Hindustan's Amit Chopra on being the 2nd best

The Indian Readership Survey (IRS) Q4 data has reported growth for Hindi dailies. But what was more startling was the fact that Hindustan had pushed down Dainik Bhaskar to take the second position in the Hindi daily category by adding a good number of readers to its total readership. The daily has reported a total readership of about 35,192,000 readers.

The daily has seen consistent growth in the last seven rounds of IRS and this time around has 12 Lakh more readers than its competitor Dainik Bhaskar.

Amit Chopra, Publisher, HMVL, told Adgully, "For the past 3 years, we have been aggressively expanding our footprint, especially in the most populous state of UP. This has meant large investments in infrastructure, creation of hyper-local papers and building high quality teams. More importantly, there has been continuous endeavour to refresh and renovate our product portfolio to better meet the needs of our customers. The growth in readership is an affirmation of our strategy."

"The good thing is that have gained across all markets. Of course, UP has contributed the largest share of new readers," he added.

The daily has grown across the state of Uttar Pradesh and has added 41 lakh readers in the last nine months. Moreover in Bihar, the Hindustan added 6.5Lakh readers.

Talking about how the daily is differentiated viz-a-viz competition, Chopra added, "For nearly 75 years, Hindustan has stood for the twin values of credibility and neutrality. We continue to work hard to stay true to these values even today. In the young India of today, Hindustan as a brand endeavours to partner its readers in their journey towards progress. That pushes us to innovate all the time. We are also blessed with a great team which helps us deliver consistently across a vast area."

While signing off we asked him how will the daily take this success forward, he said, "We can only control our actions i.e. keep trying to understand and better meet the needs of our readers. If we successfully manage that, we believe rest will fall in place." | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]