Jehangir Pocha, Editor, Businessworld

Jehangir S. Pocha took over the reigns as Editor of Businessworld in March 2007. Prior to that he was the China correspondent for The Boston Globe. Before becoming a journalist in 2002, Pocha had spent a decade in business, and worked with several startups and Fortune 500 companies in the US. He also has an MBA from Mumbai’s SP Jain Institute and a degree in media and foreign policy from Harvard University.

In conversation with exchange4media’s Puneet Bedi Bahri and Pallavi Goorha, Pocha shares his views on journalism, gives a run down on the magazine’s future plan and its news process.

Q. How has journalism changed over the years since the time you began your career? Has it changed for better or worse?

Well, I can speak for journalism in general, but not for journalism in India because I have only been in the Indian media industry about a year and a half. The first big crisis for journalism came after 9/11 and the media industry failed that test. The essential crisis was: ‘what is the role of journalism in the face of a national crisis?’ The media industry globally failed that test. They became polarised very quickly and began to reflect largely their governments’ views. This was particularly true of the British and the American media. Though the media industry has recovered from this, I am not sure whether it would be able to act substantially differently in the face of the next national crisis, which is very sad.

In India, as I had said, my reference personally is only one and a half years. But from what I understand, there is a lack or rigour in the work that people do, and there is a larger editorial directive to dumb down the news. The challenge for a good journalist is to be able to take a complex situation, cull the essence of it and explain it in a very acceptable manner. It sounds easy, but is very difficult. But that is what all good journalists should aspire to do.

Q. How has Businessworld grown over the years?

Businessworld has grown substantially over the years. About 10 years ago, it was the third largest business magazine, and now it is the most read business magazine. This has not been accomplished by me, but by some very illustrious predecessors of mine, particularly Tony Joseph, who turned it into the largest selling business magazine. Apart from the numbers, qualitatively Businessworld is a place where you get good journalism – where we take complex issues and try to cull them out in a more readable way and present them to the readers in a manner that is not aligned to any ideology or business house. We do tend to practice journalism with depth, thought. But we are not where I feel we should be yet. It’s still a work in process.

Q. What are the advantages of being part of the ABP Group?

There are tremendous advantages. Firstly, the reputation, because the ABP Group is recognised as being an editorially-led group and is very professional in the way it approaches its content and stories, in fact, in almost everything it does. I can’t speak for the business side, of course, because in ABP there is a very clear distinction between the business side and the editorial side. This is a culture that has permeated down the value chain, hence this is a fundamental value that I believe keeps us editorially fair, stable and strong. The other advantage is of course access to the other resources in the Group, whether it is the editorial resources like The Telegraph or business resources, in terms of managing and creating great events, which definitely is a plus.

Q. How are the other publications of Businessworld – such as, Doing Business in Asia, The Marketing White Book, Understanding Behaviour, and Businessworld Mega B-School Guide – doing?

They are doing extremely well, in fact. The Marketing White Book is one of the highest-selling books in India and is extremely valued by the marketing community. The Mega B-School Guide is also extremely valued and sales of those kinds of products have been increasing exponentially.

Q. What differentiates Businessworld from other business magazines in the same genre?

First and foremost, I respect all our competitors and think they all are doing a very good job. I think what differentiates us is that we are weekly and hence, are able react to news in a much more timely manner. For example, when the Ranbaxy deal with Daiichi was consummated, we could do a cover story the next day. Of course, we have a great pharma correspondent, Gauri Kamath, who could do that. But had Gauri been working for one of our competitors, she would have to wait for a week for the story to come out. So, timeliness is the key. Also, in Businessworld our approach is to be fresh – to make sure we are intellectually fresh, that our writing is fresh, and that we present our news and material in a visually fresh manner.

The last one is actually something that is quite curious. Some of our competitors create very thick products of 150 pages or more. We consciously keep Businessworld a very lean and mean product that anyone can pick up and digest very efficiently, because that is the nature of our readership. Business people are very short on time, so our goal is to give something to our readers that they can take in and process and value – all in 20 minutes to half an hour. As I had said, it is often more difficult to craft the essence of something down to 300-400 words than writing 3,000 words. We have got feedback from our readers who really appreciate our tight and efficient journalism.
,br> At the risk of sounding immodest, I also think we are intellectually sharper and more prescient than many other publications.

