Digital

Solutions in
INDIA
SPECIAL REPORT 2019

A restless publishing industry with evolving content demands is

pushing India’s digital solutions players to be nimble and innovative
 art & design
editorial
translations

accessibility
management

Editorial and production

production services
for every stage of
C

the content lifecycle digital

M
print
Y

CM

MY

CY

MY

Publish Smarter with Cenveo

Discover intelligent automation and
accelerated workflows with Smart Suite 2.0,
an integrated, cloud-based production engine
built on AI and NLP

Contact us to schedule a demo

US | UK | India | info.psg@cenveo.com | cenveopublisherservices.com | @CenveoPublisher
 Keeping Them on Their Toes,
Guaranteed
Vendors in India are busy tweaking their
playbook to fulfill demands from an evolving
publishing industry
By Teri Tan
R
estless is the world of publishing. Between
Europe’s Plan S and the Cengage/McGraw-Hill
merger, the repercussions are plenty, and the
reverberations widespread, affecting not just pub-
lishers but also authors, researchers, students, and
digital solutions vendors. There is much cause for
a considerable pause.
Plan S, which calls for open access to almost all of the scien-
tific information across Europe, is upending the subscription
business model as we know it. If Plan S gets adopted in other
regions while more major institutions scrap their journal sub-
scriptions, how would these publishers maintain their bottom
line and continue to make new research information available
while investing in technology solutions and new products?
Speculations swirled around viable alternative business models,
specifically with regard to who gets charged or paid for what.
The S in the plan now seems to stand as much for sustainable as
it does for science, speed, solution, and shock.
For India-based digital solutions vendors, their workflows
have been generating, tagging, and delivering OA articles or
journals for some time already. The question now is about fur-
ther lowering the production costs and processing time of these
OA articles and journals in order to make the whole Plan S
proposition viable for the publishers. (Read the online article
“Navigating the Open Access Path.”)
As for mergers such as the recent Cengage/McGraw-Hill deal,
these are veritable nightmares for most vendors. The overlapping
publishing operations and product lines of these two big com-
panies eventually will translate into vendor and project consoli-
dations, which lead to a shrinking client base. Simultaneously,
the time taken to straighten out the newly merged company will
also mean less focus (and investment) on developing new pro-
grams or products that will go to these vendors.
In the meantime, augmenting and elevating human perfor-
mance with algorithm-driven decision-making to speed up
production processes continues to gather momentum. With
cognitive technologies—in other words, the combination of
artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language pro-
cover illustration © monsitj / istock.c0m
cessing (NLP), and expert
systems—repetitive and
rote tasks in the editorial
processes, for instance,
can be automated with
minimal manual intervention. It makes sense given the shorter
project-turnaround time, demands for more efficiency, and
faster time to market. Bots, chatbots, and robots—they are all
here to stay. (Check out the online article “Full Speed Ahead
with AI and NLP.”)
But with all the tech gadgetry and solutions comes a world
full of distractions and ever-shorter attention spans. So while
digitized, chunked, and enriched content is well and good, if it
is not noticed, or purchased and consumed, it all comes to
naught. There lies the issue of discoverability, and with it mon-
etization. Tagging the appropriate metadata, personalizing the
content, and anticipating consumer engagement are some ways
to go about it. Deploying AI and chatbots to uncover new
insights from patterns, trends, and overlooked data is another.
(See “Enriching Content for Discoverability,” p. 21.)
For digital solutions vendors, there are ample opportunities
for growth and innovation in the restless and chaotic pub-
lishing world. Fishing in troubled waters, however, is not for
the fainthearted. But then again, this is the same group of ven-
dors who managed to convince publishers to enter the world of
XML, HTML, and ePub (albeit reluctantly), then got them to
venture further afield into the realm of augmented reality, vir-
tual reality, and mixed reality, and have now fully engaged them
in the wonders of AI and NLP. Tenacity, let’s remember, is a
major part of these vendors’ modus operandi.
And despite the constant state of flux and frenzy, the pub-
lishing world is slowly and surely forging and defining its digital
path. For most, it is about combining print with digital to
hybridize new products. For a select few, it is increasingly about
being digital-only. Whichever path is chosen, digital solutions
vendors in India are ready to offer their collaboration and appro-
priate workflows, platforms, and solutions to transform sketchy
ideas into solid products. So what are you waiting for? ■
W W W . P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY. C O M 3
 No One-Size-Fits-All Here
Vendors in India are customizing and retooling their solutions
to cater to different publishing segments and content needs
By Teri Tan
D
echunk, dice, splice, and repackage—what works
for publishing content now applies to vendors’
own solutions. After all, one publisher’s size,
genre, operational needs, and service require-
ments differ from the next, and savvy vendors
know that customization and personalization is
the only way to go. As a result, workflow and content solutions
in the form of modules, platforms, apps, and subscription
models—mostly cloud-based, seamless, device-agnostic, and
intuitive—are now de rigueur.
But with technology coming fast and furious (and often not
cheap), implementing new, unique, and robust workflows and
solutions often looks better on paper than in reality. There are
many obstacles, big and small, lying in wait. Ironically, at the
crux of it, technology poses one major stumbling block.
The Technology Conundrum
The variety of digital platforms in the marketplace means that
publishers are often trying to figure out which one will work
not only in terms of generating revenues for them, but also in
doing so cost effectively, says Indira Rajan, CEO of Lapiz
Digital. “Potential technology disruptions require us, as the
digital solutions vendor, to ensure that any digital content pro-
duced is as technology- and future-proof as possible.”
The shelf-life relevance of the software solutions needs to be
carefully estimated as part of the investment process, says Vinay
Kumar Singh, executive director and CEO of Thomson Digital.
“The capabilities of a technology in resolving publishing issues
have to be evaluated as well. For example, there is still a debate
about the pros and cons of blockchain in the publishing world,
even though the technology has been relevant and yielding
positive results in other sectors such as consultancy, finance,
retail, and other transactional areas.”
Skepticism in embracing a new technology is normal, says
Uday Majithia, assistant v-p of technology, services, and presales
at Impelsys. “It takes some effort and discussions on our part to
show the value of technology. But it is undeniable that digital
technologies bring along operational efficiencies through auto-
mation while enabling experimentation of new business models.”
Consumers are digital-savvy and want content access on the fly,
in smaller bytes, and all interlinked, while content creators are
playing catch up. “This is partly because consumers have constantly
evolving usage patterns that require platforms that can easily
evolve,” Majithia adds. “And in the absence of such platforms, pub-
lishers may not see the desired ROI and are therefore skeptical.”
4 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY ■ A U G U S T 5 , 2 0 1 9
Additionally, publishers have also been experimenting with
various tools, but not all have been able to provide value. “The
problems may lie in incorrect identification of company goals
or choice of the right technology, or issues related to the orga-
nization’s current technology stack and implementation of the
new tools,” Majithia explains, adding that “the lack of unifor-
mity, cross-functionality, and awareness has created distrust
about the value of these technologies.”
Convincing potential publishing clients to adopt newer and
better technology is always tough. “Some publishers are still
stuck with the traditional way of working, while some others,
over a period of time, have developed isolated tools or proprie-
tary in-house workflows,” says Nizam Ahmed, founder and
CEO of DiTech Process Solutions (as well as 3ClicksMaster).
“There is also the perception that certain software will only work
for one publishing segment. For instance, humanities and social
sciences publishers often think that platforms adopted by STM
publishers will not work for them.”
The fear of change is holding back the publishing industry, says
Yakov Chandy, managing director at TNQ Technologies. “Our
push to move to HTML-only articles through HTML typesetting,
for instance, is held back by the need to keep producing PDFs,
which is perceived as the format authors and readers love and will
not do without. So, change that is sure to come via completely
connected and interlinked articles or books has yet to happen.”
Chandy also finds that technology products are still hard to
sell. “Most publishers believe that the services they pay for
should include the technology products that vendors have cre-
ated. This is an issue as good technology products need to be
constantly developed and paid for.”
Then there is the customer’s expectations of technology versus
what vendors such as TNQ Technologies can do for them. “With
the use of AI and ML [machine-learning] technologies in our
workflow, we have solid offerings that are useful and attractive
to new clients. But increasingly, publishers now need full-ser-
vice outsourcing, a transition that has become a challenging
activity for the sales process,” Chandy says.
Defining the Digital Path
Since finding the perfect digital roadmap is not a simple task,
adds Singh, of Thomson Digital, “publishers need consultancy,
support, and partnership to work on realizing the digital results.
This supplement is published with the support of
the vendors covered in these articles.
 Unified editorial &
production system on SaaS

