Sahara Urdu daily on fast track expansion mode

A month after the launch of its Mumbai edition, an edition was launched in Kolkata and more editions are to be launched from Patna, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Srinagar later this year.

According to Aziz Burney, the editor of RRS, an international edition of the weekly Aalmi Sahara, is also on the anvil which will be launched around June 10 and distributed in London, Jeddah, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and other regions in west Asia.

The much-talk-of Urdu news channel will also begin its dry-run in Delhi in June.

Rashtriya Sahara, the Hindi daily, from the group is also on an expansion spree, opening editions in Patna, Varanasi, Kanpur and early next year, Kolkata.

At present, the readership of Urdu newspapers is declining but the group is determined to launch editions in cities.

Burney says he has a plan: "At the moment a lot of Urdu readers fall back on English or Bengali newspapers "" we will be trying to make them come back to Urdu, giving them a newspaper that fulfils all their needs."

As for advertising support, Burney says, "Urdu readers also use Lux, they also buy fridges and TVs. Our marketing team has been focusing on this message, especially now that there is a product where they can reach out to this very important section."

RSS, especially its Delhi edition, does get corporate ads, but not on a regular basis and even then as a combined package with the English daily.

Burney says that he is also putting in place a marketing team responsible primarily for the Urdu dailies.

The Kolkata edition will have 8 pages, going up to 12 on Sundays, and is priced at Rs 2.50.

The initial print order will be for 25,000 copies which will be distributed in the whole of West Bengal and south Bihar.

RRS comes at a time the market has been stagnant or declining for all the major Urdu dailies in Kolkata -- Akhbar-e-Mashrique, Azad Hind and Abshaar.

According to Abdur Razzak Mahilabadi, the editor of Azah Hind, Urdu newspapers are "dying a slow death". "The West Bengal government, unlike that in Andhra Pradesh, does not support us and even among advertisers the perception of Urdu newspaper-readers is that they are a bidi-smoking, motorcycle-riding lot with little purchasing power."