Fast Company to launch MENA website this month

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DUBAI: Fast Company magazine will launch a website for the Middle East and North Africa region this month, with a print edition scheduled for May.

The brand announced last year that it had signed a new foreign licensee, Vibe Projects, for the MENA region.

As part of the regional foray, Fast Company will also launch lists and awards, such as Most Creative People in Business, later in the year. The people featured in the list will be honored at a gala awards night.

Ravi Raman, publisher of Fast Company, told Arab News: “Fast Company’s arrival to the Middle East reinforces the role of technology and innovation in a changing world.”

The print edition will be released on a quarterly basis and will coincide with “key experiential events” like Most Creative People in Business and Most Innovative Companies and World Changing Ideas, said Raman.

Fast Company Middle East’s first office is in the UAE. It plans to open bureaus in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt, in addition to appointing correspondents and reporters to cover stories from countries including Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Yemen, Raman added.

The website can be accessed free of charge for an initial period of six months, after which Fast Company will introduce a metered subscription — a pricing model where readers are charged based on their consumption. A certain amount of articles will remain free every month.

“During the launch phase, readers would get full access only after registering,” said Raman, adding that the focus of Fast Company is to acquire “first-party data for a deeper understanding of our consumer behavior.”

The print edition will be available via several subscription options, including “digital+,” corporate subscriptions and auto-add when applying for any of Fast Company’s lists.

“For example, when a company files a nomination for any of our lists, they would be presented the option of adding a print subscription,” Raman said.

The print editions cannot be purchased in stores, since “we want to make sure returns and unsold copies are minimized,” he added.

Fast Company is set to an announce an editor-in-chief for the region.

Raman said: “The region is being propelled by powerful societal shifts, and we aim to become a clarion call heralding a new era of business for a new generation of business leaders.”