AUTHORING

COLLABORATIVE
EDITING

AUTOMATED
LAYOUT

MATH AUTHORING
AND EDITING

MULTILINGUAL
ENABLED

Existing publishers on the platform

School / Hi-Ed / Academic / STM Books & Journals / Trade

Cloud based SaaS solution Quicker Turnarounds

Automated PDF & e-deliveries Instant page proofs
NLP-Assisted copyediting Supports 3rd party vendors

www.diacritech.com
sales@diacritech.com
 Digital Solutions in India 2019
The cost of digitizing is one of the biggest factors for publishers
to consider. It is a long-term strategic investment and may be
a fiscal challenge for some publishers.”
The academic and education segments are facing not just a
digital issue but also other market concerns including adoption,
usability, and efficacy. “Major publishers have been moving in
the right direction for quite some time now and making the
right investments,” says Sriram Subramanya, founder and CEO
of Integra Software Services.
Digital has different meanings for different segments,
Subramanya adds. “For the academic segment, they can create
e-versions along with print, or just e-versions. For the education
segment, it is about hitting the right balance of delivering unique
experiences in using products that are available in both print and
digital. Their digital versions are not copies of their print products,
and a lot of time and effort have gone into reimagining the digital
product’s learning experience, efficacy, and learning outcomes.
Large publishers are able to make the right investments and have
the market size to realize their ROI on their digital initiatives.”
There is very little that is holding publishers back from going
digital at this point in time, says Atul Goel, president at Cenveo
Publisher Services. “In fact, many clients are eager to go digital-
only, overlooking that there is still demand from the market for
print.” For now, Goel finds that streamlining the number of
products being published, especially from higher-ed publishers,
“means that our team is providing more and varied services for
larger individual products.” Accessibility, he says, “remains a
secondary consideration even now, rather than the concept we
have been advocating of content being ‘born accessible.’”
In the STM/scholarly segment, the movement toward AI and
NLP-based editorial workflow has been obvious, says Vidur
Bhogilal, vice chairman of Lumina Datamatics. “Some parts of
the industry are implementing workflow technologies like
STEM and online editing, while general trade publishers are not
making any changes except for wanting multiple outputs. In
the education segment, the market is feeling its way along what
models will eventually drive new forms of value: Should they
be focused on subscriptions, rentals, or micro-transactions?
Should they greatly lower the price of content while up-selling
services? All these issues are still being sorted out, and each of
these affects how every client is doing business.”
Additionally, the digital learning industry, as a part of the
edTech space, is particularly quick to evolve: SecondLife, adaptive
learning, intelligent tutors, MOOCs, machine learning, and aug-
mented reality/mixed reality are all advancing rapidly. “The busi-
ness or instructional value of some of these technologies may not
yet be proven, but companies often respond to market pressures
and invest in both the technologies and training,” says Goel, of
Cenveo Publisher Services, adding that there remain multiple
conflicting standards within the digital solutions industry.
However, many publishing clients who bet heavily on digital
have successfully monetized their content. “But those who ven-
tured in half-heartedly are not as successful,” says A.R.M.
6 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY ■ A U G U S T 5 , 2 0 1 9
Gopinath, executive v-p at DiacriTech, adding that “for many
medium and small publishers, how to potentially deliver the
content to their clients in a secure and commercially viable
manner remains the big question. Needless to say, choosing the
right partners not only for converting files but also for deliv-
ering the content to the right market is key to success.”
Of Data and Privacy
When it comes to metadata, there is still much to establish from
the outset, says Goel, of Cenveo Publisher Services. “Publishers
still tend to rely on Word document manuscripts as the authority
for all information instead of detailed header files. So informa-
tion is sometimes missed, or manual intervention is required,
instead of realizing the full benefits of automation.”
Funding statements, for instance, are often inconsistent, pos-
sibly because peer-review systems do not enforce metadata stan-
dards for funder identity. “If this is not caught during the pro-
duction and proofing process, the data can be missed or cor-
rupted on its way to aggregators and registration agencies such
as HighWire and CrossRef,” Goel adds, pointing out that
author names and formatting of article titles are also subject to
error in untagged Word files.
For Mohanty, of HurixDigital, IP protection (vis-à-vis dig-
ital-rights management) and multichannel access to content are
two main publishing issues. “Publishers are concerned about
the copyright violations and online piracy associated with dig-
ital platforms, and their concerns are totally understandable. So
we offer DRM protection for content to allow publishers to rest
easy with the knowledge that their content is safe on our Kitaboo
platform.”
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) restrictions
“have made Lapiz Digital tread carefully and, as a result, have
slowed down our sales process.  We have changed our approach
with existing and new prospective clients in the EU in order to
comply with GDPR,” v-p Meena Prakash adds.
Adhering to and complying with IT regulations is one
thing—handling privacy is another. “At Lapiz Digital, we have
previously handled the personal information of our clients from
some of our other businesses for many years,” Prakash says. “We
have exercised great diligence in information security. Adapting
and applying the knowledge we have gained over the years to
the current European scenario was, however, a bit of a challenge.
Handling data during a business process is quite different from
when one encounters it for making contacts in the course of
business development.”
Integra Software Services, for instance, has been busy con-
ducting workshops across its offices to ensure staff sensitivity
and critical compliance to GDPR. “This regulation is very much
an extension to our long-standing emphasis on data security and
maintaining confidentiality of proprietary information. We are
also signing mutual GDPR agreements with our customers,”
Subramanya says, adding that his company has a well-estab-
lished personal-information-management system.
 Digital Solutions in India 2019
The Urge to Merge (and Control Costs)
Consolidation of small publishers, mostly through acquisition
by bigger groups, has resulted in a massive volume of work
heading to larger vendors. “This is a problem: the bigger ven-
dors are often unable to match the service-level expectations of
small publishers, which typically require more hand-holding
and personal attention. This reflects negatively on the out-
sourcing industry and, in the longer run, may adversely affect
the industry growth,” adds Gopinath, of DiacriTech.
Mergers and acquisitions are definitely shrinking the cus-
tomer base, says Goel, of Cenveo Publisher Services. “Societies
migrating to commercial publishers to run their journal pro-
grams present a similar problem. At the same time, the vendor
base is highly fragmented, making it easy for clients to work
with multiple service providers.”
For Bhogilal, of Lumina Datamatics, the aggressive consoli-
dation and cost-cutting exercise on current businesses are in full
evidence. “New forms of business only see experimental vol-
umes. Theoretically, the spending in new digital products and
solutions should exceed that of traditional publishing models.
But what works versus what doesn’t is still being explored,
which means that publishers are understandably hesitant to
commit to vast numbers of new products that would generate
new forms of service.”
Rising costs—of paper, printing, and shipping—and vendor
consolidation definitely have an adverse effect on experimentation
with new channels, such as AR/VR, says Tyler Carey, chief revenue
officer at Westchester Publishing Services. “Our company is rela-
tively shielded, since editorial and production offerings have not
experienced the volatility that printing companies or publishing
supply chains—let alone emerging technologies—are facing.”
But as publishers continue to consolidate their vendor rela-
tionships and cluster around big technology platforms, Maran
Elancheran, president of Newgen KnowledgeWorks, sees
growing opportunities—and a necessity—for vendors large and
small to collaborate. “Publishers are increasingly looking for
unique and imaginative solutions to give them the edge in a
hugely competitive marketplace, and so vendors that can work
together in the best interests of the publisher will have an edge
that could unlock a new level of innovation in the industry.”
Cost pressure, Elancheran adds, “is a reality that we have lived
with for many years. It goes together with the agenda to automate
and is a necessary part of addressing the structural efficiencies in
the industry. In many ways, we have been victims of our own suc-
cesses in this regard, and the constant drive for efficiency is enabling
us as an industry to embrace change and to continue to drive for-
ward academic and educational endeavors around the world.”
Rising production and distribution costs along with a
plethora of digital avenues have created a fundamental shift in
the business model, says Mohanty, of HurixDigital. “For
instance, in the U.S. higher-ed publishing sector, the rise in
demand for affordable study materials has created a need for
alternative delivery and monetization models. New digital ini-
tiatives and platforms along with content-delivery techniques
are driving the change in that market.” (Mohanty and his team
published a white paper, “Can U.S. Higher Education Publishers
Leverage a Subscription Model?,” with references to models
similar to Netflix, Spotify, and the New York Times in March.)
Working It Out
For smaller publishers, navigating the speed bumps has affected
their ability to explore alternative technologies and platforms
as core needs have been in flux, observes Carey, of Westchester
Publishing Services. “So by providing as consultative a solution
as possible for publishing clients, Westchester continues to
explore partnerships with best-in-market vendors to help aug-
ment what we can offer our clients, such as the work that
Fablevision and Learnosity do to support our educational clients
with their digital needs.”
Having a 50-year history in providing top-notch market
editorial and production offerings for printed products has been
beneficial to Westchester. “We tend to have an advantage when
clients begin exploring digital products,” Carey adds. “Providing
digital solutions for products that also have a print component
is a natural extension of what we do, rather than a competitive
digital-only offering. Where we see our clients wresting with
challenges is usually in defining what digital products will have
the most ROI for them.”
One textbook publisher that Westchester works with, for
instance, was encouraged by their marketing department to
create customized digital editions for every textbook platform
in the market. “But for a publisher their size, it may have made
more sense to focus on just investing in the platforms that will
generate the most revenue and exposure for their products,”
Carey says, adding that this is where his company’s consultative
stance helps to realize clients’ visions, by delivering the best
possible products for print and digital, and working with them
to define where they are trying to go.
Building trust and confidence is often the biggest hurdle in
starting any new relationship. “It takes time to develop trust,
and we can only do it through experimenting and proving our-
selves on those first few projects,” says Elancheran, of Newgen
KnowledgeWorks. “Although our technologies and services are
often transformative for publishers, we never underestimate the
confidence that production and editorial staff need to have to
risk switching vendors and workflows. Even with existing cli-
ents, introducing new workflows and efficiencies can be worri-
some when established processes are tried and tested.”
Meanwhile, publishers are looking at converting their pro-
duction operations to profit centers and searching for partners
to help them reach those goals, says Ravi Venkataramani,
cofounder and CEO of Exeter Premedia Services. “With business
models changing rapidly, publishers are looking for digital solu-
tions partners that will support them through these changes,
primarily to provide technology solutions that will streamline
workflows and enhance author experience.”
W W W . P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY. C O M 7
 Digital Solutions in India 2019

