Indian Express is looking for a new partner for J&K

Indian Express and The Himalayan Mail have called off their tie-up; the former is now looking for a new content and business partner for J&K

The English daily, Indian Express has scrapped its 12 year-old tie-up with the Jammu & Kashmir-based daily, The Himalayan Mail. For the time being, the J&K readers are being offered the Chandigarh edition, till the time a new franchisee is found.

Indian Express' J&K edition was available in the Valley in coordination with The Himalayan Mail since 1998. As part of the model, The Himalayan Mail was appointed the franchisee to run the edition of Indian Express in the J&K region.

The Himalayan Mail was responsible for handling the edit content of the edition. Circulation and revenue generation were also managed by the franchisee, which bore the operational expenses as well. Indian Express also has its marketing and editorial representatives in the region.

Alok Srivastava, sales and distribution head, Indian Express, says, "Due to certain reasons, the tie-up has been declared void. As of now, we are reaching out to the J&K readers through our Chandigarh facility, but we are looking for new partners for the J&K region."

He adds that the group is looking for a local partner, which has strong presence in the region and has a printing facility. Indian Express was, so far, using the printing facility of The Himalayan Mail to publish its edition in the region.

According to RS Suriyanarayanan, media director, LMG, entering into a tie-up with The Himalayan Mail was a good strategy adopted by Indian Express, but the daily couldn't utilise it to its advantage. "When entering into a new market, it is always better to tie up with some established publication in the market. It is a good way to test the waters, and once satisfied, decide if they want to have a setup in the region or not."

"In Indian Express's case, they must have done it with the same thought, but they never got significant numbers to establish their own setup. The market has not grown for them in all these years; had it grown, they would have set up their own facility within the first three-four years of the tie-up," he adds.

The J&K edition of Indian Express had eight pages of national news, selected from its bureaus spread across the country, and 12 pages of local news coverage by The Himalayan Mail.

The claimed revenue for Indian Express is more than Rs 1 crore for the Jammu region. Around 60 per cent of the revenue for the eight pages came from the national ads collected from the group's network. The Himalayan Mail pages, being a local offering, generated an estimated 65 percent of their revenue from retail ads.

As per those close to the development, the tie-up broke due to strain in the relationship between the two parties. Apparently, there were clashes regarding the claimed circulation of the edition put forward by The Himalayan Mail. The J&K edition of Indian Express is not covered by any survey and is believed to be in the range of 8,000-12,000 copies.

Arun Tyagi, vice-president, media, Reliance ADAG, says, "When The Himalayan Mail entered into a tie-up with Indian Express, they must have thought that they would get a lot of exposure and advantage through the association, but it must not have happened. The Himalayan Mail's expectations from the edition must have surpassed what Indian Express could offer them. That's why the alliance could not sustain."

He adds that such alliances don't usually work in the long run. "This kind of alliance was first started by Asian Age in Ahmedabad, when it entered into a similar franchisee model association with Sambhav Media. But it did not work out after some time. Asian Age, like Indian Express was also using Sambhav Media's printing facility, sales team, as well as content. A clash of ideologies happens in most of the cases. Companies should ideally restrict such tie-ups to content sharing only."

Another industry expert is of the opinion that though the franchise model adopted by Indian Express looked good on paper, it was not a practical model. "Such tie-ups usually lead to conflict of editorial and business interests, which ultimately affects the quality of the edition."

Indian Express Group has a similar tie-up for its Hindi daily, Jansatta's Raipur edition, and its printing is outsourced.

Since the entire J&K region is not covered by IRS (only Jammu is covered under the survey), media planners go with the Chandigarh and Haryana editions of national dailies, while reaching out to readers in J&K.