The Guardian

Mumbai, July 27:

In Nicholas Coleridge’s Paper Tigers, a sharply-written study of the world’s biggest newspapers and their owners in the early 1990s, the worldly-wise Coleridge was surprised to discover that India’s then biggest-selling English daily, the Calcutta Telegraph, employed rows of people to dial its bureaux around the country, in the hope that they might eventually get through. “Telephone lines, telexes, faxes: none are reliable,” he wrote.

Fast forward to a decade later — in the offices of DNA, India’s newest broadsheet, which launches this week in Mumbai. The frosted glass, shiny computers, cappuccino machines and modern art of its central Mumbai office are designed to project the idea of a hi-tech India far removed from Coleridge’s musings.

“There is nothing really in which we lag behind the west now,” says Girish Aggarwal, managing director of DNA, “I was in London looking at the Times recently and in terms of technology, we all have the same hardware and software. We have full colour printing presses. In the technical and management aspects we are either at par or have surpassed you.” DNA (Daily News and Analysis), is the brainchild of Aggarwal’s family newspaper empire, whose Hindi language Dainik Bhaskar sells 2.4 million copies a day, and Zee, one of India’s most successful Hindi TV networks. For both of them, English is new territory. According to DNA’s editor, Gautam Adhikari, it will be a classic liberal newspaper.

India is one market where there is room to grow. Compared with the US, where print readership was down by eight per cent in 2004, Indian newspaper readers are expected to exceed by 20 per cent of the population — of more than a billion — in the next three years. The total number of newspaper copies sold, including English-language, exceeded 142 million last year, compared with 55 million in the US.

DNA is the first national English-language newspaper to be launched in India in more than a decade. The 100 million sterling pounds venture will eventually employ 300 journalists to produce 50 colour broadsheet pages, initially in Mumbai.

Aggarwal says the reason for launching in Mumbai was simple, “it is underdeveloped as a newspaper market.” He points out that Delhi, which is comparable to Mumbai in terms of disposable income and literacy, supports two big newspapers — the Times of India and the Hindustan Times.

“In Delhi these two have a circulation of 1.4 million. In Mumbai, the Times of India edition sells just 500,000. And the Hindustan Times only decided to launch now because of us. We both realise that 3.5 million people read English in Mumbai but only 2.1 million buy English newsprint of any kind.” Both DNA and the Hindustan Times, which announced plans for a 27 million sterling pounds flotation, are hoping to break the local domination of the leading English-language daily Times of India. At stake is a growing number of advertisers and readers in a city that combines the money power of New York with the cinematic glamour of Los Angeles.

The Times of India, run by the Jain family, is a formidable competitor. The younger members of the clan took over a decade ago and transformed the paper into a marketing team’s dream, where editorial space is sold to advertisers and stories treat readers as consumers rather than citizens.

It is so successful that it claims to be the biggest-selling English-language paper in the world, with sales of 2.4 million.

In an early counter-attack against DNA, the Times of India’s parent company, Bennett Coleman, in June launched The Mumbai Mirror, an English-language daily tabloid.

It’s not hard to see why Mid Day does so well. Indian newspapers can be stuffy and written in idiosyncratic English. Last Friday, Mid Day sported the eye-catching headline, “After 8 Years, Boy Gets a Penis’’.