Kottayam: Manorama Online, the flagship portal of the Malayala Manorama group, has won the prestigious Wan-Ifra award for the best news website in the world. Wan-Ifra, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, is a global body with more than 18,000 publishers from 120 countries as its members. Manorama Online, published in Malayalam, beat several other reputed international news websites to grab the honor.
The award took into consideration aspects including editorial excellence, innovation, creativity and consistency. Manorama Online, a digital pioneer and a market leader in Kerala, has won more than a score national and global recognitions in the 20 years of its existence.
“It is a great achievement for us at Malayala Manorama,” said Mariam Mammen Mathew, COO, Manorama Online. “We have always been at the forefront of digital technology. And we have worked to give news to our customers in a format that appeals to them and adds value for them.” Head of content – Manorama Online Santhosh George Jacob and associate producer Rajan Thomas received the award at a function in Vienna. The award comes on the heels of a double-honor for Manorama Online just last month when the portal was adjudged the best news website in South Asia, and Onmanorama, the English portal of the group, came third in the same category.
Apart from news, the portal offers a bouquet of 18 channels that include highly popular ones like movies and entertainment, automobiles, technology, sports, astrology, faith, among others. The portal offers hyper-local news through its widely read Chuttuvattom channel and offers the reader a rich multimedia experience through short videos, 360 degree videos, podcasts and slideshows.
Manorama Online offers a seamless reader experience across devices — its news app is the most popular Malayalam news app in Google Play store. It also has several apps for the mobile reader, including for platforms such as Amazon’s Alexa and Apple Watch.
Onmanorama is the news destination for the global Malayalee to know everything about Kerala, and offers a complete news experience right from breaking news, mobile-friendly content, and analyses and columns by opinion leaders. It also presents a rich non-news experience through popular channels like travel, food, entertainment.
Manorama Online has partnered with global leaders to build the technology infrastructure for its growth. The portal leverages Adobe’s content management system, Akamai’s content delivery network and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud, which offer highly scalable architecture for growth in both the Web and mobile space.
