Digit.in

About Digit.in

Digit.in is the digital home of Digit, India's pioneering technology media brand, encompassing the long-running Digit magazine and its online portal covering technology news, reviews, buying advice and gaming. Published from Mumbai, Maharashtra, Digit provides technology articles in eight Indian languages — English, Hindi, Bangla, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu — and is known for its testing-led reviews, its annual Digit awards and its vibrant reader communities. Founded as a print magazine in June 2001, it was acquired by Times Network, part of Bennett, Coleman & Company Limited, from the 9.9 Group in May 2024. Its official website is digit.in.

A magazine born in 2001

Digit began as a monthly technology magazine whose first issue appeared in June 2001, launched by Jasubhai Digital Media. It arrived at a formative moment for Indian technology culture: personal computing was spreading beyond offices, the internet was reaching Indian homes, and a generation of readers needed a trustworthy guide to buying and using technology. Digit's formula — accessible explanations, rigorous product testing and a reader-first attitude — quickly made it the country's most popular technology magazine, a position confirmed when the Indian Readership Survey voted it India's most-read tech magazine in 2008.

The magazine's identity was shaped by its physical format as much as its journalism. Each issue shipped with extras that became legendary among Indian tech enthusiasts: dual-layer DVDs, a mini-book called Fast Track offering in-depth guides to topics from web publishing to open-source software, and SKOAR!, a dedicated gaming supplement. By 2011 the magazine's monthly readership was estimated at around 230,000, higher than the combined readership of its peers according to IRS data — a dominance few specialist magazines anywhere have achieved.

The 9.9 Media era

In December 2007, 9.9 Mediaworx acquired Jasubhai Digital Media, bringing Digit magazine, the SKOAR! gaming supplement and all associated properties into the 9.9 Group. Under 9.9 Media, Digit expanded its digital presence through Digit.in while maintaining the print magazine's authority, building one of India's earliest integrated print-digital technology publishing operations. The company's leadership invested in the brand's community and testing infrastructure, keeping the magazine's reputation for independence intact.

The 9.9 years were Digit's imperial phase in print. The magazine's covers, its famously thorough reviews and its bundled software and content discs made it a fixture in the lives of Indian technology enthusiasts through the 2000s and early 2010s. Even as digital media eroded print elsewhere, Digit's utility — genuine buying advice backed by lab testing — gave it a resilience that newsweeklies and general-interest magazines lacked.

Digit.in and digital expansion

Alongside the magazine, Digit built Digit.in into a comprehensive technology portal carrying news, reviews, features, buying guides and price information. The website extended the magazine's testing-led philosophy to the pace of digital publishing, covering smartphones, PCs, components, peripherals, gaming hardware and consumer electronics with the same emphasis on helping readers choose, buy and use technology. The portal's growth mirrored the Indian internet's own: as hundreds of millions came online, overwhelmingly on phones, Digit.in served the technology-curious among them.

The digital expansion also allowed Digit to publish in eight languages — English, Hindi, Bangla, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu — taking its buying advice to readers far beyond the English-speaking metro audience that had been the magazine's core. In a country where the next wave of technology buyers would research purchases in their own languages, the multilingual portal was a strategic asset of growing importance.

Communities: Digit Squad and SKOAR!

One of Digit's most distinctive assets is its community infrastructure. Digit Squad, a network of tech influencers, and the SKOAR! College Gaming Club, a college gaming community, extend the brand beyond publishing into organised fandom — readers who don't just consume Digit's content but participate in its culture. The company has claimed a combined reach of 180 million across Digit and Digit Squad, a figure that, while self-reported, indicates the scale of the community ambition.

The community strategy reflects an understanding that technology enthusiasm is inherently social: buyers seek recommendations from people they trust, gamers organise around shared titles, and product debates thrive in forums and meetups. By institutionalising these behaviours in the Squad and the gaming club, Digit built loyalty that transcended any single article or issue — a moat that pure content competitors found difficult to cross.

