Indian language newspapers' first family (from left): Pawan Agarwal (Director, Dainik Bhaskar), Sudhir Agarwal (Managing Director), Ramesh Agarwal (Chairman), and Girish Agarwal (Director, Marketing)

If anything, the Rs 1,168-crore (revenue from newspaper business, 2002-03: Rs 256-crore) Bhopal-based Dainik Bhaskar group should become a case study in management schools on how to institutionalise success. And that too in the country's notoriously fickle, and often unprofessional and unprofitable, language newspaper market.

Over the past 20 years, starting with Indore, the third edition (after Bhopal and Gwalior) of its eponymous Hindi-language newspaper Dainik Bhaskar (DB), the group launched 17 more editions in quick succession to become the country's largest read newspaper with 1.57-crore readers, according to National Readership Survey (NRS), 2003. And a highly profitable one at that (see Dainik Bhaskar: The Story So Far...). So much so that all the 20-odd DB editions, some just two years old, are not just market leaders, but in the black too!

"Before committing to a market I look at three things: size of the advertising market, the gap in the market to quickly get to number two slot at the least, and most importantly, existing market leader's reader friendliness," says Ramesh Chandra Agarwal, the 61-year-old Chairman of the group. In DB speak what it means is simply this: enter ad-rich and uncluttered markets such as Rajasthan, Haryana, and Gujarat and avoid committing too much to already saturated, cut-throat or ad-dry markets in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, and Himachal Pradesh.

But could it be just this which gives his newspaper business success in market after market, a 75 per cent projected sales growth in 2003-04 (to Rs 448-crore) even when the advertising market, the back-bone of any newspaper business, grew by just over 10 per cent?

"Today our biggest strength is the ability to understand the reader and the market very well," says Sudhir Agarwal, Managing Director. And that marketing can help open doors. For that has been the story since 1996 when the group launched DB in Jaipur, Rajasthan, and dislodged an entrenched competitor, Rajasthan Patrika, virtually overnight! What also helped is that none of the big national media houses ever considered a language newspaper as core to their empire. By the time they woke up to the opportunity, it was too late; DB had virtually discovered and monopolised a virtual gold mine. "Last year, one of the country's biggest print companies wanted to partner us in a venture that would have bunched all their language titles with ours. We said no, for their papers do not have much reader strength and moreover we did not want to lose our identity under a bigger banner," adds Agarwal Sr.

The company meticulously plans how it enters a reader's house, the way it asks questions and books orders

Combining a smart strategy of self-styled mass market surveys that not only help custom-make the newspaper to every individual market need but even pre-book orders with low entry-level cover pricing, DB prised open market after market, and in no time dominated them. From Jaipur in 1996 to Ajmer, Jodhpur, and Bikaner the following year to Chandigarh, Panipat, and Hissar in 2000 to, finally in June 2003, its first non-Hindi foray with Gujarati-language Divya Bhaskar in Ahmedabad.

The scope of these DB surveys needs mention here, for these aren't sample surveys, but all-inclusive ones amongst the target market. Nearly two lakh households were covered in the first mass survey by DB in Jaipur, 12-lakh ones in Ahmedabad, and 7.4-lakh ones for Divya Bhaskar's Surat launch later this month.

"Our surveys are not mere consumer research. For that you need to cover just 3-4 per cent of your target audience. With a mass-based survey you get mass brand awareness and mass involvement, and that's true expansion of the market," says Ramesh Chandra Agarwal. Well it worked in Jaipur, where readership of Hindi-language dailies soared 121 per cent since the DB launch in 1996. Even Ahmedabad saw a 32 per cent growth in readership of Gujarati-language newspapers between NRS 2002 and ACNielsen ORG-MARG's readership survey in September 2003, post Divya Bhaskar's launch.

But surely anyone who has seen Bhaskar's juggernaut roll, virtually uninterrupted all these years, can copy from its all too simple methods? So what gives it near invincibility in conquering markets at will? "The success is in the detail, the passion that we work with and this, not many people are able to copy," adds Sudhir Agarwal. For starters, the entire Agarwal family shifts temporarily to the city the clan plans to conquer next, wife and kids in tow. The Agarwals spent three months in Ahmedabad before Divya Bhaskar's launch last June. "Newspaper is a completely city-to-city product and we need to stay there to understand the reader," adds senior Agarwal.

The company meticulously plans even the minutest detail of how it enters a reader's house, the way it asks questions, books orders et al. And for votaries of core-competence, the group is a complete antithesis, for it does not hire any market research agency for such mammoth surveys but administers it entirely through its employees, who are re-skilled temporarily for it.

So assiduously does the group work on delivering local reader-driven content and hooking her completely, that it is able to up cover price, once market leadership is achieved, almost to plan. All 16 DB editions, barring Faridabad, launched post Jaipur in 1996, today sell at Rs 2.50 compared to Rs 1.50 at launch.

Competitors, however, are incredulous. "What market leadership are they speaking about? questions Shreyas Shah of Gujarat Samachar. "They are at just 50 per cent of our circulation in Ahmedabad and we have not even lowered our cover price," he adds. Independent observers, like Amit Ray, Executive Vice President of Optimum Media Solutions, one of the biggest media buyer in the Ahmedabad market, have a somewhat more balanced view: "Our sense is that circulation of Gujarat Samachar and Divya Bhaskar would be almost at par, though Gujarat Samachar still has the perceptual leadership." Still, that's no mean achievement for Divya Bhaskar, in just six months that too, given that Gujarat Samachar was selling upwards of 3.5-lakh copies of its Ahmedabad edition.

The next two years will be consolidation time for the group, with an emphasis on expanding Divya Bhaskar in Surat, Baroda, Rajkot, Mumbai, even New York.

"For us now, the language barrier is over. So all markets where we can get the pulse of readership by speaking to readers in Hindi could be a potential market for us," says Ramesh Chandra Agarwal. In its quest for five million plus circulation, almost double of the current 2.5 million-odd, in the next five years, the Dainik Bhaskar group may enter all markets where an Indian language can dominate. To start with, the blissful existence of happy Marathi and Oriya-language newspapers could soon be threatened.