UK Bound

Countless desk diaries and cardboard boxes full of emails, faxes and letters helped jog my memory while developing the Corporate Today UK edition. And, the new issue in hand, the format proved invaluable, with a stong emphasis on lifestyle and South Asian diaspora. Tracking the growth of the magazine over last three years -- from a modest circulation to peaking 100000 copies sold per month -- stems back to the "big moment" of my engagement with this endeavour while the "new generation" began to rise through increased papping and reality TV, the forerunner of that most intrusive of genres. Looking back on my time with Th e Coporate Today, there are moments of pride, from capturing our moments with philanthrophy billionnaire Ted Turner to helping to question the fashion industry's preoccupation that "skinny is everything". But there have also been clanging mistakes, which we have acknowledged in the subsequent issues. Ten years ago, we were being told by all and sundry that magazines were finished and within years would be subsumed by the internet. The late nineties saw content become king, with all manner of media conglomerates fighting over rights to apparently elusive content. Looking back from the safety of 2005, I am of the view that the magazine industry is as healthy as ever and, thanks almost entirely to those new launch titles, still retains the facility to shock and surprise. The Corporate Today conception of UK edition is an effort in that direction. Assuming that our new launch is sufficiently different and that our timing is good, the final area that many recommend us to s consider before a new launch is to make an objective assessment of what we uniquely add to the process. Now we realize there are many – unique content, positioning and branding which can create word of mouth publicity. As we launched the UK edition of The Corporate Today, we intend to make it more relevant it to South Asian Diaspora in UK. India's union minister of Indian Overseas on our cover to the story of Britain's top Indian women, I reckon would make some compelling reading.

Raveendran Mrithyunjaya