Mudra Concrea, Samyak Chakrabarty addresses the crowd at WAN INFRA

Mudra Concrea is a pioneer in the field of generating grass root level youth insights, India's first Youth Marketing and Communications agency. Samyak Chakrabarty, Chief Youth Marketer Mudra Concrea was one of the speakers at the first ever WAN INFRA Young Readers Summit held on 28th March'11.Mudra Concrea works on the fundamental philosophy that in order to communicate with the Youth of today one has to engage and partner with them in a meaningful dialogue. The address by Samyak Chakrabarty, Chief Youth Marketer Mudra Concrea aimed at enabling newspapers to begin a meaning full dialogue with their younger audiences in both an urban and a rural context.

In a recent survey conducted by the National Book Trust in India, out of the total youth (13- 35 years of age) in India which number 459 million two thirds are literate. This is a statistic which cannot be ignored by any member of the ranks of the fourth estate in India. The implications of this statement are not limited to the India. The World association of Newspapers and News publications (WAN INFRA) recognized the importance of bringing Young readers into its fold. India with one of the world's youngest populations was an ideal location for the first ever WAN INFRA Young Leaders Summit. This was a landmark event to reclaim the share of mind that Newspapers once enjoyed with their younger audiences.

"With an increasing number of youth who want to actively participate in national affairs and also have strong opinions about the same 'there is a scope for newspapers to become their mouthpiece, therefore for newspapers to engage youth-content will be the way forward." Samyak Chakrabarty, Chief Youth Marketer Mudra Concrea.

The address by Mudra Concrea began with examining the landscape of the Indian Youth and focusing on what trends are shaping their behavior. In an attempt to better engage with this core youth audience newspapers need to fully appreciate the distinction between the Urban and Rural Youth in India. The second part of the address covered an engagement strategy for the Urban Youth .The prime focus of this strategy was to build talk value for the medium amongst this segment which has a plethora of mediums vying for their attention. The engagement strategy for the rural section focused more on providing this segment with an outlet for their ambitions. The Youth of Rural India have ambitions to match their urban counterparts; the engagement strategy for them revolved around giving them a forum to realize these ambitions.

This conference had a multi disciplinary participation to enable the Newspaper fraternity to adopt practices from various other fields in an attempt to chart a roadmap for their future engagement strategies. The speakers for this prestigious event included Angela Ravazzolo( Education Editor,Zero Hora, Brazil) , Alok Sanwal (Project Head & Editor, i next), Anshul Chaturvedi (Editor - City Supplements, The Times of India) , Dipanjan Dutta( Corporate Manager - The Telegraph in Schools, ABP Pvt Ltd) , Dr. Aralynn McManne(Executive Director, WAN-IFRA Young Readership Development) , Dr. Gerard van der Weijden (WAN-IFRA Associate Consultant) and Santhosh George Jacob (Senior Online Content Co-ordinator, Manorama Online) .