The brand, with 50 million digital users, produces around 2,000 pieces of content every day, across 70 cities, and since the paywall is in a nascent stage, the focus this year has been on consumer acquisition. 

The brand’s paywall offering, at this point, can neither be called metered nor hard, since aside from 350-400 premium pieces, all the content is free to access on the website and apps. 

Radhika Shukla, Head of Growth and Strategy, TOI+ and Newspoint, Times Internet Ltd., joined WAN-IFRA’s recent Digital Media India Conference to share the brand’s subscription journey to date and their initial learnings.

The paywalled content includes expert opinion, newsletters, podcasts, crossword, and in-depth news analysis, heavily driven by data and charts in an easy to consume form.

Once a user becomes a subscriber, they are shifted to an ad-lite model. 
Currently, ToI+ offers only one yearly subscription plan at a very competitive price of Rs 599 (€ 7.24) (Android and browser) and Rs 799 (€ 9.66) (iOS). 
The brand also offers a Times Prime membership that has been dubbed a super subscription service that provides access to over 15 premium subscriptions and offers from more than 20 brands, such as SonyLiv, Disney+Hotstar, Cricbuzz, Uber, Starbucks and Myntra amongst others.

User acquisition
Since ToI+ is only a year old, the brand’s biggest focus this year has been strategising customer acquisition that has been categorised thus:  

Platform-based strategy:…