Dainik Jagran unveils mobile news site in Hindi

Jagran Prakashan plans to launch four or five more mobile portals in the near future. Its classified ads site, Khojle.in, will be available soon as a mobile site

Jagran Prakashan, publishers of the daily, Dainik Jagran, has launched a Hindi news mobile portal, Wap.Jagran.com. The portal already offers national, international, sports, business and breaking news, but Jagran now wants to use the location based targeting power of mobiles to offer district-level news to people across the country.

The portal has been developed by J9 Ventures, the enterprise division of Jagran Prakashan. Speaking to afaqs!, Rajeev Dhal, country head, J9 Ventures, says, “It is quite obvious that there is a dearth of Hindi news content in the mobile space and there are a number of consumers in India who want to access Hindi news content on their mobiles. Our Hindi news portal aims to tap that market.”

Dainik Jagran unveils mobile news site in Hindi

Dhal adds, “News will remain the primary focus of the mobile portal. We have plans to introduce citizen journalism on the mobile site and enable our users to upload photos and news on the site. We will offer localised news content as well. This implies that users can opt for news related to their districts. News from more than 200 districts will be integrated and made available to users.”

Apart from the news content, other features such as cricket scores, school results and jokes will be added soon. Entertainment and spiritual wallpapers will also be available for free download on the site.

What about monetisation? Dhal says, “Although the portal is still in its nascent stage, it will be monetised primarily through advertisements. Revenue will be earned mainly through response or return on investment driven ads by banking and financial institutions.”

He adds, “We are talking to some mobile ad networks in India who will represent us and do ad sales for our mobile news portal.”

The company plans to tie up with the various mobile operators to promote the site among subscribers on the mobile portals of the operators. Banner ads of the Jagran mobile portal will be put up on the mobile sites of the operators. The company will also use the services of different mobile ad networks to run its banner ads to promote the portal across different mobile sites in India.

Dhal hints that J9 Ventures is working to launch another four or five mobile portals in the near future, which will include a classified ads site and an entertainment and a gaming related mobile portal. The classified ads mobile site will be the mobile version of Khojle.in, a classified advertising website owned by the group.

“After the launch of the Hindi news mobile portal, we will soon release a classified ads mobile portal, which will allow mobile users to browse through the various classified ads posted on the portal,” says Dhal. He refuses to divulge further details about the ads portal. Currently, the web version of Khojle.in only allows users to search or post classified ads through SMSes.

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