SEARCH Global Digital News Brands See Growth Opportunity in India
A newspaper distributor in New Delhi sorted papers with news of the May election victory of Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
Newspaper is everywhere in India. Print readership, especially of the country’s vernacular press, is continuing to rise.
At breakfast tea joints in Indian cities, people sip chai and unfold their broadsheets, which they lay out over older newspapers, used as a tablecloth, before reaching for samosas packed in makeshift to-go bags, themselves fashioned out of folded and stapled newsprint.
Samir Patil, a longtime Indian media entrepreneur, recounted a quote he once heard attributed to Immanuel Kant. “In modern city life, it has been said that the secular ritual of reading the newspaper replaces the morning prayer.” While that observation may no longer be valid in much of the West, it’s still an apt description of media consumption in India.
Yet, in a juxtaposition typical of India’s stratified modernization, growth in digital media is exploding simultaneously, and Mr. Patil has spent the better part of the last decade adapting print media into digital successes. Seven years ago, he bought India’s most prominent comic book publisher, whose sales were flagging, and had versions of their books animated and broadcast on the Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel in India. His latest start-up,Scroll.in, is part of an emerging batch of online news media in India.
Scroll.in offers analysis and reporting on Indian politics and culture, presented in an infinite scroll format. In the three months following its launch this January, a million unique users visited Scroll.in, more than half of them via smartphones. Advertisers are beginning to line up, and an app launch is a few months away….
Click here to read more