Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Times Local Partners: Growing Global Digital Companies in India

India is the fastest growing English speaking digital market in the world. With over 200 million users online and the fastest growing mobile user base, it’s become a land ripe with opportunity. At the same time, there has been an incredible blossoming of digital content and product companies globally, with new publishers emerging everyday, great products getting rolled out and offering new platforms, perspectives and engaging content that challenge the traditional ways content has been produced. The cutting edge products and platforms being launched are impacting the way we look at, engage with, grow and monetize the digital media more than ever.

The rapidly growing Indian Internet Audience and the huge latent potential that the market has spurred Global Digital Companies into actively developing an India strategy (see these posts in NYTDigidaytheMediaBriefing and Nieman Journalism Lab). India is also a market that adopts new platform and product technologies very entusiastically.

We started Times Local Partners just over a year ago to help great, emerging digital publishers and product companies tap this potential. We wanted to leverage our reach with consumers, our understanding of the Indian market and our connect with advertisers to build great businesses in India for companies succeeding in other markets. We also build out a full suite of editorial and product operations locally for the partner. The local team creates meaningful volume of original local content in line with the edit and brand ethos of the partner. This delivers a more holistic experience to the Indian audience.

It’s been 15 months, and we’ve launched ten partnerships. All of these partnerships have seen strong audience and consumption growth ranging from 100-120% within a year.

A trend of how a few of the partners sites have grown in India post the partnership can be seen below:

And when we look at some comparable properties, which haven’t had the same Indian focus, it becomes even clearer how strong these properties have become.

It’s not just about traffic growth. We’ve invested into making our partner brands salient within India, leveraging their expertise and emphasizing their brands in other media, like print and television. Our other media editorial teams are encouraged to leverage our partner’s content, giving proper branding for our partners, which has contributed to the improved reach of our partners’ sites. And today, that improved salience is translating into meaningful ad revenues, which are growing healthily for our partners.

Indian Digital Market is increasingly becoming a key focus area for Global Digital Companies. Many are already building out plans, and more will develop soon.

At Times Local Partners, we hope to work with the best global publishers and product companies in making a successful and prominent footprint, and most importantly, to help expose our consumers to the vast array of digital content and products being made around the world.

Media Contact
Company Name: Times Internet
Contact Person: Yashmeen
Email:Send Email
Phone: 919811699757
City: New Delhi
State: Delhi
Country: India
Website: www.timesinternet.in

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