More than 35 distinguished speakers from leading news media companies around the globe will share ideas at the upcoming 25th annual WAN-Ifra India conference.

The silver jubilee event is being held at the ITC Grand Chola hotel in Chennai from September 13-14.

The annual meeting point of news publishers in South Asia, it includes two parallel conference tracks, learning workshops, presentation of the South Asian Digital Media Awards, a plant visit and expo. For the first time, the World Printers Forum South Asia Summit is being launched in conjunction with the conference.

The conference theme 'Driving the media business into future' will be underlined with presentations from leading editors and media executives on topics including journalism, fake news, artificial intelligence, readership development through big data, printing in the digital era, operational efficiency and cost reduction in newspaper printing plants, as well as high value products, automated distribution systems and optimised paper handling.

The list of speakers includes The Street chief executive David Callaway, and Shadi Rahimi, a senior producer with Al Jazeera USA, Rheinische Post AdLog managing director Michael Kiesswetter, and Bella Hurrell who is an assistant editor at BBC News (UK), and from India editor of The Hindu Mukund Padmanabhan and Basant Rathore, who is strategic planning senior vice president for brand and business development at Jagran Group.

Taking part in a panel discussion on the future of the media business will be Pawan Agarwal (deputy managing director, DB Corp), Rajiv Lochan (managing director and chief executive of Kasturi & Sons), and Rajiv Verma (chief executive of HT Media), with chair Thomas Jacob, who is chief operating officer of WAN-Ifra.

With the South Asian Digital Media Awards will come presentations by winners in two of the ten categories, who will talk about their work.

Registration to the conference is now open with an early bird offer, valid until August 11. Register at www.wan-ifra.org/india2017 or call +91.44.4211 2893 or email infoindia@wan-ifra.org