To Poach or Not Operational Size Matters

Staff poaching remains a big issue in the highly competitive
digital solutions industry since its early days. “Today, the
poaching is mostly for employees with some initial experience
of between six months and a year, and not the more experienced
operations people,” says Rajan, of Lapiz Digital.
Hiring issues are here to stay, Rajan adds. “But once they’re
hired—be it a fresh or a lateral hire—getting them to under-
stand the culture of the company and the corporate work envi-
ronment is a major challenge. Attracting, retaining, and
engaging the millennial workforce, and bringing them together
to build a successful organization, is not easy. But our induction
and training programs—all based on the sense of belonging—
has been proven successful.”
The fight for talent is mostly about developing capabilities
within the digital solutions industry. “Poaching is par for the
course when there is a shortage of talent in every market seg-
ment,” adds Subramanya, of Integra Software Services.
Poaching is the easiest way to develop digital solutions from
scratch, says Ahmed, of DiTech. “By poaching the head of the
solutions division, for instance, one immediately obtains the
ideas, architecture, design improvements, and so on. But there
is one big problem: everybody’s solutions become indistinguish-
able from one another.”
For DiacriTech, establishing production facilities in second-
tier cities is one way of countering staff poaching and reducing
employee attrition while, at the same time, improving business
continuity. “Unfortunately, the development of new technology
and product solutions tends to happen in main operational hubs,
which are located in the major cities where poaching is ram-
pant,” Gopinath says, adding that “a sense of discipline among
vendors is required to get this sorted out.”
When it comes to ramping up production during peak seasons,
operational scale is always an advantage in the digital solutions
industry. As a rule, big publishers tend to gravitate toward the
big vendors. “But our services and offerings are not confined to
big customers with huge volumes,” says Singh, of Thomson
Digital, which operates five delivery centers (three in India, one
in Mauritius, and another in New York) and has more than
1,500 employees.
“Publishers of any size, work volume, and project complexity
will be able to leverage our products and services with the same
efficiencies—and our current client roster bears that out. We
are aware that the viability of a business depends on work
volume and that it may be challenging to work with similar
efficiency with medium or small-scale publishers. However, our
tools and automation are easily customizable and our efficiency
is definitely not volume-based,” Singh adds.
Larger customers have used the company’s scale, size, and
financial depth to qualify it for vendor selection, says Rahul
Arora, CEO of MPS. “But that is where it ends—at qualifica-
tion. Great and reliable delivery through a consultative approach
powered by market-leading technology is what differentiates
us. We make learning smarter, and this precise mission allows
us to be focused in enabling customer success through smarter
delivery and not just delivering the scope of work agreed upon.”
Ten out of MPS’s top 15 publishing customers are small and
medium-size companies. Arora explains, “We bring not only
years of experience in innovative publishing solutions, but also
high ROI and robust solutions. We are not a marketing orga-
nization: we are an operations and technology company. Our
work speaks for itself, further bolstering our good reputation
with small- and medium-size publishers.”

Online Coverage of the Digital Solutions Industry

The following articles are available online in conjunction with this print report:
● Full Speed Ahead with AI and NLP ● Navigating the Open Access Path ● No Project Is Too Complex

Articles in the Expert Series, penned by invited vendors, examine critical topics impacting both publishing and digital
solutions industries:
● Are You Listening? by Jeyashree Sundaram, sales and business development manager at Lapiz Digital
● Data Analytics, Discoverability, and Monetization by Vinay Kumar Singh, executive director and CEO of Thomson Digital
Related Reads from PW:
● BISG Explores Promise, Reality of Blockchain Technology ● It’s Time to Move to ePub 3.2
● Blockchain for the Book Biz: The Hype vs. the Reality ● Keeping Up with Tech Should Be a Publishing Priority
● European Parliament Approves Controversial Copyright ● Moving Metadata from How to Why
Overhaul

Visit publishersweekly.com/digitalsolutions2019 to read the full coverage, and publishersweekly.com/digital-

marketplace to find out more about the vendors featured in this report.

8 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY ■ A U G U S T 5 , 2 0 1 9
 Streamline, Automate, and
Optimize Your Publishing
Workflow with DigiCore

• Built in a modular manner

using open-source
technologies for
seamless integration

• Collaborative working
environment

• Customizable framework

• Configurable end-to-end
workflow with integrated
workflow management

• Integrated digital asset

management

Making Learning Smarter since 1970

2500+ 14 70+
Learning Global Delivery Fortune 500
Professionals Centers Customers

