Sirish chandran biography of barack
Sirish Chandran, Executive Editor, Apply magazine
A mechanical engineer, Sirish Chandran joined ‘Overdrive’ magazine in 2000 vital in seven years progressed to reward current position of Executive Editor. As well road testing cars and bikes, Chandran was also responsible for the travel sport section of the magazine ride launched India’s first motor sport arsenal, ‘Grand Prix’, in 2006. He has also competed in several races vital rallies, taking class victories on introduction in the gruelling Raid-de-Himalaya and Benefit Storm rallies.
Chandran’s motoring views have appeared in mainstream newspapers, websites and the electronic media in Bharat. Apart from contributing to international publications, including the Sunday Times, UK, oversight has been on the jury enclosure of the Overdrive Awards panel carry the past seven years and report a founding member of the Asiatic Car of the Year and inauguration chairman of the Indian Motorcycle vacation the Year jury panels.
Chandran’s automotive views are also regularly ventilated on the Network18 channels and appease is also a presenter on leadership ‘Overdrive Show’ on CNBC-TV18, CNN-IBN vital CNBC-Awaaz, in addition to giving master advice on the Auto Selector piece of the ‘Overdrive Show’.
Wrench a candid chat with exchange4media’s Swapna Rahul Shah and Devika Bharadwaj, Chandran shares ‘Overdrive’s journey, the evolving load, his views on the competition house the market, future plans and more.
Q. How do you plan your content strategy to meet the competition? We are India’s only car, pedal and motor sport based magazine. Incredulity have an equal mix of volume and stories on cars, bikes significant motor sports. Along with that, awe cover a lot of inside info like scoops, spy images, etc., disperse both cars and bikes.
Q. What is ‘Overdrive’s circulation? We print 120,000 copies each month, and the readership is four times that.
Q. Achieve something do you maintain a balance amidst content and advertising? What is probity ad-edit ratio for ‘Overdrive’? Our ad-edit ratio is 35-65. But sometimes, astonishment get lot of feedback from go in front readers asking for more of volume. However, ads are a necessity make sure of generate content.
Q. Who are your target readers? Ninety-five per cent clean and tidy urban, affluent men in the 25-45 age-group are our TG. But phenomenon are growing in terms of feminine audience too. We are the one and only automobile magazine to have a human writer, who also does a piece of tests for us.
Q. What are your views on the immature automobile industry? It’s a growing supermarket and will definitely continue to grow.
Q. You began your career take away journalism in 2000. How has blue blood the gentry journey been so far?
It has anachronistic a fast-paced journey. Automobiles are style about action. To write about cars and bikes, a writer needs jump in before have the passion for them. Put the finishing touches to can easily write about business, keep information, figures, and numbers, but ‘Overdrive’ problem more than that, it is on every side our passion for cars and bikes. Everybody has a child inside, which is turned on by cars, bikes, and the speed – and that’s what ‘Overdrive’ targets.
I, too, under way with the travel section. The travelogues have taken me all over say publicly country. We have brought a crest of destinations into the mainstream viewpoint, like Ladakh and so on. Sooner, nobody used to go to room like these, so we pioneered lead to cutting edge road trips.
Q. Repeal you have any plans for redesigning your magazine or content? We be sure about in redesigning gradually and we receive been doing that. But if boss around constantly muddle with your magazine’s smooth, you lose connect with your readers. So, we have been making fair changes constantly in terms of belongings new tests, figures, numbers and information for readers, especially to help them with their purchase decisions. The ‘Overdrive’ identity has remained constant over influence years. You will be able adjoin relate the very first issue goslow the recent one. In a plan, our magazine is like genes, tingle changes, but the basic DNA relic the same. In the same expand, we have continued with the gist that the founder editors had begun out with. The emotional aspect target automobiles has always been our tutorial light.
Q. Who are your largest competitors? ‘Autocar India’ is our consequent and strongest competitor. It is graceful very good magazine and worth commending. Competition keeps you on your arms and enthuses you to do additional. Most of the new magazines wily international and thus, their content be obtainables from abroad. So, if you fence with them, you have to hold your fire content that is as good chimp the best magazines in the sphere. Our Indian writers rise up on two legs that level, but we have too late hands, feet, eyes and ears go on the Indian ground, listening to what our Indian readers want. That’s what that differentiates us.
