Zigwheels, the Tata Nano amongst Indian Auto Mags

Zigwheels, Adil Jal Darukhanawala, Times Group. Low Cost Automobile Magazine

Zigwheels Auto Magazine

Zigwheels, has done a Tata Nano in the Indian Auto Magazine space with their full fledged magazine priced at shockingly low Rs 10. No, this news isn’t new as Zigwheels launched the ultra cheap magazine in October, 2009. But, I waited a bit to bring you this news as I wasn’t too sure about Zigwheels retaining the ultra low price after the introductory month. Meanwhile, Zigwheels is a Times Group promoted India auto website which till recently used to sell as a free monthly supplement I didn’t take Zigwheels seriously when they launched at the ultra low price point as I thought that this price would merely be a stunt to pull in buyers from other auto mags. But, this is the 3rd month I’ve been reading Zigwheels and till date, I have spent a meager INR30 on all three issues starting from October.

Coming to the quality of articles, it isn’t out of the world or as detailed as say an Overdrive or as classy as Topgear, but at Rs 10 per issue, can you really complain? Print quality too is top notch. Here is how I assume Zigwheels manages the ultra low price point. Each issue of Zigwheels comes out with around 110 huge pages displacing almost double the page size of other auto magazines. Of this, a better part of sixty percent is devoted to automobiles while the remaining 40 percent displays ads. Probably, it is these large, eye catching ads which bring in most of the revenues thus allowing the Times Group to price the magazine so low.

The only minus point is that most bookshops and magazine racks haven’t yet warmed up to Zigwheels, which makes availability a niggling issue. That said,With Adil Jal Darukhanawala, the much respected Ex -bossman of Overdrive at the helm, we can only expect Zigwheels to grow as a magazine, both in quality as well as distribution.

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