For more information and a demo,

please reach out to us at marketing@mpslimited.com
www.mpslimited.com

DigiCore_29th_July_2019.indd 1 7/29/19 9:51 AM

 Digital Solutions in India 2019
Cenveo Publisher Services
Cenveo Learning, which provides unified digital solutions for
publishers and corporate learning programs, was launched in
March. Employing a team of learning professionals with deep
experience in instructional systems, as well as visual and tech- significantly reduces manual intervention while achieving the
nical design, Cenveo Learning bundles educational talent with
corporate learning capabilities into a robust end-to-end
offering.
Available across devices
and platforms, Cenveo
Learning solutions include
adaptive micro-learning
modules, full-length
courses, assessment and
certification products,
gamification, animated and
live action interactive
videos, and simulations.
“We have long worked with
publishers, schools, col-
leges, and universities
worldwide on learner-cen- Atul Goel, president of Cenveo
Publisher Services
tric, 21st-century solutions
for math, ELA, science, social sciences, and other disciplines,” references to the already available chapter- and article-end
president Atul Goel says. “Corporate learning and develop-
ment programs will benefit from the application of these core
principles to training modules delivered via evolving tech-
niques and systems, including VR and AR, responsive design,
rapid development, blended learning, LMS development,
managed services, and consulting.”
Rajeev Barowalla, v-p of learning, says, “Cenveo is excited
to implement the skills and best practices to improve work-
place performance while we continue to create curriculum-
aligned and immersive educational experiences. Following our
proven approach of combining standards-based instruction
with interactive environments, we are confident that we can
transform mundane training materials into engaging and
effective learning across markets.”
As for Smart Suite, Cenveo’s cloud-based ecosystem of
publishing tools, many new features have been added to
make it even smarter. A total of four modules make up
the platform: Smart Edit (for pre-editing, copyediting,
and conversions), Smart Compose (the production engine),
Smart Proof (for capturing edits while allowing valid
XML round tripping), and Smart Track (which has an easy
user interface that logs all content transactions).
“Real-time reporting and validations are now a part of
the workflow,” Goel says, adding that one of the latest
features includes the fully automated issue-production
process. “It cuts down the issue compilation and delivery
process to a few minutes from the time the issue-lineup
information is received.” Cover processing has also been
fully automated. As for the new Smart Reporting feature, Mahesh Balakrishnan (l.) and A.R.M. Gopinath of DiacriTech
10 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y ■ A U G U S T 5 , 2 0 1 9
customer-driven information such as metadata, stylesheets,
and typographic rules are now validated against the process
and reported as a proof of compliance.
“Smart Suite 2.0 is an integrated end-to-end workflow that
goal of high-speed publishing with editorial excellence,” Goel
adds.
DiacriTech
Both large and small publishers have successfully adopted
XEditPro Publishing Suite, DiacriTech’s unified editorial and
production platform. Now in its third iteration, the platform
provides full support for multilingual interfaces and content,
and it has a changeable theme.
Enhancements to the platform are many. The security fea-
ture, for instance, includes IP-based restrictions for user access
and limits those users to the operations they are authorized to
perform. The project dashboard, meanwhile, can now monitor
project performance at a much more granular level, especially
for larger projects with multiple milestones. “An audit trail
or log is maintained for all events occurring during the stages
of publishing,” explains executive v-p Mahesh Balakrishnan,
whose team has added citation autolinking for edited book
reference link. The brand new UI/UX is an enhancement to
the previous Word-like editing interface.
“XEditPro version three presents a stable and more respon-
sive platform that has faster rendering of print and web PDF,
HTML, XML, ePub, and Word at any stage of the production
process,” Balakrishnan adds.
ImmersiveGaze, DiacriTech’s product for the AR/VR/MR
realm, is also evolving as a solution for distraction-free headset-
based immersive-learning techniques. “New generations of
schoolkids mostly have access to smartphones and devices, and
so we are creating content and storyboards that have an MR
angle,” says executive v-p A.R.M. Gopinath, whose team has
developed a series of biology concepts for a multinational
 Digital Solutions in India 2019
publisher and deployed these in a private school as their proof
of concept on advanced teaching methodologies.
“We also launched our own game-based physics education
module, Vaco from Venus, on the iStore and Playstore. The goal
is to help the character Vaco get to its spaceship through
solving science-based activities and understanding the con-
cepts involved,” Gopinath adds.
The company’s true XML-first InDesign production solu-
tion has also undergone major updates. “InXML now works
with the latest version of InDesign and is used primarily for
clients wanting an InDesign-based solution. InXML is highly
automated with multiple outputs—Word, XML, PDF, ePub,
and HTML5—generated at a click of a button. So we are able
to fast track projects with ease,” adds Gopinath, whose focus
remains on “bringing about cloud-based solutions for design-
intensive publications.” Gopinath explains, “We are inte-
grating InXML with XEditPro to achieve this goal, which will
see almost all design and editorial work done using XEditPro’s
web interface.”
DiTech Process Solutions
DiTech’s acquisition of eAthena in December 2018 has
brought about special skills
and domain expertise. “This
was the first company to
develop regional Indian-
language e-books for Kindle,
and it was among the first
few to launch animated chil-
dren’s e-books,” company
founder and CEO Nizam
Ahmed says, adding that
eAthena, a specialist in cap-
turing medieval hand-
written documents, has
worked very closely with
several U.K.-based organi- Nizam Ahmed, founder and CEO
zations and universities on of DiTech Process Solutions and
such projects. “So we now 3ClicksMaster
gained a foothold in this specific domain and acquired new
niche clients. There is huge potential in this area, and we want
to further grow this going forward.”
Then there is 3ClicksMaster (3CM), a separate company
developed and owned by DiTech that offers a cloud-based
automated cross-media publishing platform of the same name.
The 3CM platform combines three separate processes: creation
(which covers copyediting and XML conversion), design (auto-
flowing-created XML into InDesign or predetermined DTDs),
and publishing (creating print PDF, XML, ePub3, and
HTML5 on the fly). Customizable, flexible, and editable, the
3CM platform is designed for web, print, and mobile content.
Several global nonprofit organizations have adopted 3CM for
their publications.
Recently, 3CM started offering a new module for end-to-end
journal-publishing requirements. “JMaster allows the users to
publish their articles at the click of a button. It provides a
unique set of features for seamless journal publishing, such as
automated DOI generation, online copyediting, author packet
generation, auto-issue building, and email notifications for
production managers and authors. There is also a math-type
editor for equations and formulas,” Ahmed says, adding that
JMaster, which can process approximately 500 pages per
minute, has the ability to produce extensive publications with
highly complex layouts.
Aside from that, JMaster can process Unicode data and
comes with copyediting rules for all languages, thus enabling
multilingual publications. “Production managers can track
the status of their journals in the 3CM platform, allowing for
better planning of print and digital products,” Ahmed says.
“Since JMaster is easily configurable, it delivers quick solu-
tions to specific requirements without quality compromise.”
The success of 3CM, which was established in 2016, has
prompted Ahmed to focus on his company’s ability to provide
technology solutions for end-to-end publishing services. “We
want DiTech Process Solutions to be known as a technology-
solution provider rather than just a service provider.”
Exeter Premedia Services
Kriya, Exeter’s cloud-based publishing platform, continues to
focus on its goal (and slogan) to “deliver happy authors.” “It
is being enhanced functionally as well as technologically to
ensure that its workflow and capabilities provide a superior
experience for authors, publishers, and all users of the system,”
company cofounder and CEO Ravi Venkataramani says. “We
have added significant new capabilities across the spectrum of
publications—journals, books, abstracts, newsletters, and
directories, for instance.”
For books, the team has built a dedicated cloud-based solu-
tion on Kriya that streamlines the entire life cycle of book
production. “The solution
comes with all the features
that make Kriya an effi-
cient publishing platform,”
Venkataramani says. “These
include an integrated con-
tent-management system
for versioning and storage/
retrieval for revised edi-
tions, versions, supporting
files and metadata; XML-
driven automation; proof-
and-edit on the flow; and
intuitive interfaces.”
The core new capability
Ravi Venkataramani, cofounder and is a stronger book-planning
CEO of Exeter Premedia Services and project-management
W W W . P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY. C O M 11
 Digital Solutions in India 2019
module. Additionally, Kriya for Books also provides a dash-
board view of titles in production and enables the publisher
to have complete control and visibility into the entire process.
“This is particularly important given the longer production
cycles and complexity of books compared to other publication
