Indian Magazine Congress 2025 to explore trust, community and digital shifts in publishing

New Delhi: The Indian Magazine Congress 2025 will be held on August 8, running from 9:30 AM to 9:00 PM,at The Imperial, New Delhi. The annual industry gathering will bring together magazine publishers, editors, media strategists, digital leaders, policy makers, and researchers to discuss the evolving publishing landscape.

This year’s theme, The Deep Connect, Building Communities. Nurturing Trust. Re-imagining the Future, sets the tone for conversations around advertising models, subscription growth, digital transformation, and audience engagement across formats.

Among the key developments at the 2025 edition is a special keynote address by Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister for Railways; Information and Broadcasting; Electronics and IT. Two notable launches are also scheduled during the day: the magazine e-store on Waves OTT, which will be unveiled by Prasar Bharati CEO Gaurav Dwivedi, and Magnet, a seller-side application developed in collaboration with ONDC, to be introduced by Vibhor Jain, Acting CEO and COO of ONDC.

The day-long event will also feature the Magazimise Awards, which seek to spotlight creative and high-impact advertising collaborations between brands and magazine publishers. Organisers describe the launches as a “transformative step forward” for digital distribution and commerce within the magazine sector.

Speakers announced for the event include Shashi Sinha, CEO of IPG Mediabrands India; Shreyams Kumar, President of the Indian Newspaper Society; Prasanth Kumar of WPP Media-GroupM; Neeraj Sharma, MD-CMT at Accenture; Puneet Kukreja, Vice President at Times Internet; and Richa Shah, Editor of Champak.

Other speakers expected to participate include Abhishek Sharma, Chief Product Officer at Hindustan Times; Srinivasan B, CMD of Ananda Vikatan; Anant Nath, Executive Publisher at Delhi Press and President of the event's organising body; Manoj Sharma, CEO for Magazines at India Today; Anurag Batra, Chairman of BW Businessworld; Dhaval Gupta, Director at CyberMedia; Riyad Mathew, Chief Associate Editor and Director; Girish Mallya, COO at Next Gen Publishing; and Deepak Bhatt, Circulation Director at India Today.