Indian Express Vernacular Websites and History

• In September 2017, the Express Group launched a new mobile application for its Malayalam regional language website.
• Two more vernacular language websites were added by April 2018–iebangla.com in Bengali and ietamil.com in Tamil.
• These launches aimed to broaden the reader base beyond English, Marathi, and Hindi speakers using digital technology.

History

• Ramnath Goenka founded the Indian Express in 1932 to support India's freedom movement.
• The newspaper aimed its British atrocities coverage at the English-speaking audience in India and worldwide.
• It promoted Indian independence.
• After Independence, the newspaper continued fearless, independent journalism under Ramnath and later Viveck Goenka.

Changes to News Industry

• By 2012, readers could access news on smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, and live television.
• Anant, Viveck's son, was assigned to lead the Group's digital initiative in 2012.
• By July 2017, the Indian Express Group was the second-largest digital group in India with 56 million unique monthly visitors.
• News publishers globally faced the challenge of adapting to multiplatform publishing amid competition from platforms like YouTube and Facebook.

Indian Market Potential

• In 2016, 64.7% of India's 1.28 billion population was between 15 and 59 years old.
• The Indian newspaper industry was growing, with 114,820 publications and a total circulation of 488 million copies as of March 31, 2017.
• Around 39% of the Indian population read newspapers and digital news consumption was increasing among the young.
• In July 2017, ComScore reported 92% of Indians aged 25-34 consumed digital news/information.
• In 2017-2018, Indian Express Digital revenues were INR0.507 billion.
• There was an aim for INR 2.5 billion in the next four years and INR10 billion in the next seven to eight years.

Independent Journalism Identity

• Post-Independence, the group continued to criticize governments, playing a key role in reporting the Bofors scandal.
• The newspaper protested media censorship during the Emergency by leaving its editorial section blank on June 28, 1975.
• The Group launched Loksatta, a Marathi daily newspaper, on January 14, 1948.
• By 2018, it had a readership of 3.5 million.
• The Financial Express, the first business newspaper, was launched in 1961 as India shifted to industrialization

Reputation

• The Indian Express and its founder, Ramnath, gained prominence in Indian journalism
• India Today named Ramnath as one of the 10 most influential people in India in the 1980s and one of "100 People Who Shaped India" in 2000.
• After Viveck joined, the Group launched Jansatta, a Hindi newspaper, in 1983.
• After Ramnath died in 1991, the Group split.
• Express Publications (Madurai) formed and held rights to circulate the English daily in five southern states as the New Indian Express.
• By early 2000, the Group had the Indian Express, Loksatta, Jansatta, and The Financial Express.

Digital Business

• In the mid-2000s, technology caused a shift in reading habits toward digital media.
• Nandagopal Rajan, Editor, New Media, noted the shift from living rooms to "just about everywhere" with convenience of mobile screens.
• Worldwide, newspaper circulation and print advertising revenue dropped, while the Indian market was expected to follow innovations in developed countries.
• Zenith Media expected smartphone users to grow to 530 million in 2018.
• Cisco reported mobile internet users would increase to 829 million by 2021, about 59% of the Indian population.
• The Indian Express launched expressindia.com in 1994 during the dial-up internet era, followed by news websites for Loksatta, Financial Express and Jansatta.
• By 2012, expressindia.com was ranked 15th in terms of visits.

Digital Platform Challenges

• Rajan described that a mobile news website competes with all other apps.
• News expanded to include any event and consumers appreciated sensationalism and convenient news.
• In 2012, Anant took over running the digital business, understanding the needs of modern readers and the digital platform opportunities.
• He noted readers wanted "latest news" and "news-on-the-go" instantly on mobile devices with popularity measured in clicks.

Building A Digital Business

• Anant had to decide to continue with the Indian Express name or create a different one for digital.
• The team decided to continue, embracing responsible journalism with a youthful flair.
• The IE Digital team partnered with WordPress VIP for CMS activities, ensuring website uptime.
• The 2014 parliamentary elections were an internal target.
• The website clocked over 80 million views- the CMS support ensured focus on reporting and content creation.

