Atlantic Media’s mobile-first digital publication Quartz has gone live with its Indian edition, accessible at qz.com for readers in India and at qz.com/india for readers outside the country.
The company says Quartz India will provides both global and India-specific business news coverage and features. It will feature quick takes on news, original reportage, longer analytical pieces, and charts and maps. It’s worth noting that readers in India are automatically redirected to this Indian edition, although they do have an option to switch to the global edition from the navigation bar at the top.
Note that Quartz had earlier announced a co-publishing deal with Scroll.in, as part of which Scroll.in was expected to take care of all the content, while Quartz will take care of all the monetization. There is a revenue sharing agreement in place between both the companies, although Scroll.in founder Samir Patil had earlier declined to comment on the exact details.
Sruthijith had been appointed as the editor of the Quartz’s Indian edition and interestingly, he along with the 4-5 member editorial team of Quartz India are on the rolls of Scroll.in. (More on the tie-up and Quartz’s India plans here)
Quartz claims that its readership in India has grown around 200% year-over-year, registering around 200,000 monthly unique visitors. Earlier this year, Quartz had mentioned that India is among the top five traffic source for the publication.
Native ad formats: Quartz mentions that it will offer two types of native advertising products to advertisers – Bulletin (sponsored content which are similar to the editorial content) and Engage (“fill-the-screen” ad units with support for rich media and video). Remember that the publication had earlier announced that it has tied up with GE as a sponsor and founding partner, which will sponsor a multi-part content series based on “key areas of innovation in India” like renewable energy, manufacturing and healthcare.
While we are curious on when Indian advertisers are ready for native advertising, Patil had earlier told Medianama the mood of advertisers has shifted in the past year and a half. While Quartz is currently looking after the advertising right now, Patil had hinted about the possibility of having an in-house advertising team that could even sell slots for the parent website in the long run.
In the past year or so, we have seen several International publications launching their Indian editions, IGN, Gizmodo India, Lifehacker India, Pursuitist, Business Insider and AskMen had launched their respective Indian editions in association with Times Internet, while ZDNet had gone solo in launching its Indian edition. BuzzFeed and Huffington Post are also expected to launch its respective Indian edition this month.
