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'We were getting no help from our partner'

For computer enthusiasts throughout India it means the death of an institution. CHIP, arguably, the largest selling technology magazine in India, is set to go off the stands from next month.

Launched in April 1998, CHIP was a must-read for anyone who had even the slightest interest in information technology.

With its clever mixture of content relevant to the Indian IT professional and marketing innovations like free CDs and DVDs CHIP ended with a circulation of 1,20,000 and a reach to over 300 cities across the country.

But on Tuesday, Jasubhai Digital Media, the company that publishes CHIP in India, announced that it plans to discontinue the magazine and May would mark the last issue of CHIP in India. CHIP is being published in India by Jasubhai under a licensing agreement with Vogel-Veriag of Germany.

The announcement shocked many. But it had to come at some time. For as CHIP grew in size and popularity resentment between the two partners was building up.

The Jasubhai group found itself investing all the time, money and effort into building the brand with little input from the Vogel group. Which set them thinking about withdrawing from the partnership.

Finally, Maulik Jasubhai, the 32-year old chief executive officer of Jasubhai Digital Media, announced that May would mark the last issue of CHIP.

He spoke to Priya Ganapati about the circumstances that led to the decision and if the new magazine that the Jasubhai group intends to launch can capture the glory of CHIP.

When and why was the decision to part ways with Vogel taken?

We have been thinking about this since January when we re-launched CHIP with a new look and new positioning as 'the navigator of new technology'. The positioning was different from CHIP's original tag line of 'the best guide to computing.'

We did this because we wanted to have control of our own brand, because we were doing our own sales distribution and generating content. We generate all the content. So, we evolved a plan to change the name and launch a brand that would be solely ours.

We were getting no advertising support, no marketing support, no training… nothing from Vogel. We were investing our own money and efforts into building their brand. And on top of that we were required to pay royalty for the same. We were to pay a percentage of our revenues as royalty for licensing the brand name.

What was that percentage?

I can't tell you that. I can only tell you that we were very disillusioned with the partnership. We started it with high hopes, but later found it was not working.

We found that we were the ones bringing out the magazine with 100 per cent of our editorial content and our own sales and distribution.

So, what brought about the flashpoint in this kind of situation?

There was no flashpoint, so to speak. It was a gradual process. The first step was when we launched the new look. This was more focussed on the digital technology than just personal computing, which was the original focus. We did that because our readers were evolving and we wanted to keep pace with that.

But did Vogel-Veriag not object to all these changes?

That was the problem. They objected to changing the positioning of the brand. But the truth is that after we did that sales in January went up by 30 per cent. But Vogel constantly hindered us in our efforts.

In many ways, it was our brand for we built it up. They were completely indifferent to any kind of investment or training and brought no value to the partnership.

But what about brand loyalty? How will you ensure that readers who used to ask for CHIP now ask for a new brand called DIGIT?

When we launched CHIP nobody had heard of it. But people fell in love with the content. It was irreverent, innovative, and catchy and had everything that readers wanted.

With DIGIT the content will be the same because the team is the same. The distribution will be the same. The reach will be the same. As for the name DIGIT we have enormous ideas of plans that we will use to promote brand recall.

But how will DIGIT be different from CHIP? Or will you consciously strive to produce a CHIP clone except for a change in the name?

DIGIT will not be different from CHIP. We will consciously try to make sure that DIGIT provides everything that CHIP does.

But if you believe that you can successfully build a new product, why did you opt for a tie-up with a foreign brand at all? Why could the step of launching your own brand not be done from the beginning itself?

When we started in April 1998, we were a young company. We had experience in the engineering sector. As Fisher Rosemount, we were the number one company in our space. When we entered the infotech media sector, we thought that having an international partnership would help us learn the business better.

We do not believe in re-inventing the wheel and we think that partnerships are a very successful way of doing business. We have had a partnership with Fisher Rosemount that has lasted 21 years.

But in the case of CHIP, the partnership was adding little value. In this case, the foreign partner was doing nothing.

Most of the ventures in your stable are due to foreign partnerships. Be it zdnetindia.com or Network Computing or other gaming magazines. Do you not think that a similar problem with arise with these ventures too?

In case of our partnership with Ziff Davis or other ventures there is a significant value addition. We have a strong partnership with zdnet for instance over content. They have given us support in terms of training and advertising. We have no intention of discontinuing any of our other existing partnerships.

But we believe that a partnership has to be on equal terms. It must be mutually beneficial.

Every success story is in many ways because of a unique combination of factors. So, do you think that DIGIT can replicate the success of CHIP?

We are absolutely confident that we can. We are going to launch a massive campaign to inform people about this. We will run a campaign in magazines and will send out 50,000 direct mailers every week for six weeks.

All the factors that went into making CHIP a success are still there. The only thing that is not there is the name itself. The factors that went into making the content a success are still there. The innovations, in terms of CDs and DVDs that were given out with CHIP, too will be there. The reach and distribution will still be there. All are identical except for the branding and we will build the brand up again.

That is why we are confident of the success of DIGIT.

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