formats, such as newsletters or journals,” COO Sowmya
Mahadevan says, pointing out that Kriya has a subscription-
based pricing model for different formats.
Kriya is built with the ability to support custom workflows
based on client requirements. Mahadevan explains, “We look
at any customization request as it applies to our philosophy of
converting production to a profit center. We carefully consider
and implement such requests and share the results with our
community. As a result, Kriya is always evolving per industry
needs and not based on specific client needs.”
As for the time needed for a publishing client (or stake-
holder) to get comfortable and up to speed with Kriya,
Venkataramani says that the publishing platform is built to
be as intuitive as possible. “We are constantly challenging
ourselves to improve the user experience. We have added
guided workflows, enhanced user interfaces, navigation tools,
help guides, alerts, and notifications. These have enabled our
authors to use Kriya with little to no training and to complete
their review. Our publishers also have a similar experience and
are able to get up to speed with Kriya very quickly.”
HurixDigital
Kitaboo, HurixDigital’s flagship product and interactive
e-book platform, continues to undergo enhancements to reflect
changing industry needs
and the latest technology.
“ We h a v e a d d e d a u g -
mented reality and created
Kitaboo AR to stay ahead
of the digital publishing
curve and help our clients
to deliver more varied con-
tent on digital platforms,”
CEO Subrat Mohanty says,
adding that Kitaboo AR
“has seen considerable
traction among publishers
and enterprises, a few of
whom have signed up for
customized development
Subrat Mohanty, CEO of of the AR feature.”
HurixDigital Kitaboo now has more
than six million users in 25 different languages across 20 coun-
tries. “Over the years, we have added new features and upgrades
based on the latest AI/NLP technologies and development,
resulting in Kitaboo growing from strength to strength,”
Mohanty says. Aside from having a client roster of who’s who
in the publishing industry—including Grupo Anaya,
12 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y ■ A U G U S T 5 , 2 0 1 9
Gyldendal, Macmillan, McGraw-Hill Education, Pearson, and
Profil Klett—Kitaboo is known for winning multiple industry
awards, especially the Brandon Hall Group Excellence Award
for six consecutive years since 2012.
As for Kitaboo’s payment gateway, it is a bespoke feature
that is built based on client requirements. “Kitaboo can enable
a PCI-DSS-compliant payment-solution integration for
e-stores and online commerce. This helps publishers reach out
to consumers directly and monetize their content seamlessly
behind a pay wall,” explains Mohanty, whose company also
offers a comprehensive K–12 digital content library with more
than 2,500 science and mathematics videos.
These instructional learning nuggets, he says, are based on
a global K–12 curriculum, developed by experts in various
subjects, and approved by teachers. The videos have been
tested in classrooms worldwide, and they can be customized
to the language needs of various markets along with the
English-language edition.
Then there is Kitaboo Insight, HurixDigital’s mobile-first
training platform for enterprises, which continues to gain
traction among training and development teams in various
organizations. It enables enterprises to deliver training con-
tent to employees via mobile devices while helping to create
interactive digital content that is tailored to organizational
goals.
Recently, Mohanty has created a new team (Hurix
Technology Services) to focus on AI and NLP-driven content
solutions and products. “In the longer term, our focus is on
offering scalable cloud solutions, mobile and web applications,
QA testing, managed cloud solutions, and Big Data analytics
to publishers and enterprises.”
Impelsys
At Impelsys, projects with key partners such as the American
Heart Association and Laerdal Medical have strengthened its
goal to build a company whose larger mission goes beyond
making a profit. “We want to be an entity with a purpose,
which is to make an impact
by spreading knowledge
through technology and
making the world a better
place for everyone,” says
Uday Majithia, assistant
v-p of technology, services,
and presales. “We want our
technologies to touch as
many lives as we can and
help people to learn and
grow professionally and
personally.”
The company’s platform Uday Majithia, assistant v-p of
iPC Scholar (previously technology, services, and presales at
known as iPublishCentral Impelsys
 Digital Solutions in India 2019
Scholar), for instance, has been adopted in emerging markets
such as the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.
In the U.S., a prominent oncology society is now building an
authoritative LMS that can support a blended model of profes-
sional learning for its members, which include nurse practi-
tioners, doctors, and clinical support staff.
“This solution, based on our core iPC technology, will be an
online university that supports individual plus institutional
business models in which partner hospitals can assign relevant
courses for their employees,” Majithia explains, adding that
“it will host video- and assessment-based courses, discussion
forums, and podcasts on the first development phase. The next
phase will see the platform hosting the society’s e-books and
also a separate skills-assessment platform.”
As for iPC Health, it is now helping in the up-skilling and
professional development of more than 2,000 healthcare per-
sonnel across multiple hospitals in India. “The platform is
enabling these hospitals to enhance patient safety and healthy
care outcomes and, in turn, promoting standardization of care
across different facilities in the country. From doctors to nurses
to ambulance drivers and security guards, iPC Health is
already touching thousands of lives at different levels by facili-
tating holistic development of healthcare establishments,”
Majithia says.
Both iPC Scholar and iPC Health are undergoing contin-
uous innovation and development. New feature enhancements
and a complete microservices-based architecture are among
the product updates in the coming months. “Impelsys
Innovations Lab will also be launched later this year,” Majithia
adds. “It will be a collaborative platform for our technology
leaders and engineers to work alongside our partners and cli-
ents on cutting-edge technologies such as AI, Big Data, ana-
lytics, and blockchain to push the envelope and keep
innovating.”
Integra Software Services
Cloud-based authoring plat-
form iAuthor, which has
NLP capabilities, is the
latest solution from Integra.
“A number of journal pub-
lishers are piloting the
product to re-engineer their
workflows by onboarding
some of their authors and
editors in the iAuthor envi-
ronment,” company founder
and CEO Sriram Subramanya
says, adding that the pub-
lishers are able to see real-
time results. “There is a Sriram Subramanya, founder and
turnaround-time reduction CEO of Integra Software Services
of up to 30% accompanied by efficiency gains, which trans-
14 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y ■ A U G U S T 5 , 2 0 1 9
lates into significant savings in production costs.” Currently,
more than 1,000 journals adopt iAuthor.
“Many publishers have started to implement digital-first
and digital-only products in order to reduce cost and time to
market, and making the final products more accessible price-
wise,” adds Subramanya, whose company operates from 10
offices in six countries (including India).
Integra’s Digital Solutions Center of Excellence, with its
300-strong team, is helping publishers make a smooth digital
transition. “We offer end-to-end digital content management,
including instructional design, content development, 2-D/3-D
graphics, animation, audio/video services, AR/VR, HTML5
development, assessments, and accessibility-based content,”
Subramanya says. “Most of our platforms and products are
assisting publishers to re-engineer many aspects of their work-
flows and achieve digital-only workflows.”
The market, he says, is still in flux. “While we see OERs
and MOOCs competing with traditional publishers, we also
see big education publishers such as Pearson and Cengage
innovating their business models—for example Cengage
Learning’s Netflix model for higher-ed content. There are
other socioeconomic factors affecting the education seg-
ment, but the education publishing segment is highly
resilient.”
In recent months, more publishers are requesting systems
and platforms through which they could see metadata through
a simple user interface during the content-production stage,
and verify the metadata accuracy prior to product distribution.
“So we have updated our tools to extract the appropriate meta-
data and display them to authors and publishers within our
platforms,” Subramanya adds.
As a part of its CSR initiative, Integra has been building
classrooms and refurbishing infrastructure at a 135-year-old
rural school—founded by Subramanya’s great-grandfather and
managed by Subramanya as a nonprofit—benefitting 1,200
underprivileged students. Integra has set up IT and science
labs to enable students to start learning computer and science
skills from an early age; Integra has also provided scholarships
for those struggling financially to continue their education,
and it has launched a school website to bring together its
alumni and collectively contribute to the betterment of both
the school and students.
Lapiz Digital
Accessibility-related services were the most sought-after
solution at Lapiz Digital last year. “Then there were requests
for e-book conversion, composition, digital services, interac-
tive whiteboard development, and e-learning,” president V.
Bharathram says, adding that AR/VR is more popular among
his corporate clients. “Cost remains the deciding factor in
whether we adopt HTML5 for e-learning, go for a less com-
plicated e-book, or simply use an editable PDF as a
solution.”
 One-Stop Partner
FOR YOUR CONTENT NEEDS

