Indian Spice consolidates its growth

Most Indian households have at least one family member who gets Indian Spice, which has hovered around 100,000 monthly unique visitors until a spate of hard-hitting news and new social media platforms doubled those numbers. The daily news wrap (The Daily Roti) is sent out on WhatsApp and the newsletters reach over 200,000 subscribers across various lifestyle and ethnic segments.

“Many agencies were not ready for some of the ideas I presented that targeted the Indian consumer. Fast-forward to 2018, however, and they realise that those consumers can be found here,” Naufal Khan, Founder and Publisher, attributes the wave of success of Spice to the forward thinking that happened over a decade ago when there was no emerging digital platform to cater fully for the lifestyle market of Indian consumers.

Spice began its rise in the digital space connecting audiences across the ethnic spectrum providing audiences news, entertainment and lifestyle content relevant to their ethnic identity. A wider South African audience of more than just NRI’s and PIO’s began to filter into the Spice network which subsequently led to a change in content provisioning from just purely Indian to Indo-Asian-African news and content.

"Our niche audience drives our strategy that which is ever-changing. In order to gratify our users’ needs we widen the net. With constant analysis, insights and trends Spice is able to cater to their content consumption as well as providing established product brands that matter to them," says Khan.

Being a part of the ACME network has extended Spice’s revenue funnel and ensures that agencies are aware of the title. Audiences being built out uncover the very under-served South African Indian consumer market of Indo-Asian population of 1.2 million that makes up 2.5% of the South African population.

Spice predominates in the higher LSM quadrant and is reflected in the lifestyle and hard-hitting news, but also represents across the spectrum and flows over into other Diaspora countries in Africa such as Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, Madagascar, Mozambique, Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and the island of Mauritius.

The news item, which catapulted Spice into a household name along the East Coast and Gauteng, was a series of explosive scandals at Lotus FM. In true Leaks style, Khan was inundated with various tipoff’s on other potential scandals and scrambled to form the investigative unit, Kali. The team made up of retired SAPS employees, a forensics unit, freelance journalists and a law firm was assembled in order to address these and other 'Indian' issues that usually get pushed under the carpet, by choice or ignorance.

"When we feel our community is being sold short, Spice believes there is a need to stand up and report on it to affect positive outcomes," explains Khan.

The publication, Indian Spice has been incorporated into AdShakti Media, majority owned by Khan. The platform and incomparable contacts accumulated over a decade have spring boarded the company into adjacent business ventures which include an events firm, radio and television, book publishing and NPO projects for 2018. AdiShakti is currently in a round of funding in order to fulfill on the opportunities it has unlocked.

The team of writers is a collective of newshounds, maverick story tellers, editors, producers, designers, analysts and reporters who have cut their teeth on the best news teams in the country and the world.

The website has gone through a makeover to cater for the demands of an audience that consumes content on-the-fly and 90% on mobile devices compared to five years ago where readers spent time on desktops.

The website primarily catered for the core verticals in the audience market providing news, opinion, entertainment news, arts and culture, LGBT and diary events. The lifestyle segments demanded more and Spice incorporated new additions to the website which include careers, business, travel, home, personal finance, Indian weddings and lifestyle content and so much more.

Spice will be launching the iOS and Android app in 2018 bringing our users closer together with streaming radio, exclusive offerings on products and premium content.