients and with big clients and clients like Coca-Cola we have a cascade running every 3 months where me and Sume and our teams they jam and we jam without a agenda or purpose per se right like we keep saying there cannot be a brief for an innovation it has to be just experience in the form of prototype and uh how has been your experience in terms of our partnership and what we've been doing and how are we landing a lot of good body of work out there >> I think you know you said something really nice it really helps to meet sometimes without agendas It's almost like saying, "Okay, let's see what we can do." And I think experience center is actually built for that. >> Yeah. >> Like you walk in like a person like Alice in Wonderland. You walk in and you see all the stuff and you're like, "Okay, what can I do with it >> and then you bring your teams over there, you figure there are ideas, sparks that happens here and there and we'll talk about that. How did we actually come to do what you'll see on the stage?" But um bigger point um it talks about screen to presence right now. This is something that we've been truly truly living for the last few years that we are going through the transformation that we are seeing within my company. I'm sure you are seeing across other clients. >> It is becoming so important. And why is that so? And why are we like here talking about this new I wouldn't say prototype new feature and new use case. See right now I think all of you all of you already know content is infinite. There's just infinite amount of content that is being thrown at you but attention is finite. So you only have that much of attention that you have and consumers have to retain and remember. Brands are often forgotten because they come in into different features, different culture, different tournaments etc. But they do not own it. That's an interesting feature that we have been talking about and every time we look at content we talk about how do we disrupt it? How do we do something that captures attention and what we'll talk today over here is truly groundbreaking and attention capturing and we'll talk more about how we can grow it as we go [music] through it. So passion points is an important thing in our life like you know that right? uh in Coca-Cola we do believe very strongly that showing up rightly in different passion points whether it's music it's sports it's cricket it's very important and how do you seamlessly make yourself a part of where culture is happening because people naturally congregate when you know when passion point when it's a question of passion point whether it's actual sports or whether it is content like cook studio but people are there talking about their passion points not necessarily your brand but your brand seeps in creeps in and holds it together. >> So like like Sumei rightly said uh my passion point is all that's new. Every time I see something which is new in the space of technology, I feel like I should go out there and do it first to begin with in my journey and as AI happened and I believe that it's so transformational that you can do so much meaningful work and to that Bhana made a very interesting point in some of the cases which we've released that how a transformational era like AI can be used to build more accessible solution the work which we did with Amaren for visually impaired audience right or the platform which we've created which takes AI to the bottom of the pyramid out there and like she spoke about the passion and culture and we see cricket as is something which is like a religion in India. People connect all throughout. So when at CES when we were kind of seeing a lot of stuff and I was sending it to her and we still had those fresh memories from back in Jan that I was sending a clip and I I was like you guys are so heavily invested in cricket and we can do so much more with what we are seeing out here. So your take on that because Coca-Cola is really doubling down on cricket and there's a use case which we're constantly thinking that sports and technology how can it come together how can we get the worlds to collide. >> So um you know as we were talking and as we were thinking so Coca-Cola's investment in cricket and sports in general is massive. It's a very deep connection. So if you look at ICC and cricket thumbsup has a very deep investment with international cricket council ICC. So we do a lot of work when we use cricket as a stage and as a launchpad as a experience driver etc. We also have connections with KKR with CSK and LSG. So I'm coming to LSG while thumbs up talks about the discipline of cricket sprite talks about the fun moment of cricket the fan moment of cricket right. So when we got talking we said okay if we have to think about this technology this is more fan forward this is more experience forward this is more fun and vibe forward and then we thought about a very interesting thing and interesting way that we can integrate it with sprite so I will not talk about it I would rather want you to see a little snippet of what we did and then we'll come back to it >> let's do that come on guys [applause] >> India's first creative robotics use case deployed in brand marketing Let's have the AV guys. bowler bowling speedome big bro. Big fan. Can you show us some dance movement? [music] >> Josh, how you feeling today? >> I'm ready to roll, brother. Ask him if he's got a girlfriend. >> Sledgehammer. >> What do you think of Aiden Marshall? >> Aiden, your calm presence lifts the whole room and your cover driving is pure class. >> So guys, put your hands together. If you do not put your hands together and raise an applause, our dear friend will not walk onto the stage. So why don't you call your dear friend? >> All right, come. He listens to my voice. We'll make you stand here on the marker because we have so many of us on the stage. So yeah, that's a quick uh wave for all you guys. Now you just saw the AV, right? It's the same humanoid. And the beauty about that use case which you saw that he walks in and he can real time switch languages. For example, if he sees