Floriculture Today: India's Flower Industry Magazine from Media Today, New Delhi
Floriculture Today is a monthly business-to-business magazine for India's floriculture industry, published by Media Today Private Limited in New Delhi since 1996. Described by the International Association of Horticultural Producers (AIPH) as India's premier B2B magazine for the sector, and by its own group as the only magazine on floriculture in India, it connects growers, nurserymen, florists, landscapers, greenhouse and irrigation technology suppliers and horticultural professionals. For three decades it has chronicled the transformation of Indian floriculture from a largely household and traditional activity into a commercial industry of cut flowers, pot plants, nursery production, landscaping and exports.
The magazine does not stand alone. It is the publishing core of the Media Today Group's floriculture business, which also organises the International Flora Expo, first held in Bengaluru in 1997, along with the Horti Expo and the Landscape and Gardening Expo. Magazine and exhibitions reinforce each other: the expo gathers the industry in person, and Floriculture Today reports, previews and follows up that gathering in print and online through the year.
Founded in 1996 by Media Today
Media Today Private Limited was established in 1995 in New Delhi, and Floriculture Today followed in 1996. The group's wider list includes Agri Business and Food Industry magazine and the flagship Agriculture Today, and its trade listings describe a publishing house producing glossy, saddle-stitched trade magazines in standard 8.5 by 11 inch format for agribusiness and food industry professionals, with niche targeting, professional layout and industry insight as its selling points. Floriculture Today was the group's specialist bet on a sector that, in the mid-1990s, barely had a trade press of its own.
The timing was apt. India's floriculture was shifting as urbanisation and rising disposable incomes increased demand for cut flowers such as rose, gladiolus, carnation, orchid, gerbera and lilium, alongside continuing demand for traditional flowers including jasmine, marigold, chrysanthemum and tuberose. A monthly magazine could serve the new commercial growers, the Dutch and Israeli technology companies entering India, the exporters and the event organisers simultaneously, and Floriculture Today was built to do exactly that.
Leadership: M. B. Naqvi and the Media Today Group
The magazine's public face is M. B. Naqvi, its Chief Editorial Coordinator and the Chief Executive Officer of the Media Today Group, who has led Floriculture Today since 1996. AIPH, in profiling the International Flora Expo, identifies Naqvi as an influential figure in India's floriculture industry and quotes his statement of mission: through Floriculture Today and the Expo, to drive innovation, collaboration and sustainability in the floriculture industry. His brothers, S. Jafar Naqvi and Mohd. Kausar Naqvi, have been instrumental in supporting the venture and shaping the Expo into a platform bridging international markets and local growers.
Naqvi's role extends beyond editing. He appears at industry meetings, including sessions of the Indian Greenhouse Manufacturers' Association held alongside the Flora Expo, where Media Today has offered the association support in its activities, and he campaigns publicly on industry questions, notably for restrictions on artificial and plastic flowers to protect natural flower growers. The magazine's editorial voice and the group's convening power are, in this case, the same voice.
What the Magazine Covers
Floriculture Today's stated readership spans flower farmers, florists, nurserymen, landscapers and allied industry stakeholders, and its content follows their working concerns: production technology for cut flowers and pot plants, greenhouse and protected cultivation, seeds, bulbs and planting material, irrigation, nursery business, landscaping design and practice, market trends, policy developments and trade opportunities. A recent March issue, for example, led on the Government of Maharashtra's move to ban artificial flowers, presented as a step toward sustainability and support for natural floriculture, and carried a cover story on integrative approaches in modern garden landscaping, with features on business partnerships in the flower trade and on tulip landscapes as global inspiration.
Policy coverage is a recurring strength, because Indian floriculture depends heavily on government decisions: subsidies for greenhouses, goods and services tax treatment, export promotion through the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), and state-level rules affecting flower markets. By reporting such developments alongside market and technology news, the magazine functions as the sector's monthly briefing paper.
The International Flora Expo Connection
The first Flora Expo was held at Kanteerava Stadium in Bengaluru in 1997, a year after the magazine's launch, and editions have since been staged in Bengaluru, Pune, New Delhi and Hyderabad, among other cities. The 13th International FloraExpo in 2018 drew more than 20,000 visitors, with exhibitors from the United States, Holland, Israel, Nepal, Korea, Portugal, China and other countries displaying flowers, pot plants, nursery plants, plant technology, biotechnology and greenhouse technology, and a thrust on green living concepts such as vertical gardening and floral arrangement. The 14th edition, held with the 11th Horti Expo in Pune in February 2019, was described as India's largest event on floriculture, nursery and greenhouse technology.
