Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Friday, Dec 21, 2007
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version
Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Friday, Dec 21, 2007 ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version |
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Marketing
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Interview Web Extras - Books Chandamama launching slew of non-print initiatives 
Mr L. Subramanyan Archana Venkat Chennai, Dec. 20 The change is evident in the new swank office of Chandamama India Ltd as Mr L. Subramanyan, Chief Executive Officer, designs the course of its new brand strategy. Four months ago, he took over the reins of the children’s magazine after it was acquired by Mumbai-based Geodesic Information Systems. Since then, Chandamama has more than doubled its total sales at 3.65 lakh copies compared to 1.6 lakh copies — “without adopting any heroics”, Mr Subramanyan said in an interview to Business Line. Excerpts: What has led the sales to surge? We put together a distribution and circulation team that evaluated our existing (distribution) network and discovered that some big distributors did not stock Chandamama in their own depot. Since then we have changed distributors for Mumbai, Pune, Nasik, Gujarat and Karnataka. We have expanded our distribution in Orissa. We are now confident of selling five lakh copies by May and 10 lakh copies by December 2008. The company recently raised Rs 2.5 crore through a rights issue. Where is this m oney going to be deployed? In our print and non-print initiatives that have commenced. We are coming out with Chandamama books. Priced Rs 50-70 each, it will have a collection of stories like Panchatantra and the Jataka Tales. We plan to launch 12 such books next year. We are also coming out with a coffee table book in January commemorating our 60th anniversary. We have tied up with a Mumbai-based national radio station to pilot-test our audio book initiative, starting February 15. The audio CD containing stories will be sold along with an activity book based on those stories. For example, if the audio CD narrates a Vikram- Betaal story, the activity book may have five questions based on the story for kids to extend their bond to the print medium. What other areas of non-print business are you venturing into? Internet, mobile and films. Version One of our Web site was launched 15 days ago and currently hosts 120 stories. It has already received over 20,000 page views, despite being a non-interactive site. The average time spent by a user on the site is 8-12 minutes averaging 14 page views per user. (Most content-only sites have five-six page views per user). Version Two of the Web site will be launched by March 15 and will be interactive with sections like classical stories, contemporary stories, educational information and a ‘hand around’ section that will host blogs and communities for use by children, parents and teachers. We also plan to launch one 3D animated story a week on the site. Will you be tying up with animation studios for this initiative? We are in discussions with studios in Chennai, Mumbai and Thiruvananthapuram and may announce a tie up soon. Besides many animation-related enquiries, we have also got an enquiry for a live-action film. But we will tread cautiously until a business model for translating our intellectual property (IP) into films is established. We own IP rights for 25 story characters and about 16,000 stories including 550 Vikram-Betaal stories, 500 Jataka Tales and 600 Panchatantra stories. Do you plan to distribute content over the mobile? Yes. We plan to launch Multimedia Messaging Service clips, wallpapers, comic strips and text stories as downloads on mobile by next month. We have signed an exclusive agreement with one operator for 90 days after which all operators will distribute this content. What has been Geodesic’s contribution so far to Chandamama? Financially and strategically they have helped us. They have given us business connections where we needed them — in content distribution and helped build our Web site. More Stories on : Interview | Books | Children & Parenting
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