Friday, August 24, 2012

FIVE YEARS OF RESEARCH, INTELLECT AND PASSION-DRIVEN BUSINESS JOURNALISM THAT HAS TRANSFORMED BUSINESS JOURNALISM... THE WAY IIPM TRANSFORMED MANAGEMENT EDUCATION IN INDIA! WATCH OUT FOR THE NEXT FIVE YEARS!!!

It's been absolutely wonderful a journey! What's most important is that I know that every line we carried in these five years, was one which we believed in it. There has been no compromise – with advertisers, with politicians, with policymakers, with businessmen. They have actually often hated us for our bold views, filed cases against us; and the best part has been that we have had competitors trying to harm us – and our parent institution – in all possible ways! It only shows that we made a huge impact. An impact that made competition fear us, policymakers and politicians uncomfortable, and businessmen careful. And I think that was the role that we wanted to have as a business and economy magazine. We stood not only for truth, but truth backed by intellect – our biggest differentiator. In the world of unintellectual journalism and journalists – and more so in the business sphere – we wanted to bring in analysis that would set benchmarks.

We wanted to be honest to the point that no businessman could say that any Business & Economy journalist was just a phone call away. And everyone knows that our magazine has never been a PR tool, or one where only foolish praises would be showered, issue after issue. And most importantly, we gave our readers in four crisp pages – yes, that has been the size of our cover/main stories – what other magazines failed to give in four times the number of pages! Trust me, any pathetic journalist can write a 16 page story by taking 30 quotes and placing them one after the other – with logic or sans logic. But when you have to write a story in four pages, you better be intelligent enough to know what the context is. And that happened purely because of the team of MBAs led by Sutanu and A. Sandeep in tandem. If Sutanu was the ideas man, A. Sandeep was the guy who saw to it that every line retained its sharpness and yet had subtle humour in it, which business magazines rarely get to see! And trust me, more often than not, I have found our half-page stories as wonderful as our cover stories. They have all been cover stories in their own right – that is the amount of knowledge that the team squeezed into each story!

We realise that we are still not The Economist – the magazine I personally respect the most – so we never dared to call any of our half page stories the cover story. But I know that many of them were worth being cover stories. So, for their endless hard work, intellect and sustained sincerity, thank you so much Sutanu and Sandeep. For keeping the intellectual flag flying through Scrutiny stories, thanks Prasoon; you and your team are brilliant! For the smart lifestyle section – which all business magazines started only after we started – many thanks to you Prashanto and your lovely team. Many many thanks to the super awesome design team under Satyajit, ably supported by Manish and others.

Of course, taking out a magazine requires a 'huge behind the scenes' production work and for that, Gurudas, thanks to you and your lovely team as well! Finally, I must must thank Abhimanyu for managing ad-sales, despite my endless strictures which always made his life difficult. What is most amazing with all the names I have taken so far, is that they have all been with us since day zero of Planman Media! That is the power of a team, without which an organisation is nothing. Thanks to everyone who has contributed with so much passion and heart, but has not been named here. Above all else, I must thank Dr. Malay Chaudhuri for giving us the vision and a great institution called IIPM.


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