What is RePivot?
RePivot is a media collective, built by a group of media professionals, with a focus on anticipating Indian media trends, unpacking their implications and documenting the industry’s past.
From membership models to native advertising plays, one-man operations to change management of sprawling legacy groups, the Indian news industry’s many experiments in building, innovating and evolving – in one of the world’s most vibrant-but-complex media markets – goes largely undocumented.
Our aim is to fix that. We hope to find fresh ways to understand and examine shifts taking place in this vital industry, while also providing crucial context from developments in the media space globally, and amplifying the most insightful voices on the subject.
What do we do?
RePivot isn’t just one thing. Think of what we’re doing as an attempt to bring a ‘NiemanLab’-like lens to the Indian media industry.
For now we have a newsletter – also called RePivot – where you can expect to find analysis, interviews and thoughts on developments in the Indian media.
Along with the India Forum, we are also launching a podcast, on which we hope to feature insightful voices and key players in the Indian media space, delving into subjects that go beyond the headline trends.
Who are we?
RePivot was founded by five media professionals, who collectively have half-a-century’s worth of experience in the field, across legacy media outlets as well as digital start-ups, editorial and business, and beyond.
RePivot is not a company and is not directly affiliated with any media publication, though we are open to partnering on projects.
Jayant Sriram, is a media consultant, working across news and non-news organisations. He is a former visiting fellow at The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and co-editor of two global reports on the future of the media industry in association with INNOVATION Media Consulting Group, a leading media consulting firm based in the UK. He also runs his own company, Spore Media Consulting, which helps organisations reimagine their communications and leverage digital media channels to find new audiences.
Nikhil Kanekal is Head of Subscriber Experience, HT Digital Streams. Nikhil Kanekal has worked with two data startups and two legacy media companies. He began his career as a staff writer with Mint (2010-2012), reporting on corporate disputes, law and the judiciary. He was a copy editor and digital publisher at Deccan Herald, and the head of strategy for The Printers Mysore. He formed part of the founding team at Paper.vc and was then part of the leadership team at Crediwatch, a fintech startup. He is a visiting faculty member at the Asian College of Journalism and the convenor of the ACJ Awards for Journalism. Nikhil graduated as a Toni Stabile fellow with a masters in investigative journalism from Columbia University, New York and holds a bachelor's degree from Symbiosis Law School, Pune.
Ramanathan S is the Head of Revenue and Product at The News Minute. He started out as a TV news reporter with NDTV, and later worked with Times Now, reporting on stories from south India. He has experience in print, TV and online journalism. He worked as a Senior Editor at TNM before moving to a business role, where he is currently in-charge of various revenue streams including programmatic advertising, brand partnerships, events, special projects and audience revenue. He also has experience working in non-profit communications and public policy.
Rohan Venkat is a media professional with more than 10 years of experience working on editorial products in India. He writes India Inside Out, a newsletter on Indian politics, foreign policy, history and more. He is a Consulting Editor at the University of Pennsylvania's Centre for the Advanced Study of India, working on India in Transition, a bi-weekly scholarly publication with a wide international readership. He is also an Editorial Consultant at the Centre for Policy Research, one of India's premier think tanks. Previously, Rohan spent 8 years at Scroll.in, an award-winning independent digital news organisation, where, as Deputy Editor, he ran news operations and was closely involved in product development as well as audience engagement. Rohan is an alumnus of the University of Southern California.
RePivot is open to including others in the collective, or publishing thoughts from anyone interested in analysing or documenting the industry.
Why ‘RePivot’?
The title ‘RePivot’ is a nod to the (much maligned) tendency of media organisations to ‘pivot to’ new strategies – listicles, audio, Virtual Reality, short-form video and now AI – in lieu of a more grounded approach to building a thriving business. We hope to both document whichever pivot the herd has shifted to at the moment, unpack what that means for news organisations and the industry, while also offering reminders that pivots may come and go but cannot replace long-term strategy.
