Reaching new Milestones in Digital Publishing Date:   Friday , July 26, 2013 Vijayakumar Radhakrishnan, Co-founder & President of Magzter, noted the difficulty his friend faced in Singapore to get hold of his favorite Tamil magazine. He had to shell out 5 times the original cost of the magazine in India, although the issue was already a month old. Recognizing a potential for a great idea, Vijay Radhakrishnan and Girish Ramdas, currently the Co-Founder & CEO of Magzter, initiated a journey which would change the very face of distribution in the publication industry, not only locally, but globally as well. The birth child of the Innovation was Magzter, a publishing platform with over 2300 magazines in its digital newsstand today. Starting off with only 35 magazines, the company was co-founded by Vijay Radhakrishnan in May 23 2011, today having acquired more than 2300 publications world wide in a span of 24 months showcases a heavy traction from a publisher's standpoint, just as predicted by Vijay Radhakrishnan. Magzter has published clients from 35 countries and readers from 74 countries with over 11 million app download till date. The Trail left behind by Vijay Radhakrishnan and his team can be viewed as global footprints of Magzter are visible with offices in South Africa, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Singapore and a recently inaugurated office in Amsterdam. Vijay Radhakrishnan and his team cleverly chose these locations so as to create a ripple effect in the surrounding areas, for example The Singapore office delves deep into the readership and publications in Malaysia, HongKong Indonesia and China respectively. Learning the Tricks of the Trade "Where is a successful global product from an Indian like me?"was the question that Vijay Radhakrishnan asked himself before delving into the vertical of digital publication. His entrepreneurial journey began in 2001 when he founded NTS along with Ms Kalaiselvi, who headed the product team at NTS. The first major turning point was when NTS was merged with Dot Com Infoway in 2005 to enable reaching the audience for services. The partnership with Girish Ramdas and Dot Com Infoway enabled Radhakrishnan to learn immensely in the realm of International business building. Eventually, the growth of the idea of Magzter started with the initiative to build an app for Galatta cinema magazine. The application was built to enable readers in every corner of the globe to gain access to the South Indian cinema monthly. Complications such as shipping the magazine, especially overseas was a huge challenge additionally the magazine would reach the end reader at a much later time, rendering it old. The application built by Vijay Radhakrishnan acted as a bridge connecting the gap which existed for the magazine in terms connectivity and expenditure opening a new era of reading medium and accessibility. Opening the Door to Publishers Vijay Radhakrishnan realized a need to tap into the boom of apps development in 2008 and launched Galatta cinema's app for the I phone in early 2009. As predicted there was a huge attraction from global consumers and even from Indian consumers before the magazine went for printing.Digital versions were ready and it became easy for movie fanatics to read about movie reviews. As a result, the app raked in 100,000 downloads within a period of twelve months. The team realized that when one magazine can generate a large number downloads, the door to usher and expand toother magazine publishers was possible. Leveraging the existing technology division of Dot Com Info way; Vijay noticed the capability to deliver apps on various verticals including that of online newsstand in an Android phone. "India itself there were more than 55,000 registered magazines obviously globally will have several thousand magazines" says Vijay Radhakrishnan ultimately; in 2010 Dot Com Infoway saw an opportunity in the form of a platform for magazine publishers which finally led to the birth of Magzter Overcoming Hurdles through Strategic Moves As an entrepreneur,Vijayakumar Radhakrishnan started differently by establishing headquarters in New York so as to build a global platform. Realizing that New York was the nerve centre for publishing, the team started sales, marketing and financial operations in the city to build a strong relationship within the publication sphere."The key challenge that I faced is to scale up the team to create a global product. Though Indian companies are very good in IT business services, when it comes to product development the culture of the organization should be completely different. In that aspect every team has to feel the ownership of the product to make it world class," Points out Vijay Radhakrishnan. Overcoming the hurdles of structuring of the organizationand setting up the startup in New York to position Magzter as an International product. Perseverance, Quality and Dedicationare the key principles he adheres to and advises others to apply in everyday life. An operational and strategic approach to have a flat and bottom-up organization is what Vijay Radhakrishnan endorses. As he feels that a game changing innovation can bloom from anyone in the organization. "Above all, keep dreaming big and this will drive you to create something big which can change the world."says Vijay Radhakrishnan.His intent is to make Magzter the sole platform of the online digitization readership space in the coming years, judging by Magzter's recent growth streak, the goal does not seem too far off.