ManagementNext
ManagementNext is an English-language magazine on management, leadership, talent and business education published from Bengaluru, Karnataka, by ManagementNext Media. Launched in August 2004, it set out to offer busy executives and entrepreneurs fresh insights, perspectives and tools in a crisp format, with the aim of encouraging holistic thinking and responsible leadership. The magazine began as a print-focused publication, moved to digital publishing in 2012 after the effects of the global recession of 2008, and subsequently developed into a wider set of activities whose flagship brand remains ManagementNext itself. Those activities came to include SustainabilityNext, a monthly web magazine on sustainability published since March 2013, and the Bangalore Business Literature Festival, started in 2015. Although the original subscription magazine model changed substantially, ManagementNext has continued intermittently to publish book reviews, thought-leader articles and interviews, and its editor and publisher, Benedict Paramanand, remains the public figure most closely associated with the title.
Launch in 2004 and Editorial Aim
ManagementNext Media dates its work in the management, leadership, talent and business education space to August 2004. The magazine's own About page describes it as a pioneer in that space and sets out its aspiration plainly: to create holistic thinking as well as responsible executives and entrepreneurs through fresh insights, perspectives and tools presented in a crisp format. For busy executives, the page suggests, the magazine was intended to be useful and quick to absorb rather than dense or purely academic. That positioning placed ManagementNext between several kinds of business publishing available in India in the 2000s. It was not a daily business newspaper reporting markets and companies, nor a peer-reviewed management journal. It was a magazine for practising managers, executives and entrepreneurs, concerned with how people lead organisations, develop talent, learn from business books and experience, and respond to change. Its Bengaluru base placed it in a city strongly associated with information technology, start-ups and globally connected companies, a setting consistent with its intended readership.
Editor and Publisher: Benedict Paramanand
The editor, publisher and best-known figure behind ManagementNext is Benedict Paramanand, based in Bengaluru. The magazine's contact pages list him as Editor, Publisher and Author, with ManagementNext Media & Publications LLP as the publishing entity and an address at 22, 1st A Main, G M Palya, Bangalore – 560 075. Paramanand is also editor of SustainabilityNext and a founder and curator of the Bangalore Business Literature Festival, roles that grew directly out of the magazine. He is the author of a book on the management thinker C. K. Prahalad, described in festival coverage as CK Prahalad – Mind of the Futurist and as CK Prahalad – The Mind of the Futurist. His public commentary in festival and magazine contexts has focused on the value of business books, biographies and storytelling as sources of learning for entrepreneurs and executives, and on the need to give business writing a more prominent place in India's literary culture. That personal continuity — the same editor-publisher leading the magazine, its sustainability successor and its festival — is a defining feature of ManagementNext's history.
Content: Insights, Interviews and Book Reviews
The content of ManagementNext has centred on management and leadership ideas presented for practitioners. Its site carries interviews with authors and thought leaders, articles by and about executives, and book reviews and author conversations. Examples visible in its archive include conversations about wise leadership and the limits of smartness alone, about transpersonal leadership, talent development and assessment, about behaviour as a leadership concern, and about succeeding in India as a test of a firm's ability to succeed in emerging markets. One interview discusses an author's experience of building organisations over twenty-five years and of developing leaders and talent in Indian companies and multinational companies. Another explores the gap between personal values and organisational values, emotional intelligence, empathy as observable behaviour, and the importance of meaning and purpose at work. These examples illustrate the magazine's characteristic territory: leadership behaviour, values, talent, organisational culture and the practical lessons of business books, discussed in interview and article form rather than as company news or market reporting.
Print Origins and the Move to Digital in 2012
ManagementNext began as a print-focused magazine. Surviving print issues from its early years, including issues from 2003–2004 held in its online archive, show a conventional magazine format with contributions from business school and institute faculty, consultants and business leaders, and with subscription and advertising information directing readers to its website. Following the global recession in 2008, the magazine's own history records, ManagementNext moved from being a print-focused magazine to digital publishing in 2012. That transition reflected wider pressures on niche print magazines in India and elsewhere: advertising and subscription economics became harder after the recession, while digital distribution offered a lower-cost way to reach executives who were increasingly reading online. The magazine's subscription page continued to offer an e-magazine that could be read online via desktop and laptop computers and internet-ready mobile phones, with one-, two- and three-year subscription rates listed, gift subscriptions, and intranet versions for executives and managers in companies and for business school students.