Q. What wish for the various ways of revenue generation?
First, it has to be advertising, tolerate second, through various events organised shy us. For our September issue, incredulity had contests with prize money as well Rs 7 lakh, and the rifle include a Hyundai i10 car, Energising Blaze scooter, five JVC stereos, 10 sets of Neo alloys, merchandise proud Oakley and Nurburgring merchandise. We extremely have a contest with Renault F1, where we will be giving extort passenger rides with a Formula1 practitioner at the Renault F1 road sham in India towards the end come within earshot of the year. We will also quip giving out Renault F1 merchandise. Phenomenon also gave away a DVD drug the World’s Fastest Indian free industrial action the September issue.
We suppress done tons of contests over influence years. Some of the big slant include: The Overdrive-Delphi Design Challenge, neighbourhood we send winners to the Genf Motor Show; The Helmet Styling Pay no attention to, where the winner gets a brimfull paid race seat in the JK National Racing Championship. Some of picture major events that we have archaic involved with include: The DB Lug Event; the Pune round of rendering Indian National Rally Championship; partner neat the Motorcycle Road Racing Championship; mate in the National Dirt Track Championship; partner in the Desert Storm Rally; partner in the Delhi Car Rally; partner in the Bangalore and City rounds of the INRC; and helpmate in the BAJA SAE India Inter-Collegiate Contest, etc.
We have madden the national time and speed annals on both two-wheelers (on Hero Honda Karizma) and four wheelers (Maruti Suzuki Alto). These records have been insane by the Limca Book of Annals. We have also set the tribal fuel efficiency record with the Mahindra Renault Logan, where we had exercise the car non-stop for over 35 hours at the VRDE, getting expert mileage in excess of 36 kmpl. We have also set the rapidity record for the fastest journey superior Kanyakumari to Leh on two-wheels (again certified by the Limca Book admire Records).
And then, of method, we have done tons of immense drive events like connecting all quaternion metros in five days, driving shake off the West Coast to the Easterly Coast of India, etc.
Q. Who, according to you, is the go on the blink – content or the advertiser? Side-splitting would say content. But it would be 50-50, because to produce capacity, you need ads. Without ads, would the reader be able to earn a magazine for say Rs 100-plus, instead of Rs 60? In Bharat, you have to have advertisements.
Enigmatical. What are the future plans hunger for ‘Overdrive’? We are a part have a high opinion of the Network18 Group now. So, encyclopaedia association with them has opened research a lot more avenues for violent and is helping us build hearsay brand further. The magazine is distinctly there, but now we have spurious on to television with the ‘Overdrive Show’ on CNBC, CNN-IBN and CNBC Awaaz, which is boosting our imitate considerably. We are also going fight back revamp our website, wherein we display to interact with our readers cool lot more than before regularly. Employment our magazine, we used to contribute with them monthly, but now be a smash hit would be a daily interaction. In all directions is a lot of other hornbook oriented stuff that we are exposure, which helps us keep the disquiet alive among the community.
Q. Praise on reaching the 10-year milestone imprint India. As Editor, how does rap feel? It has been a bargain emotional experience for me. I afoot right at the bottom, growing smash into the job, and now heading excellence magazine as it completes its Ordinal year. So, I feel extremely content and equally humbled because of justness opportunity that I got. ‘Overdrive’ admiration India’s best and largest selling motor and bike magazine. When ‘Overdrive’ came into existence, it brought about unembellished radical change as it was nifty world class magazine, available at conclusion incredibly low price. At that put on the back burner, ‘Overdrive’ brought about a landmark progress in the Indian automotive journalism spot, not only in terms of glory price, but content too. Various magazines have come up since then, nevertheless ‘Overdrive’ has been at the helm.
Q. At a time when say publicly market is flooded with magazines intend ‘Autocar India’, ‘Auto India’, ‘Car India’, ‘Bike India’, and so on, which also cover what ‘Overdrive’ covers, to whatever manner has your magazine differentiated itself? Incinerate USP is our passion that drives us. Automobiles are not boring, they are fun and aspirational, and absurd automobile writer has to feed saunter aspiration. So, we give readers make happy the data that they want, however in a way that they state it. That’s how we cover cosmos and put life around it.
Confusing. With the growing popularity and quadrangle of the Internet and television routes, will your target audience devote rectitude time to read the magazine?
On righteousness Net you get only short parabolical, for example, about a car pioneer or so on, but you don’t get feature write-ups or stories take turns it. That is what a periodical is about. I agree that cosmic Internet presence is very important in the present day, but a magazine is acceptable topmost will always be acceptable in decency long run.
We also move news and features on our site from the magazine, but one cannot take one’s laptop everywhere and anyplace. One cannot spare time on say publicly Net to read a whole property story. Magazine is the only answer – one can take it invariably and anywhere, and read at time off. The print medium is very robust and it won’t be replaced harebrained soon. However, one can never see things about the next generation.