Magazine players to lead media biz in coming years: Dr Annurag Batra  

The Indian Magazine Congress 2023 saw several leaders from across the magazine and media industry come together to share insights on how the magazine business had tremendously evolved over the years and what are the new paradigms for magazine publishing. They also discussed re-imagining the corporate structure for nurturing multiple magazine communities and how magazines could participate in enhancing brands’ engagement with their communities.

Dr Annurag Batra, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, BW Business World, and exchange4media, spoke on how the magazine business in India has metamorphosed into futuristic multimedia platforms. He began by defining the purpose of doing a magazine business which predominantly revolves around three words: Content, Community and Commerce. He mentioned how the pie expands when each player in the market grows, either individually or collaboratively. 

Sharing more insights on how exchange4media instinctively built the B2B marketplace for the media industry in the last two decades, Dr Batra mentioned how they all began with the focus being on content, which is the glue for commerce, to build their own media platform.

Unequivocally, the media platform which is a significant player in the marketing, advertising, and media communication community, stands out in the clutter of the market for its high credibility content and audience base. Moreover, he said, “exchange4media is a home page for everyone who matters in the marketing and advertising industry. We provide diversified content on everything happening in the B2B space. Also, the four major pillars of our business are: e4m daily, Pitch is our monthly magazine, Impact is a weekly magazine and fourteen years back we started a website on business media in Hindi, Samachar.” Further enunciating the events, he mentioned that exchange4media has organized more than 72 events and sixty AIPs zoned by the company including twelve in partnership.” In addition, the business world has built twenty-seven communities with the hotel community topping the list, in the last forty-three years. Also, BW is planning to add twelve to fourteen new magazines along with adding a Subscription based model with other investments in the coming years. 

Furthermore, briefing how magazine businesses in India have metamorphosed into futuristic multimedia platforms, Dr. Batra shared how BW and exchange4media have expanded their horizons and explored beyond Print, Events, and Research. The OTT and video are the next bars the company is planning to set in the coming years. “We are in the business of brand and content and how to define our business in a way that profitability follows, could be better exemplified with India Today which started as a magazine company and later entered into the broadcast. This shows that in the coming years, the top media players would be those who have started with the magazine business.”

In addition, he mentioned that scale, understanding the market depth and market enablement are the major pointers to focus on, to expand the business. In the concluding remarks, Dr. Batra mentioned all the major dos the business must follow for overall business growth and the list includes: Content, insights, connectivity and enabling business, advertising, sponsorships, and subscription models.