Discovering greener pastures
The India Today group has partnered with Discovery Channel to launch Discovery Channel Magazine in India, showing its belief in the future of the Print industry in the country. Ashish Bagga, CEO, India Today Group talks about covering a gap in the group’s offerings through this initiative, focus on the digital media for a marketing push and more… Q] The India Today Group has made a license agreement of this nature after a while – what are some of the other plans that you may have in mind for 2013? Our focus is to address key gaps in the market. The Robb Report was launched in 2012 and so was Women’s Health. We have now partnered with Discovery. We are presently researching new opportunities and a consumer magazine and business media platforms for launch in 2013-14. Keep watching this space. Q] The company had recently received funding from the Aditya Birla Group – what are some of the expansion plans that this funding enabled? It is business as usual... lots of investment going into “digital” and technology… Q] How does this agreement with Discovery Channel Magazine help the overall offering from the India Today Group in terms of augmenting your presence in the niche title areas? The Discovery Channel Magazine mirrors various genres featured on the Discovery Channel… it will cover a wide spectrum of topics including nature, adventure, marvels, sci-tech, history, the universe, forensics, seekers, survival, info-tech, psychology and the environment, all in a very contemporary and entertaining style. Clearly a gap exists for such a magazine in our diverse portfolio as well as the market… Q] How is the Discovery Channel Magazine’s India version going to be different from the other versions? It will be similar to the international version, but with some additional local flavour. Q] What are some of the marketing activities that you may have planned? It is currently being planned, but will clearly be multi-media with an accent towards building a strong subscriber base. Q] How do you look to target the audience for this magazine? Pretty broad, as the magazine’s concept and construct is quite ageless and timeless… Q] How do you look to take the magazine to the digital space? To begin with, we will be using the digital space for our marketing programmes and CRM. Feedback: priyanka.mehra@exchange4media.com
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