HT’s Rajiv Verma is bullish about print

According to Rajiv Verma, CEO of HT Media, “Luckily we are experiencing double-digit revenue growth from our print operations.” Verma's interview can be read in the latest issue of World News Publishing Focus, the bimonthly magazine published by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).

11 Mar 2015 | By Rahul Kumar

Verma added, “We are also seeing growth slowing down in some of our print revenue streams, especially on the more mature metro market. However, print in India still has life left as long as we continue to keep the core underlying bits strong – highly credible journalism taking on key readers’ issues, good-quality products, low cover price, and free home delivery of newspapers,”

Verma’s interview is part of a series of interviews which provides a global perspective on trends and illustrates the diversity of developments in the news publishing industry worldwide.

About the new business models for newspaper publishing, Verma stated, “Many new and unusual business models are being successfully implemented by newspapers in India, principally among them ideas like providing value-added brand solutions for customers that actually move publishers up the value chain, making them effectively brand consultants to marketers, enabling a very different level of win-win than is otherwise feasible; and an ads-for-equity model which makes publishers participate in the growth and development of fledgling businesses, again often making them early-stage partners.”

A firm believer about mobile as a futuristic technology, Verma concluded, “Mobile is clearly emerging as the device of choice for Indian consumers for content consumption, and will therefore be a key publishing platform in 2015 and the near future. The traffic on mobile – both apps and sites - is growing rapidly, across both English and regional languages, and overall consumption including video is expected to pick up momentum with 4G rollout that is expected later this year.

The World News Publishing Focus is a publication of Wan-Ifra which is based in Paris, France, and Frankfurt, Germany, with subsidiaries in Singapore and India, is the global organisation of the world’s newspapers and news publishers. It represents more than 18,000 publications, 15,000 online sites and over 3,000 companies in more than 120 countries. Its core mission is to defend and promote press freedom, quality journalism and editorial integrity and the development of prosperous businesses.