Opportunities in ICM: A Media Start-Up for God!

By Verghese V Joseph –

It was in July 2017 that Indian Catholic Matters (ICM) began its baby steps and since then it has been a glorious three-year period.

The though-process behind starting ICM was that while there were good Catholic content that was primarily shared from US, Europe, Australia and so on; there was no relevant Indian Catholic content available for the discerning Indian catholic community. Another thing was that people were worried sick about the kind of content that was being shared on different Social Media platforms. Children were exposed to unverified content, pornography, abuse of different kinds, et al at an early age.

Team ICM thought, well, how about putting together good, inspiring and enriching Indian Catholic content?

The immediate challenge was how to communicate the Communicating God to today’s digital church populace? More so, Social Media being the new religion.

COVID-19 pandemic notwithstanding, Team ICM was well aware that India is an emerging region for digital development. Compared to other countries, India stands out for two reasons. One is its technology supremacy and the easy digital embrace. The second and the most important factor is that India creates and consumes a large digital content. It is instrumental in creating, manufacturing and innovating the most advanced technology – both software and hardware.

In India, however, the Church’s digital media presence is poor thanks to lack of ideas in reaching out to the laity and professionals. Going digital has not been a priority area for the Church in India and therefore, it has a duty to go digital to unite all these divided people.

Holy Father Pope Francis has reminded us about this when he said: “The digital world – the social networks that are so pervasive and readily available – dissolves borders, eliminates distances, and reduces differences.”

Also, people’s reading habits seemed to be dying down, lot of fake content and random forwards being put out, and for most Catholics, Sunday was their only touch point with the Catholic Church.

Cut to now, within a short time, ICM has grown exponentially and has become one of the leading Indian catholic websites with over 65 (and counting!) of the best Indian catholic authors, besides a global and nation-wide network of journalists writing for it.

In addition, ICM is the only one from India to be ranked 51 among Top 100 Catholic Websites in the world. Today, its reach is global and thousands of people visit the ICM on a daily basis to be spiritually enriched.

ICM’s journey wasn’t any easy considering it was self-funded and not-for-profit venture. ICM faced innumerable challenges along the way. Many were skeptical of the idea of ICM; some questioned its intent behind this venture; was it driven by commercial consideration? Who benefits from this? How is this being funded? Not to mention the technology challenges such as server overload, hacker issues, laptop short circuits, constant upgradation of technologies, etc., and building up a committed team of journalists, writers, authors across India proved daunting. Till date, ICM has stayed true to its path in providing great Indian Catholic content day in and day out, with no commercialisation angle!

The Catholic Church in India

Today the strength ICM is that they received great support from unexpected quarters, many who never have even talked to them even once over the phone.

Today, ICM has been listed on Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) website and also on the earlier Intermifica, a decree on the Media of Social Communications, solemnly promulgated by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on December 4, 1963.

The Catholic Church in India is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope and the curia in Rome.

In India, there are 28 million Christians, constituting 2.3 percent of India’s population (2011 census). Of which, 19.9 million are Catholics, which represents around 1.55% of the total population and the Catholic church is the largest Christian church within India. Despite the small percentage, India has the second largest Catholic population in Asia after the Philippines, due to India’s huge population.

The CBCI is at the service of 168 dioceses out of which 29 are Syro-Malabar, 8 are Syro-Malankara and 131 are Latin dioceses.

The Smartphone Advantage

Over the course of the years, with the changing technology and media, it was observed that more and more Indians use their smartphones.

According to the Ericsson Mobility Report India, smartphone subscriptions in India is expected to increase four-fold to 810 million users by 2021, while the total smartphone traffic is expected to grow seventeen-fold to 4.2 Exabytes (EB) per month by 2021.

According to a study by GSMA, smartphones are expected to account for two out of every three mobile connections globally by 2020. India is expected to lead in the growth of smartphone adoption globally with an estimated net addition of 350 million by year 2020.

Total number of smartphone shipments in India stood at 25.8 million units in the quarter ending December 2016, and smartphone shipments during 2016 stood at 109.1 million units, up by 5.2 per cent year-on-year. Broadband services user-base in India is expected to grow to 400 million connections by 2020.

