In the last two months, one-upmanship has pushed three Hindi newspapers to launch city specific colour supplements covering life style, fashion and soft city news, a la Delhi Times or HT City.
Dainik Jagran from the Kanpur-based Jagran Prakashan group simultaneously started Jagran City across 26 editions on May 15. Dainik Bhaskar's City Bhaskar came up in Jaipur last month where Rajasthan Patrika also launched its Metro 141 with much fanfare on May 25.
Interestingly, the three Hindi dailies are addressing a common consumer constituency -- youth and women -- through their new products.
"Lifestyle and fashion, typically covered by the English language dailies, are becoming major areas of focus for proprietors of Hindi papers as well," says a media industry observer.
Hindi newspaper promoters feel that their product must reflect the changing aspirations of the Hindi-speaking middle class with improved living standards and higher purchasing power.
Says Dainik Jagran CEO Sanjay Gupta: "To sustain itself in a competitive market a brand has to evolve with time otherwise it will be discarded by the consumer."
Bhaskar City first came up in Bhopal and Indore and has now been launched in Jaipur. Rajasthan Patrika named its city supplement after the city's code -- 141.
Says Rajasthan Patrika's director Siddharth Kothari: "Metro 141 covers lifestyle-related events and publishes articles on the social fabric of Jaipur."
Clearly, "localisation" with a tinge of glamour is the buzzword. "If one paper starts a four-page colour pullout, others have to follow in order to remain competitive," explains an industry observer.
Though newspaper marketers insist that the soft city supplements basically broaden the readership base, the fact is that the new products make good business sense.
Local advertising is growing with retail chains, departmental stores, jewellers, food joints, real estate companies, entertainment complexes and educational institutions vying with one another to promote themselves.
"We are tapping the hitherto untapped source of advertisers like small fashion designers and schools to convert non-advertisers into advertisers in supplements," says a Rajasthan Patrika executive.
The advertising market for Hindi newspapers in Delhi alone is pegged at Rs 400 crore (Rs 4 billion). It's tough to get a handle on ad revenue figures for other cities but newspaper owners are confident of mopping up local advertising.
"We will not be immediately profitable. Advertising will follow audiences," says Dainik Bhaskar director Girish Agarwal.
For the time being, the supplements mean additional cost for the newspaper companies. Each copy of the supplement costs between Re 1 and Rs 2 and is being distributed with the paper without increasing its cover price. It may take a while, but the cost will be recovered by advertising revenue.
Incidentally, the Hindi dailies are also slugging it out in the market claiming leads over each others in terms of circulation and readership.
On the basis of Indian Readership Survey, 2005 and the ABC figures, Jagran maintains that it has a readership of 1,74,74,000 and a circulation of 21,61,446 copies (21 editions) everyday as per ABC July-December 2004.
Meanwhile Girish Agarwal, director, Bhaskar Group, maintains that put together the readership of Dainik Bhaskar and Divya Bhaskar has grown by 70 lakh (7 million) readers.
It remains to be seen if the new products manage to rope in new readers and help the newspapers grow their circulation and revenues.
