Magazine on parenting big draw at book fair

In the last week, the stall has seen over a thousand visitors. Some are regular readers, some are curious children who want to engage in the activities and some jsut want to pick up a copy or two of the only Tamil magazine that focuses on parenting. Chellamey, the Tamil magazine from Parentcircle by Sri Harini Media, turned five recently.

Being the only one of it nature, guiding parents through the trials and tribulations, the magazine has been reaching out to the Tamil audience through a broad range of topics—wellness, parenting, learning and lifestyle. The monthly publication has a subscription of close to one lakh readers with a strong digital presence. Talking to DT Next, Rajesh Viswanathan, senior VP, Content Strategy, said that the content has been wading through the importance given to academics by Tamil parents. “In between that, there are a lot of distractions and noise for children. These distractions were absent for yesteryear parents, who would have never thought about mental wellbeing. It was only about physical wellbeing and bright academic performance.” He pointed out that the belief that children will grow by themselves has to change owing to a lot of reasons.

The magazine’s subscription is dominated by young mothers, added Rajesh. He said, “They want to practice on focussed parenting from the beginning. They understand the challenges that are presented in bringing up the child. They want to adopt best practises and connect emotionally strongly with their child from a young age.” Rajesh reckoned that in five years, the biggest success for any magazine, is in receiving positive feedback about how parents implement the magazine’s stories and suggestions.

Parentcircle was founded by Nalina Ramalakshmi who is also the editor-in-chief of the magazine, to do something different for parents in India.