How Moneycontrol Pro earned as many subscribers as Financial Times, Dow Jones’ Barron’s and China’s Ciaxin

Moneycontrol Pro, the subscription service from Network18’s Moneycontrol, reached a significant milestone in October by surpassing 1 million paying subscribers. This achievement places it alongside global giants, such as British daily Financial Times, American publication Barron’s, and China’s Ciaxin. In the same month, Moneycontrol also crossed 10 crore unique visitors, reinforcing its leadership in financial journalism.

Javed Sayed, chief content and strategy officer, Moneycontrol, told afaqs! that these milestones can be attributed to the platform's two-pronged strategy: catering to its paying subscribers with premium content through MC Pro while expanding its free traffic base.

“For our paying subscribers, we focus on continuously adding value to enhance their experience. At the same time, we aim to simultaneously grow overall traffic, recognising the vast potential of India’s large, diverse audience. For non-paying users, we leverage this traffic to drive ad revenue, which is also growing steadily. This dual approach is helping us effectively serve both paying and non-paying audiences while strengthening our revenue streams,” Sayed explains.

Driving value for subscribers

Moneycontrol Pro has cemented its position as India’s largest news subscription platform and is now among the top 15 digital subscription platforms worldwide. Its value proposition lies in empowering equity investors with actionable insights and cutting-edge tools.

For subscribers, Moneycontrol Pro offers a suite of features such as ‘Expert Edge’ with daily trading calls and weekly investment ideas; ‘Trade Like a Pro’ with technicals, ratings and trends; ‘Spot the Winner’ with over 200 powerful stock scanners; ‘Deep Dive’ with quant-based insights and ‘Track Holdings’, which helps users follow India’s leading investors with big shark portfolios. 

Additionally, Moneycontrol Pro is supported by a team of expert research analysts covering 270 major Indian companies across 25 sectors. 

“Moneycontrol Pro stands out as a unique product with no true comparable in the market. While some competitors focus primarily on delivering news, we offer a comprehensive "News Plus Plus" package. This robust and evolving offering has been key to our consistent growth in subscribers, adding users at a rapid pace over the years,” says Sayed.

He adds that in the subscription landscape, success hinges on making a clear promise to subscribers and consistently delivering on it. 

“In the subscription space, content is undeniably king. Despite a challenging media landscape, achieving one million paying subscribers in a market like India is a remarkable feat. This success is a testament to Moneycontrol's credibility and its ability to deliver relevant market intelligence, analysis, and insights to investors,” says Sayed.

A balanced growth approach

What sets Moneycontrol Pro apart is that it goes beyond simply delivering news. It offers everything its audience needs in one place—a comprehensive package of analysis, insights, tools, and data. "This holistic approach is key to the strong response it continues to receive.” 

While serving its premium audience, Moneycontrol has also worked on broadening its scope to attract non-paying users. Over the past year, the platform strengthened its core content in markets, personal finance, startups, and corporate business while diversifying into politics, sports, and current affairs.

“This expansion has transformed Moneycontrol into a more comprehensive business and news platform. This balanced approach—deepening our expertise and broadening our scope—has proven highly effective,” says Sayed.

Staying ahead in a crowded market

Despite competition from finfluencers and numerous digital distractions, Moneycontrol’s engagement remains exceptionally high. The site records an average of 10 minutes per user session, significantly higher than the typical one-minute engagement on other news platforms. Moneycontrol Pro is estimated to have an even higher engagement time, according to Sayed. 

With over three decades of experience as a journalist, a considerable amount of which was spent in print media, Sayed says the biggest challenge today is that readers have countless options competing for their attention—not just from news outlets but from entirely different distractions, like games.

For example, a US newspaper once identified Angry Birds as a competitive threat because people were choosing to play the game instead of consuming news.

“For financial journalism, the key challenge is keeping readers meaningfully engaged. Moneycontrol excels here by providing actionable information that helps users make informed decisions. We deliver real value to our readers and investors—by offering content that is relevant and directly beneficial,” Sayed says.

Another significant challenge, he adds, comes from mobile screens. Therefore, the focus now is on creating content and presenting it in formats that resonate with today’s digital-first readers.

Unlike other players, Moneycontrol Pro does not rely on finfluencers for content creation but focuses on its core strength: delivering comprehensive insights through diverse formats like videos and podcasts.

“We continuously explore ways to strengthen our offerings. Beyond our core products, we are focused on enhancing formats such as video and podcasts. While we evolve, we remain fully committed to our core mission and strengths.” 

With its remarkable subscriber growth and unmatched audience engagement, Moneycontrol Pro has carved a niche for itself, rivalling global leaders in financial journalism while redefining the subscription model in India.