By Srabana Lahiri
(with inputs from Saloni Dutta)
As Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd brings the group’s language newspapers business under the ‘Bennett Languages’ banner, Ravi Dhariwal, CEO of BCCL, Shrijeet Mishra, COO, Arunabh Das Sharma, President and Rahul Kansal, Executive President, Brand Function talk of focus areas for the Times Group, potential of the vernacular market, having a robust revenue base and keeping pace with the demanding consumer
What is Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd’s latest initiative – unifying its regional language publications under the ‘Bennett Languages’ banner - expected to achieve for BCCL? With the Group’s strong accent on profitability, ‘Bennett Languages’ is no doubt aimed at making the most of growth that is rapidly shifting to small town India, strengthening a media vertical that offers more languages than most, but is yet to conquer the market in terms of numbers. “Our English newspapers have a good projection, but it’s largely in metros.
In smaller cities, typically, it’s the language brands which take bulk of the advertising. We want to expand our business to these cities through languages so that there too we have a very robust offering for our advertiser,” says Ravi Dhariwal, Executive Director and CEO of BCCL, adding that the objective is “to be as strong in languages as we are in English.”
There are five brands under the Bennett Languages banner - NavBharat Times (Hindi), Maharashtra Times (Marathi), Vijay Karnataka (Kannada), Ei Samay (Bengali) and NavGujarat Samay (Gujarati) – but Dhariwal is certain that it won’t remain at five for long.
“We expect to launch more languages but these are five that we have built up in the last four to five years, and we expect these to grow much faster than the rest of our businesses. We also expect that when we go to a town, a combination of Times of India, Economic Times and our language offering will be an irresistible option for the advertiser,” he adds.
In the overall scheme of things at BCCL, the language business has gained strategic importance and is seen to be the No. 2 driver for growth, next only to the mother brand TOI. “It’s one of our top two strategies,” confirms Dhariwal, “Eventually it will enormously add to our profitability. We want to increase our share of the metro markets where we are already strong and be the fastest growing among language newspapers. These will contribute very significantly to overall BCCL growth and profitability.”
“About 30% of our circulation comes from languages. And we are the third largest player in advertising revenue already behind Bhaskar and Jagran, and the fastest growing in the last one year – we have grown at 20% plus in languages, Dainik Bhaskar grew by about 17% last year, Hindustan grew by 15% and Jagran at 14%,” says Shrijeet Mishra, Executive Director & COO, BCCL, explaining the traction gained from going into a market with a language newspaper as well as the English TOI – a combination that ensures higher circulation than even the No.1 language daily there.
THE READER PROFILE
The reader profile in Tier II and Tier III cities is now seen to be a premium profile, modern and educated and BCCL brands claim there is a much larger percentage of SEC AB in their readership compared to competitors. “Nav Bharat Times has 71% SEC AB readership, while brands like Jagran, Bhaskar and Hindustan are in the 30s. It is the same story with Vijay Karnataka, Ei Samay, Maharashtra Times, etc. We are after the premium, more advertising relevant and the higher educated reader. That is our differentiation,” says Dhariwal.
BCCL has been using technology transfer from large cities to small cities to successfully bring about innovation in new markets. Tier II or Tier III launches of language editions and English newspapers in those cities get to see the same innovations that delight advertisers. “We are able to not just enable an advertiser to get better value out of the advertising, but the most important thing is that a reader is surprised and is able to take notice. For example, when we launched in Nagpur, which is called the orange city, we launched our paper with an orange fragrance. People say paper is a static medium, it is not - what is static is your mind. Today, we achieve interactivity through different mediums and the Alive app is a very interesting way of doing it,” observes Mishra.
REVENUES FROM LANGUAGE
BCCL is looking to gain revenues from advertisers who can now reach out to several language audiences at the same time along with TOI, the market-leading English language daily. “We already have a fairly robust business which is growing rapidly. Though we are not necessarily trying to go out and sell packages, let’s say a Kolkata advertiser whose product is sold only in that city earlier could buy just TOI/ET - now the same advertiser can also reach out to the Bengali audience. Most importantly, a lot of these have dual readership and that is where we really score,” says Arunabh Das Sharma, Executive Director & President, BCCL, who heads the revenue function of the Group.
The kind of advertisers for language newspapers and which categories are dominant varies from market to market. “Typically, retail brands look at the market carefully, FMCG is a national advertiser which looks at both English and languages, Automobile looks at both English and languages. Retail, education, healthcare, real estate – these look at languages and English together but for us, these are all local businesses. Then there are national advertisers like Automobile, FMCG and Telecom who are available everywhere and therefore for them, looking at the top languages and the top markets along with English is very important,” shares Das Sharma.
But do hyper-local editions of the mother brand cannibalize language newspapers’ revenues? “I don’t believe that we are cannibalizing at all,” says Das Sharma, adding that the overall strategy is to have a very strong local footprint aggregated to a very strong national footprint. Some advertisers buy nationally and look at deeper penetration while local advertisers do their share of business in that locality or city or State as Print continues to be the largest medium in India, still bigger than TV. The exponential growth of Digital too does not seem to affect advertising revenues in Print - Digital is about 6% of the total market while Print is at 40-42% of the market.
LEVERAGING STRENGTHS
BCCL’s language business is a separate business vertical, with a brand management team headed by Vice-President Kaustuv Chatterjee. There is a lot of synergy derived across language editions, in terms of content-sharing. So, if a Bengali editor goes to Rio for the World Cup, he files not just in Bengali, but in English too and that is subsequently translated and used by others. Or Navbharat Times may file a story in Hindi, not just for themselves, but for everybody else. However, this synergy is only among the language brands, while other Group publications such as the Mirrors, TOI and ET editions compete with one another.
“The language brands don’t compete with one another simply because a person who reads Gujarati is not likely to read Bengali or Marathi,” adds Kansal, reiterating that a separate entity called Bennett Languages is to let the world know BCCL’s seriousness about growing its language business.
Meanwhile, we don’t find a single language brand from the Bennett Languages bouquet mentioned in the IRS data released in January this year, with the exception of Navbharat Times (No. 9 among Hindi dailies). But then, the very methodology of IRS data management is under question, and the industry awaits a solution to that.
(Transcription credits: Simran Sabherwal & Henna Achhpal)
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