Devesh Gupta
Media

TOI enters Gujarati market

The TOI Group has launched a Gujarati daily titled NavGujarat Samay from Ahmedabad.

After venturing into Hindi, Kannada, Marathi and Bengali languages, the TOI Group has now entered the Gujarati language space with its new daily, NavGujarat Samay, starting today.

TOI enters Gujarati market
TOI enters Gujarati market
Priced at Rs 3, the paper is the fourth language paper from the stable of BCCL Group after NavBharat Times, Maharashtra Times and Ei Samay. The 24-page daily is currently being offered to the people at a price of Rs 100 for the first five months.

The launch comes on the heels of a slew of successful launches like Ei Samay in Kolkata, seven new editions of Maharashtra Times (Pune, Aurangabad, Nagpur, Nasik, Kolhapur, Jalgaon and Ahmednagar) and one new edition of NavBharat Times (Lucknow) in the last couple of years.

"The approach of the new paper will be towards the younger, fresher and progressive Gujarati reader and it will act like a window to their progress and opportunity. The paper will offer them content in sports, entertainment, news, technology and advertising supplements. Business news will be an important aspect of the newspaper as Gujarati people are extremely entrepreneurial by nature and love to keep abreast with the latest happenings in the world of business," says Rahul Kansal, executive president, The Times Group.

He adds that the group now needs to stabilise in the Gujarati language market, expand its footprint and take it to its conclusion.

Like NavBharat Times, NavGujarat Samay will also have two front pages. The paper claims to offer differentiated advertising supplements with reader interactivity.

Speaking on the idea of launching a Gujarati language daily, Kansal says, "As a group, we are expanding ourselves in the language space. In a year of the launch of the Bengali paper (Ei Samay), we have gone up from the price of Rs 1 to Rs 3.50. Our Lucknow launch of NBT has also been extremely successful and we look forward to other markets in future. The success of our language papers has been extremely encouraging."

The group will simultaneously launch the website for the paper, www.navgujaratsamay.com. The Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/NavGujaratSamay, has also been created.

TOI claims the print ad market size of Gujarat is about Rs 500 crore.

NavGujarat Samay will face competition from Divya Bhaskar, Sandesh, Gujarat Samachar and others.

BCCL had initiated a campaign to announce the launch of the Gujarati daily, titled 'Time to Fly, Time for NavGujarat Samay'. The media mix included print, outdoor and digital.

It also released regular advertisements in TOI Ahmedabad edition, along with several billboards at key locations across Ahmedabad. The launch was also promoted on its social media pages.

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