New FIPP member spotlight: Groupe Velan Média

New FIPP member Groupe Velan Média is a conglomerate of specialised and digital media job websites. To connect businesses with the best job-seeker candidates, the Canadian company has built high-performance, state-of-the-art platforms in the legal, digital, administrative, automotive and engineering fields.

Groupe Velan Média is the parent company of legal publication Droit-inc and Autosphere, a B2B magazine and news site for the automotive industry, as well as job boards across different sectors, including Espressojobs.com and Secrétaire-inc.

GVM is also made up of a team of experienced recruiters who specialise in the industries the group serves, with a wide range of comprehensive recruiting and headhunting services.

We caught up with René Lewandowski, CEO of Groupe Velan Média and Editor-in-Chief of Droit-inc, to talk about the past success and future plans of the company.

What are your goals for Groupe Velan Média over the next few years? How would you like to see the group evolve? 

We have a plan to grow by acquisitions in media and job boards business, mainly in the US and France. We are looking for a structuring deal of about 10-20m. 

For those who are part of the law profession in Quebec, Droit-inc seems to be an invaluable source of information. How much has the company added to the local law community? 

A lot! Our penetration rate is astonishing. Rare are the lawyers in Quebec who don’t know us. And we’re working on a new platform that should be out at the end of the summer.

How do you prioritise the content on your website? Is it always topical? 

We’re mainly a news site so we cover the daily legal news in Quebec. The writing’s not technical, we don’t do that. We mainly cover the movements of lawyers, the human side of the profession and the scoops!

You have a background in journalism having worked for Le Devoir, Le Soleil and others. How did you end up launching a platform for the legal community? 

In 2004, I was the editor-in-chief of a business magazine when I was approach to lead a new legal magazine in Quebec. The venture lasted only two years, but I loved the experience, so I launched Droit-inc a couple of years later.

You say on the Droit-inc website: “Law and journalism can get along very well”. Why do you think that is?

Because I feel that, at the end of the day, we sell the same thing: information. Except that lawyers get paid much more!

What is next for Velan Media in from a content point of view?

Well, I feel the way that we deliver the news has to adapt. We mainly write articles, but I think we must do more, like videos for instance.