The series continued with the 2020 edition in Hyderabad, a pause during the pandemic years, the 16th International Flora Expo in January 2023 at the NSIC Exhibition Complex in Okhla, New Delhi, held alongside the Landscape and Gardening Expo and Horti Expo, with an APEDA theme pavilion and a flower-decorated bicycle ride through central Delhi campaigning against artificial flowers, and the 17th edition in October 2024 at the Nesco Exhibition Centre in Mumbai, an AIPH-approved exhibition covering floral artistry, pot plant production, greenhouse technologies and urban farming innovations. Floriculture Today previews, partners and reports across this entire cycle.
Readership and Commercial Role
As a B2B title, Floriculture Today is read as a buying tool. Its advertisers are greenhouse builders, seed and bulb companies, irrigation and fertigation suppliers, substrate and plant-protection firms, exporters and event organisers, and advertising guides for the Indian magazine market single it out as a cost-effective awareness channel for a company introducing a new greenhouse technology or planting-material variety to India, particularly through advertorial formats read by an audience already in a content-consuming, trade mindset. Bookings are handled directly through Media Today or authorised media-buying agencies, with material deadlines typically ten to fifteen days before publication and standard trade specifications for artwork.
The magazine is frequently cited beyond its own pages. Academic and industry writing on Indian floriculture cites Floriculture Today as a source for market scale and growth, including estimates of a world floriculture market growing at 10 to 15 percent a year, an indication that the magazine became a reference point for the sector's basic facts as well as its news.
Advocacy: Natural Flowers and Sustainability
Floriculture Today and its leadership have taken identifiable editorial positions, most prominently against artificial and plastic flowers. The Growers Flower Council of India and allied bodies, working with Media Today, have used the Flora Expo platform to ask the Indian government to ban artificial and plastic flowers, arguing the case on both grower-livelihood and environmental grounds, and the magazine has highlighted state action such as Maharashtra's ban as a progressive initiative. Sustainability is the second advocacy thread, visible in the Expo's emphasis on sustainable horticultural practices, well-being and environmental stewardship, and in the magazine's coverage of landscaping as bio-aesthetic, resource-conscious design.
This campaigning role distinguishes the magazine from a neutral trade sheet. Because the same group publishes the magazine, runs the expos and works with grower councils and APEDA, Floriculture Today often reads as the printed voice of an industry coalition, reporting policy wins it helped to pursue.
Place in Media Today's Publishing Group
Within the Media Today Group, Floriculture Today sits alongside Agriculture Today, which the group presents as India's preeminent agriculture periodical, and Agri Business and Food Industry, covering food processing, packaging and the supply chain, together with oils and fats and other agri titles listed in trade directories. The group, headquartered in New Delhi with a workforce in the dozens to low hundreds across its operations, also organises awards, yearbooks and news services in agriculture. Floriculture Today is the horticulture specialist in that stable, and the Flora Expo series is its live-events counterpart, in the same way that the group's agriculture titles are paired with agri events.
For advertisers and exhibitors, that structure offers a single counterparty for print, digital and exhibition exposure to India's flower and horticulture trade, which is a large part of how a niche monthly has sustained itself for thirty years.
Digital Presence and Recent Issues
The magazine maintains an active digital edition and social presence, with monthly issues promoted online as they appear, including cover stories and highlights shared through professional networks by its leadership. Its website, floriculturetoday.in, is the title's home, and its issues are positioned for the same trade audience in digital form. The continuity of monthly publication into 2026, with dated monthly editions announced in the same format as in previous years, confirms the title's active status three decades after launch.
Digital distribution also carries the magazine's Indian coverage to the international flower trade, whose journals report on the Flora Expo and quote its organisers, extending Floriculture Today's role as India's interlocutor with the Dutch, Kenyan and other flower industries that exhibit, speak and advertise in its ecosystem.
Floriculture Today at Thirty Years
Few Indian trade magazines survive thirty years in a single sector, and Floriculture Today's longevity rests on a simple alignment: it was founded, in 1996, just as commercial floriculture became a real industry in India, and it grew with that industry through the expo launched a year later. Under M. B. Naqvi and the Media Today Group in New Delhi, it remains the sector's monthly record of technology, markets, policy and people, and the print partner of the country's principal flower exhibitions. For growers, suppliers and researchers entering Indian floriculture, it is still the first trade title they are likely to be handed.