the star Shami, he's going to have a conversation in Udu, right? If he switches to an English player, say Makram, he switches to English. And a player who can speak Hindi switches to Hindi, right? In real time. And obviously, we've been adding lot of layers to it. So if you load lot of data, say Gman's image inside the robo, it's going to greet you. Hello Gman, what's up? You sponsored a superb event out there. Stuff like that, right? So let me just ask him few questions for our audience. He >> is your friend. >> So we just saw the AV and I think you had a great time. So how was your experience at the LSG dinner which sumely facilitated for you? It was amazing. The LSG team welcomed me like I was just another member of the squad. Honestly, the only thing cooler than a chilled sprite in that room was the team's vibe. >> Wow, that's seamless, right? Let's just go for it. And maybe let's ask one more question now. How was it meeting Shami? Because he is the star player and I thought he spent lot of time with you. How was it meeting him? If you could tell our audience. bowling action. So you can see that there are some beautiful gestures we are training him on and then you can get it closer to brand com. So look at u experiential marketing campaigns which brands are already doing which is your retail activations, your mall activations blah blah and a bunch of sports technology experience where a lot of fans are engaging with uh smart screens and stuff like that and you have got this capability to creatively think coms and overlay onto him so that he can have smart conversations out there and the technology grows by the day. So every month in you come and see him you will have an upgrade out there something new which we've been discussing your thoughts. No, it's excellent. Like for example, when we first met and we were talking about cricket, I think a very interesting question that we had with ourselves, does he really know cricket? Like he walks into a room with so many cricketers were living this daily and they are going to be seen by fans who are also living cricket daily. Does he really know cricket? So that's a question. And then yes, he learned cricket. I think when when um when we met I said that we are exploring a use case on cricket so better get prepared and you know how AI is right it's like thousands of PhDs running on your pocket this guy is way smarter than what we think >> uh >> I think you have to say how did you convince us to do this you did something >> before that I I remember our conversation when I was there and I was talking about a prototype that how we can load >> lot of uh interesting K celebrity cricket fans their voice into the robo in real time and have a conversation going remember about that conversation >> and that's a prototype which is live right now less than 3 months we've been discussing >> so should we try a demo if that works now we are switching to a personality which is Roboc to my personality so I coded him in my voice and I coded him to talk technology obviously and collaboration which is super duper critical you on your drone is nothing. You with so many other talented people in the organization and external partners, you are amazing. So I coded him to breathe collaboration, coded him to think, you know, new stuff, new experiences out there. And more and more as he meets lot of our brand marketeers, the aces of brand marketing world, top CMOs who come and visit him, he constantly learns from them because they have all these brand related questions and he gets trained. M get trained on wreckit and then he has a conversation with them when they walk in right or a a big media editor is coming and I said she's coming in she's got like all sci-fi knowledge get geared she's going to ask you difficult questions and then the conversation goes on from there right so right now as a prototype he cannot just speak my voice but he can speak my voice in multiple languages which was one of our core KPIs when we were looking at coding how do you Indianize it how do you get more language models and dialects into it, right? And 100 plus languages you can speak right now. But uh let me ask you to speak maybe in my voice and uh maybe show some multilingual capabilities to our audience. What's say absolutely one of my key capabilities is to connect with audiences across languages. Let me greet all of you in a few languages in N's voice. Namaste. Tamil Bonjour Juiraj actual japal fr you get that this how was it so it's my voice it can be NL's voice in the next tech munch we'll give you a holiday and very soon it's going to be my face also >> [laughter] >> All right. So, we've been like I said, we've been training him on a lot of gestures >> proactively >> and then when we jam with our debrief with the top CMOs in the country, he just goes and relays a lot of these gestures out there. A lot of it you can train in real time. >> So, let me just ask you to show our audience that what you've been learning in our center in terms of gestures. Sure. Let me show you a few things I've been learning. Oh, it's 67. >> 67. Come on. You will tell me now what actions is he doing. >> What next? How about this? >> Woohoo. >> So while he's having a conversation, he can do bunch of actions. Like you remember when he was having a conversation with Chami, he said maybe fast bowler room and then he shows an action and he says speed 160 km. >> Yeah. And there was a very funny episode which happened with Shami. Shami asked him a follow-up question and this guy was little hallucinating because there's so many people talking out there. So Shami says, you know, then he gives a very quirky answer back. So stuff like that. I think there's so much more you can train him on. There are some stuff which he's constantly learning in terms of actions. And when we are jamming on a specific brief which you want to achieve on the retail parlance then always we can quickly train him to do a lot of these stuffs. How is it? How do you see the upgrade in less than 3 months? >> I am seeing >> I think she's seeing it for the first time. By the