By Rohan Venkat
On Episode 3 of the RePivot Podcast, a show focused on the business of news in India, Jayant Sriram and Nikhil Kanekal speak to Vignesh Vellore, founder and CEO of The News Minute, an award-winning digital-only news publication that has carved out a sharp South India-focused brand since its launch in 2014.
Vellore had no news media experience before his involvement with The News Minute, which he co-founded with seasoned journalists Dhanya Rajendran – who is also his wife – and Chitra Subramaniam. Tune in to understand:
How and why Vellore, Rajendran and Subramaniam decided to take on the mainstream legacy publications by setting up an independent news organisation, focusing on South India.
The challenges that The News Minute faced in its early years; why newspapers are still major players in the Indian market; and how TNM learned to move away from its initial reliance on social media as a means of digital distribution.
The expectations Vellore had about the potential revenue streams and likely business model when TNM was launched, and how this understanding has evolved – particularly in response to a precipitous drop in earnings from programmatic advertising as well as the difficulty in sustaining and scaling a ‘Brand Studio’ model.
The thinking behind the decision to build out a membership model approach over the last few years.
Why TNM signed up to an “alliance” with Newslaundry with the aim of collaborating on strategic business issues – and why Vellore hopes that more independent news outlets will join this grouping.
“We are not looking at only Newslaundry and News Minute. We are very open to aligning with a lot more digital platforms… We’re not looking at organisations which are only functioning in English. We’re looking at very niche products which are functioning out of Maharashtra, Kerala, North-East, preferably in the languages… We feel that if we take care of the operational costs, then these people who have founded these organisations… they would do wonders in terms of the content they create. When you don’t have that pressure of ‘where is the revenue coming in from for this month to sustain this business’… when you eliminate that, I think people will be able to create kickass content. And with a super-subscription of sorts, it gives you access to a wide range of people. We genuinely believe that we should be able to set up a relatively large media company, which not just backed up by members, but more important still speaking truth to power.”
- Vignesh Vellore on The News Minute’s ‘alliance’ with Newslaundry
The News Minute
The News Minute was among a clutch of independent digital-only publications that launched in India in the mid-2010s (alongside Scroll.in, The Wire, The Quint, The Ken, Asiaville, Newslaundry and several others). It grew quickly and came to be known for its sharp focus on South India through its dogged reportage and features. It was launched in 2014, and operates out of Bengaluru, with reporters across all five South Indian states and coverage of current affairs and cultural issues that go beyond.
At its peak (during the period when social media networks actively promoted news content to their users’ feeds), TNM received 25-30 million page views, and almost 13 million unique visitors in a month, said Vellore. It gained 750,000 followers across Twitter and Facebook. Social media was a key distribution channel for TNM, like it was for many of the digitally native outlets that emerged across the world at the time. While publicly available numbers rarely match with in-house analytics, Similarweb currently records a reach of 3.5 million unique visitors over the last month for The News Minute, with organic search driving nearly 50% of its desktop reach.
The organisation received its first round of funding from Quintillion Media in 2015, then owned by Raghav Bahl, who also founded The Quint. It raised additional funding in 2019, and then in 2022 from Quint Digital Media and Newslaundry Media. As of 2021, Quint Digital Media owned 47.92% of Spunklane Media, the company that operates The News Minute. When the Adani Group acquired a minority stake in Quintillion Business Media (QBM) in 2022, Quint Digital Media explicitly mentioned in a press release that transaction involved only QBM, and not other assets, such as Spunklane Media (TNM).
On the revenue front, TNM initially focused on programmatic advertising and then built out a brand studio. Lately, the organisation has moved towards raising reader revenue, especially after the Covid pandemic. One of its reader engagement projects, TNM Connect, was selected as part of the Google Innovation Challenge in 2020 and its membership efforts have also been highlighted by the Membership Guide which reported that the organisation receives 10% of its revenue from members as of 2023. Members pay to support TNM, but none of its journalism is behind a paywall, yet.
In April 2023, The News Minute announced that it was forming an “alliance which is committed to public interest journalism”, with the aim of collaborating not just on editorial projects but also on “a joint strategy for growth.”
The announcement from The News Minute insisted that,
“this coming together will maximise the strengths of the two organisations and be a force multiplier. Newslaundry’s focus on news critique and long experience in both audio and video formats, and The News Minute’s tradition of outstanding ground reportage, is a combination that we are confident will throw up cutting-edge shows, reports and projects that are compelling in form and intent, and important as public interest journalism.
We hope this is the beginning of a journey to create a bigger and better news entity.”
Listen to the episode for more insights on path The News Minute has taken and where Vellore thinks independent news media in India could go. If you have suggestions for who we should feature on the podcast or feedback, you can share your thoughts in the comments below or write to us at repivot@substack.com.
If you missed our previous episode, an interview on the state of digital advertising with Jagran New Media's Gaurav Arora, check that out below:
'Super-alliances' and the fate of independent news in India with The News Minute's Vignesh Vellore