With a reputation for careful planning, and under the leadership of chief executive Dipankar Das Purkayastha - a regular speaker and attendee at global industry conferences - Kolkata-based ABP Group is making sure steps to the future.
While print circulations of its English-language Telegraph and multi-edition Bengali flagship Anandabazar Patrika remain strong, the group continues to develop the technology base on which it is building its digital presence.
The latest of these is the introduction of ppi Media's multichannel Content-X editorial system, which complements the DC-X digital asset management system already in use in Kolkata.
The announcement confirms an order which was one of the unofficial talking points at WAN-Ifra's World News Media Congress in Glasgow last month, at which Purkayastha (pictured) was an attendee. At the same group's IfraExpo event in Berlin last October, he had told how digital was "starting to eat our breakfast, too".
The new systems will enable ABP to exploit its content through a variety of digital channels, and will be supported by ppi's Classifieds AdSelf self-service portal, and PlanPag planning suite.
Publisher of the most popular Bengali daily newspaper, Anandabazar Patrika - which has a circulation of 1.2 million copies across 25 local editions - and English-language daily The Telegraph, ABP becomes ppi's tenth Content-X user in India. An advantage was support for Bengali script and language in Content-X, AdSelf and the integrated alfa Stylo Editor.
Purkayastha says the order followed a search for future-oriented solutions, and visits to users including The Hindu and The Printers Mysore in India, and Südkurier and Axel Springer in Germany.
The multichannel editorial system will allow ABP to use its print and media channels equally effectively. The media-neutral content recorded in the digital asset management system DC-X, which is already in use at ABP, can now be exploited through various channels with a range of alternative stories.
AdSelf is a self-service portal on which agencies and other users can book classified ads and manage them online, with billing and other transactions handled through an interface with BackOffice in the company's SAP system.
ABP was an early user of Atex's Polopoly-based web CMS in India in 2013
Anandabazar Patrika first appeared in 1922 as a four-page evening daily, while English-language daily The Telegraph has been published in Kolkata since 1982 and now has five editions.