Q. How do you manage the entire news process – right from the story idea to news gathering to presentation?

Businessworld is a place where we work in a very democratic fashion. It is intellectually very open house, so to speak. All ideas are discussed. We also have a remarkably ‘uncompetitive’ work culture, whereas in many publications journalists within the organisation are very competitive with each other. We do have competition to a healthy degree, but it is always superseded by a spirit of working together. So, when an idea is presented, it is discussed with different people and we have a culture where everyone’s input matters, regardless of his or her designation. The input is valued more for what it is rather than who says it. So whether you are a trainee or the Editor, the story and ideas are put on the table and discussed threadbare.

The democracy of that process allows us to remain intellectually fresh because there is no fixed format for approaching what we see around us. It is a brain storming effort and once it is settled, the person goes to work on it.

We are also one of the few Indian publications to have correspondents in Silicon Valley, New York, Bejing and Singapore. Again, this is where being part of the ABP Group helps as we have an ABP correspondent in London too. So, if a story needs global inputs – which so many stories do – we get that. If a story requires cross-disciplinary input, that is also taken care of. So, if someone is doing a corporate story on a pharmaceutical company, then our pharma correspondent and corporate correspondent work together on it. The story is built that way and submitted to one of our deputy editors, who will then assess the story to make sure it has 360-degree reporting, makes its arguments well. Then the story may be rewritten or massaged by a rewriting team that works on making the writing flow easy to read.

While all that is happening, there is also a production brief that is given to our design department. This explains what the story is about so that the design of the pages of the story reflects the mood and direction of the piece. That is one of the reasons that Businessworld is visually also very interesting. Every issue of Businessworld is designed for two kinds of readers. One is the reader-reader, who will actually sit and read the magazine, and the other for the flipper-reader, or someone who flips through the pages of the magazine. All our pages are designed so that someone who is flipping through the magazine can always get quick, sharp takeaways in the form of visuals, graphics, tables, charts, photographs. Thus, even if you flip through the 4-5 pages of the cover story and see only the visual cues on that page, you still get the essence of the story.

Q. What are your future plans for Businessworld? Are you looking to launch more titles?

Growth is a big part of our agenda. I won’t talk about exactly what we are going to do, but there are some obvious things like the Internet, and then there are a couple of not-so-obvious things that we are working on, which I think will be quite interesting. We are not in a hurry like most of the media houses are to get things out. The one thing that is well known is that we are partnering with Fortune to bring out an Indian edition of Fortune magazine. That deal is required to go through a certain regulatory process. Fortune will compete with Businessworld in a sense, and so for ethical reasons I keep detached from what Fortune is doing as it is also headed by a very competent team on the editorial side by DN Mukerjea. So, it does not need any inputs from our side. But I think ultimately it is dependent on the Government giving its clearance.

Q. What are the various ways of revenue generation?

If you are asking me whether we do private treaties – we don’t. ABP has problems with private treaties. We don’t have any ‘innovations’ or private treaties. In the Businessworld business unit, we do make revenues from events and books, as we discussed. But in Businessworld magazine, there are only two significant revenue streams – stand sales and advertising. And that is how it should be.

Q. How important is the content-advertisement mix for a magazine like Businessworld?

I don’t think it is any more or any less important for Businessworld than it is for any other magazine. When a reader buys a publication, the implicit expectation is that at least half of it should be editorial and we adhere to that pretty much. Some other publications don’t do that, but we do and we have a lot of loyalty among our readers. One reason for that is also the heritage of the magazine, as we’ve had so many eminent editors that have helped win goodwill for the brand – Jaggi (R Jagannathan), Dilip Thakore, TN Ninan, Tony Joseph, who over the years have helped build goodwill for the brand.

Q. Given the growing popularity and usage of the Internet and the television media, will your target audience devote the time to read the magazine?

We are as much on the web as we are on print. We get a huge number of clicks on our website, which is a tremendous advantage for us. It is a tremendous resource for people wanting to get information on India Inc, Indian business and economy. TV does walk away with the breaking news part of the news cycle. But that’s not where we are playing anyways. People read Businessworld to get new ideas, clarity, depth and understanding on various complicated issues.