Kartik Rao Kothari

Editor, Lokeezi Magazine

Kartik has spent the past eight years covering independent design studios, artist communities and neighborhood stories across Indian metros. He edits the magazine's long-form photo essays and city guides, with a particular interest in how local craftsmanship adapts to contemporary living. His reporting has taken him from Jaipur's ceramic workshops to Bengaluru's thrift markets, always looking for the details mainstream media tends to skip.

Latest Stories From the Magazine

Fresh dispatches on urban culture, creative communities and the people shaping contemporary life across Indian metros. Each piece is reported, photographed and edited by our small team in Chennai.

All Stories Portraits City Guides Design Notes Street Style
Kartik Rao Kothari March 12, 2025 4 Comments

Notes From a Recent Planning Session

Last week we sat down with three independent publishers from Bengaluru to talk about how they decide what to cover next. The conversation kept returning to a simple problem: how do you stay consistent without becoming predictable? We mapped out their editorial calendars, looked at what actually got read, and compared that against what the team wanted to write. The notes from that session turned into a working checklist for our own planning. It is not a grand theory, just a practical look at how small magazines decide where to spend their limited time.

Swati Rupal Pandya March 5, 2025 7 Comments

A Practical Look at the First Week

When we launched the new issue format, we expected the first week to be chaotic. It was, but not in the way we predicted. The real challenge was not production, it was distribution: getting the PDF into the right hands, convincing readers to open a long piece on their phones, and figuring out which sections actually held attention. This post walks through the numbers, the reader feedback we received, and the small adjustments we made to the layout and navigation. It is a behind-the-scenes account of what worked, what did not, and what we changed before the next issue.

Aadil Dev Tank February 27, 2025 3 Comments

What Changed After the Initial Review

Three months after our first editorial review, we went back to look at the stories we had published and the ones we had shelved. The findings were uncomfortable but useful. Some of our most polished pieces underperformed, while a rough photo essay shot on a phone became the most-shared story of the quarter. This piece explains what we learned about reader preferences, how we adjusted our commissioning process, and why we now ask every contributor to answer one specific question before pitching. It is a honest look at editorial decision-making without the usual self-congratulation.

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Each month we send one letter with the stories we are working on, the studios we visited, and the neighborhoods worth a slow walk. No noise, just the edit.

Issue 04 Ceramics, cafés, and the craft of slow living A preview of the upcoming issue featuring Jaipur potters, Mumbai art cafés, and a photo essay on handloom weavers in Kutch. Field notes What we saw in Indiranagar last Sunday Street style observations from a single afternoon, plus the thrift stores locals actually recommend. Pitch us Tell us about a story we should cover We read every note. If you run a studio, a café, or a neighborhood project, we would like to hear from you.
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