We, at Lapiz, provide end-to-end

publishing solutions that go beyond
satisfying your needs, as your business
expands and evolves with the changing
needs of your customers.

Digital
We offer content services for diverse Transformation
sectors like Education & Training,
Healthcare, Retail, Banking, Science • eBook Conversion from any source format to Reflowable &
& Technology and so on.
Fixed-Layout
• epub3 - Interactive eBooks with HTML 5 and CSS 3
• Animated eBooks
• Accessibility Compliance (WCAG) – HTML, PDF, Word, 508, Daisy,
Braille, NIMAS

TYPESETTING COPYEDITING
SERVICES SERVICES

Prepress and
Typesetting Services

CONVERSION CMS | LMS • Project Management

SERVICES
• XML and DTD Creation
• Pre-edit and Copy Edit
• Typesetting – Layout and Design
• Indexing and Abstracting

INTERACTIVE EBOOK APP DEVELOPMENT • Legacy Conversion: Rekeying, XML & Digitizing
DEVELOPMENT SERVICES • Scanning – Book & Journals
• Artwork – Redraw, Editing and Enhancement
• Alt Text writing
Contact Us
www.lapizdigital.com
contact@lapizdigital.com
 Digital Solutions in India 2019
Content creation and
rewriting is another area
in which the Lapiz
Digital team has been
doing very well in recent
months. “We are basi-
cally ghostwriting blogs
and books, and most of
these projects involve
technical research con-
tent in areas such as engi-
neering, technology, and
the internet of things,
which require web
mining and are quite
V. Bharathram, president of Lapiz
Digital Services
straightforward. We also
work on tests and assess-
ments, create question banks for various subjects, and write
alternate texts for accessibility content,” Bharathram says.
The team has been working on auditing other vendors’
works for many years. The auditing projects, Bharathram adds,
“revealed common content errors related to spacing and entity
issues as well as formatting errors and missing links. The con-
cept of ‘first time right’ is yet to sink in with the younger
workforce, and so there is an urgent need for more training to
overcome negligence and to provide error-free products and
content.”
Meanwhile, publishers are becoming more focused on cap-
turing the correct metadata. Bharathram explains, “We know
the importance of having the correct metadata, which are
extensively used to search, identify, collect, and trace resources
of all kinds. Publishers are increasingly going for semantic
metadata, which describes the resources or objects at a gran-
ular level and makes the content search more effective and
efficient.” The metadata input and output are validated
through automation tools that collect data based on client
requirements. For some customers, the team uses a purpose-
built web engine that utilizes crawlers to search for all meta-
data and generate the raw output. Specific algorithms are then
used to index and validate the metadata.
Going forward, Lapiz will focus on two new business initia-
tives involving e-commerce and analytics. “Though we started
working on these two last year, there will be a lot more push
in terms of investment in technology and resources in the
coming months. An aggressive push in e-learning is also on
the table,” Bharathram adds.
Lumina Datamatics
Among the latest solutions from Lumina Datamatic are MARS
(Manuscript Assessment & Reporting System), Rights
Platform (enhanced with blockchain technology), ExpertSource
Pro (powered by Smart Test Technology), and the
RightsPlatform Marketplace. “Our custom solutions address
16 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y ■ A U G U S T 5 , 2 0 1 9
specific publishing issues, while our new solutions, such as
MARS, help to improve the overall efficiencies of the journal
peer-review process,” vice chairman Vidur Bhogilal says.
Its market-leading RightsPlatform tool, for instance, has
been upgraded to automate the rights-acquisition process. “It
is the chief source of auditable transactional details for dozens
of clients. RapidRightsChain, backed by blockchain, now
enables instant transactions,” Bhogilal adds. “Authors, edi-
tors, and designers can quickly and easily approve their image,
send their rights requests with one click, and receive licensing
grants without leaving the system or performing additional
data entry. This dramatically lowers acquisition costs and
increases creators’ control in the process.”
Two of the world’s largest STM/scholarly publishers now
have all their visual assets on Lumina Datamatics’
RightsPlatform Marketplace. “We are currently facilitating
access to collections of materials and implementing taxono-
mies that help drive more targeted searches in specialty areas,”
Bhogilal says, pointing out that the platform manages more
than two million assets.
Meanwhile, the latest ver-
sion of ExpertSource now
matches clients with free-
lancers on tens of thousands
of tasks, including complex
math and science writing as
w e l l a s e d i t i n g , proof-
reading, indexing, and fact
checking. “When free-
lancers sign up, we use
LightPayCoin to reward
their activities. Clients are
also rewarded for rating
freelancers and their
ongoing participation on
Vidur Bhogilal, vice-chairman of the platform,” Bhogilal
Lumina Datamatics explains, adding that clients
“can exchange LightPayCoin rewards for freelance services,
award bonuses to high-performing freelancers, or bank their
rewards for more speculative projects that are harder to fund.”
Now that publishers are busy reorganizing not just their
business models but also cost structures and the way services
are delivered, Lumina Datamatics is focused on under-
standing the shifts and reinventing itself to fit evolving client
needs. “Our goal is to leverage technology to solve client’s pain
points. For instance, we are developing platforms for pre-
manuscript screening to enhance peer-review efficiencies,
improving copyediting capabilities via contextualized pro-
cesses, and supporting publishers’ new Open Access eco-
system,” says Bhogilal, who is establishing Lumina Datamatics
as a core supplier for educational publishers and collabo-
rating with them across their businesses in different
geographies.
 Digital Solutions in India 2019

MPS Modules within the cloud-based digital publishing plat-

MPS has entered another form DigiCore have been enhanced and expanded. For
phase of growth, according instance, DigiXML now accepts a broader scope of normal-
to company CEO Rahul ized input files for advanced structuring and XML genera-
Arora. “Our focus has tion, and new validation and QC tools to unlock machine
expanded to include all learning. DigiRights (a rights and permissions platform) has
forms of learning. Now we been integrated into, and now offered as an additional module
view content as global and of, DigiCore.
all-encompassing, from As for the e-commerce ecosystem Think360, which MPS
educational to science and acquired in April 2017, enhancements include integration
scholarly to professional with ERPs and CRMs with the bidirectional flow of data, PCI
development to learning compliance, multifactor authentication for payment gateway
within an enterprise.” And integration, flexible invoicing with custom templates, and
MPS’s ability to author, dynamic report generation through advanced analytics,
Rahul Arora, CEO of MPS
develop, manage, produce, custom KPIs, and customizable dashboards. The company’s
and deliver content through smarter technologies and work- business intelligence module, MPSinsight, is now equipped
flows is what binds it all together. to generate Counter 5 statistics and reports.
“Our vision is to power the competitiveness and differentia- The digital and mobile publishing platform Magplus,
tion of our customers by making the process transparent, real- which is targeted at creative professionals, now has a powerful
time, and always focused on the learning outcomes,” adds content-management system, enhanced authoring and pro-
Arora, whose company’s Vision 2023 plan centers on three duction environments, and advanced analytics on user-
strategies—leverage, diversify, and disrupt—and through behavior insights.
further developments on its three platform ecosystems The acquisition of Tata Interactive Systems (TIS) in June
(DigiCore, Magplus, and Think360). 2018 marked a significant milestone in MPS history. “We now

SCALE
000

W W W . P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY. C O M 17
 Digital Solutions in India 2019
have nearly 3,000 associates—in 19 cities worldwide—that
are working towards making learning smarter,” says Arora,
who has added new services in learning solutions (including
AR/VR/MR, games, and simulations), consulting services,
and platforms (such as the CyberTest assessment engine and
the Learning Planet LMS).
“We see a boom in the emerging-technology space, specifi-
cally within AR and VR, and we are doing exciting work with
customized AR/VR solutions to address client-specific busi-
ness needs,” adds Arora, whose team’s VR-based program for
mechatronics students won a prestigious Brandon Hall
Technology award last year.
Newgen KnowledgeWorks
The focus on reducing production time and costs while
increasing production efficiencies has seen Newgen
KnowledgeWorks creating several major platforms and
solutions.
There is PubKit, an end-to-end journal-management system
that incorporates dynamic scheduling with content-automa-
tion tools to optimize workflows and task scheduling to meet
the needs of each individual journal. “From submission right
through to delivery, publishers adopting PubKit have a single
dashboard to view the content progress throughout the work-
flow,” v-p Srikanth Srinivasan says.
Then there is SilkEvolve, which can read legacy content
intelligently and know when human intervention is required
to validate a decision. “This intelligent ‘guided’ process dra-
matically improves the fidelity of e-book content to the print
original,” v-p Muralidharan Pattabiraman adds, explaining
that SilkEvolve embraces all ePub3 functionalities and is
capable of implementing enhancements such as audio and
video support, SVG, MathML, multiple navigation tables, and
many new CSS3 formatting properties. “When combined with
our accessibility services, SilkEvolve is perfectly placed to
combine fast and efficient legacy conversion with the bespoke
content-enrichment processes required to bring legacy content
up to the latest WCAG standards.”
As for RedShift, the focus is on transforming the author
experience within the content-production workflow. “Authors
now have the opportunity to work in their familiar Word or
LaTeX environment. RedShift gives authors ownership of the
content-production workflow like never before, while
retaining the important checks and balances publishers need
to ensure high editorial standards and rigorous cost control,”
company president Maran Elancheran adds. “By automating
the process, we have been able to incorporate machine learning
into page composition and constantly refine the templates,
thus embedding continuous improvement into the very core
of this platform.”
For Elancheran, extending Newgen’s range of services and
applying technological solutions earlier in the product life-
cycle is becoming an important focus. “Our editorial skills are
18 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y ■ A U G U S T 5 , 2 0 1 9
already being used to support publishers in content develop-
ment, early manuscript assessment, and author management.
Increasingly, activities such as list management, content
acquisition, rights and permissions, peer-review management,
and product design are coming to vendors like us, and many
of these services are being delivered through our hybrid
onshore/offshore solutions.”
Such hybrid solutions, Elancheran adds, “are helping new
publishing entrants and established presses to confidently
grow their lists within their tight operating budgets. Newgen
KnowledgeWorks is here to partner them in achieving their
goals.”
Thomson Digital
Innovative process automation is driving Thomson Digital’s
business operations. “We have invested in a technology frame-
work based on AI, ML, NLP, Big Data, and cloud integration
that gives us a competitive edge in terms of efficiency, speed,
quality, and cost-effectiveness while also enabling us to help
global publishers to design their publishing solutions,” execu-
tive director and CEO Vinay Kumar Singh says, adding that
there is a paradigm shift in his company’s focus from service-
centric offerings to tech-
nology-centric solutions.
“So we have invested
these technology capa-
bilities by forming an
independent software-
solution vertical called
DigiScape, a hub for
designing and devel-
oping workflow and solu-
tions for publishers,”
adds Singh, whose team
has been using TD-XPS,
its flagship web-based
digital publishing plat-
form for books, for the
Vinay Kumar Singh, executive direc-
tor and CEO of Thomson Digital past five years. “TD-XPS
provides us with the con-
cept of 1P1P [one person, one project], which we then applied
and expanded to create UniTouch, our state-of-the-art set of
tools and workflow-management systems driven by AI, ML,
and NLP, and which consist of modular services.”
Each UniTouch module is designed and developed to aim
at a specific service, thereby giving the tool a dynamic and
agile set of features. The modules act as plug-and-play decou-
pled services deployed via cloud for easy integration and acces-
sibility. UniTouch, Singh adds, has helped in improving the
company’s internal efficiencies by 80%. “Our deep insight of,
and over 50 years of working with, the publishing industry
has guided us to create these sets of digital publishing and
content solutions.”
 Digital Solutions in India 2019

