Ketkar to join Divya Marathi, Girish Kuber takes over Loksatta

Though none of the officials confirmed the happenings to Adgully, media reports reveal that the future strategies for the daily to enter Maharastra in the increasingly competitive Marathi daily market will be taken in the joint board meetings to take place from 14th of March to 16th of March 2011.

On the 21st of February Adgully had reported about Divya Marathi creating pre-entry buzz in Aurangabad. The daily will start operations from Aurangabad's Shendra MIDC and has plans to then gradually enter other markets across the state of Maharashtra.

While Lokmat alone accounts to about 20 lakhs of circulated copies in the Marathi daily market, Sakal has grown in Aurangabad by 20% in terms of circulation within the period Jul-Dec 2010 vs. Jan-Jun 2010. The current net paid average circulation of Sakal Aurangabad edition is 241,929 copies. It will be interesting to see what change in readership and circulation numbers does Divya Marathi bring in the Aurangabad market given the DB Group's marketing aggression and Ketkar's value experience in the field of journalism. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]