The who's who of the magazine world: (From left) Jacob Mathew, Donald Kummerfeld, Aroon Purie & T.N. Ninan

The magazine industry in India is going through confusing times. On the one hand, surveys suggest that readership is on the decline and, on the other, more and more publishers are queuing up to enter the business-over a dozen new titles were launched over the past year and most leading foreign publishers are looking at ways of entering the Indian market. And, even as the number of eyeballs for magazines is shrinking, advertising bucks (mainly for English publications) seem to be chasing them faster than ever. The challenges are clear: how to remain relevant in the midst of emerging digital media revolution and how to engage the younger generation of readers.

The Association of Indian Magazines recently organised a two-day event in New Delhi called "The Indian Magazine Congress 2006" to see a way through this conundrum. Participants included the who's who of the industry like Aroon Purie, Chairman & Editor-In-Chief, India Today Group; Vinod Mehta, Editor-In-Chief, Outlook Group; Jacob Mathew, Editor & Publisher, Malayala Manorama, and senior executives of leading foreign publications like The Economist, Reader's Digest, AxelSpringer, BPA and International Federation of Periodical Press (FIPP) chief Donald Kummerfeld.

Some of what emerged is already well known. For example, all the panellists spoke on how magazines needed to reinvent themselves in the context of the changing environment. But there were some interesting sessions, too; like the one on what works better-subscriptions or news-stand sales; everybody also seemed to agree that magazines needed to be more self-reliant.

The second day's session on leveraging magazines successfully with consumers and advertisers was also quite refreshing, as panellists discussed how the way ahead for magazines was to create superior editorial content to keep readers engaged and how to create multiple touch points to connect with advertisers and readers.

Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, in his inaugural speech, promised to look into various issues afflicting the industry, including the speedy clearance of titles. However, in an interactive session with Purie, Das Munshi was adamant on not allowing facsimile editions of foreign magazines with India-specific advertising. Purie raised several pertinent issues with the minister, like how the process of clearing foreign investment proposals can take forever because of the lack of a single-window clearance mechanism. "Our group had applied for a licence for Men's Health but because of an objection by the Health Ministry to the title, the magazine was stuck for 10 months," he said. (Men's Health was finally launched last month.) Das Munshi admitted that there were flaws in the system and promised to fix them. Later, in a session that included Purie, T.N. Ninan, Mehta, Mathew and Kummerfeld, issues like how magazines should and could remain relevant in today's age were discussed.

Surprisingly, though, the congress largely remained focussed on the current universe of magazine readers, which is only 2 per cent of the total population; this, while over 20 per cent of the population reads publications of one kind or the other. Panellists spoke about what magazines need to do to keep this group engaged, but nobody tried to explain why Indian publishers were not looking beyond their current market. As Paresh Nath, Managing Director, Delhi Press, later told BT: "The huge potential that everyone talked about is not being explored, forget about being exploited."

Making a point: The panelists discussed a variety of topics

In fact, one session that actively delved into this topic was the one on "How The World Views The Indian Magazine Industry". Chaired by Kummerfeld, the session had Mike Brennan, President (Latin America, Asia-Pacific), Reader's Digest, Carel Limburg, President (se Asia), AxelSpringer, Russ Haderer, Vice President, BPA, and Tim Pinneger, Publisher, The Economist, as panellists. This panel agreed that there was a huge potential in this market because magazines were an under-penetrated segment (they were also forthright in saying that the cover prices of Indian magazines are way too low to render a business model without advertising viable) but they also pointed out that magazines were unduly skewed towards the English-speaking population and that there was no serious effort on the part of leading publishers to change this anomaly. "Readership of Hindi publications is huge but my understanding is that Indian advertisers have this wrong notion that Hindi readers are not worthy consumers; hence, they remain focussed only on English publications. This is not healthy for the overall growth of the industry," said Kummerfeld.

The session on winning editorial strategies in today's digital environment was moderated by Sanjoy Narayan, Editor, Business Today. He started by pointing out that "though the internet and mobile phone community is very small as of now, it is growing fast and if examples in the West are anything to go by, it will soon become too big to be ignored. Magazines, hence, need to be ready for this medium." Other panellists, who included Anurag Batra, Publisher & Editor-In-Chief, Impact, Pitch, and Shankkar Aiyar, Managing Editor, India Today, made the discussions snappy and interesting.

The learnings from the congress: magazines are growing, if not in readership, then in numbers. Everybody, from the editors to the publishers, believes that this growth will continue, but the industry faces serious challenges in the future-both in terms of talent and the challenges posed by the digital medium.

Q&A
"Digital Medium Can Provide Greater Reach"

Donald Kummerfeld has worked for six decades in such diverse industries as investment banking, investment consulting and publishing. Currently President of International Federation of Periodical Press (FIPP), he was in New Delhi recently to attend The Indian Magazine Congress. BT's Archna Shukla caught up with him to discuss the trends in the magazine industry in India and around the world. Excerpts:

What do you think of the Indian magazine industry?

India is a very interesting market for us. Though it is a highly under-penetrated and small market from the revenue point of view, the long-term view of global publishers is that this market will shape up soon and will grow very fast. Magazines, being a niche product, always do well in markets that have a resourceful and discerning readership. With growing incomes and increasing exposure to the best global consumption practices, magazines will only but grow in India.

Is digital media a threat for magazines or an opportunity?

Magazines will lose the game the moment they start seeing the digital medium as a threat. It is a low-cost medium with immense reach. Magazines, which are able to establish their brand equity with quality content, can exploit the internet to reach the consumers that they physically cannot. The challenge is to use the internet to push magazines rather than focus on the net and kill the magazines.

Now, Jobs In Small Towns

The trend setter was probably Vellore's employment exchange. With government jobs becoming scarce, the local Employment Exchange decided to organise job fairs to tap the private sector. "Generally, 35 to 40 per cent of the batch is placed,'' says an official who didn't want to be named. That was three years ago. It was such a resounding success that other district exchanges and even the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Trichy Chapter, jumped on to the bandwagon this year, the first time the CII is doing such a thing. The objective: place final year students from the arts, science, engineering and polytechnic colleges in and around town in corporate jobs. The only criteria are that students should not have any standing arrears in their mark sheets and should have scored a minimum of 60 per cent in whatever subjects they have taken up. This year, 30 colleges were asked to forward resumes of final year students. Some 8,500 job-seekers came forward for the placement, and 350 actually landed jobs. Says B.V. Ramanan, Chairman CII, Trichy Chapter: "Actually, there were 2,000 job opportunities. But soft skills like communications and presentation were lacking and if this can be rectified, more people can be accommodated.'' Says P.K. Mohapatra, Deputy Chairman, CII Southern Region and President and Chief Executive, RPG Enterprises: "The event allows industry to interact with smaller educational institutions and absorb the right candidates."

-Nitya Varadarajan

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