Most media pitches are never answered, and the reason is rarely bad luck. Indian business journalists receive dozens, sometimes hundreds, of emails a day, and the overwhelming majority are irrelevant, self-serving or lazy. If you want a reply, the honest answer is that you have to earn one: by pitching the right reporter, at the right moment, with a story that is actually about their reader rather than about you. This guide sets out exactly how to do that, drawing on how media relations works in practice with the desks at The Economic Times, Mint, YourStory, Inc42, Business Standard and the regional press that so many brands ignore.
We will cover how to research a journalist before you email them, how to write a subject line and a pitch body that survive a five-second read, when to send, how to follow up without becoming a nuisance, and the specific mistakes that get founders quietly blacklisted. If your pitches are disappearing into the void, this is the discipline that changes it.
Why most pitches get ignored
Before you fix your pitch, it helps to understand why the current one fails. Journalists do not ignore you because they are rude or gatekeeping. They ignore you because your email failed a very fast triage, and the triage is brutal for a good reason: their inbox is a firehose.
A typical business reporter is working two or three stories a day against a deadline, fielding PR blasts, reader tips, internal editorial requests and their own reporting. When your email arrives, it gets perhaps five seconds of attention before a decision: open, archive or delete. Pitches lose that decision when they are generic, when they bury the news, when they are addressed to the wrong beat, or when they ask the journalist to do work (“please find attached our press release” with no summary and a 3 MB PDF).
The mental shift that fixes almost everything is this: a pitch is not a favour you are asking for, it is a story you are offering. If the story is genuinely useful to the reporter’s readers, you are helping them do their job. If it is not, no amount of polish will save it. Good thought leadership and a genuinely newsworthy angle do more for your reply rate than any clever wording.
Research the right journalist before you write a word
The single biggest cause of ignored pitches is sending the right story to the wrong person. A reporter who covers fintech regulation will not write about your D2C skincare launch, and emailing them anyway marks you as someone who did not do the basics. Building a proper media list is the unglamorous work that separates pitches that land from pitches that vanish.
Before you email anyone, invest twenty minutes per journalist in the following.
- Read their last five to ten articles. This tells you their beat, their angle, the kinds of sources they quote, and whether they lean toward data, human stories or contrarian takes. You cannot pitch someone you have not read.
- Confirm they are still on the beat. Journalists in India move jobs and beats frequently. Pitching a reporter who left that publication eight months ago is a common and avoidable embarrassment.
- Note how they like to be contacted. Many list a preference in their bio or on X (formerly Twitter). Some prefer email, some are reachable on LinkedIn, a few are open to WhatsApp once you have a relationship. Respect it.
- Look for a hook to their recent work. If they wrote about SaaS margins last week and your story adds a data point or a counter-view, say so. Reference their piece specifically. It proves you are a reader, not a spammer.
Match the story to the outlet’s readership
Beyond the individual journalist, match the story to the publication’s audience. Inc42 and YourStory live for startup and funding narratives. The Economic Times and Business Standard want business and market relevance. Mint leans analytical and data-driven. A trade publication in your sector wants operational depth a generalist would skip. And the regional and vernacular press, in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Telugu, Kannada or Bengali, often reaches the audience that actually buys from you far more effectively than an English placement. A brand serving Tier-2 and Tier-3 India that only chases English business dailies is leaving its most persuadable readers untouched.
Craft a subject line that gets the email opened
Your subject line is the pitch for the pitch. If it does not earn the open, nothing else matters. The failure modes are predictable: vague (“Story idea”), promotional (“Revolutionary platform disrupts industry”), or all-caps desperation. Journalists have trained themselves to delete these on sight.
The subject lines that work share a few traits.
- Specific and concrete. “Indian SMEs cut logistics costs 18% using X” beats “An exciting update from our company” every time. Lead with the news, not the ego.
- Signals the story, not the sell. “Data: how Tier-2 cities drove 60% of festive D2C sales” tells a reporter there is a story here, and that you have the numbers.
- Honest. Never oversell in the subject line and underdeliver in the body. A reporter who feels tricked once will not open you again.
- Short. Many journalists read email on their phones, where long subject lines get truncated. Front-load the value in the first six or seven words.
