AIM elects new Executive Committee; Anant Nath named President

The AGM of Association of Indian Magazines (AIM) for the year 2022-23 was held on November 17. Anant Nath, Executive Publisher, Delhi Press, has been elected as the new President. The other office bearers elected are: Manoj Sharma, CEO- Publishing, India Today Group, as the Vice President, Dhaval Gupta, Managing Director, CyberMedia, as the General Secretary, and Annurag Batra, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief of BW Businessworld Group and Founder & Editor-in-Chief of the exchange4media Group, as the Treasurer.

MB Srinivasan, MD of Ananda Vikatan, is the outgoing President, who has lead the organisation for the last three years.

The AGM has also elected the following to the Governing Body:

B Srinivasan (Vikatan Group); R Rajmohan (Malayala Manorama); Pradeep Gupta (CyberMedia); Paresh Nath (Delhi Press); Mahesh Peri (Pathfinder Publishing); Riyad Mathew (Malayala Manorama), Girish Mallya (Next Gen Publishing); Maneck Davar (Spenta Multimedia); Deepak Lamba (Worldwide Media); Manan Kotak (Chitralekha); and Indranil Roy (Outlook Publishing);

Members appreciated the enormous efforts taken up by the Association over the last three years to improve the distribution system for magazines. Foremost amongst them was the rolling out of ‘Magazine Post’, an express delivery service introduced by India Post to exclusively serve the needs for magazine publishers for fast and accurate delivery. Other efforts like magazine distribution agency accreditation system, as well as partnerships with e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Blinkit have also been very successful.

It was agreed by the publishers body that the No. 1 focus for the industry should remain on strengthening the distribution system for magazines, with an emphasis on subscriptions marketing through innovative channels and new partnerships with e-commerce players.

The following key decisions were taken at the AGM:

1. Indian Magazine Congress (IMC) to be held in March 2024. Magzimize Awards, to recognize the most innovative advertising in magazines to be held along with the Congress. The jury was announced in March 2024, which is being chaired by Mr. Shashi Sinha.
2.  A new operational strategy for Dastaan Hub, the mega branded content studio by AIM, was adopted. Dastaan Hub endouvours to offer innovative branded content solutions across 10 Indian languages, with a possibility of reaching out to more than 100 million consumers, across more than 80 magazine brands and their associated websites, social handles, and events
3. With respect to distribution, new initiative to be taken for creating a country-wide online magazine market place, which can serve as a single point forum for any reader to place orders for single copies as well subscriptions. Delivery to be done through tie-up with e-commerce logistics partners or Magazine Post.
4. Using the tech driven magazine marketplace, publishers to rope in newspaper vendors for selling magazine subscriptions
5. After the success of partnership with Blinkit, new channels for magazine sales and distribution to be explored across e-commerce platforms, as well as with offline chains.