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Business Booming At India's Dailies
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As a result, advertising revenue in print media is making a comeback, its growth outpacing that of television for the past two years. Print advertising revenue has grown 12 to 14 percent annually in the past few years, says Deepak Kapoor, an executive director at PricewaterhouseCoopers Ltd. in New Delhi.
Online publications aren't yet in the picture because only about 4 million Indians subscribe to an Internet service. In fact, the Internet Service Providers Association of India says subscription growth has slowed in the past few years because of overregulation and a lack of investment.
That leaves most of the media market to print publications, which are hustling to lock in a generation of new readers. Although there are no statistics to show how much of their recent growth has come from young readers, newspapers are betting that India's vibrant economy is enriching the young and making them attractive to advertisers.
India has one of the world's youngest populations, with half of its 1.1 billion residents under 25. The country's median age of 24 compares with 32 in China and nearly 37 in the United States. In India's cities, which still generate the bulk of print ad revenue, the battle for new readers is fierce.
In the commercial capital of Bombay, the venerable Times of India is battling two rivals that have encroached on its turf in the past year. One of them, the Hindustan Times, is soon to launch a business newspaper. The other, a brash start-up called Daily News & Analysis, or DNA, has plans to expand nationally.
Like the Times, DNA has crammed its pages with lifestyle supplements, glossy magazines and content on issues such as sexuality, which were taboo in India not so long ago.
"For these people, it's a relief just to have an option," says DNA Director Girish Agarwal. "The idea is not to give them something their grandfather would have read."
Binny Sabharwal contributed to this article.
