Exchange4media chairman Annurag Batra stepped into the media arclights after news spread that he was buying up one of India?s oldest magazines, BW Businessworld. The world has now given him many labels. Some call him India?s Jeff Bezos. Others refer to him as the ?Media Moghul? and the ?Takeover Tycoon.? Batra?s acid test will be to live up to some of these labels, for the task before him is a formidable one. He has to turn around a magazine that has clocked heavy losses for many years now under the reign of the Anandabazar Patrika Group (ABP). The reticent BW Businessworld must step out from the old world of journalism into the new. Will this be the shot in the arm that the magazine so desperately needs? In an interview with FE Brandwagon’s Anushree Chandran, Batra talks about the rationale behind buying BW Businessworld. Edited excerpts:

How did the BW Businessworld deal come about?

I?ve wanted to get into the business magazine genre for around seven years now. When I heard that Anandabazar Patrika (ABP) was looking at selling BW Businessworld, I approached them. I truly believe that BW Businessworld is a fantastic magazine product. And can be built into a great digital product. It needs to be supported on the business side via sales and circulation and extended into digital. The magazine was a weekly, but has turned into a fortnightly from March this year. It is priced R40 and remains India?s number one business magazine. Prosenjit Datta continues to remain the editor. We will support him in building BW in a 360-degree manner. We plan to do more of events, books and digital. We will give visibility to events such as the Magna Banking awards. We are also considering subscription based products. Can we do a business intelligence product that the business community pays for? The idea is to increase the magazine?s visibility. As far as ownership goes, 99% of BW Businessworld is owned by me and 1% is owned by my friend Vikram Jhunjhunwala. At some stage, we will raise capital as we have very ambitious plans especially for digital. We will build BW Businessworld TV for the online medium.

India is the second largest consumer of videos on the web. Can we create content for the magazine which people can access on their iPads

and smartphones? That will require investments. We will need to build studios as well.

What is the nature of losses for BW Businessworld?

Prosenjit Datta has 48 full-time people in the editorial team. He feels that there is scope for streamlining and he is in the process of re-assigning some roles. On the business side, we will bring in people. By that, I mean people on the sales side. In a market like Mumbai, BW Businessworld has only one sales head. On

the marketing side, we need people in events.

Yes, there is no getting around the fact that BW Businessworld was making losses. On the cost side, frankly, you can only do so much. If you have 48 people, you bring it down to 40 people. You can bring down your costs by 10% or at best 20%. Or on the business side, if there are inefficiencies?you bring down those inefficiencies. But where one has to add value is on the strategy and on the momentum of the business. Where one has to add value is in revenues and that is what we are good at that. Within BW Businessworld, we will look to build verticals whether it is around big data, or entrepreneurship. We would like it to be a guiding tool for entrepreneurs. BW Businessworld is a CXO level magazine. We are not a magazine for B-school students, though they may also pick it up. We have to do a deep dive in every sector now. We would have to live up to the credo of making a difference. While we want to be financially and editorially strong, we would like to contribute to economy of this country.

What about other acquisitions? There is media speculation that Outlook magazine is looking for a prospective buyer. If it were, would you bite the bait?

We are about to acquire a company based out of Singapore called digitalmarket.asia, a trade website on digital marketing. We are looking to build communities, whether it is around venture capital and private equity, security and defence, etc. We will become India?s largest digitally enabled community ecosystem for business enterprises. We launched a website called everythingexperiential.com which looks at brands and businesses and how they use experiential marketing. Our idea is to build communities across multiple domains. We are working towards having one holding company that will house all of our media assets, but this company will have to be separate from exchange4media. The reason is that exchange4media?s neutrality is its biggest strength. I am trying for other bigger acquisitions as well.

On Outlook, I am not even sure if it is up for sale. Outlook no doubt is a very good brand and certainly is the kind of brand we would like to own. If I ever get an opportunity to buy it, I?d certainly look at it. Outlook is a fantastic magazine editorially. I am told in the last two years, it has lost a lot of money and its top lines and bottom lines have come down. But I think that the Rahejas must be given credit for running a great product editorially. Similar kinds of products are welcome but we don?t mind investing in events, digital assets either. But whatever companies we buy into, we?d want to have majority stake.

Have you thought about venturing into e-commerce?

The ticket size of e-commerce has become very big. Via digitalmarket.asia, we want to set up a fund which incubates start-ups in the digital space. This would be the kind of set-up where we are not just giving money to them; we can connect them to their customers. The idea in e-commerce would be to back other entrepreneurs, rather than start off from scratch on it. We would be much better off building communities through our editorial products. But at some point, we may set up an incubator.

Many of the trade news websites in India are facing a huge revenue crunch because of a slowing economy. Would you consider acquiring some of your rival companies in this space in order to make exchange4media stronger?

We are the number one platform. I don?t think that anyone has built anything significant in this domain. The reason that a lot of them are bleeding is because they were not differentiated properties to begin with. Before some of them launched, I had warned them that the ad pie was just not big enough. Most of our competitors in the ad and media news space are weak as editorial products. They are weak as businesses. And most importantly, we can do it all on our own. So why would we look to buy them out?

What are some of the problems that surround media and entertainment companies?

The news business is becoming very competitive. Magazines are no longer as important as they used to be. While some have moved on to the web very well, others haven?t moved fast enough. Business models for media in India are under pressure. However, general entertainment as a genre continues to do well. Zee has done amazingly well and so has Sony. Star continues to do extremely well under Uday Shankar?s leadership. Print is a different story. Some of the leaders (in print) charge disproportionate ad rates. During a downturn, all of this comes under scrutiny. Still, print will survive for the next 5-10 years, if you look at the way regional media is performing. As a media owner, I too am obsessed with rate cards and revenue. But the media company of the future is the one with no rate card. You get paid only if you deliver. Media will move from the ownership driven model to the wealth sharing one. It has to move from being authoritative to being participative. It will move from silos into integrated and digital. You have to re-invent the media product. Being unique and differentiated is important. Me-too products are dead.