Adgully Exclusive | Service to the society is our top priority: Eenadu's I Venkat

I Venkat, Director, Eenadu Group, has been associated with the company ever since its inception and has grown with the company's rising revenues and audience statistics. Sometime in 2007 he momentarily stepped back and tried to bid adieu to the organisation only to come back at the helm of its operations again.

Adgully caught up with the man to know more about his vision for the Group.

Talking about the way forward for the organisation, he says, "We are looking at basically consolidating so as to ensure that the circulation, readership and advertising revenues grow gradually. Newsprint prices are going to remain high so the bottomline is that pressure is increasing for everybody. So we have to make sure that the revenues are stable enough to support the increasing costs of newsprint."

So what about the increasing competition in the market?

Venkat humbly adds, "You have to be realistic and accept competition, competition is healthy and should be helpful in creating a growth-path. But at times it is very important to take decisions based on what is best for your organisation irrespective of what the competition is doing."

He further adds that newspaper business is very different than television business and that when a newspaper has to be launched the investments have to match the existing players' investments. "So a new competition seems off the hook for sometime," he says.

Talking about how Eenadu has revolutionalised the print industry, Venkat says, "If you look at the newspaper industry today in India most of the supplements you see in many of the well-established newspapers have all been taken off from Eenadu. Eenadu started off with its district and city newspapers way back in 1986. Besides we have been forerunners in launching newspaper for every Legislative Assembly constituency in Andhra Pradesh (AP)."

He says that the company believes that service to the society is its top priority and that the company will render these services in the most professional and accurate way.

When asked about the demarcation of advertising revenues earned by Eenadu, Venkat says more than half of the newspaper's advertising revenues come from AP within which local edition contribute atleast to half of the revenues earned within the state. "Around 55-60% at an average is earned from AP itself and national advertising contributes to around 30-35% of the revenue earnings," he adds.

While signing off, Venkat says, "We are doing a lot of on-ground activties now on themes like education, automobile, real estate etc. So every month we have more than one district where there are such activities happening. We are right now focusing on the digital part of our offering too. We will make sure that we remain where we are and move forward from there." | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]

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