AIM forms committee for readership related issues; Ashish Bagga to be committee chairman

The Association of Indian Magazines (AIM) recently met in Mumbai to discuss various issues pertaining to the magazine business in India. It is for the first time that AIM organised such an industry meet in Mumbai.

The objective of this convention was to discuss various industry-related problems and find out probable solutions for the smooth sailing of business operations. Issues pertaining to newsprint, pricing, readership, circulation, postal and RNI procedures were taken up at the meeting.

Maheshwar Peri, President, AIM, shared with exchange4media the Association’s action plans. He said, “Taking into consideration the problems faced by the industry, we have decided to set up a committee to address all readership related issues. This committee, which would represent all magazine publishers in India, would help in dealing with the Media Research Users Council (MRUC).” Ashish Bagga, CEO, Living Media India, would be the chairman of this he committee.

Peri further said, “The industry requires a facilitator in Delhi, whose task would be to co-ordinate operations for those publications that are not based in Delhi. It becomes really difficult for non-Delhi based publications to pursue matters with the Ministry, and hence, we have decided to appoint a senior level bureaucrat to take care of this issue. We hope that by the end of January 2008 we would be able to finalise the person and take things forward from there.”

Besides Peri and Bagga, Delhi Press’ Paresh Nath; Pradeep Gupta, Founder, Cyber Media; Prakash Iyer, Infomedia, India; Anurag Batra, Editor-in-Chief and Managing Director, exchange4media Group; and World Wide Media’s Devashish Sarkar were among those who took part in the AIM meeting.