Safari a popular magazine without Ads

It may sound strange, but its true. Safari a monthly from Ahmedabad has circulation of 71,000 plus, but it does not carry any advertisement. This is not that the publication in existence for three decades does not get advertisement. It gets lots of offers. Its founder editor Nagendra Vijay says that the publication, a monthly magazine , can easily mobilise advertisements of millions of rupees every year!

He says that it does not carry advertisements as a policy. We want to give knowledge to people in its purest form without any hindrance of any kind of filters or deflectors. The publication caters to the basic hunger for knowledge and we want to remain committed to our loyalty to our readers for reliable and authentic information in easy language to understand and interesting style of presentation.

Safari is in Gujarati. Its 200th issue hit stands this month. Though Safari is in English also. But it is just three years old. In the words of Nagendra Vijay, English Safari is still struggling to come to critical thresh hold of economics of a successful publishing venture. In the 35 issues , it has gained circulation of 16,000 plus. What has brought the success to Gujarati Safari has two major facts. Open playing field in Gujarat and the brand Nagendra Vijay in Gujarat. He is known for his writings in Gujarati newspapers like his father Vijaygupta Maruya.

But the project would not have succeeded without his distinct reader friendly approach in the selection of the content and style of presentation. Articles in Safari are written in a style that is lucid and presents even the most complex ideas in easily digestible language of simple words and short sentences. And when one knows that Nagendra Vijay is a commerce graduate, his grip over science and technology reflects his true passion for search for knowledge.

English Safari is an independent entity. It is not a translation of Gujarati version . Even articles of Gujarati Safari are re written if they are to be used in English Safari. Nagendra Vijay has been able to maintain his indelible impression on each issue of Safari whether English or Gujarati one. It has helped him create what a marketing guru would call "brand Loyalty". Each and every article has Nagendra Vijay touch. Now his son Harshal has joined the one man team of Nagendra Vijay.

The matching wavelength of father and son duo is providing reader pulling synergy to the content of the each issue of Safari.

Nagendra Vijay says that for people what appears in Safari is final word on that subject at that time. We want to keep this faith of our readers in our publication intact. And for that we work even overtime without any material gain. Making money from Safari was never thought of, he says. He contributed his time to get information and to process it. This saved money on creating human infrastructure and thus reduced cost of publication.

Earlier, I used to write for others and get money. But, now even that has been stopped because I get enough for my basic needs from Safari and other publications, mainly books, he points out. I want to keep Safari a kind of encyclopedia and so I would never go for any kind of advertisements. No doubt three decades of existence of Safari has seen three phases of suspension of publication because of financial constraints. But now Safari Gujarati has crossed the threshhold limit and it can now take other payloads like Safari English and Safari in Hindi and Marathi.

Safari has its own website also. That is also quite popular. In this ever changing world , one of the secrets of the success of Safari is changing themes of content and styles of presentation.