Nalin Mehta on why Moneycontrol stays ahead of the legacy pink papers

New Delhi: Moneycontrol has been topping the charts in terms of page views, users and time spent for the last few months, making it the leader in its segment. 

Moneycontrol managing editor Nalin Mehta on Thursday said that the platform’s reportage, big corporate breaks and exclusives kept it ahead of legacy pink papers. 

Charting out the future roadmap for the platform, Mehta, in an internal communication to the staff, explained the reason why it has managed to stay ahead of the legacy pink papers. 

“A key reason for Moneycontrol being the ‘markets ki dhadkan’ is our relentless focus on breaking the biggest corporate and market news. In line with our ‘Go fast, go deep’ approach, we’re delighted that our reportage, big corporate breaks and exclusives have truly been setting the agenda,” he wrote. 

According to Comscore data for February 2024, Moneycontrol has the largest number of Unique Visitors (UVs) at 28.46 million. It also maintained its massive lead in pages views (512 million) and time spent (667 million minutes).

Crediting the platform’s reporters, writers and editors for always being on top of news, Mehta added, “Deborshi and Swaraj’s big break and comprehensive coverage of Vodafone Idea’s  FPO was a good example of an agenda-setting corporate break. It was quickly followed by Swaraj’s story on how Vodafone plans to spend its FPO proceeds. Moneycontrol led throughout and the competition followed.” 

“Similarly, we had Ashwin’s break on Hinduja Group’s IIHL being in talks to acquire a majority stake in Invesco as well as his story on Japanese investors looking to buy a majority stake in Yes Bank. Deborshi did it again with his story on the Adani group eyeing a $1 billion in foreign currency bonds for expansion. The return of Bajaj Group to the public markets by Ashwin. In the startups/tech space: Deepsekhar and Vikas broke the story on Meta mulling its first data centre in India; Chandra and Tushar’s exclusive on Tiger Global, Softbank etc ending funding winter with $300 million round in Meesho.  And, of course, the redoubtable Bodhi’s big sit-down interview with Jonathan Gray of Blackstone. This was the only one Gray did separately in India,” he added.

In his email, Mehta said that stories like these are the reason why Moneycontrol is the market leader with a big lead in every metric: the highest number of unique readers in the business news space in India, three times the time-spent and more than three times the pageviews compared to our nearest competition. 

“They reflect the quality of our journalism and why we are No.1. They also show how our speed, agility and news offerings have shifted the fulcrum of business journalism away from the legacy pink papers. But this is just the beginning. We must continue to focus on scooping market-moving and agenda-setting stories in the next few months as we deepen and broaden our news coverage.”