If you have an exclusive to offer, say so plainly: “Exclusive: [company] closes [round], first to comment”. Exclusivity is one of the few levers that reliably moves a busy reporter, and we return to it below.
Write a pitch body that respects their time
Once the email is open, you have won a few more seconds. Do not waste them on a warm-up. The strongest pitches follow a tight structure that puts the news first and the company second.
The five-part structure that works
- A one-line hook. Open with the story, not “I hope this email finds you well.” State the news or the angle in a single sentence a reporter could almost use as a headline.
- Why it matters now. Tie it to a trend, a season, a regulation or a data point. Journalists write about things that are happening, not things that merely exist. If the RBI just issued a circular, a festive quarter just closed, or a new DPDP rule just took effect, that is your peg.
- The proof. One or two concrete facts, numbers or credible details that make the story real. Vague claims (“significant growth”) get deleted; specific ones (“grew from 4,000 to 22,000 paying users in eighteen months”) get read.
- What you are offering. Access to a founder for a quote, exclusive data, an interview, a customer to speak to, or first rights to the story. Make it easy to say yes.
- A short, clear close. Offer to send more, name a spokesperson, and stop. No PS, no attachments they did not ask for, no five follow-up questions.
Keep the whole thing to roughly 150 words. If a journalist has to scroll, you have already lost. Put the press release, if you have one, as a link or offer it on request rather than as an unsolicited attachment that may trip a spam filter. If you need the mechanics of the document itself, our guides on how to write a press release and press release distribution in India cover that separately; the pitch email is not the release.
Personalise, genuinely, at scale
Personalisation does not mean pasting the reporter’s first name into a template. It means the email could only have been sent to that person. One specific line referencing their recent work, tuned to their beat, is worth more than three paragraphs of flattery. If you are pitching twenty journalists, that is twenty pieces of genuine personalisation, which is precisely why serious brands either build the discipline in-house or work with a public relations team that already has the relationships and does this every day.
Time your pitch for when journalists actually read email
Timing will not save a weak story, but it can lift a good one. Indian newsroom rhythms are real, and pitching against them wastes your best material.
- Mid-morning on weekdays tends to work. Reporters have cleared the overnight backlog and are shaping the day’s stories but have not yet locked into deadline mode. Roughly 10 am to 12 pm is a reasonable window.
- Avoid late afternoon and evening, when print and digital deadlines hit and nobody has bandwidth for a new pitch.
- Avoid Monday morning and Friday evening. Mondays are inbox-clearing chaos; Friday evenings are when your email dies quietly over the weekend.
- Respect the news cycle. If a huge story is breaking in your sector, either ride it fast with genuine relevance or wait. Pitching an unrelated story into a big news day guarantees you are ignored.
The one exception that overrides all timing is genuine breaking news of your own. If you have something truly time-sensitive, send it immediately and flag the urgency honestly in the subject line.
Offer exclusives and embargoes the right way
Two tools, used correctly, dramatically raise your reply rate. Used carelessly, they burn relationships.
An exclusive means you offer the story to one journalist first, and only that journalist, for a set window. Reporters value exclusives because they get a story their competitors do not have. The rule is absolute: if you promise an exclusive, honour it. Offering the same “exclusive” to five outlets at once is the fastest way to lose every one of them permanently.
An embargo means you share information in advance on the agreement that it will not be published until a stated date and time. Embargoes let a journalist prepare a considered piece rather than a rushed one. They work only on trust: state the embargo clearly at the top of the email, confirm the reporter accepts it, and never embargo trivial news, which just irritates people. If you are coordinating a larger announcement, this is where a structured effort to get media coverage pays off, because the sequencing of exclusives, embargoes and the wider release has to be planned, not improvised.
Follow up without becoming a nuisance
Silence is not always a no. Journalists are busy, and a good story sometimes needs a nudge. The difference between a professional follow-up and harassment is discipline.
- Wait two to three working days before following up. Same-day chasing reads as needy and entitled.
- Follow up once, maybe twice, then stop. A single, polite, value-adding nudge is fine. A third and fourth email marks you as someone to block.
- Add something in the follow-up. Do not just write “did you see my email?” Offer a new data point, a fresh angle, or an offer of an interview slot. Give them a reason to reopen the conversation.
