The Race To Become The Premier Mouthpiece Of Youth In India

With youthkiawaaz ahead in the race currently many others like Chill Maadi and Whackk are vying for the throne.

“Opinion is very important. Our generation is not democratic or diplomatic and we cater to that audience. We cater to the audience that watches all TV shows and movies. No one in the Indian market was catering to this market when we started off in 2010 which came as a surprise to us because we are one of the youngest countries if you go by the age of a large segment of our population. Also, we love to have fun then why not write about it?,” asks Kartikeya, Co-Founder, Whackk magazine.

Started in 2010, Whackk generates its revenue through advertising on the website. Though their marketing efforts are limited to social media – Twitter and Facebook (sigh!), they also actively mix with the Gen Y crowd by partnering for college and music events in Mumbai.

“We want to be the mouth piece of the youth in India. At the same time we don’t want to go out there and sell it. Whack is cool and underground and we want to keep it that way. We will continue to give you extreme ends of the coin even if we get big,” says Kartikeya, the mouth piece of Whackk.

Chill Maadi sees its student team as the key factor differentiating it from other youth centric publications in the market. To consistently read the pulse of the student community, Chill Maadi intends to continue with a student team even after their Founder, Gopal, a final year student in Manipal Institute of Technology passes out of college.

Brands are definitely exploiting the new reach created by Chill Maadi in North Karnataka. Chill Maadi in less than a year has had 46 advertisers so far including big brands like Big Bazaar, US$ store and Raymonds.

While Whackk has strongly placed its focus on its content and presence on media to market itself, Chill Maadi has counted on the large number of students at its disposal to market itself through graffiti, wall paints, flashmobs etc along with a dedicated sales team. Not far from Whackk, Gopal speaks on the vision for Chill Maadi, “We are not limited to Manipal. We see ourselves growing in the next few years into a national youth magazine.”

According to Accenture’s Global Research on Millennial use of technology (2010), young Indians are among the most technology oriented people in the world today. 7.5% (in a survey conducted by TCS) of the high school students giving media (next only to 34% IT and 11% medicine) as their preferred career choice. These numbers clearly point to the direction in which Gen Y is headed. With blogging, social media and mobile already taking the lead in luring this generation, more interesting milestones can be expected from millennial who have already broken the definitive boundaries of media and set in motion a communication and information revolution.