Which of the following newspapers has the highest circulation? Is it The New York Times, The Times of London, or The Times of India? If you answered The Times of India -- with a readership of 7.6 million -- you either guessed correctly or you know more about the Indian media landscape than I did before I visited my colleagues in Bangalore for the first time.

India’s media landscape is very different from other countries -- not only because there are three big media hubs (financial news in Mumbai, political news in Delhi, and IT news in Bangalore) but also because print media is still growing while digital media remains in its infancy.

Print remains king

India is the world’s largest consumer of newspapers, and is one of the few countries that still has a strong print sector. According to the World Association of Newspapers, more than 107 million daily newspapers were circulated in India in 2009, which means one in every five daily newspapers in the world today being published in India. The Indian print market grew 8.5% in 2013, and print publications are still the best way of reaching local audiences.

While publications like The Financial Times Germany, France Soir, Stockholm City and News of the World have shut down, India has seen an explosion of new outlets in recent years. Within business publications for example, the newspaper Mint was launched in collaboration with The Wall Street Journal in 2007, Fortune India started in 2010, and Forbes India hit the newsstands in 2009.

Increased literacy is one reason for the rise in newspaper readership in India — not just in English language titles but also in regional languages. Across India there are hundreds of titles in regional dialects. Print publications are especially important in tier-two and three- cities as well as rural areas, where different languages and dialects are spoken, and this is the main reason why print publications continue to be strong in India: they cater to local needs.

Several national newspapers such as The Times of India have started regional editions, which contain national content alongside pages of localized news relevant to the distribution area. This means that news in India needs to be localized. If a client wants to talk about the cloud computing market in India, you need to reference stats about data centers in Bangalore, or include customer examples from Delhi.

Low Internet penetration remains

Internet penetration in India is not very high: only 12.6% of the Indian population is using the Internet, but growth is occurring at a fast rate. By October 2013, the total Internet user base in India increased to about 214 million, a huge leap from 124 million the previous year. It’s estimated that India will have 243 million Internet users by June 2014, overtaking the U.S. as the world’s second largest Internet base after China. Internet penetration in India may not have yet crossed 15% of the total population, but in absolute numbers this percentage works out to nearly ten times the population of Australia.

Still, India’s Internet penetration is focused on large urban centers and therefore not yet a threat to the print publications. This is also something that we discussed in a recent panel event hosted by LEWIS Bangalore, where the conclusion was that print plus online will be the marketing recipe for success in this country.

India’s social, mobile explosion

More than 50% of Indians are under 25. In 2020 India’s median age will be 29. This fact, together with India’s economic growth in recent years, explains why Indians are becoming more connected. India has the second most Facebook users behind the United States, with 93 million Indian Facebook users as of December 2013.

In 2013, 19.8 million Facebook users in India were found to access social media via their mobile phones. In August, Facebook already had 75% of its users using mobile phones to access the social site. In other words, mobility and social are huge in India.

India is already the world’s fastest growing smartphone market, and its 90 million Facebook users are forecasted to hit 100 million soon, making India the second biggest market in terms of active users after the United States. Not only is India the world’s fastest growing smartphone market, but feature phones (lower-end mobile devices with less advanced computing ability and connectivity than smartphones) continue to make up a large portion of overall mobile handset sales, representing more than a quarter of the global feature phone market in 2013.

More than 200 million feature phones below $100 were shipped to the country last year compared with around 70 million shipped to China, highlighting the vast potential to covert feature phone users to smartphone users. Hybrid devices such as “phablets,” phones with large screens, and “mini tablets” have also been rising.

The rapid growth of smartphone users and changes in news consumption means that digital media cannot be overlooked. While it currently accounts for only a small share of the Indian market, it will certainly grow.

Media relations evolving

Surprisingly, there’s no external media database available to track journalists, freelancers, and bloggers in India. My colleagues in Bangalore keep their own press lists, which they update themselves — and this is a time-consuming task. It also goes to show that press relations are important, and ultimately you’ll have to meet your media partner first before doing business with him or her.

In some ways, however, the Indian media landscape is becoming similar to the West: editorial calendars exist only for trade publications, issuing a press release is unlikely to result in much coverage (unless it’s a big news story from a well-known brand), and pitches typically need to be localized and customized.

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Ruth Streder is an International Associate Director at LEWIS PR in Hong Kong.