Thieme is a 125-year-old company based in Stuttgart, Germany, which set up operations in India in 2008. A super specialty medical publisher and a market leader in publishing books on neurosurgery and plastic surgery, Thieme is a world renowned publisher. Indian Printer & Publisher met Arun Kumar Majji, director, sales and marketing at Thieme for a discussion on the industry and how Thieme positions itself in India.
Thieme has more than 2,000 titles to its credit and the number is steadily growing. Every year, the company brings out around 60-70 new titles a year. It also publishes more than 130 medical and scientific journals both in traditional print and electronic format, a number of which are printed on behalf of professional societies.
Talking about Thieme’s journey in India over the last nine years, Majji shares that the company has been registering double-digit growth in the country, which is believable as the super specialty titles that Thieme publishes aren’t easily available anywhere else. Not surprisingly, the Indian market has great demand for Thieme’s super specialty titles.
Competition in super specialty publications
Thieme doesn’t face much competition in its space as the area it specializes in is quite niche. Also, competition is rare in the super specialty area since the content is bound by IPR.
What Thieme publishes are original pieces of work penned by highly qualified and experienced doctors. There may be other titles covering the same subject but they rarely pitch against the best selling titles produced by Thieme. A publisher not well-known in a particular specialty will find it very difficult to convince a reputed doctor from that niche to write about it.
Focus on UG medical books
In terms of strategy, Thieme is interacting with societies in specialized areas where it is strong, such as the Neurology Society of India (NSI), Neurological Surgeons Society of India, Orthopedic Association of India (OAI), Spines Association of India (SAI), Indian Spastics Society and more. Thieme adopted this strategy with its aim to penetrate the UG medical books publishing segment, which is the biggest medical books publishing segment in India. Until recently, UG medical students were turning to international publications to buy books but now the name of the game is changing with many global book publishers are setting shop in India and offering titles at attractive prices.
Medical education is growing in India as the government is focused on building and expanding infrastructure for medical education in the country.