As for its New York–based TDI Digital Solutions, editorial duce at the issue level and
and project-management services are one niche solution, for print editions. “We have
offering onshore capabilities where native support is provided enhanced Page Central’s
for content writing and development, copyediting, proof- underlying architecture
reading, indexing, and a whole array of content competencies. with an extended set of
The hub also provides consultancy and content designing for APIs that will allow for
Fortune 500 companies in various domains to fulfill their comprehensive integra-
learning requirements. tion,” says Gary Scott, v-p
The past three years have seen Thomson Digital invest in of products. “It enables on-
further growing its journal division by 20% in terms of man- the-fly typeset documents
power and infrastructure. Singh explains, “This is where to be created within a user’s
Coast, our Web-based tool, comes in as a part of our 2020 browser, directly from
technology roadmap. Coast provides researchers and scien- within an organization’s
tists with tools to make their work organized, analyzed, and production workflow and
value-added. New features—available within the next few delivery platforms, thus
months—will assist researchers in getting their articles reducing the need to create
accepted quickly by publishers without rounds of to-and-fro and manage an inventory of Abhigyan Arun, CEO of TNQ
revisions.” PDFs.” Technologies
As for AuthorCafé, this
TNQ Technologies HTML-authoring platform has been validated by the Science
Page Central, the browser-based pagination engine from Academies of India and now hosts the institution’s summer-
TNQ Technologies, is being further enhanced to increase its research fellowship program. “More than one thousand visitors
typesetting capabilities. Alongside article- and chapter-level from all over the world read the reports each week, giving
online capabilities, the engine now offers the option to pro- the academies a substantially higher level of visibility,” chief
 Digital Solutions in India 2019
domain officer Shanthi Krishnamurthy says, adding that “a
host of other India-based institutions are also engaged with
AuthorCafé in various states of their trial programs. The plat-
form now covers academic content such as grant approvals,
theses, and dissertations.”
Then there is Proof Central, which has been serving authors
and publishers for more than seven years. Two million articles
across 2,000 journals, 1,700 books, and 20 major reference
works have been proofed using this HTML platform. The
latest update includes automated bibliographic reference
structuring with PubMed validation, and citation and refer-
ence renumbering. There is also the capability to edit a range
of structured front-matter elements, an advanced XML editor
for nuanced structuring, and real-time collaboration and feed-
back sharing on proofs.
RevView Central, the latest from TNQ Technologies, is a
browser-based submission and peer-review platform built to
help accelerate decision-making. “It uses ML, auto-struc-
turing, and data-driven insights to present an attachment-free
workflow to fast track the entire process,” Krishnamurthy
says, adding that RevView Central was launched in late 2018
with the Indian Academy of Sciences. “We plan to roll this out
in other markets in the upcoming months.”
The company, Krishnamurthy adds, “has been moving from
monolithic systems to a services-based architecture in recent
months. We see this trend with our clients, and so we have
embarked on a model of service enablement to allow produc-
tion workflows to be flexible, modular, and eventually lead to
tiered workflows where publishers can choose the combination
that works best for their needs.”
(l. to r.) U.K. managing director Tim Davies, chief revenue officer Tyler Carey, and company
chairman Dennis Pistone celebrate Westchester Publishing Services’ 50th anniversary at the 2019
London Book Fair
20 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y ■ A U G U S T 5 , 2 0 1 9
Westchester Publishing Services
This year marks a major milestone as Westchester celebrates
its 50th anniversary, as well as its fifth anniversary as a U.S.
employee-owned company. “Our U.K. operation continues to
grow with more university presses, academic, and trade
accounts signing up,” chief revenue officer Tyler Carey says,
adding that his K–12/educational unit is working with more
U.S. publishers as well as starting to onboard new U.K.
accounts. To support the needs for a more global perspective
on educational content, Westchester has hired Walter
Henderson, a classroom instructor and professor of the English
language, as its ELT subject-matter expert.
“We have also been migrating more customers to our cloud-
based client portal,” Carey says. “Early adopters gave us feed-
back that allowed us to customize and add new features for
journal, white paper, and book-project management, and by
ticking more boxes for our customers, adoption on the portal
has continued and accelerated. We are quite proud that the
portal has been shortlisted for the prestigious 2019 Stationers’
Company Innovation Excellence Awards for technology used
by the media industries.”
Almost 150 accounts—and thousands of projects—are
expected to use the free client portal by year-end. “Dropbox
continues to be a very dedicated partner in our success with
the portal. Internally, Dropbox products have made it even
easier for us to disseminate client information across our global
operation, and to interact with clients and their projects in a
more engaging, customer-centric way.”
His U.K. clients, Carey adds, are often more interested in
Westchester’s India Direct offerings, through which pub-
lishers engage directly with its India-
based editorial and production opera-
tions. “The five-hour time difference
with our Indian offices is probably
the major attraction. But we do offer
options that U.K. publishers can
adjust, including having design,
copyediting, indexing, and proof-
reading in the U.K., India, or the
U.S. So we are seeing clients heavily
customizing their workflows with us
according to their content or
preferences.”
As its 50th-anniversary year con-
tinues and draws to a close, the
Westchester management team is
looking at its growth plans for the
next five to 10 years. “We are eager to
see what our clients, partners, and
fellow vendors are doing as we all con-
tinue to expand and adjust what we do
to suit the changing needs of the pub-
lishing landscape,” Carey adds. ■
 Enriching Content for
Discoverability
Much has been said about discoverability and monetization,
but real-world applications remain slow and erratic
By Teri Tan

