First Media and Indixital Media launch exclusive partnership targeting $100M publisher engagement business

The partnership will bring First Media’s engagement technology and monetization products to publishers across India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

Published — July 28, 2026 10:52 am IST

Gurugram, Haryana, India – Business Wire India

First Media, a global media and marketing company, has appointed Indixital Media as its exclusive sales, publisher success and operations partner across India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

The partnership is already live across five of India’s leading media organizations. These publishers are using First Media’s engagement products to improve user acquisition, increase audience engagement and create more value from each website visit.

Together, First Media and Indixital Media aim to build a US$100 million Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) publisher engagement business across the region.

Partnership Details

The partnership combines First Media’s audience engagement and monetization technology, including its interactive quiz ecosystem, with Indixital Media’s publisher relationships, regional market knowledge and operational capabilities.

The companies will help publishers create more interactive content experiences, strengthen relationships with their audiences and build new revenue streams.

Industry Context

The partnership comes as publishers face growing pressure to reduce their dependence on referral traffic. Audience acquisition is becoming more expensive, while platforms continue to control how readers discover and access content.

As a result, publishers are placing greater focus on the audiences they already reach. This includes:

• Increasing time spent
• Encouraging repeat visits
• Collecting first-party audience insights
• Improving monetization

First Media and Indixital Media believe interactive content, audience intelligence and performance-led engagement products will become an important part of this shift.

Regional Expansion

As the exclusive regional partner, Indixital Media will lead:

• Commercial expansion
• Publisher onboarding
• Implementation
• Customer success
• Operational delivery

This will give publishers one regional team to manage the rollout and ongoing performance of First Media’s products.

The companies plan to expand the partnership across leading publishers in India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, with a focus on user acquisition, engagement, retention and diversified monetization.

Executive Quotes

Guy Oranim, CEO of First Media, said:

“We don’t enter markets looking for distributors. We build strategic growth platforms. Indixital brings the relationships, operational excellence and execution capabilities needed to scale First Media across one of the world’s most dynamic publishing ecosystems. Together, we’re creating a platform capable of transforming how publishers acquire, engage and monetize audiences across the region.”

Neel Kothari, CEO of Indixital Media, said:

“This is much bigger than a commercial partnership. We are building the future engagement infrastructure for publishers across India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Publishers are demanding solutions that increase engagement while creating sustainable business outcomes. Together with First Media, we intend to become the partner of choice for every major digital publisher in the region.”

Nitin Sabharwal, COO of Indixital Media, added:

“We’ve already demonstrated that the model works with some of India’s largest media companies. Our objective now is to scale aggressively. By combining First Media’s engagement technology with Indixital’s publisher ecosystem and operational capabilities, we are targeting a US$100 million ARR business while helping publishers create deeper audience relationships and long-term revenue growth.”

Jonathan Adi, CTO & CBO of First Media, commented:

“After launching our first product with India’s leading publishers, the partnership will expand, over the coming months, beyond into a wider portfolio of AI-powered engagement products, gamification, audience intelligence and publisher monetization solutions.”

About First Media

First Media is a global media and marketing company that creates content and builds technology designed to inspire action at scale. Through its portfolio of media brands, creative studios, performance marketing capabilities and audience engagement technologies, First Media reaches hundreds of millions of consumers worldwide.