I am chilling at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore - the Harvard of India - sipping on my morning cup of tea, and reading the Indian Express. My mission is to advise an Australian company on the future of the print industry in India.
But wait, isn't print dead, and isn't all content being digitised?
While print - books, newspapers, magazines, and printed communications - and by association, printers, are struggling in the West, in the East and across the developing world, print is booming. While India's GDP is forecast to grow at a pace of 6.1% for the next few years, print is outperforming GDP at a rate of 9.1%. Increasing literacy rates, government programs to raise educational levels, and cultural focus on access to information are responsible for driving this trend. Booming industries like retail and financial services also demand increasing amounts of printed communications, and in a country where only 2% have regular access to the internet and digital content, print is the medium of choice.
There is something beautiful to interacting with a paper. Whether it be the International Herald Tribune on a flight from London to New York, the South China Morning Post at the W Hotel in Hong Kong, or Monocle Magazine at Bondi Icebergs, the feel, the slower speed, and the depth of content reminds us of a time forlorn in the West, yet our brains seem to crave this more considered view of global affairs.
Print Media in India is an excellent example of an industry which continues to buck the trend
by embracing the analogue, the tangible, the high touch, unlike the global print industry which has
shown negative growth in readership and ad revenues year on year. Newspapers in India are projected to grow by
an annualised 9.6% over the period 2010-2015. With over 90 million copies in
circulation daily, the Indian print industry is now one of the largest in the
world, second only to China (130 million copies).
Unlike in the western countries and in
some of the other Asian countries, the newspaper in India is still eagerly
awaited every morning and is consumed with the morning cup of Chai Masala. People still
love the way the local newspaper smells and feels in their hands.
The rise of hyper-localisation - Newspapers are now realizing value in
going a step further and launching area-specific editions of newspapers - so called vernaculars. Publishers
have opted for content more personable and closer to the reader's heart,
catering to their desire for the local
and the personal, to 'tell the story'. Regional papers also give
advertisers access to localized population and their niche target audience,
difficult to do via national broadcast media. These cater to the local
population and are mostly launched in metros, to derive maximum advertising
spends. For example, TOI has launched South Mumbai and Navi Mumbai editions.
Growth of online editions - Most print media companies have made
forays into the online market to cater for the consumer's increasing appetite
for ubiquitous information. Online revenues have accrued to transaction- and
commerce-led models (online shopping, etc.) and certain types of classified
advertising (particularly jobs and matrimonials) have started moving online.
Most newspapers have an online presence and a growing view count on their
portals, but hard copy still remains the preferred mode to access news. We do
not expect any significant change in this trend over the next five years. The top 10 dailies in India all have online
versions of their newspapers with varying success as some newspapers have struggled
to earn subscription revenues.
Even though digital media like the tablet and mobile could be the next
piece of hardware to replace the feel of paper in one's hands, its prohibitive
cost and low broadband penetration ensures that it will be several years before
this becomes a reality. At present, less than 10% of the population has access
to e-papers and even here the preference is for the print version over the
online one. Going forward however, if technologies like 3G and reducing handset
prices begin to drive data and internet traffic to mobile handsets, this
scenario can change.