C
ontent is everywhere. In fact, there is an overabun-
dance of content out there at the click of a button
or the swipe of the screen. Now more than ever,
with digital content on the rise, it is imperative
for publishers (and their digital solutions part-
ners) to connect content and users. That means
having to understand consumer behavior, viewer engagement,
and user experience to ensure targeted and successful (read:
monetized) content dissemination.
And all this involves ensuring content—specifically articles,
books, journals, and media assets—that is meta-tagged and
enriched, made agile and adaptive for multichannel distribu-
tion, and kept future-ready for transformation and retooling
into new products through different delivery formats. That is
quite a tall order.
Ensuring Accessible Content
Content that is “born accessible” enhances discoverability and
usability, says Mike Groth, marketing director at Cenveo
Publisher Services, which has long been a champion of digital
equality.
Accessible content, for instance, plays better in the Siri and
Alexa era. Voice searching is exploding, and content with high-
quality metadata is perfectly optimized for this phenomenon,
while content that meets accessibility standards can avoid
being penalized in search rank-
ings. Groth adds that “acces-
sibility also involves adding
meaning to content via
well-versed in “born accessible” content, Groth adds, “but
journal publishers are still waking up to the notion that properly
structured and tagged content and metadata—the foundation
of accessible content—provide a better product experience,
improve rendering for multiple formats, and increase discover-
ability.” (Groth chaired a panel discussion at the SSP annual
meeting in May on the importance of accessibility in scholarly
publishing.)
Moreover, making content accessible provides a competitive
edge over other products or companies, and it protects against
having to (re-)convert static formats in the future. “The market
is large. According to the U.S. Government Accountability
Office, over 10% of students enrolled in higher education have
a disability, and this includes a large and growing number of
students with visual and cognitive impairments and print-based
disabilities,” Groth says.
Further Improving Metadata
Metadata management is key to creating better visibility,
searchability, and discoverability across the digital landscape.
“The same metadata is often used multiple times to generate
revenues,” says Vinay Kumar Singh, executive director and CEO
of Thomson Digital. He adds, “The speed of managing content
simultaneously on multiple platforms becomes essential for
making content ready for all types of users at every digital plat-
ILLUSTRATION © SIBERIANART / ISTOCK.COM

alternate text descriptions

to images and non-text
items, and semantic tag-
ging—both of which cap-
ture more discoverable
information than keyword
searches alone.”
K–12 publishers who
must comply with gov-
ernment mandates are

W W W . P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY. C O M 21
 Digital Solutions in India 2019
form. With our efficient workflow and delivery mechanism, we
can drive the speed to achieve faster reach of the content through
improved metadata management.”
Thomson Digital, and in particular DigiScape (its innovative
technology wing), offers automation in metadata management
and helps clients to build content-monetization strategies. “We
provide innovation support and technology expertise to build
solutions that can handle the business case of discoverability and
content monetization,” adds Singh, whose team is now devel-
oping intelligent usage-analytics tools that will offer data drill-
down capabilities to help publishers in further increasing their
content reach to users, and thus better monetization.
Publishers, Singh says, are experimenting with different
models of content monetization. “New technology and innova-
tion in digital media have opened newer avenues for building
various monetization models. We understand that content must
be adaptive for future use, and the same must go for monetiza-
tion strategy, which must also be flexible and nimble.”
“Our clients are making their content discoverable by
indexing it using keywords from a structured thesaurus and
providing an abstract so that the customer can make a ‘buy’
decision, and thus monetizing the content,” explains Vidur
Bhogilal, vice chairman of Lumina Datamatics. “Publishers
need to use machine learning for automated indexing and
search-engine optimization. They can also ensure that the meta-
data for their content is crisp and accurate, which is certainly a
plus.”
For one of Lumina Datamatics’ university clients, the team
captures metadata in a semiautomated fashion and ensures
100% accuracy using custom-built validators. “We are also
indexing the content with headings and subject descriptors, so
that it is discoverable and relevant to the user,” Bhogilal adds.
For another client, a content aggregator, the team indexes
approximately 400,000 articles annually so that users can find
the appropriate content from a vast collection of titles com-
prising various genres and languages.
“Existing projects can be tweaked to include semiautomated
indexing engines based on business rules,” Bhogilal says. “This
coupled with machine learning will enable us and publishers to
process high volumes of content to make it discoverable.
Publishers can also ensure that the content is high-quality and
engaging, which in itself will ensure that it is monetized by
multiple shares on social media.”
Deploying Artificial Intelligence
Discoverability is one of the best AI applications for publishers,
says Uday Majithia, assistant v-p of technology, services, and
presales at Impelsys. “AI tools can help discover characteristics
of top-ranking content and offer real-time recommendations
on how to improve content performance. Based on user
behavior, AI can make content recommendations, and based on
the interaction, it can recommend and implement campaign
strategies. Besides, AI can also be used for other marketing-
22 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y ■ A U G U S T 5 , 2 0 1 9
related activities, such as customer segmentation based on
behavior and intent, lead prioritization, sales strategy, and
retargeting.”
Semantic tagging for research content, for instance, is a
powerful method for accurate content discovery, and Impelsys’s
iPC platforms currently support semantic tagging, which is
an AI-based operation. “For discoverability, we have widgets,
a type of promotional tool that consists of smart cover art for
titles that can be embedded as banner advertisements in
social networking sites, blogs, and book-review pages.
Widgets add to the visibility of the titles across the web,”
Majithia explains.
“ViewInside is another marketing tool that we use to help
publishers showcase their titles and let the readers have a
glimpse of what’s in the book, eventually helping them to buy.
Readers can view the table of contents and share sample content
on social media and through email,” Majithia adds.
Enhancing Content for Marketing
Content plays a crucial role in marketing and reaching out to
consumers across digital touchpoints, says Subrat Mohanty,
CEO of HurixDigital. “We have identified this potential for
content marketing and built our DigiCM360 services to help
brands and companies engage with their customers on digital
platforms. Our team helps enterprises drive positive business
outcomes with DigiCM360 content-marketing solutions.”
HurixDigital combines social listening, analytics, and
insights with compelling digital content to deliver maximum
customer engagement. “Some of the biggest names in the
banking, financial-services, and insurance industry have lever-
aged DigiCM360 solutions to augment their online presence.
It is a matter of time before traditional publishers realize the
benefits of digital marketing to improve reader engagement and
enhance discoverability, which will then lead to improved mon-
etization. And when that happens, HurixDigital will be well
placed to offer publishers its content-marketing services.”
Emerging technologies can provide substantial benefits to
publishers in terms of enhanced end-user experience, competi-
tive advantage, and monetization, says Rahul Arora, CEO of
MPS. “One of our short-term priorities is to collaborate with
our customers as their trusted technology partner to help them
identify and implement the latest technology innovations that
make the most sense.”
The future of publishing, Arora adds, “will be more about
engaging, nurturing, and monetizing the end consumer. So
personalization of content is crucial, and our product-enhance-
ment initiative is focused on driving the content strategy by
using technology that can leverage audience data and recom-
mend relevant content for consumption. Another of our initia-
tives is improving the mobile experience and helping publishers
to transition into a mobile-first culture for successfully inter-
acting with, and engaging consumers in, what has become the
primary browsing environment.” ■
 Project management, production, and editorial
services for book and journal publishers.
Proudly 100% employee-owned since 2014 | westchesterpublishingservices.com

Our updated Client Portal provides secure access to your projects and real-time reporting
customized to your needs. Clients including the American Society of Civil Engineers,
Rutgers University Press, and Columbia University Press, appreciate the visibility
the Portal provides to projects that are assigned to Westchester, while still receiving the
attentive customer support they have come to know and expect over the years.

“Our authors and editors value high-quality copyediting and service. The Westchester Client
Portal, an online platform giving us real-time access to check on the status of manuscripts and
review author correspondence, is critical for us to provide the service our authors expect.”
—Angela Cochran, Managing Director and Publisher, American Society of Civil Engineers

Westchester Publishing Services continues to serve the evolving editorial and composition
requirements of our clients in the trade, academic, policy group, legal, and professional
publishing markets, providing services including:

Project management led by your choice of Book and Journal Production

a U.S. or India-based Project Manager managed in the U.S., or India Direct

</> Complimentary, Time-saving Pre-edit Customized digital assets, e-PDF/web

Microsoft Word styling, and XML Tagging PDF, XML, ePub3, and other assets

Composition services using InDesign, Copyediting, proofreading and

3B2, or LaTeX indexing services available

Contact Westchester to see how the Client Portal, along with our full range
of editorial, composition, and project management offerings can help you
condense publication schedules and reduce costs.
Info@westchesterpubsvcs.com | 203-658-6581
sales@newgen.co
www.newgen.co

Services and Solutions

• Business Solutions 10
• Content Solutions
Analytics
01
09 Integrated single platform
• Technology Solutions Collaborative issue compilation
02
• Design & Illustration 08 Article landing and auto-trigger
Alerts for risk mitigation

• Composition 03
• Manufacturing Services 07 Intelligent auto-scheduling
Shared dashboard

• Digital Marketing Solutions 06 04

Author / Editorial Office portal
Converse with external systems
• Digital Books 05
In-built mail management system

ACCESSIBILITY
INITIATIVE
Newgen can improve the accessibility of your content for
screen-reading and text-to-speech systems by tagging the
structure and the reading order of content and providing
new descriptive text for images making you compliant
with the regulations prescribed by the Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) Level AA

Alternate Text Solutions Born Accessible Consulting Digital Accessibility Audit