preferred choice of youths’
‘Utilitarian approach makes I-Next preferred choice of youths’
Youth-centric bilingual compact daily from the house of Jagran Prakashan Ltd, I-Next is a name to be reckoned with in a great potpourri of success stories in the newspaper industry. Brainchild of Shailesh Gupta, director marketing, Jagran Prakashan Ltd and nourished under the astute guidance of Alok Sanwal, COO & editor, I-Next has established itself as peerless newspaper, becoming the real voice of youth community in India.
“Leaders need competitive differentiation in their operation and we endeavour accordingly to grow on this line smartly, with utilitarian approach towards youths,” conveyed Alok, a prudent professional of quiet sedate nature and connoisseur of the genre, in conversation with Ajeet Singh, asst editor, All About Newspapers.
Alok Sanwal, COO & editor, I-Next (right) with Ajeet Singh,
asst editor, All About Newspapers in New Delhi.
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Carving a niche for itself in the reading routine of youngsters since its inception in the year 2006, I-Next has been evolving constantly keeping pace with its dynamic and quirky readers through an interesting mix of serious and fun content, vivid photographs and engaging features. Achieving several national and international awards for their remarkable initiatives such as Bikeathon, Fresh N’ Crazy, Health Meter, Teacher Meter, etc, are accolades of their outstanding performance. The latest recognition is to be designated as ‘the 2012 World Young Reader Newspaper of the Year’ for their recent ‘Power of Youth’ campaign project. Presently, I-Next stands tall in Northern India as the leading youth-centric daily newspaper, with presence in four states having 12 editions, including Agra, Allahabad, Gorakhpur, Bareilly, Kanpur, Lucknow, Meerut and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh; Jamshedpur and Ranchi in Jharkhand; Dehradun in Uttrakhand and Patna in Bihar.
Evolving stream…differentiated product
“When I took over the responsibility as project head for I-Next in the year 2006, everything had been planned except the content format, and we took around two and half months in giving a certain shape and characteristics to designing and content development, ensuring to make it a city-centric product, flanking with youths in their daily activities. We focused to produce I-Next as a ‘life style product’ which differentiates it from other newspapers. Made to look different, I-Next’s masthead has been designed in vertical manner instead of keeping it horizontal. In terms of style of content presentation, photographs & captions, positioning of the stories, demography of readers (18-35 age group), it marks unparalleled features,” said Alok whose forte is writing for the youth, despite being from engineering background. “We adopt innovative concepts for both content and advertising, and to ensure better quality in print, imported newsprint is used alongwith giving extra care to colour corrections,” he added further.
Spoken newspaper…
Time to rejoice! While celebrating a great feat of I-Next being designated as ‘the 2012 World
Young Reader Newspaper of the Year’ at New Delhi office of Jagran group, Alok Sanwal
sharing a bite of cake with Puja Sethi, executive editor, Jagran Cityplus.
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Though I-Next is known as bi-lingual newspaper, but Alok terms it as ‘spoken newspaper’. “In content presentation style, our focus remains on creating easy language which gives comfort of proper understanding to youths. That’s why we prefer bi-lingual content format in ‘spoken style’ which is popular among youths. Quick browsing format (QBA) is followed, in presenting sports, business, national and international content in native style, with a vivid description, having the clarity and freshness of the immediate experiences. For the purpose, smiley and metaphor are also derived from the modern vague influenced by technologies regarding which today’s youngsters are cognizant of. With this, our news stories ring very vivid, making us youths’ most favorite newspaper,” he pointed out proudly.
Picking and prioritizing…,
Being a viable and engaging platform to raise social issues before the world, I-Next always remains ultra youth-conscious in picking up and prioritizing news stories. “Through I-Next, we are playing a valid and vital role for youth community in the country. Some of the common social practices being followed across the world continue intermingling with the traditions of the Indian society, which especially reflects in the youth community who is highly influenced with these and demands protection to their ultimate rights of freedom. Wrong approach to the reality may be pernicious for the society as a whole. Giving an added fillip to city-based youngsters’ voice, we try to live up to their expectations, ensuring proper coverage to those issues which generally go neglected by mainstream media,” mentioned Alok while talking about what bring them more close to young readers.
"Web-user satisfaction remains on the upswing as while surfing the internet, the user feels free to read and watch whatever he or she wants. On this line, while propagating constructive ideas, we, like a ‘Vodafone dog’, follow youths wherever they go, becoming a communicator, partner, and also a co-sufferer, and provide them appropriate content accordingly,” he explained further.
What’s ahead…
“Being available at the right place at right time is our strategy to boost our circulation and readership. Presently I-Next is reaching to around twenty lac readers, and we expect to cross the figure of one crore readers with thirty plus editions in the next five years. To achieve this goal, we shall definitely be launching more editions of the daily, and one of these may be debuted within the next two months. Seeing the success of I-Next, we may also enter other language combinations on this line,” concluded Alok with the greater hopes to surge exponentially.
