Haribhoomi website goes live in January

Hindi daily, Haribhoomi will upgrade its website, which will go live next month. Though the site for the daily has been in existence since 2005; it only provided the electronic edition of the paper so far.

"Our focus, till now, was to establish the paper, expand its reach and put a network of reporters in place. Having reached a considerable size, we felt it was time to go for a live website," says Dr Kulbir Chhikara, group editor, Haribhoomi.

Like the paper, the website will not find the going easy, as other Hindi newspapers already have well-established websites. Dainik Jagran has a website with Yahoo, called Yahoo Jagran - which has approximately 1 million unique visitors per month, as per Vizisense data. Dainik Bhaskar's portal comes next, with approximately 228,000 unique visitors per month.

Web portals currently contribute a small portion to the overall revenues of newspapers. But publishers feel it is important to be on that platform. "Even if revenues are not coming in now, it is important to be able to reach the people through this medium. In so far as the popularity is concerned, it will depend on how frequently one updates the website," says Chhikara.

Haribhoomi started as a weekly newspaper from Rohtak in 1996 and became a daily the following year. Today, it has presence in Haryana, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi. As per the latest round of the Indian Readership Survey, it had a total readership (TR) of 38.61 lakh and an average issue readership (AIR) of 12.77 lakh. Going by AIR, it is the tenth largest Hindi daily in the country. While TR includes any reader who has read any of the last six issues, AIR includes any reader who has read the last issue of a publication.