Considering that India is set to become the second largest market for smartphones in 2018 globally, most people have a tendency to reach out for their mobile phones, first thing in the morning, and also the last thing.

An Idea Was Born

This set the ICM team thinking. How can the Social Media advantage be leveraged to set up an online initiative to highlight unique, good and great Indian Catholic content?

The next logical step was to talk to numerous people – priests, religious, and laity. ICM Team invited them to join us in creating an online resource that will make available the unique Indian catholic content.

Then reality hit them! While there were many talented writers, authors, thought leaders in this space, not many were willing to support them in this Mission.

An idea was born, and it worked much like a typical start-up. Helmed by a lay Catholic journalist, ICM prided itself as a ‘Start-Up for God’. ICM did not have any budget to start with, and no history of its people having worked together, nothing to show to the first few writers and how to reach out to readers. It went through typical start-up birth pangs.

ICM then charted out on its own and began piecing together with an aim to offer inspirational and unique Indian Catholic content, this strategy paid rich dividends in the long run.

ICM began with a focus on commissioning articles from Indian catholic priests, religious and laity and using different WhatsApp groups as a mode of content delivery as daily digests. It relied solely on strong and original content to encourage people to get onto the website, and that worked! The cutting-edge stories left readers asking for more.

Somewhere along this journey, ICM also realized the importance of bringing out the voice of Indian Catholic women through this platform, and now have some of the finest Indian Catholic women writers on board.

ICM also realized that it needs to reach globally to spread its wings and as well as bring more relevant catholic content to its readers. In its search they reached out to Aleteia – the most visited Catholic website in the world. One can find ICM stories here on Aleteia.

Aleteia and ICM came together to mutually share content cross both platforms for the benefit of a wider audience.

It also helped that ICM’s daily dose of content made its readers’ day go a bit better. Moving ahead, ICM has also launched new initiatives such as Fake Catholic News Busting service, Catholic Helpline and Prayer Request feature on its website that were useful for its readers.

One of the things ICM has decided is that it will always work according to teachings of the Catholic Church.

2020 Vision

With funds drying up in late 2019, things were beginning to look very bleak. Added to that was when in February this year Coronavirus hit the world leading to COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, the entire world has seen its businesses, manufacturing, agriculture and services industries coming to a grinding halt. Even churches were closed. But then God had different plans for ICM. Being an online venture in today’s situation helped. To its credit, ICM didn’t miss out even on a single day in updating the site with fresh content! Its great team of reporters, writers, authors, tech hands, developers, designers were able to work from their homes from different parts of India and abroad across different time zones!

Having come this far the team at ICM have become stronger in their belief that God will certainly provide for it mission to reach out and positively impact people world over.

ICM is dedicated to its craft, seeking to get the story right, and by and large its coverage of the Church has been fair and honest. More importantly, it is ever willing to report on positive developments of the Church and its institutions’ work in India, under the magisterium of the church.

Future Strategies

COVID-19 pandemic notwithstanding, the Indian populace is growing, especially the middle class segment and they have a tremendous purchasing power. The travel bug too has bit Indian Catholics, and have become more aware of spiritual journey they undertake to holy places. Also, the increasing pervasive technology world here is making people search for their meaning in life. There is indeed scope to work on these areas as well as promoting the beautiful Catholic faith.

Considering the opportunities that the country presents, ICM believes India creates quite a blip on Catholic business radar! This opportunity can pursued by working with like-minded Catholic organizations to help spread the Word of God to far ends of India and beyond for mutual benefit. ICM is keen to take the mission forward and are seeking like-minded organizations to partner with it and sees it as a mission to bring benefits to the Indian Catholic audience world over. Proceeds from future projects can go towards funding ICM’s penetration in India’s catholic community. Its editor sees multi-fold possibilities for collaboration that can benefit the community.

Team ICM has been very excited that its calling has been for the Greater Glory of the Lord. ICM welcomes you to be a part of this wonderful journey.

Would you like to help ICM realize its Mission? Please feel free to get in touch with its editor at: [email protected]