The Association of Indian Magazines (AIM) has announced office bearers elected at its AGM held on November 17, 2023.
Anant Nath, Executive Publisher, Delhi Press, has been elected as the new President.
Other elected office bearers are Manoj Sharma, CEO – Publishing, India Today Group (Vice President), Dhaval Gupta, Managing Director, CyberMedia (General Secretary) and Annurag Batra, Founder, Exchange4Media Group (Treasurer).
B Srinivasan, MD, Ananda Vikatan is the outgoing President, who led the organisation for the last three years.
The AGM has also elected the following to its Governing Body:
B Srinivasan (Vikatan Group); R Rajmohan (Malayala Manorama); Pradeep Gupta (CyberMedia); Paresh Nath (Delhi Press); Mahesh Peri (Pathfinder Publishing); Riyad Mathew (Malayala Manorama), Girish Mallya (Next Gen Publishing); Maneck Davar (Spenta Multimedia); Deepak Lamba (Worldwide Media); Manan Kotak (Chitralekha); and Indranil Roy (Outlook Publishing).
Members appreciated the enormous efforts taken up by the Association over the last three years to improve the distribution system for magazines. Foremost amongst them was the rolling out of ‘Magazine Post’, an express delivery service introduced by India Post to exclusively serve the needs for magazine publishers for fast and accurate delivery, informed an AIM statement.
Other efforts like magazine distribution agency accreditation system, as well as partnerships with e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Blinkit, have also been very successful, it added.
It was agreed by the publishers body that the topmost focus for the industry should remain on strengthening the distribution system for magazines, with an emphasis on subscriptions marketing through innovative channels and new partnerships with e-commerce players.
Key decisions were taken at the AGM were listed as:
- Indian Magazine Congress (IMC) to be held in March 2024. Magzimize Awards, to recognise the most innovative advertising in magazines, to be held along with the Congress. The jury is being chaired by Shashi Sinha of IPG Mediabrands.
- A new operational strategy for Dastaan Hub, the mega branded content studio by AIM, was adopted. Dastaan Hub endeavours to offer innovative branded content solutions across 10 Indian languages, with a possibility of reaching out to more than 100 million consumers, across more than 80 magazine brands and their associated websites, social handles and events.
- New initiative to be taken for creating a country-wide online magazine market place, which can serve as a single point forum for any reader to place orders for single copies as well subscriptions. Delivery to be done through tie-up with e commerce logistics partners or Magazine Post.
- Using the tech driven magazine marketplace, publishers to rope in newspaper vendors for selling magazine subscriptions
- After the success of partnership with Blinkit, new channels for magazine sales and distribution to be explored across e-commerce platforms, as well as with offline chains.
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