A Publishing House Comes of Age

Prasanto K Roy

IN October this year, Dataquest's publishers CyberMedia announced, and

filed for, an Initial Public Offering.

Why is that a big deal? Not because of the size of the IPO (at 17 crore, it's

among the smaller ones today, though reasonable in the media industry context).

But it's an endorsement and validation of all that this media group has stood

for, these 21 years.

From its small beginning in 1982, when Dataquest was launched, years ahead of

its time (there was barely any computer industry in India then), CyberMedia is

today the largest specialty media house in South Asia. For these decades,

Dataquest has stayed the most influential industry magazine, evolving into its

role as a bridge between industry and enterprise.

And these are traits reflected by every one of the nine publications in the

group: PCQuest (1987), Voice&Data (1994), Living Digital (born

Computers@Home, 1996), the three DQWeek newspapers editions (1996 to 2003), DQ

Channels India (1999) and BioSpectrum (2003). Each came in early, ahead of the

market, focused on a specific segment and reader need. Each dominates its space,

from consumer to telecom to channels to biotech.

And those are also the hallmarks of the other group activities: IDC India

(1986), the first and largest IT research agency in India), CIOL.com (1996) the

first and now the only Indian tech portal, CyberMedia Events, the largest tech

events organizer (Bangalore IT.com, etc), to our more recent content outsourcing

services. And of all the other activities, such as CyberMedia Labs (born PCQ

Labs in 1994).

Where most media houses scaled down in 2002 and 2003, CyberMedia launched the

School of Convergence, DQWeek Mumbai and BioSpectrum. While other tech

publications shut down in 2002-03, we hired. We have not launched products in a

hurry. No "dot com" magazines here. Every product is a long term play,

a category creator, a #1 player, and this continues when we launch Global

Outsourcing in 2005 (the first global magazine from an Indian media house).

We practice what we preach. The first media house to go all-electronic in

1989 with networked electronic publishing; the first in Asia with a cover CD-ROM

(1995). From distributing and using Open Source on our servers, to evangelizing

as well as deploying wireless in CyberMedia offices across the country.

Those are part of the reason we are where and who we are. In an industry

where high attrition and rapid turnover is the norm, most senior editors have

stayed for a decade or more with CyberMedia.

But the best validation of all this is when someone comes up, as a CIO did at

the Bangalore IT.com conference the other day, and says that he's a reader

since 1982, that we've helped, just a bit, to change his life and work. That's

when it all comes together, and makes it all worth it.

Prasanto K Roy