Divya Bhaskar's New York edition in May

Publication major Bhaskar Group will launch the New York edition of its Gujarati daily, Divya Bhaskar, in May.

The group had launched the second edition of Divya Bhaskar from Surat on March 28. The first edition was from Ahmedabad.

The group is planning to launch the third edition of Divya Bhaskar from Vadodara this September and an edition from Rajkot is expected to be launched by the end of this calendar year.

The group is also exploring opportunities of launching Divya Bhaskar in Gujarati from Mumbai in the next two years.

"We are finalising the format of Divya Bhaskar's New York edition. It will be in a tabloid form and dummies are being prepared in Ahmedabad. The pages of this weekly will be prepared in Ahmedabad in coordination with our bureau being set up in New York. Printing will be done in the US," Girish Agarwal, director (marketing) of Dainik Bhaskar said on Thursday.

The Surat edition of Divya Bhaskar has touched a circulation of 302,000 in the first month itself.

Agarwal said, "In Surat, we have expanded the market of Gujarati readers. We are planning the same strategy for the US edition. In North America, 60,000 to 70,000 people are reading Gujarati weeklies published by three newspaper groups."

Gujarat Samachar, Sandesh and Gujarat Times have their editions in the US and each of them sells 20,000 to 30,000 copies a week.

Divya Bhaskar is also setting up a big office in New York to co-ordinate its activities in the US. The Surat edition of Divya Bhaskar, which has a circulation of 302,000, caters to the readers in Surat, Navsari, Valsad and parts of Vapi and Daman.

The proposed Vadodara edition will reach Dangs, Narmada and Bharuch cities.

The Surat office of Bhaskar is spread over 40,000 square feet built-up area and has four machines printing 1,05,000 copies per hour.

Before launching the Surat edition, a team of Divya Bhaskar carried out surveys for 80 days in 700,000 households in the city and outskirts.

"We are stressing on the readers' involvement and that is how we could expand the market here so fast, facing competition from other established publications. We have hired consultants to add value to the publication and understand the needs of the readers," said Pradip Mallik, resident editor of Divya Bhaskar's Surat edition.

On its plans to launch a Mumbai edition, Agarwal said, "At present, we are selling around 800,000 copies of Divya Bhaskar in Gujarat including 500,000 from Ahmedabad. Our target is to sell 1.3 million copies in Gujarat in the next one year. We are exploring the possibility of a Mumbai edition, but have not decided when to launch it."

It has been learnt that Sandesh, a vernacular publication in Gujarat, is also eyeing the Mumbai market. It has five editions in Gujarat.