On the side-lines of ABP Network’s ‘The Southern Rising’ Summit in Chennai, Avinash Pandey, CEO, ABP Network reflects on the journey of ABP Nadu and ABP Desam – the Tamil and Telegu digital news platform from ABP Network, the focus on local content and programming, why news should not be free and why he believes that ABP Network platform’s in the South will be in the top three.
Edited Excerpts:
You are here in Chennai with ABP Network’s The Southern Rising Summit. What is the potential that the group sees in the region South of the Vindhyas?
The ABP Network is here for the long run. We do not have a traditional newspaper or TV business here and deliberately chose to be Digital first because media consumption patterns are changing. If you look overall, in terms of just the Rupee number, a successfully run firm can easily make Rs 250 to 350 crores in South India, that's the revenue potential for a company in the news genre. However, we are not here for quick success or to make immediate money. We are here to establish our brand and the way we work across India is to focus on local issues. We are a pan-India organisation but our decisions about delivering the content and how to monetize it are taken locally.
Looking at today’s event, the Southern Rising Summit event, we had a brilliant lineup of marquee speakers, and out-of-the-box moderators and the response has been fantastic. I'm thrilled and this encourages me to do more events in this region.
You have established yourself across regional markets with ABP Ananda, ABP Majha and ABP Sanjha. Any learnings that travelled from your established markets to the South?
The ABP Group is over 100 years old, we’ve been in Television for over 20 years and had a digital presence for over seven years now. When we combine all three platforms together, the learning is that the media business is a local business. Unless you understand the culture, the society and the customs of the local people, you will never be as successful as you intended to be. Our policy is to be extremely local in content, understand and respect the culture and build the programming around it. However, at the same time, the content is delivered in the best available technology internationally available.
What has been the response to both platforms - ABP Nadu and ABP Desam? How would you assess the performance of both these platforms?
We started in the middle of the pandemic and there is a long road ahead for us and we are quite positive about the response that we have got so far.
Digital media business is about building communities and you won't be successful if you are too spread out. We are creating our own niche. If you look at the media landscape - newspaper, television or digital channels, they are either affiliated with a political entity or are politically aligned. There's no one in the neutral space in which we operate. The South consumes entertainment news disproportionate to the rest of India, which consumes news and entertainment together. Our focus is largely reporting on politics, polity businesses, economics, and society. We are creating video stories and getting a huge response.
In terms of metrics, where are you placed?
ABP Nadu has steadily developed a very strong follower base on social media with over 1.5 lac followers on Instagram, 4.5 lac on Facebook and a strong video viewership on these platforms, making ABP Nadu the only digital first News publisher in the top 5 crowded tangle leaderboard for Tamil News in India.
ABP Desam is among the fastest growing Telugu publisher in India with over 200 million video views clocked on YouTube and over 100 million views on Facebook since its launch on 29 July 2021. The website is also the youngest website to have ranked in the top 5 publishers in the Comscore MMX leaderboard.
Alongside readers who consume hardcore news, breaking news, hyper local coverage; ABP Desam has also developed a very strong millennial and young follower base on social media with over 2 lac subscribers on YouTube, 1 lac on Facebook and a strong video viewership on these platforms, making ABP Desam the only digital first News publisher among the top 10 leaderboard for Telugu News in India.
What's been the advertiser response?
Slow but it is picking up. Every month is better than the previous month. The content on most of the digital sites in the region are heavily dominated by entertainment news. While we want to serve entertainment news, that's not our purpose as we strive to inform, educate and entertain people and for us information and education comes first. We are focusing on reporting on local issues and it will take us time to build up. People have lost trust in other brands which are politically aligned and believe that political news is biased. It's taking time to build up and we have taken a difficult path. With the sharp edge in politics right now and a closely contested elections expected in 2024, I believe products like ours will shine.
Content on ABP Nadu and ABP Desam is free. Do you believe the regional markets are ready for the subscription models?
I believe nothing should be free, except for emergency news - for example, in case of a fire, riots or a misinformation campaign, the right news items should be freely available. That is the duty of a news organisation. However, on a regular basis for all well-researched articles, and documentaries, why should we serve it free?
This is my philosophy, but in India, if the industry is ready to serve everything as free, then it's very difficult to ask people to pay as we have not developed a culture of appreciating paid content. The industry has to build it and we have decided to take that lead. We will not be putting everything behind the paywall but will start by putting some content behind the paywall and are certain that we'll be successful.
Are you looking at Kannada and Malayalam?
Not right now.
This is an election year – Both national and state elections in Telangana. How is the network looking to leverage this to drive growth?
You will see a never-before-seen kind of coverage of the election on our digital platforms. They will lead the coverage of elections this time. If you look at the data availability, from the 2019 election vis-a-vis now, it has changed completely. We are quite confident that with the plan that we have for the election, by the end of the election we will be in the top three.