way, >> I'm seeing him learning really really really fast. But I'll come back to my question. >> You want to talk about how did you convince us after sending a lot of WhatsApp messages? >> Absolutely. because there's a story there >> that that's something I think a lot of guys in the room who must be getting a lot of WhatsApp messages from me as a tech evangelist you need to like really keep sharing information it's going to click somewhere and that's how the good work is going to emerge so I remember I mean randomly I call my clients and most of the times they are busy but they definitely call me back I have never seen any CMO after series of messages >> they don't call me back they call me back in the evening saying that >> what's up you know stuff like that these are the kind of conversations I do with them. No mainstream conversations. So I call up SI and I said I want to meet you just like that >> for a coffee not a coffee actually when we meet it's for a coke. So I said let's meet I'll have a diet one and she will go with her original. So I said I want to come over. So I went to her Mumbai campus and I was carrying a black box that box which is there >> and I have to say this >> and the reception calls me saying oh you have uh you have nich and his friend is here I'm like the friend doesn't have an email ID I've not registered the person who is the friend >> so yeah then I tell him it's a friend trust me he's not going to harm you let him come in we do the formalities we get him up there and then we walk into her campus where she's there was no meeting planned nothing and there are people busy with their work. Everyone had scheduled meetings out there. So we just walk in and I say that I have trained him to perform certain actions. I just want to brainstorm. And she says, "You've not blocked any time. There's nothing. You just walked in and she said 30 minutes conversation. And how much time did you spend with us?" >> Spent 2 and 1/2 hours. It's not me. The entire office gathered together because you had this fellow running around in office. There are people who came and hugged him. Okay. And I'm saying what I mean over here. Seeing is believing on this. [music] It is for me it was okay. I had seen all the videos. I had seen all the uh demos. I had seen all the explanations that he had given. I had seen other people also interact with him. But when he walks in and then you know goes shakes hand talks randomly in between not randomly meaningfully between brainstorming sessions and you're like woo did he make sense over there and he did. Um that I think was the tipping point because for me to see people who were really the corporate people right the corporate people are the most cynical people and corporate people in marketing are possibly a little more cynical than rest of them when I saw everybody walk in and talk to try to talk to him literally felt emotional about him like you know don't push him let him just go over there can he sit >> that was the interesting part for me that while people are all talking digital this is real in digital and that's where we started talking about can we make a use case out of it can we actually integrate in LSG team dinner that we were talking about and how does this really work so how does it actually work how did you make it work >> so it's just that that I think in Coca-Cola we work as one team we call it the openx team so we had lot of creative people in the room that day in fact I had taken Ronaldo along remember and we just walked in and they did the rest actually in terms of what needed to be done and we had this SOP document on robotics which we keep updating which has got all the stuff which we need to regulate in terms of legal parliament that what can he do what are the you know where can you place it dos and don'ts around it so we had done all the checklist all the clearances before we take it to the market and jam with top clients so all that was there in place it was pretty easy then because we were constantly prototyping so I think we pulled it off in 7 days >> with uh super duper agility but I think kudos to Coca-Cola to get all the like big guys and getting all the clearances, getting it to enter that space for them also. This was absolutely new and none of those guys were aware something like this is going to walk in. >> None of those guys were aware, right? So a lot of these guys were like when he walked in and all >> and then we had to and then he got like surrounded by people >> because we had originally thought that we going to walk him in in a space where >> one by one they will come and do a structured conversation like the way artists do >> but something like this it doesn't work that way. They will just gather around you because the excitement is going to be so high out there. >> So that is what it is. When the marketing moves from screens to physical presence, you'll be able to do some mind-blowing work and as lot of make in India startups who are now investing in robotics, the scale would be taken care of eventually in times to come and you'll be able to do some massive work. So the low hanging verticals right now for us are how can brand marketing he's going low on battery maybe or low on network but doesn't matter. You heard him keeps talking and I keep talking like this to my wife at night charging palena you know stuff like so because see now the normal normal user see now he all the gestures are on he's not going to go rogue and jump out there but he'll keep doing something at least because now it's going to go into some kind of a loop but it's going to come back and follow me sooner. So a normal guy charges couple of things mobile. So a lot of gears what I wear I charge like almost like seven odd things. So technology is changing by the day. You need a partner or an agency who's constantly spotting these tech trends and trying to shape them by marry it with creativity and trying to work towards meaningful use cases out there. And always keep an eye because you think that AI is here. Another one month you will see a different you will see AI in