Frugal Technology Investment

• The decision to outsource technology helped IE Digital progress on a fraction of the technology budget of other news publishers.
• They resolved the technology investment dilemma by deciding if they were a news company or a technology company.
• IE Digital is probably the only digital news business that never registered losses, not even in its initial days. While other media companies spent up to INR 100 million(USD 1.6 million) on their back-end system, we spent just INR 10 million (USD 0.16million).

Organizational Issues

• Adaption to pace of digital news was reluctant for employees with experience.
• Some editors refused to be on influential social media platforms like Twitter and would often dismiss digital as an inferior medium. Faced with employees' reluctance to change, Anant formed a team of hand-picked, motivated journalists and digital experts to accelerate the growth of the digital business. Solid walls were enforced between the digital and print businesses-separate employees, separate management, separate financials. Employees who could understand the digital platform and sensibilities of new generation readers were recruited to bring in a change to the organisational mindset.
• Solid walls were enforced between the digital and print businesses.
• Separate employees, management, and financials were created, recruiting those who understood the digital platform and new generation readers.
• The niche skillset of selling digital advertisement was needed.
• Most advertising agencies had already created separate media buying teams for digital and print.

Scaling

• In 2016, Sandeep Amar was appointed CEO of IE Digital.
• IE Digital focused on adding new products in news and non-news segments to grow.
• The aim was targeting young readers with new brands in food, health, women, and technology.
• The new products launched between 2016 and 2017: InUth.com, Lifealth.com, Evesly.com, Expressfoodie.com, and Techook.com.
• The Digital launched its news brand in vernacular languages including ieTamil.com, ieMalayalam.com and ieBangla.com–launched in April 2017, September 2017 and April 2018, respectively.

Philosophy

• IE Digital team emphasised the philosophy of "Content Is King".
• Readers want news AS it happens not at 6 am next morning.
• Readers also want to form his own opinion based on factual event descriptions.
• Readers no longer type “www.xxxxxx.com" to go to a news publisher's website for their news.

Content Expectations

• There must strive to be the first to break the news to the reader.
• It must be there where the reader is: Google, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, news aggregators, etc.
• It must build news content to enable discovery.
• They must maintain as a premium brand and remain credible.
• The content must cover more genres to satisfy the information needs.

Digital Journalism Initiatives

• Concrete initiatives were taken to sensitise its journalists about the key requirements of digital journalism trained to give small bits of information instead of waiting for the whole story to develop and losing critical time to competition.
• We have to be quick, accurate and also get our articles discovered. In the newsroom, we challenge each other in a friendly competition to see whose stories rank higher on Google. It adds fun to our challenging job.
• Print journalists commanded more respect and acceptability from personalities and were able to source information much earlier than their counterparts in the digital medium as they were well connected in the circle.

Sourced Content

• sourced from instant messages, global news agencies, and television news.
• 60% was from dedicated Indian Express reporting teams, 25% from news agencies, and 15% after value addition.
• Translators transmitted news to all regional language websites.
• Video content disseminated.
• The Internet and Mobile Association of India stated 58% of rural internet users and 65–75% of 4G mobile consumers streamed videos.

Expressing Goals

• Digital soared to be India's second-most popular digital group. The digital team had set high goals for the digital business.

Revenues

• Jansatta.com was India's second-largest online Hindi news site on desktop by unique visitors.
• Financialexpress.com had gained the number 2 status among business news websites.
• InUth.com averaged5 million page views per month.
• ieMalayalam.com grew to be the third-largest Malayalam news website.
• In 2017-2018, revenue was INR 0.5074 billion which included direct advertising sales, Google AdSense and PubMatic, partnerships, content sales and events. There was a goal to grow revenues to INR 2.5 billion by 2022 and INR 10 billion by 2028.
• They wanted to partner with a technology-first publisher from either UK or US, expand US footprint, improve advertiser relationships, create high-quality Express-standard video and expand our digital footprint.

Staffing

• In November 2017, Durga Raghunath was hired as the new CEO to bolster the top management team
• Except for a few successful companies, like the New York Times and the Financial Times, that wer able to charge for their online content, most other news publishers were still giving away their content for free. The only source of revenue in digital was advertising.
• Media websites were competitors for digital advertising.
• In early 2018, Facebook restricted the type of posts for a user's new feed.
• the Indian Express recognized the Indian Express version 2.0 had to be different with growth opportunities built around a business model, alliance partnerships, content distribution, new products, acquisitions and new technologies like artificial intelligence.