India’s print circulation grew at CAGR of 4.87% from 20062016

The circulation of India’s print publications grew at the compound annual growth rate or CAGR of 4.87% between the end of 2006 and the end of 2016, to 62 million a day, the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) announced on Monday. “This is remarkable growth for print at a time where most countries are seeing a decline in print”, I Venkat, chairman of ABC, said.

ABC is a non-profit that audits circulation figures of newspapers and magazines.

Over the past 10 years, ABC data shows, 23.7 million copies have been added to the circulation of Indian newspapers and magazines. The organisation released these numbers at a conference in Mumbai and, on the strength of these, sought to make a case for print media as a preferred advertising medium. To highlight this, ABC launched a print ad campaign under the tagline “Newspapers are growing” .

ABC data from 2006 to 2016 shows that it is regional language newspapers that have contributed the most to the growth story with Hindi, Telugu and Kannada being the top three language publications that grew at a CAGR of 8.76%, 8.28% and 6.40% respectively. English media publications grew at a CAGR of 2.87% in the same period. In terms of regions, the north zone including the Hindi heartland saw the highest growth at 7.83%, followed by the south (4.95%), west (2.81%) and east (2.63%).

India has among the highest growth rates for print in the world, according to data from ABC.

Between 2013 and 2015, the circulation of Indian dailies grew 12% while that of those in markets such as Australia, France, Germany, the US, and Japan all saw a 3-6% decline. The UK saw the highest decline of 12% in this period, according to ABC.

ABC predicted that print media advertising revenue would grow at 8% CAGR to ₹29,600 crore by calender year 2021. TV ad revenue is expected to grow 14.4% to ₹39,410 crore, and digital by 30.8% to ₹29,450 crore in the same period.