MUMBAI, India The Hindustan Times started publishing a Mumbai edition Thursday, breaching the citadel of the rival Times of India in search of a share of the $180 million in print advertising generated annually by the commercial capital of India.
It is the first serious competition in Mumbai for the 167-year-old Times of India, the largest-selling English-language daily in the country. The Times dominates the Mumbai newspaper market with a circulation of 550,000 copies.
Mumbai, home to the biggest Indian companies, such as Reliance Industries and Tata Motors, has a 16 percent share of the $1.1 billion-a-year national market for print advertising, according to TAM India, a media researcher. The market may expand as companies target a younger, more literate and affluent generation of Indians joining the work force in services such as call centers and software production, said Prabha Prabhu, an advertising executive.
"Mumbai is a critical media market for most brands and advertisers," said Prabhu, executive director at the advertising agency Madison Communications. "The changing scenario in terms of demographics and lifestyle has made it a lucrative option for publishers to turn their attention to this market."
Companies are increasingly pitching their products at younger consumers to tap demand from the 540 million Indians the 2001 census estimated are below the age of 24. India, with 1.1 billion people, is the second-most-populous nation in the world after China.
Indian capital markets, including its two biggest stock exchanges, are based in Mumbai, a city of 16 million. It is also home to the movie industry known as Bollywood, which sets fashion and lifestyle trends.
"Readers in India's most prosperous, cosmopolitan and modern city, and the city I grew up in, are tired of being taken for granted," the Hindustan Times editorial director, Vir Sanghvi, said in remarks carried by agencyfaqs.com, a Web site covering the Indian media industry.
HT Media, which publishes The Hindustan Times, has invested about 500 million rupees, or $12 million, to publish its Mumbai edition, according to a prospectus the company filed in April for the sale of 6.9 million shares.
"We are targeting a circulation of anywhere up to 300,000 copies in Mumbai," said Anand Bhardwaj, HT Media marketing chief.
The Hindustan Times is the largest-selling newspaper in the capital, New Delhi, with an average daily circulation of 1.07 million copies between January and July 2004, according to the prospectus, which cited figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation, an independent assessor for the publishing industry.
The Times of India sold an average of 925,000 copies daily in the capital city during the same period, said the filing for the prospectus by HT Media, which is 15.83 percent owned by Henderson Asia Pacific Equity Partners of Britain and 7.06 percent held by Citicorp International Finance.
The Hindustan Times is encroaching on its rival's turf about a decade after The Times of India cut the price of its New Delhi edition by half, a move that ultimately helped expand the English-language newspaper market in the Indian capital. The Hindustan Times is being sold at an inaugural price of 2.50 rupees in Mumbai; The Times of India has a cover price of 4 rupees.
At month's end, The Hindustan Times and The Times of India will be joined on Mumbai newsstands by Daily News & Analysis, or DNA, which kicked off a billboard campaign across Mumbai in March with a series of images depicting people with their mouths taped shut and tag lines such as "Speak up. It's in your DNA."
DNA is owned by Diligent Media, a joint venture of Zee Telefilms, the largest listed broadcaster in India, and Dainik Bhaskar, publisher of the second-biggest Hindi-language daily newspaper in India. Diligent has booked orders for 300,000 copies of DNA, said Girish Agarwal, a director of the company.
Still, the market may not be big enough to sustain the ambitions of the new entrants, said Vinod Mehta, editor of Outlook, the second-biggest weekly news magazine in India.
The Times of India, which began as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce in 1838, has been able to retain its hold over Mumbai against rivals such as The Indian Express, The Free Press Journal, The Daily and The Indian Post. Only The Indian Express and The Free Press Journal are still publishing.
"It's very difficult to get people to change their reading habits," said Mehta, who has written a book about the city. "People are generally conservative about changing a newspaper. It's like changing your wife."
The Times of India is not threatened by the arrival of fresh competition, said Arun Arora, president of Bennett, Coleman, which owns the paper.
"We believe there is space for a second or even a third general newspaper in the city," Arora said. "We welcome competition."
The publisher has sought to broaden its appeal by starting a new tabloid-sized daily, The Mumbai Mirror, which began publishing on May 30 and is being delivered free with its flagship newspaper.
"The current run-up of launches in the English space is largely to gain control of the single largest market" for print advertising in the country, said Atul Phadnis, vice president of TAM India. "The race for the two prominent newspapers being launched will be to fill the void in Mumbai for a strong No.2 English newspaper."
The convergence of the biggest names in the Indian newspaper industry on Mumbai has come as a windfall for media professionals, said Anurag Batra, chief executive of Exchange4Media, a New Delhi-based company that owns advertising and media publications.
"I know of journalists and newspaper executives tripling their salaries," Batra said. "Given the paucity of talent and the growth in the media industry, it's quite natural that they are spoilt for choice."