From ManagementNext to SustainabilityNext
The most important change in the magazine's history came after the digital move. Its About page records that, since the subscriber-based digital magazine model had not proved sustainable, the magazine morphed into SustainabilityNext, a web magazine, and launched an annual business literature festival. SustainabilityNext has been published as a monthly web magazine since March 2013 with grant funding, according to the same account, at sustainabilitynext.in. The shift was more than a change of title. It represented a narrowing and refocusing of editorial purpose from general management and leadership towards sustainability, a subject that had been present in ManagementNext's concern with responsible executives and entrepreneurs. SustainabilityNext carried the earlier magazine's interest in responsible business into coverage of sustainability practice, renewable energy, green business and related books and ideas. Paramanand is listed as its editor and publisher as well, and its issues were distributed by email and on the web to readers interested in sustainability in business and public life.
Bangalore Business Literature Festival
In 2015 ManagementNext's publisher started the Bangalore Business Literature Festival, described on the magazine's About page as running on a fee-cum-sponsor-driven model and as having emerged as India's premier business literature festival. The first festival was held as a one-day event on 26 September at the Century Club in Bengaluru, chaired by V. Raghunathan, with Benedict Paramanand as its chief executive. Contemporary reporting described it as possibly India's first business literature festival and noted Paramanand's argument that, although literature festivals included some business speakers, business storytelling did not have pride of place in them. Participants in the early festival included business leaders, authors and entrepreneurs from technology, industry, food, services and the arts, with panel discussions and workshops on topics including book publishing and business book and article writing, and a workshop by screenwriter Anjum Rajabali. By its third edition in 2017 the festival's theme was biographies and business history, reflecting Paramanand's view that biographies and autobiographies are a leading source of insight for entrepreneurs and executives.
The Festival in Later Editions
The festival became the most visible public activity associated with the ManagementNext brand. Its About page records that in its first four editions more than fifty authors and two thousand business leaders, executives and authors participated. Later coverage confirms that pattern. The 2019 edition, previewed as the festival's fifth year of activity, was described as having hosted more than fifty authors over previous editions, with a line-up including Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy and other authors and founders. Coverage of a later edition described thirty-four speakers in thirteen sessions spread across three evenings, with sessions on science, management and start-ups, and discussion of Indian business writing and prolific business authors. The festival continued into the 2020s, with a 2025 listing showing sessions on India's commercial history, the economy, Bengaluru itself, founder stories and personal branding for start-ups, with Paramanand as festival curator and co-founder. The festival thus extended the magazine's original work — bringing business books and ideas to executives — into a live, conversational format.
Readership and Intended Audience
ManagementNext was aimed at busy executives, managers, entrepreneurs and, through its intranet subscription offer, business school students. Its editorial promise of fresh insights in a crisp format was addressed to readers with limited time who wanted ideas they could use: perspectives on leadership, tools for managing people and talent, and lessons from books and experienced leaders. The later activities retained that audience while changing the channel. SustainabilityNext addressed readers concerned with sustainability in business, while the Bangalore Business Literature Festival brought authors together directly with business leaders, executives and entrepreneurs. In each form, the underlying assumption was the same as in the original magazine: that practitioners learn not only from formal training but from stories, biographies, interviews and reflective writing about experience, and that a publication or festival that curates such material well performs a useful service for India's business community, particularly in Bengaluru.
Bengaluru Base and Contact Identity
The magazine's identity is firmly Bengaluru-based. Its publishing address in G M Palya, Bengaluru, its telephone contacts, its festival held at the Century Club in Cubbon Park, and its later association with other Bengaluru literary activities all place it in the city's business and cultural life. Bengaluru's position as a centre for technology companies, start-ups, multinational operations and business education provided both subject matter and readership. Festival coverage repeatedly connects the event with the city's start-up character and with grassroots entrepreneurship and start-up ecosystems as themes. That local base did not limit the magazine's subject matter, which ranged across Indian and global management thought, but it gave ManagementNext a recognisable home distinct from business magazines published from Mumbai or Delhi, India's more traditional centres for financial and business publishing.
Continuing Status of the Brand
ManagementNext remains, in its publisher's words, the flagship brand, even though its form has changed repeatedly since 2004. It moved from print focus to digital in 2012, found the subscription digital model unsustainable, morphed into the grant-funded monthly web magazine SustainabilityNext in March 2013, and added the Bangalore Business Literature Festival from 2015. It continues, its About page states, to intermittently publish book reviews, thought-leader articles and interviews. Its archive of interviews and articles remains available on its website, and its editor-publisher continues to be publicly active through the festival and through a later green literature festival. For a directory of Indian magazines, ManagementNext is therefore best understood not simply as a defunct print title or as a conventional monthly, but as a Bengaluru management magazine founded in 2004 whose publishing model evolved into digital, sustainability-focused and festival formats while retaining its original concern with leadership, talent, business books and responsible entrepreneurship.
