Associated with 'courage' and 'the naked truth', Tehelka has made a resounding comeback. In 2001, the Tehelka news portal was put out of business for exposing corruption in high places in a sting operation on arms deals. Reborn almost three years later as a weekly newspaper, Tehelka has made a mark on the strength of its investigative stories, reaching a print run of 100,000 within one year of its launch in January 2004.
The newspaper has a current circulation of 95,000 that is expected to touch 1.5 lakh by September 2005, the company has said in a press release, and also claiming that it is the fastest growing English weekly.
The citywise dispersion of Tehelka, in terms of North, East, West, South, is around 30 per cent while Kolkata accounts for around eight per cent. Through an in-house research survey, readership per copy has been estimated at six and time spent per copy is about 2.5 hours spread over 3-4 sittings in a week.
In an effort to maintain its editorial independence and be true to its mandate of being a "people's paper", Tehelka is funded almost entirely through subscriptions from concerned citizens. The Tehelka website too is seeing an increase in the number of subscribers and has become one of the most read news websites in the country.
Founder-Editor Tarun J Tejpal was named by AsiaWeek as being among the 50 most powerful communicators in the Asian region. BusinessWeek rated him as one of the 50 top leaders at the forefront of change in the Asian region.
In line with its values of responsible living and good citizenship, Tehelka has launched Tehelka Social Responsibility Initiative - iPartner School Workshops. The Tehelka Lecture Series has also been launched with the inaugural lecture delivered by Sir V.S. Naipaul in Bangalore.
Tehelka is also attempting to reach out to people through music. Rabbi Shergill, a recent singing sensation, has been discovered, promoted and launched by Tehelka. The first album of Rabbi has broken all records with sales of over one lakh copies.
