Inc. magazine comes to India

The New York based corporate magazine Inc. will now be released in India. The Indian version of the magazine will be called Inc. India. The media company 9.9 Mediaworx, promoted by Pramath Raj Sinha, will be launching this magazine by June 2009.

Given the current media climate in India, it is surprising though that Mediaworx thought this would be a right time to launch Inc. in India. However, there is a possibility that they are looking the slowing market as an opportunity at a time when others are cutting costs or reducing editions.

The price for the Indian version of Inc. is yet to be decided as the approval from the government is pending, but the electronic version of the magazine will be released on 2 February, 2009 with just four pages. The physical version of the magazine will have somewhere around 100 pages.

“Unlike other licensing tie-ups, we will be generating Indian content though we will be using Inc.’s iconic design, ideas and some of the content. To make it more relevant to the readers in our country, we will focus on high growth companies and the successors of the companies in India” said Pramath Raj Sinha, founder and managing director, 9.9 Mediaworx.

According to Mr Sinha, what the company is targeting for is not high circulation numbers, but quality. 9.9 Mediaworx has applied for the license for the magazine to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The magazine will have up to 10-12 professionals in the editorial team although the editor for the magazine is as yet undecided.

Inc. magazine India would have a content-ad ratio of 70:30 where the former is corporate content and the later is advertisement.

“India is a very dynamic and young entrepreneurial community, and Inc. is excited to be a part of it. Our deal with 9.9 Mediaworx will help us expand our efforts to support entrepreneurship as a powerful force in the world.” says John Koten, CEO and editor in chief, Mansueto Ventures, which publishes Inc.

Explaining the utility of the magazine John also said that it provides market tested strategies for managing people, finance, sales, marketing and technology. The magazine will dig deeper in to the entrepreneurial lifestyle. 9.9 Mediaworx also plans to release other international magazines in India in the coming future.

The 9.9 Mediaworx is a media company that has reportedly received investments of Rs 34 crore from Helion Venture Partners and some NRIs. The group has publications such as Digit, an end-user computing magazine; Skoar, a magazine on gaming; The CTO Forum, a fortnightly magazine for the CTO community; Logistics 2.0, a quarterly magazine targeted at chief executive officers and logistic heads of manufacturing companies; and Industry 2.0, a technology management magazine.