The India GNI Subscriptions Academy is a collaborative effort by the Google News Initiative (GNI) and FT Strategies. The 2022 cohort consisted of five national publishers from across the country: The Times of India, The Hindu, The Ken, Moneycontrol, and Vikatan.

The programme aims to help news publishers strengthen their digital subscriptions capabilities and grow reader revenue at a time of significant disruption to traditional advertising business models.

This report shares key learnings from the first edition of the Indian GNI Subscriptions Academy, in which five Indian publishers participated in a five-month programme. The programme helps publishers accelerate their reader revenue streams by creating a reader-first strategy and culture, optimising reader engagement and building an outcome-driven ‘North Star’ strategy.

The first section of this report, shares an overview of the programme as well as the key themes heard from the Indian publishing market.

The second section of the report, shares publisher experiences, experiments and testimonials from the GNI Subscriptions Academy. These examples have helped publishers optimise performance at the various stages of the subscription lifecycle.