Chitralekha Group turns 60 in April 2010; plans to launch new titles on automobile and for school children

The Mumbai based media company plans to launch a series of products for kids and an automobile magazine

Chitralekha Group had humble beginnings, when its flagship Gujarati magazine, Chitralekha was launched in 1950 by Vaju Kotak, a journalist, with a print run of 10,101. Today, the group has 10 titles across various genres and three languages.

The group's flagship brand, Chitralekha is a weekly in Gujarati and Marathi; Chitralekha Lifestyle offerings, including Chitralekha Lifestyle – Home, Travel and Wedding – are published in Gujarati; whereas Watch World is published in Gujarati and English. Its customised offering, Watch Couture is published in English for premium customers of a foreign bank. By The Way (BTW) is a lifestyle monthly magazine in English, which is distributed free with Chitralekha Gujarati in Mumbai and Ahmedabad.

The group is also involved in content and design syndication work for film magazines overseas and many retail magazines in the country.

As part of its 60th anniversary celebrations, the group plans to bring out a 500+ page issue in August 2010, charting the history of six decades of Chitralekha and India, written by experts and eminent personalities from various fields. The magazine will be divided into four segments – charting Chitralekha's history, the last 60 years of India, regular columns and reader reward programmes, including foreign holidays.

Also on the anvil is a three-city event in Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad, which will be supported by a multi-media campaign. The campaign, to be launched in January 2010, will be created in-house, with support from the group's creative agency, Beehive Communication.

In 2010, the group plans to come out with magazines and tabloids in Gujarati for school children. Encompassing this initiative is a 360-degree campaign with the objective of promoting the language early in schools and working with school students through events, quizzes and scholarships.

The group also plans to enter the automobile category with offerings in Chitralekha Gujarati initially; and then gradually branching out as an independent magazine. This initiative will be in association with a leading auto magazine in India.

Mitrajit Bhattacharya, president-publisher, Chitralekha Group, says "What keeps us going is our portfolio of great brands. While Chitralekha still provides us the base, distribution clout and bulk of revenues; the margins are high in special interest magazines such as Watch World and Wedding."

As per the company, Chitralekha magazine – which hits the news stands every Saturday at a cover price of Rs 15 – has a weekly circulation of over 2,40,000. The content is a mix of news, events, cultural landscape and fiction.

Chitralekha Marathi has a weekly circulation of 1,00,000 copies. Distributed along with the flagship magazine, BTW reaches over 1,65,000 homes in Mumbai and Ahmedabad. "BTW has been a runaway success since its launch. What we did with BTW was unique; it was probably the first of its kind -- an English add-on magazine with a Gujarati weekly, distributed free with Chitralekha Gujarati in the two cities every month," he adds.

Talking about the subscription drives employed by the group, Bhattacharya says, "To keep the numbers growing for a magazine is a tough job. Circulation initiatives are continuous and never ending. Chitralekha Gujarati has a great advantage of being a pull brand; 70 per cent of our copies are home delivered like newspapers, making us depend less on cash stalls or subscription sales. However, we have strong subscription drives in pockets such as Saurashtra and Kutch, where we picked up over 20,000 subscribers last year. We want to double it this year."

The group claims that the concept of serialised novels on television (daily soaps) was started by Chitralekha in 1950. "It was a precursor to the daily soaps we see now. Till date, many of our novels have been adapted on national networks. The latest is Tarak Mehta ka Ulta Chasma on SAB, which is based on a column running in Chitralekha Gujarati for 40 odd years," Bhattacharya adds.

Chitralekha is distributed in over 100 countries across the world, including Mozambique, Portugal, Ireland and New Zealand.

Chitralekha also won the maiden Media Emvies in 2001 for the unique tie-up of Chitralekha Marathi with Deshdoot, a Marathi daily from North Maharashtra; and the launch of Priyadarshini, a magazine within magazine for women. The group plans to replicate this formula for its soon-to-be-launched automobile offering as well.

Chitralekha ventured into English language publication with the launch of Watch World in 2003. The group will also launch the first-of-its-kind watch awards in India. Called Watch World Awards, the event will be launched in August 2010 and will have around 21 award categories.

About the editorial standards followed by Chitralekha Group, Maulik Kotak, chairman of the group says, "We try to uphold the strict editorial values instilled and nurtured by my father for all our publications. That has kept us going for the past six decades."