The Financial Times (FT), owned by Japan’s Nikkei, is turning its focus back to India.

Earlier this month, FT hosted its first event in India in over 12 years—the FT Live Energy Transition Summit in New Delhi. The event was attended by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and other key figures from the government and industry.

FT Professional (Pro), the company’s enterprise brand, has been increasing subscriptions through partnerships with Indian corporations like Infosys, Tata, and Mahindra. It now has a user base of 1.8 million. “That’s how many we are being paid for. Over 100,000 of those are reading us every day,” says Angela Mackay, Managing Director for Asia Pacific, Global Publisher of FT Live, and Board Director of FT Group.

Besides these corporate subscribers, FT has about 13,000 direct subscribers in India. The company is hiring staff in Delhi, Bengaluru, and Mumbai to boost engagement with new FT Pro subscribers, according to Mackay.

FT is considered a “paywall pioneer” in the newspaper industry. Despite challenges in revenue and readership growth, it has built a global paying audience of 2.8 million people—1.4 million newspaper subscribers and 1.4 million subscribers to FT Specialist brands like Foreign Direct Investment, FundFire, and Endpoints, a biopharma newsletter.

The company has successfully transitioned to digital media, now earning half its revenue from digital subscriptions. The rest comes from advertising, events, and other businesses. In 2007, 70% of its revenue was from print advertising. “We’ve been lucky and also strategic about the way we have relentlessly increased our subscription base, particularly over the last decade with Nikkei’s support,” says Mackay. Nikkei acquired FT in 2015 for £844 million.

Nikkei, which had revenues of $2.45 billion in 2023, publishes the Nihon Keizai Shimbun among other brands. “B2B (business-to-business) subscription is one area that FT has cracked better than others. It is a significant way to distribute because at those prices (₹16,100 for the first year) they won’t get mass subscriptions,” says Parry Ravindranathan, CEO and co-founder of Converj and former President and Managing Director, International, Bloomberg.

Even at lower prices, getting people to pay for news in India is tough. After more than a decade of efforts, there are barely 2 million online subscribers to print media in the country. The ₹26,000 crore newspaper industry remains dependent on advertising. Streaming video services, however, have between 80 to 100 million subscribers, showing that willingness to pay exists.

“Indian retail investors are increasingly participating in global markets, so there is a growing appetite for global data and knowledge,” says Ravindranathan.

“Seventy percent of the FT’s subscribers are outside the UK,” notes media analyst Colin Morrison.

India could significantly contribute to that global subscriber base. This is part one of FT’s strategy in India.

“We were selling the newspaper in India from the 1920s and have had an editorial presence since the 1950s. But we’ve really just come back over the last 18 months, thoughtfully and strategically. It coincides with the realization that India is much more outward-looking than it used to be,” says Mackay.

The second part of FT’s strategy is advertising. An estimated $30 million (₹246 crore) is spent by Indian governments and companies on outbound advertising for tenders, tourism, and investment. Much of this goes to international brands like CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The Economist, and FT. Analysts estimate that FT’s share is about $5-7 million (₹41-57 crore).

The third part involves events, consulting, and other products. FT Strategies, a wholly-owned company, advises other media firms. FT Corporate Ventures takes strategic stakes in companies.

“It’s no longer just about a newspaper,” says Morrison.

While diversification is the way forward, it brings challenges. “FT’s performance has been very modest in many ways. At half a billion pounds, it’s not very profitable (£30 million in operating profits in 2023). In the long run, things have to make money to survive,” says Morrison. Analysts note that much of its profit still comes from print, especially its popular weekend edition.

FT has been fortunate to have an investor like Nikkei, which is owned by its employees since Japanese law doesn’t allow newspaper firms to be publicly traded. This long-term approach has allowed FT to continue its expansion plans.