Images Grp to launch Progressive Grocer in India

New Delhi: The IMAGES Group today announced the launch of the Indian edition of international food & grocery speciality magazine PROGRESSIVE GROCER via a licensing arrangement with The Nielsen Company

Announcing the launch in India, Stephen Dowdell, editor-in-chief, Progressive Grocer said: "We are extremely happy to enter the exciting Indian marketplace with this speciality publication. Looking at the explosion in supermarket formats in particular and organised food retailing in general in India, PROGRESSIVE GROCER will be a critical B2B interface to build linkages between the farming community, suppliers, retail support firms, FMCG manufacturers and retailers. We will be leveraging the rich publishing experience and retailing knowledge of the IMAGES Group to take Progressive Grocer to touch every component of food and grocery retail in India."

Amitabh Taneja, editor-in-chief, IMAGES Group said: "Effecting the entry of PROGRESSIVE GROCER in India marks a new high for the IMAGES Group. We are proud to partner with The Nielsen Company, the world's leading provider of marketing information, audience measurement, and business media products and services, to bring PROGRESSIVE GROCER to India. This arrangement will enhance our aim to support and direct organised retailing in India, and will empower manufacturers, suppliers and retailers across all categories of food and grocery merchandise to develop higher efficiency and effectiveness."

PROGRESSIVE GROCER has been the voice of the food retail industry for over 80 years. Serving the largest audience in the market, Progressive Grocer's readers are top management at headquarters and top decision makers at store level. From chain supermarkets, to independent supermarkets, super centers, wholesalers and food brokers, readers rely on PROGRESSIVE GROCER for its authoritative, comprehensive, relevant and research-based editorial and news. By anticipating, reporting and interpreting important data and trends, PROGRESSIVE GROCER fulfills its mission: accelerating insight and opportunity for leading grocery retailers and accelerating brand and sales success for leading manufacturers.

The Nielsen Company is the world's leading provider of marketing information, audience measurement, and business media products and services. By delivering an unmatched combination of insights, market intelligence, advanced analytical tools, and integrated marketing solutions, Nielsen provides clients with the most complete view of their consumers and their markets.

Headquartered in New York, USA and Haarlem, The Netherlands, Nielsen operates in more than 100 countries with a global team dedicated to helping clients compete more effectively and discover opportunity with more clarity than ever before. With 42 publications, over 135 trade shows and conferences, and 185 digital products and services, Nielsen Business Media, a division of The Nielsen Company, offers insight, analysis and face-to-face contacts to help professionals better understand their markets, serve their customers and grow their businesses.

IMAGES Group is India's largest speciality multimedia organisation, which operates through a multi-channel approach encompassing media "� both print and digital, sector-specific business events and a speciality research and intelligence wing. IMAGES publishes magazines that tap niche readership markets through both B2B and B2C products that have highly distinctive content.

Over the last 14 years, IMAGES Business of Fashion has played a directional and supporting role in the evolution of branded fashion in India. IMAGES Retail's broad-based research covers movements in technology, logistics, formats, store design, retail real estate, franchising and human resource, besides reporting on directions within India's sunrise industry. FNL transfers international fashion and style trends and directions to India, and to translate the global dynamism of fashion for Indian audiences. M, launched in May 2006, has already been accepted as a men's magazine of outstanding quality by virtue of its carefully contoured content and design/production values.

IMAGES also organises the largest business and information exchange fora for the fashion and retail businesses in the Indian sub-continent and the Middle-East. IMAGES Fashion Forum (IFF) is held in January and the India Retail Forum (IRF) in September. IRF's regional extension, "The Shop", takes the event across India through region-specific platforms. IMAGES' digital medium www.indiaretailing.com is an exceptional online interface aimed at giving a wide angle view and analysis of the business of Retail in India.