PRINT MEDIA HOTS UP

The Indian Print Media is hotting up.

Financial Times of London wants to enter India. If this happens, what will happen to the tie up between FT & Business Standard?

FORTUNE magazine intends to launch an Indian edition. FORTUNE has been a success in China as it has been able to sell 100,00 copies of its Chinese language edition. However there is no market for vernacular business publications in India. Popular business magazines like Business Today and Business World sell for INR 10 each. To be a success in India, FORTUNE has to have the right mix of international and local content. Otherwise they will be confined only to Boardrooms and Libraries in India.

According to Business World, NDTV also plans to enter the print media.

BusinessWeek also plans to launch an Indian edition. The current price of BusinessWeek is INR 150 - 200. They need to slash prices drastically to make it afforable to the average Indian reader.

Moving over to some action from the Chennai Print Media (BusinessWorld dt 28th March).

It is public knowledge that Deccan Herald and Times of India will be launching their English dailies pretty soon. Vikatan group will launch a personal finance magazine in Tamil SUN Network (which runs SUN TV) plans to launch a newspaper (might be in Tamil).