Testing-led reviews

Digit's editorial reputation rests on its testing methodology. The magazine and website built their authority on hands-on, lab-style evaluation of products — benchmarking processors, measuring display quality, stress-testing battery life — at a time when much Indian technology coverage consisted of rewritten press releases. The Fast Track mini-books exemplified the approach: deep, practical guides to subjects like Photoshop or web publishing that treated readers as capable learners rather than passive consumers.

The testing culture gave Digit's buying advice a credibility that sustained the brand across two decades of technological change, from the dial-up era through the smartphone revolution to the current age of AI hardware. Readers learned that a Digit recommendation meant a product had survived genuine scrutiny — a trust that transferred naturally from print to the digital portal.

The Digit awards

Each year, Digit presents awards to the best Indian technology firms and products, honouring excellence across categories from smartphones and laptops to components, gaming hardware and services. The awards distil the publication's year of testing into definitive verdicts, serving readers making purchase decisions and giving manufacturers a respected third-party endorsement.

In a crowded field of Indian technology awards, Digit's carry the weight of the brand's testing heritage: they are understood as the conclusions of people who actually benchmarked the products. The awards ceremony and coverage also function as an annual state-of-the-industry address, marking the trends — the rise of a category, the fall of a giant — that defined the year in Indian technology.

Acquisition by Times Network

On May 27, 2024, Times Network — the broadcast and digital arm of Bennett, Coleman & Company Limited, India's largest media conglomerate — announced the acquisition of Digit.in from the 9.9 Group. The deal encompassed Digit's print and digital businesses, including the magazine, the website and all related properties; financial terms were not disclosed. The acquisition was presented as a move to strengthen Times Network's digital publishing portfolio and expand its footprint in the technology and gaming sectors.

N. Subramanian, CEO for new media and investments at the Times Group, said Digit fit well with the group's strategy of building digital products for diverse audiences and would bring new audiences to the network, expressing confidence that Digit's legacy and leadership would grow manifold under the Times Group. For Times Network — whose brands include Times Now, ET Now and Mirror Now, and whose digital publishing business claims over 110 million monthly active users — Digit offered an established, trusted technology vertical with deep community roots.

Editorial leadership

Digit's editorial direction has been shaped by long-serving technology journalists. Jayesh Shinde serves as Executive Editor, continuing the magazine's tradition of enthusiast-led, technically literate editing; former editors include Robert Sovereign-Smith, who led the title during significant phases of its growth. The editorial team's composition — writers who are genuine technology practitioners and hobbyists — has been central to the brand's voice: knowledgeable without being condescending, opinionated without being careless.

The continuity of editorial culture through three ownership eras — Jasubhai Digital Media, 9.9 Media and now Times Network — is itself notable. Each transition could have diluted the brand's identity; instead, the testing-led, reader-first ethos survived, suggesting it was embedded in the newsroom's practices rather than dependent on any single proprietor.

Place in Indian technology media

Digit occupies a unique place in Indian media history: it is the rare technology publication that dominated print, survived the digital transition and retained its authority across both. Launched before the Indian technology blogging wave, it outlasted most of the blogs; a contemporary of the early tech portals, it outgrew them in trust. Its journey from a magazine with cover discs to a multilingual digital portal with influencer networks maps the entire arc of Indian technology publishing.

The 2024 acquisition by the country's largest media house positions Digit for its next chapter, with the resources of Times Network behind its community and commerce ambitions. Whether the brand's enthusiast soul thrives within a conglomerate structure is the open question — but its record of surviving ownership changes with identity intact offers grounds for optimism.

Outlook

As of October 2026, Digit continues to publish from Mumbai as the technology media brand of Times Network, serving readers through Digit.in, the monthly magazine and its community platforms in eight languages. With more than two decades of testing-led journalism behind it, a claimed community reach in the hundreds of millions, and the backing of India's largest media group, Digit enters its next era as both a heritage brand and a digital growth asset — the publication that taught India how to buy technology, still teaching.