Adgully Exclusive | Our key advantages: distribution network, pricing and packaging: Jagran's Sanjiv Agnihotri

Following IRS Q2 2011 results, Jagran Josh from Jagran Prakash Limited has showcased remarkable and noteworthy growth and success. JOSH, now has the third largest readership in our group. Further it is ranked among top 7 in AIR for monthly magazine in Hindi; all this has been achieved in less than 4 years time.

On this occasion, Adgully caught up with Sanjiv Agnihotri, Project Director, Jagran Prakashan Limited, to know more about the publication, its strategies and way forward.

Taking about the, market share that JOSH holds, he said, "India has the largest youth population to be educated. About a 5 billion in 2015, with more than 1.1 crore students only in higher education. At graduate level test preparation market size is about 17% and market size for VI to XII standard is nearly 80%, which is yet to be tapped."

Sharing their content and distribution strategy and some of the key advertisers, he mentioned, "Our content will gradually become younger to suit this. The distribution is key to success, as per our research where the targeted segment has shown interest in Jagran JOSH, the rest were indifferent or not negative even on the price point."

Elaborating further, he said, "Our aim is to target the specific TG, without disturbing the majority of readers, the gradual improvement in sales is a big win. Advertising in print is key to success and also acknowledgment to its success, our advertising is constantly growing with significant improvement in numbers of regular advertisers."

When asked as to, going forward how they look at monetizing their digital content and their digital strategy, Agnihotri highlighted, "Jagran JOSH dot com is now the leading website in this category in less than six months time, and advertising will be our key focus area. Test paper and exam papers block storage is another promising segment."

Citing the three key advantages of JOSH over other products in the genre, he said, "Jagran JOSH is well placed as a convergence product. The key advantages we believe are its distribution network, pricing and packaging."

Speaking about the strategies they use to counter competition both, news paper and magazines catering to these readers, he is of the opinion that, "It is good to see more competition in this segment. Today's youth need information that is in real time and this we believe has been a challenge in this category. For example, in today's biggest category, designing content for teacher's aptitude learning none of the products is geared up for this. Smaller players are offering sub standard content and totally out of context study papers. We have in-house capability to develop content that can sell; a large circulation and correspondingly huge readership and product has focused readers with multiplicity advantage."

"The future is all set to be very different, all the majority of talent measuring techniques are now focusing on aptitude and decision making", he opined.

Lastly, sharing his vision for JOSH from here on, Agnihotri said, "Engagement of TG has changed at lot, the changing requirement now call for picking up right aptitude, learning and decision making. This is where the role of JOSH, will improve the importance of set text book will be on lower ebb. Certainly this also opens up more room for more variety and niche products."

From what it looks like, the publication has pulled up socks and ready to roar the market! | By Ankita Tanna [ankita(at)adgully.com]