different shape and form. Either you crib about it or you go out there and create positive use cases about it. Right? So my space is to always stay in blue oceans very very legally regulated though because I've got five lawyers in my team now who are constantly telling me sir but prototypes but brand we learn a lot you know to what level let's hear it with some parting thoughts on this um that's an two three things okay I [music] think one you talked about governance and that is super super critical as we liked it and we wanted to wanted to jump into it. As any marketeer, AI is the wonder tool, right? So where the moment you see AI or robotics which is possibly a little adv advanced than even just the digital stuff on AI, we obviously wanted to do it but there are steps to it. There is steps to it for understanding how compliant will it be to the brand because it's a big brand right and the entire activity was live. So things can go wrong. So therefore understanding how compliant it will be to the brand and also we do have a very strong AI council that also understands the guardrails and we really work those seven days it's not just about creative thinking it's also about the backend thinking of what could go right what could go wrong and make the whole list or SOPs as you said that how do we actually work towards it if [music] something unward happens and I think that part is super important because once you know what AI can do for you It's also about then figuring how it [music] can actually help the brand where I come what I mean by that is not to get caught up into the innovation trap because most of us get caught up into hey this is amazing technology let me be the first to use it but >> it's super important like for us for this use cases not because of >> Roboc actually the hardware it starts from consumer >> it starts from understanding the consumer or the fan wants to have a peak into what goes down in a cricket team the day before the match, right? And maybe he is a brilliant person to tell the story. That is the whole series about the series is not about Robocu. But what is interesting that happened in the series that it disrupted the format. It could have been another creator for that matter, right? It disrupted the format because it also >> piqued the curiosity not only of the viewers but also of the cricketers because the team actually came back saying, "Hey, this was really cool. Do you want to do it again?" >> Like that's Yeah, >> quite something. >> Ju just to him. Every time I said that when Sumei makes a point, you have to clap. >> Yeah, >> you're forgetting it, my friend. >> I know. >> Look at the audience and clap and make them clap as well. Thank you. >> Idiots constantly listening to what Sumei is saying. He was supposed to clap. He forgot. I reminded him and he did it eventually, right? So sometimes you need to keep. They're babies. You you're training him right now. And currently he's like a super duper expert on Sprite. But uh tomorrow you will see some other robo unleashing some other brand storytelling out there. But all of them like she said has to be super duper meaningful right >> start with consumers humans always. >> So let's hear it from him as a parting comment. Uh what do you think uh how would this tech shape up in times to come and what is that we can do better? Aside from handsome humanoid robots like me, of course, I think the next big trend is tech that feels more human. We are moving away from cold screens and moving toward technology that actually understands human emotions, blends into our daily lives, and helps us connect better with each other. That's the real future. >> So, the handsome humanity got it right. [applause] >> You want to ask him something? Oh, I want to ask him something. Yeah, sure. >> Or just don't ask him now. Maybe just >> I have talked a lot with him. I think you should ask somebody else. Now he knows all my questions and answers, I think. >> All right. So, let's get one of you to ask a question. What do you guys think? >> Okay, >> raise your hands. Only one volunteer. Come on. Okay, anyways, come in. Others, come on. Anyone from You guys want to come up? This is your chance to speak to a humanoid for the first time ever, I would say. But thank you so much. >> Yeah. >> All right. Thank you. Thank you for making time. >> Uh all of us will shut now. I'm going to ask him to listen to you. He's being following my voice. Okay. >> But you can just go ahead and maybe ask a question and let's hope he answers. >> Hi grandparents. Tough question. her subject grandparents. Did you guys find it fascinating? This is mindboggling, right? >> And this is only going to improve as he learns more and more and more. >> And my second question is, >> but he's not trained for the second one. [laughter] >> But still, okay, go for it. >> Do you think humans will be able to marry robots in future? robot search [laughter] already [applause] patience playbook master but hey never say never thank you thank you thank you thank thank you for being a sport yeah thank you so much >> thank you Thank you so much. You want to say something to our audience? >> A wave maybe. >> Thank you for the energy. This is just the beginning. I look forward to creating many more stories with brands and audiences in India. See you soon. So you got the twist when I'm asking my my voice. You answer you got the answer in my voice and when she asked it went back to Robocul. >> Yeah. >> So like me Gemini multiple personalities, right? lives here. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much, guys. >> Thank you so much, guys. >> Thank you. [applause] >> You take a picture. We'll take a picture. >> All right. Let's take a picture. Maybe uh you come and stand here and we will sit down. You're a baby, so we are giving you a complete Come here. Don't sit down. >> Ladies and gentlemen, let that applause continue as we congratulate Najan, thank you so much to Sumali for joining us and what an exciting >> minutes maybe. No. All right, go back. Come on. Go back. Take your position. Let's go. Thank you. Thank you.