After waiting for about an hour and a half at the offices of the new business paper ‘Mint’ from Hindustan Times (HT), I wasn’t hoping for a half-interview, but that’s what happened: too much fluff.
Rajan Bhalla, the publisher of Mint believes that the level of involvement is higher with a published paper than a website. If you dispense with the fluff, here’s a gist of my discussion with him:
About the Wall Street Journal Partnership
Mint has 100 percent access to WSJ content, from over 1900 journalists across the globe. HT is already full up on the 26 percent FDI that print publications in India are allowed, so an equity partnership with WSJ isn’t possible yet.
The Competitive Scenario
He says that television lacks the credibility that print has, and there is a demand for global news in a booming Indian economy. Also, there’s no real No.2 in the print market – 70 percent is with the Economic Times (ET), priced at Rs.2, and 30 percent is split between the Hindu Business Line (HBL), the Financial Express (FE) and Business Standard (BS), which are priced higher. Pricing Mint on par with ET means they compete on value. They are also targeting readers who (acc to him) get overwhelmed by the amount of news in other dailies and prefer to read magazines
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