Print Perfect

The Magazine is dead! Long live the Magazine!

Indrajit Gupta

Magazines are dead. No one reads them anymore. Who’s really got the time? That’s what a lot of people told us around the time when we quit our respective jobs to start up the Indian edition of Forbes magazine in the middle of 2008. Of course, none of us really believed the hogwash. Forbes was one of biggest business brands that you could get. And we had a compelling brief from Raghav (Bahl) and Haresh (Chawla): to do all that it takes to create a premium, international quality business magazine out of India.

It took me about two months to get a great bunch of people together. (To be honest, I used to maintain a list of people I’d love to work with on my mobile phone. So when the magic moment arrived, my first task was to persuade them to hop on board.)

The initial months of starting up operations were fun. We would sit around a large conference room dissecting a plethora of magazines from India and abroad, mapping out new spaces we could occupy, chatting about the stories we enjoyed reading and also occasionally, ribbing each other.

The honeymoon didn’t last long. By the time the Lehman crash took place in September ‘08, we knew we were already in unchartered territory. Completely baseless rumors began to swirl that our project was on the verge of being axed.

Frankly, never once did we allow the circumstances to faze us. We did exactly what we had set out to do: hire the best talent in the market, hand-pick the best columnists, freelance writers, photographers and illustrators to partner us and ensure that we had all the supporting systems in place.

It was tempting to jump into the creative process: deciding the structure of the magazine, the various departments, but we deliberately held ourselves back till we had a clear sense of the reader’s life, his motivations, media habits and unmet needs. We invited a series of discerning, sophisticated readers—call them lead users—to talk to us over coffee and munchies. We allowed ourselves to soak in all that we heard, tossed it around in our heads, and spent hours discussing it amongst ourselves later in the evening over glasses of beer.

The reader engagement sessions confirmed our hypothesis: No one could remember the last time they had read a story in an Indian business magazine that touched them in some way, made them think or even triggered a discussion amongst colleagues at work. In short, business magazines simply didn’t have impact--and they certainly didn’t set the agenda either.

Based on these conversations, we built a short concept note to guide us on our journey. We were now ready to take the creative leap.

Ours wasn’t a simple cut and paste exercise. We tried to understand and preserve the core of the Forbes brand, but also tailor it for the local market. That was crucial. We sourced the best ingredients from around the world. Our design template was created by the renowned designer duo of Walter Bernard and Milton Glaser from their studio in Manhattan. Our basic promise: the best of both worlds—the best international content from Forbes and the most engaging, sharp and in-depth stories from India.

The downturn did force us to tighten our belts though. During that period, I communicated more than I’ve ever done in my career to reduce anxieties and keep everyone focused on the task at hand. Every Saturday, all the senior team members would log on to a conference call to review the last week and plan for the next. We follow that system religiously even now. We cut down unnecessary travel and instead, invested in video conferencing. That went a long way in building an open, transparent culture.

Magazine journalism thrives in an environment where minds are allowed to roam freely, explore, question, and look for patterns. Even our youngest writers took on major assignments that they wouldn’t dream of doing anywhere else. We consciously looked to inject diversity into the team. An American girl fresh out of journalism school in Boston applied for a job at the start of the project. She showed promise, so we hired her instantly. Today, she is one of our most talented writers in the team.

By now, Forbes India has carved out its niche. Many lapsed magazine readers have come back into the fold. Some of them say they read us cover to cover. They describe the magazine as refreshingly different. At the airports and leading bookshops like Landmark and Crossword, on most months, we are the largest selling magazine across genres. And we command a huge price premium—four times that of our nearest competitor. In a space of eight months, almost half of our 50,000 plus sales come from paid subscribers—something that even we didn’t expect during a downturn.

If someone asked me what we’ve learned, I’d say this: deliberately go slow on two aspects, hiring the senior team and conceptualizing the magazine. Don’t rush. It pays to get on board lightning rods—folks who have the passion to make a difference and won’t settle for second best. Also, listen very carefully to readers before you take the creative leap. If you do those two things well, not even the worst recession in human history can dent your ambitions.

(The author is Editor of Forbes India, a fortnightly business magazine brought out by Network18 in collaboration with Forbes Media)