- Take the hint gracefully. No reply after two attempts is a no. Move on without a huffy final email. The relationship matters more than this one story, and reporters remember who behaves well.
- Never go over their head to their editor to complain that they ignored you. It ends the relationship instantly and travels around the newsroom.
Handled well, even a rejection is progress. A reporter who declines this story but remembers you as concise, honest and respectful is far more likely to open your next email, which is the entire long game of media relations.
Build relationships before you need them
The uncomfortable truth is that the best pitches come from people the journalist already knows. Cold pitching works, but warm pitching works far better, and warmth is built long before you have anything to sell.
Follow the journalists on your beat on LinkedIn and X. Engage with their work thoughtfully, not with empty praise. Share their articles when they are genuinely relevant to your audience. When a reporter puts out a callout for sources on a topic you know, respond fast and usefully, even when there is nothing in it for you directly. Over time, you become a known, reliable quantity: the founder who gives a clear quote on deadline and never wastes their time. That reputation is worth more than any single pitch, and it is exactly what a long-term relationship with a specialist team in your sector, whether in technology and SaaS or fintech and finance, is built to provide.
Mistakes that get you quietly blacklisted
Some errors do not just cost you this story; they cost you the relationship. Avoid these without exception.
- Mass blasting an identical email to a hundred journalists with visible CC lists or an obvious mail-merge. It signals you see them as a list, not as people.
- Following up aggressively or emotionally. Guilt-tripping a reporter for ignoring you is a guaranteed block.
- Pitching a blatant advertisement as news. If the “story” is just a product promotion with no reader value, you are wasting their time and they know it. Understanding the line between earned coverage and paid space, covered in our piece on PR versus advertising, keeps you on the right side of it.
- Getting facts, names or the outlet wrong. Addressing a Mint reporter as being from ET, or misspelling their name, ends the read instantly.
- Attaching heavy files unrequested. Big PDFs and image bundles trip spam filters and annoy people. Link, or offer on request.
- Ghosting after they say yes. If a journalist bites and asks for the founder or the data, deliver immediately. Making a reporter chase you after they agreed to cover you is unforgivable.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find a journalist’s email address in India?
Start with the publication’s own website, which often lists staff emails or a general editorial address, and check the reporter’s byline page, LinkedIn and X bio, where many share a contact. Most Indian outlets use a consistent email format, so once you know one, you can often infer others. Verify before sending, and never buy scraped, unverified lists, which are outdated and damage your sender reputation. Building and maintaining an accurate contact list is a core part of professional media relations.
What is the ideal length for a media pitch?
Aim for around 150 words in the body, structured so the news comes first, the proof second, and your offer third. A journalist should be able to grasp the story in a five-second scan without scrolling. If you cannot explain why the story matters in a few tight sentences, the story is not yet ready to pitch. Save the detail for the follow-up or the release you offer on request.
How many times should I follow up on a pitch?
Once, or at most twice, with a gap of two to three working days each time, and always add something of value rather than simply asking whether they saw your email. After two unanswered follow-ups, treat it as a polite no and move on gracefully. Chasing further marks you as a nuisance and risks a permanent block, which costs you far more than one missed story.
Should I pitch regional and vernacular media in India?
Almost always yes. For a very large share of Indian audiences, a story in a Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Telugu or Bengali outlet reaches the people who actually make buying decisions more effectively than an English placement. Regional and vernacular press often carries greater local trust, and pitching it in the appropriate language, or at least acknowledging the local context, dramatically improves your reply rate. Treating regional media as second-tier is a common and costly mistake.
Is it better to pitch by email, LinkedIn or WhatsApp?
Email remains the default and safest channel for a cold pitch to an Indian journalist, because it is searchable, non-intrusive and easy to act on. LinkedIn works well for a warm approach once you have engaged with a reporter’s work. WhatsApp should be reserved for journalists you already have a relationship with and who have signalled they are open to it. Match the channel to the relationship, and when in doubt, use email.
Great pitching is a discipline, and it compounds: every well-handled email builds a relationship that makes the next story easier to place. If you would rather work with a team that already knows the reporters on your beat and pitches them the right story at the right time, contact us to talk to our public relations team about a media relations programme built on real relationships and genuinely newsworthy stories.