Industry Report India Round-up

This report provides a summary of the key developments in India's B2B media industry over the past year. The report is segmented into exhibitions, online & mobile, and print developments.

In 2007, India enjoyed increased attention from all corners as investors, publishers, exhibition organizers and online players seemed to wake up to the potential opportunities in India's B2B media markets. This interest in India is likely driven by a confluence of factors including the slowing of the private equity-driven M&A activity in the US, the need to diversify investments outside China, the generally lower valuations of Indian companies and of course, the solid growth figures posted by India media companies have also played a role.

According to a 2007 report from FICCI-PWC, the overall Indian media and entertainment industry is forecast to grow at CAGR of 18% through 2011 when it will be worth US$25 billion. It is currently valued at US$10.9 billion. Internet advertising is at a relatively small US$40 million and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 43% through 2011 growing to US$238 million. Print media is valued at US$3.2 billion and it expected to grow at a CAGR of 13% to US$5.8 billion in the same period.

The exhibitions industry continues to grow as new events are launched by a variety of local and international organisers and existing events are acquired by key players such as Reed Exhibitions and UK-based Tarsus. Foreign organizers including Singapore's Pico Far East and Worldex based in Thailand entered the market as show organizers and managers of Indian exhibitions. Even Chinese organizers such as CCPIT have organised events in India last year.

The Indian online and mobile B2B media segment continues to boom, although from a very low base (i.e. paid content in India is worth less than US$8 million). Despite this, the double digit growth in the online and mobile market is attracting capital from private equity firms and commitments from key B2B media players such as Global Sources, Alibaba.com and Reuters in addition to numerous local firms including Cybermedia and Infomedia.

Growth in the Indian B2B online media segment will continue to be held back by key issues such as the under-developed physical infrastructure (broadband penetration is the lowest in Asia) and the tiny market for online subscriptions. These challenges, however, will almost certainly drive some interesting innovations including the pioneering use of mobile platforms in B2B media.

The B2B print industry experienced a year of strong growth in 2007. Unlike in more mature print markets, advertising revenues continue to expand at a double digit rate. There were a number of new launches including some through local-foreign joint ventures featuring LexisNexis, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. There were also some significant M&A transactions (notably Infomedia changed ownership again). Interestingly, the most significant of these deals featured Indian companies on both the buyer and seller side of the transaction.

In addition to prominent English-language newspaper launches such as The Wall Street Journal's Mint, there is a growing trend towards local language business newspapers. The most high-profile of these is the upcoming launch of a Hindi-language business paper by the Jagran Prakashan-Network18 joint venture. Traditional received wisdom for publishing in India has been that the language of business is English. While this may continue to be true in the major cities, it is clear that the Indian publishers themselves see great opportunities in local language publishing in the country's many different dialect regions. So far, we are not aware of any international B2B publishers having followed this lead either in print or online.