ITNext

ITNext is an enterprise IT news brand from 9.9 Media aimed at next-generation CIOs — the senior IT managers one step below the chief information officer's chair. Covering IT strategy, management practices, career development and technology leadership, the platform comprises a monthly magazine, a website and events designed to empower the community of senior IT managers with the information they need to ascend to the CIO role.

Launch and founding concept

ITNext was launched by 9.9 Mediaworx — the media group founded and led by Pramath Raj Sinha — as a magazine for India's next generation of CIOs, meaning the country's senior IT managers. Like the company's other print offerings, it followed a controlled-circulation model, distributed to a qualified audience of IT professionals rather than sold on newsstands. The inaugural issue ran to 68 pages with an initial print run of 10,000 copies and a cover price of ₹150, carrying an advertising ratio of around 30 per cent.

The cover story of the first issue — a seven-step guide to becoming a CIO — set the template: practical, career-oriented content for ambitious technology managers. Announcing the launch, Sinha said the magazine aimed to provide senior IT managers with information on technology strategies, best practices and innovations for improving enterprise IT infrastructure, and to empower them on management practices, career development and technology issues.

Pre-launch research: the 100-manager survey

Before launching, 9.9 Mediaworx conducted a survey of 100 IT managers across India to identify their information needs. The findings, as described by Sinha, showed that while IT managers who aspired to become CIOs were well informed about the latest technology, they were not up to date on management strategies. ITNext was therefore designed to fill that gap — covering the people, processes and technologies that help senior IT professionals succeed in their careers.

This research-led launch reflected 9.9 Media's broader method: building tightly targeted communities around professional roles and serving each with a dedicated media brand. The group described itself as one of India's most diversified media companies, integrating print, online, research and event platforms to serve highly targeted communities including owners and CEOs of high-growth enterprises, CIOs, CTOs, CSOs, CFOs, IT professionals, personal-technology enthusiasts, senior government officials and higher-education leaders.

Editorial scope: strategy meets career

ITNext covers two intertwined subjects: technology and the management of technology careers. On the technology side, it reports IT strategy, infrastructure, emerging technologies and management practices. On the career side, it covers personal development, business skills, education, training, workforce trends and even the health of IT managers. Regular columns in the magazine included The Big Q, Tech Talk, Insight and How-To for IT problems, alongside personal-development columns such as "The 15-Minute Manager", dealing with IT strategy and management, business skills and workforce trends.

The media directory Muck Rack, which lists IT Next as a verified online/digital outlet in the trade/B2B category, describes it as India's only platform for senior IT managers, aiming to provide the next generation of CIOs with information on technology strategies, best practices and innovations for improving enterprise IT infrastructure.

The NEXT100 Future CIO Awards

ITNext's signature community programme is NEXT100 — described as the only programme in India recognising the country's next generation of CIOs. The NEXT100 Future CIO Awards honour senior IT managers judged to be the future technology leaders of Indian enterprises, with winners drawn from companies across industries: past announcements have named IT leaders from organisations including Welspun India and Vodafone India Services among the awardees.

A special issue of the magazine — for example, the January 2018 edition, Volume 08, Issue 09, edited by Vikas Gupta — was devoted to "The Winner Voice", a collection of perspectives on technology from NEXT100 awardees across the years 2010 to 2017. The programme gave the brand a powerful community asset: a growing alumni network of rising technology executives whose careers the magazine could follow and whose insights it could publish.

Voices of the future CIOs

The NEXT100 platform doubles as an editorial resource, with awardees contributing perspectives on the evolving CIO role. In ITNext interviews, future CIOs have described the transformation of the CIO's job from a support function to a complex, agile core business function — multi-dimensional, working closely with business functions at all levels, and increasingly securing a place in the boardroom. Contributors have pointed to data management, business acumen and digital strategy execution as the defining responsibilities of the modern CIO.

On technology trends, the magazine's contributors have tracked the rise of cognitive technologies, artificial intelligence and machine learning, ambient computing and augmented reality, 5G, cloud and software-defined infrastructure, stackable technologies for digitisation, quantum computing and integrated automation — a forward-looking agenda suited to readers planning multi-year technology roadmaps.

The 9.9 Media portfolio

ITNext sits within a portfolio of specialist 9.9 Media brands that, at various times, included CIO&Leader (aimed at sitting CIOs), Digit (personal technology), CFO India, EDU, igovernment.in, digit.in and Inc. India. The logic of the portfolio was segmentation: CIO&Leader served the current generation of CIOs while ITNext cultivated the next one — a pipeline strategy that turned readers into a community and the community into an audience for events and awards.

The magazine's print imprint identifies it as a 9.9 Media publication, with the publisher's office at 121, Patparganj, Mayur Vihar, Phase-I, Near Mandir Masjid, Delhi-110091, India, and printing at Tara Art Printers Pvt. Ltd. in Sector 5, NOIDA, Uttar Pradesh. Its social presence includes facebook.com/itnext9.9 and the handle @itnext_ on Twitter, with a LinkedIn presence under the IT Next name.

Controlled circulation and the B2B model

The controlled-circulation model was central to ITNext's business. Rather than chasing mass readership, the magazine was distributed free or at nominal cost to a verified list of senior IT managers — exactly the audience technology vendors want to reach. Advertisers in enterprise infrastructure, software and services could thus buy access to a concentrated pool of future budget-holders. The inaugural issue's 30 per cent ad ratio suggested the model found early commercial traction.

This approach — community media as a lead-generation and brand-building channel for B2B marketers — was characteristic of Indian trade publishing in the 2010s, and ITNext executed it with unusual focus on a single career cohort.

Editorial legacy and the 9.9 Media method

ITNext exemplifies the 9.9 Media method of community publishing: identify a sharply defined professional cohort, research its unmet information needs, and serve it across print, digital and events until the cohort itself becomes the brand's community. The pre-launch survey of 100 IT managers, the career-ladder cover stories, the NEXT100 awards and the alumni-voice special issues all follow the same logic — the reader's professional journey is the editorial spine. Few Indian B2B publications have pursued a single career cohort with such consistency, and ITNext's multi-year run of NEXT100 editions shows how a narrowly defined audience can sustain a durable media franchise.

Digital presence

ITNext's website, itnext.in, extends the brand online with news, commentary and the magazine's digital editions — past issues, such as the January 2018 NEXT100 special, were published as PDFs on the site. The platform's three components — monthly magazine, website and online/offline events — were designed to reinforce one another: the magazine built authority, the website delivered frequency, and the NEXT100 awards and events built the community.

As an enterprise IT news brand from 9.9 Media aimed at next-generation CIOs, ITNext represents a distinctive experiment in Indian B2B media: a publication whose reader is defined not by industry or function alone, but by ambition — the senior IT manager working toward the CIO's office.