Why print is here to stay

The rise of e-commerce and the growth in the use of the internet and smartphones are considered to be a big threat to the print media and book-publishing companies in India. So, what is the impact like? If we talk about the listed companies in India in the publishing industry, we didn't find any adverse effect on them. On the contrary, they have been growing at a decent pace and have given exceptional returns on equity. We think that the edge in terms of return on equity will still stay for a long time. Who will survive? In print media it is the leader in the respective market that survives in the long term. It is the scenario where the winner takes it all. The four listed print-media companies - DB Corp, Jagran Prakashan, HT Media and Hindustan Media Venture - are the leaders in their respective regions. They have swept away the majority market share and thus command higher prices for advertising revenues. Since the revenue from advertising accounts for almost 70 per cent of the total revenue, their dependency on subscription revenue is low. Advertising will keep the bells ringing The advertising revenue will keep on rising for print-media companies, despite rising online digital marketing. This is so because, first, there is still a huge population which has access to newspapers only. Second, many ads and notices, like government tender notices and quarterly financial results, etc., go in print due to regulatory compulsions. These regulations are