What did you want to do to make Chandamama reach today's children?
There are certain fundamentals of a business. A publishing house needs a proper distribution channel. I therefore spoke to some of the distributors. It was very strange that Chandamama was vanishing off the stands within two days even when I took over in August 2007, but the problem was the distributor never told us that. Some of the distributors did not even display the magazine.
The interface between the company and distributors was missing. No one from the magazine had gone and spoken to the distributors.
During its peak, Chandamama was selling a million copies. Orissa alone used to sell 250,000 copies but when I took over, we were selling just 16,000 copies in Orissa. And the entire circulation was less than 1,35,000 copies.
How did you manage to increase the circulation by four times in four months?
My one-line instruction to the circulation guy was, in 90 days I need to double the number. In December, we printed 360,000 copies. Now what I want is, we must cross a million copies by 2009 January!
There is a market for this product.
How do you plan to achieve the target of one million copies in 12 months? Are you planning to make changes in the content?
Yes, the content has to change to appeal to the new generation. Content and language have to become relevant to them. The message is perfectly fine but the language has to change.
Chandamama's Gujarati edition
Also read: The amazing story of Amul
Advertisement
