Adgully Exclusive | Sakshi has seen a stupendous growth among the youth: Sakshi's P Sridhar

The IRS Q4 2010 data released on the 14th of March reported a growth for Telugu dailies and the category added around 509,000 readers. However the most surprising piece of data was that amongst the top three dailies in the category only Sakshi reported growth in number with a total readership of 13,474,000. On the other hand Eenadu and Andhra Jyothi have lost around 289,000 and 319,000 readers respectively.

As Sakshi completes three years after starting its operations we caught up with P.Sridhar, Chief General Manager, Sakshi, to know more about the daily's ever growing readership numbers.

Sakshi Telugu daily has consistently grown since its launch in 2008. Sridhar says readers who came out of curiosity remained loyal due to various factors and it has maintained its steady growth path. Moreover, Sakshi continues to give the reader freshness and retains reader interest every day.

He further adds, "We feel other dailies may have given up trying to catch up with us. Our solid growth can be summed up in two words-- Reader Loyalty. Sakshi unfolded its success story in a spectacular fashion three years ago with record breaking launch to an eager and expectant Telugu readers who were quite fed up with the staid dailies. The response was much more than expected as the daily proved a trendsetter in newspaper publishing with several firsts like international design, reader friendly navigation, all pages in full colour and special supplements directed to specific segments like youth, women, children. Sakshi had shaken up the newspaper world well and truly."

"Further, the changing political alignments give an opportunity to Sakshi to gather more readers as it continues to fight for the common people and gives a voice to their hopes and problems. Sakshi is well established in the metros and larger towns, it is penetrating deeper into the interiors of Andhra Pradesh. The increase in overall readership and circulation that Sakshi is successfully gaining ground with all age groups, even as its contemporaries are steadily losing their reader base," he adds.

Sridhar says Sakshi is different from the other dailies in terms of news dissemination, it has always strived to engage the reader with full information and focus on all the other aspects of the story. "Some people used to grind their own axes and focus on entirely different issues, and the readers resented that. Sakshi is still growing stronger in terms of readers who are extremely satisfied with it. Even the attraction of the English newspaper is waning among this age group," he points out.

Sakshi seen a stupendous growth amongst the young audience, while the other dailies have seen de-growth in these categories.

Sridhar adds, "We have always planned initiatives to catch the youth which is highly ambitious and forward looking. We will continue initiatives like education fairs, etc. Even as new trends unveil at the drop of a hat, young people still want to read the printed message. We are working at reaching the working adults as the sole newspaper of choice."

While signing off Sridhar says, "You say that Sakshi has achieved spectacular success, but it has always been a steady and significant growth. True we face problems like other dailies do, but we are confident in our product and we have faith in our readers. That is a big plus point for us." | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]