In 2017, Group M, a leading media agency, estimates that we will see marketing expenditures cross the $1 trillion threshold for the first time ever. This includes about ~$550b of advertising expenditure or ‘Above The Line’ i.e., print, TV, digital, radio, OOH etc., and balance ~$450b in marketing services, primarily ‘Below The Line’ spends e.g., direct marketing, events, activations such as tasting sessions within a mall as well as buying …
Building The Post-Amazon Bookstore
By Sajith Pai in Book Discovery 1 Comment Tags: Amazon, Bookstores, Curation, Experiences
On starting a bookstore
Imagine that you have decided to set up a bookstore. It may be that that you are retiring and now you have some time and money to pursue your dream. Or you have won a lottery allowing you to quit your boring job and give in to that urge, that you have been nurturing since childhood. Either way, you are ready now to start looking …
Why Did Mint Go Broadsheet?
By Sajith Pai in News Media No Comments Tags: Broadsheets, HT Media, Mint Newspaper
Mint, a financial daily from HT Media Group, went from a Berliner to the larger Broadsheet format today.
Why did they do this?
Mint’s Executive Editor R Sukumar explained the change here. In the article he cites only one reason; that the earlier Berliner format was better suited to carrying longer in depth investigative pieces (“more of less” as he calls it). Today, he says, consumers prefer to get …
Experiments in curation: a look at 3 new bookstores
By Sajith Pai in Book Discovery No Comments Tags: Amazon, Book Discovery, Bookstores, Curation, Libreria, Morioka Shoten, One Grand Books
Benedict Evans, tech blogger and VC with a16z, recently had an interesting series of tweets, polling his followers about their perception of various industry facts, such as android devices vs iOS devices, in an attempt to contrast the polled results with reality. One of the polls was about perceptions of Amazon’s share of the U.S. Consumer print book market.
Perception: the correct answer is around a third, depending on definitions
What Should Twitter Do?
By Sajith Pai in News Media No Comments Tags: Content Discovery, Curation, Twitter
Twitter recently announced its Q1 2016 results. While its revenue grew by 36% to ~$600m, and losses halved to ~$80m, the numbers didn’t impress Wall Street analysts or tech pundits. After all, revenue growth is slowing, audience numbers are barely moving and there are newer more exciting kids (snapchat, medium etc) on the block. The stock dropped as much as 13% on the news, and is now trading at its …
Why India Needs Online Private Universities
By Sajith Pai in Higher Education No Comments Tags: MOOCs, Online / Digital, Universities
An open letter to Mr T S R Subramanian & fellow committee members drafting the New Education Policy
Dear Mr Subramanian & fellow panelists
Congratulations on being appointed to the panel.
This is only the third time since independence, that an education policy is being drafted. The previous policies, be it the Education Policy of 1968 that resulted in the 10+2+3 system of education that we follow today, or the …
Sunil Khilnani’s ‘The Idea of India’ – A Review
By Sajith Pai in Book Reviews 1 Comment Tags: Book Review, History, India, Politics
Reading Sunil Khilnani’s Idea of India nearly two decades after its original appearance to considerable acclaim, and nearly fifteen years after I purchased a copy (yes, I have waited that long to read it!) I am struck by
- the insights packed into this slim book (just 200-odd pages)
- the quality of his prose, specifically how artfully he weaves phrases together to create magical sentences, or even a para or two
I Read 28 Books in 2015
By Sajith Pai in Book Reviews No Comments Tags: Books
Of these 28 books that I read in 2015, three-fourths were non-fiction. The average page-length was 377 pages. Over a third of these were books written in 2015, and all but two were written in the last 7 years.
I know all this, because I have been keeping tracking of the books that I read, rather obsessively for over a decade now. Every year, at the beginning of the year, …
Adblockers, Superdistributors and Unusual Publishers: A Look Back at 2015
By Sajith Pai in News Media No Comments Tags: 2015 Review, Adblockers, Content
Let’s face it: 2015 wasn’t really a great year for media companies. From television majors that saw cord-cutting making a sharp dent in their valuations to online players that saw the looming threat from ad-blocking impacting the flow of advertising dollars, there hasn’t been too much good news this year.
And if we take news media – the smaller subset of the media industry that we call home – then …
Kashyap Deorah’s ‘The Golden Tap’ – A Review
By Sajith Pai in Book Reviews No Comments Tags: India, Startups, Valuation
I first met Kashyap Deorah sometime late ’08 in Gloria Jeans Coffee in Bandra. We were introduced by Sudhir Sitapati, a junior of mine from IIMA, and a then-advisor to Kashyap’s Chaupaati Bazaar. I was then in the Brand Capital division of Times Group, and the conversation likely revolved around our funding model and whether it made sense for Chaupaati to access it (It didn’t).
We lost touch subsequently, though …