was highly trained in customer engagement, and was trained by experts in body
language, grooming, posture, approach methods, social norms and rules etc. Based
on survey feedback, they went back to each of the households surveyed, to show
them a prototype of the newspaper and gave them the option to sign for an
advance subscription. The customers were offered a subscription price of Rs. 1.50
(as against the newsstand price of Rs. 2) and a refund in case of dissatisfaction.
When Dainik Bhaskar's first launch outside MP happened in Jaipur on 19 December
1996, it entered the market as No. 1 newspaper with 172,347 copies. Rajasthan
Patrika, the former No. 1, had a circulation of just 100,000 copies at that time.
[2]
The newspaper's next target was Chandigarh. It launched a customer survey in
January 2000, covering 220,000 households. At that time, the English language
newspapers in Chandigarh outsold the Hindi newspapers by six times, with The
Tribune as the leader (50,000 copies). Dainik Bhaskar's survey found that people in
Chandigarh preferred English newspapers because of better quality. As a result, the
newspaper concentrated on design, and incorporated the local Chandigarh dialect
in the design, mixing Hindi and English. Dainik Bhaskar's second launch outside MP
happened in Chandigarh in May 2000: it entered the market as No. 1 with 69,000
copies.
[2]
In June 2000, Dainik Bhaskar entered Haryana, again as No. 1 on first day, with
271,000 copies.
[2]
For its fourth launch outside MP, Dainik Bhaskar identified Ahmedabad, Gujarat
as the city with highest potential. It surveyed 12,00,000 households, with a team of
1050 surveyors, 64 supervisors, 16 zonal managers and 4 divisional managers. The
surveyors were gathered largely through posters at colleges and word-of-mouth
publicity, instead of expensive print and TV advertisements. Nearly 40-50% of the
surveyors were later absorbed in Dainik Bhaskar or Divya Bhaskar, while the rest
were given a certificate of appreciation. The team was trained to reach out to 8 lakh
households in Ahmedabad and 4 lakh households in adjoining districts, in a time
span of 40 days. The newspaper was launched in Ahmedabad on 23 June 2003,
under the name Divya Bhaskar, as No. 1 with 452,000 copies (a world record).
Within 15 months, it entered two more cities of Gujarat: Surat and Vadodara. To
counter the Bhaskar's group's threat, the leading Gujarati newspapers came up with
color pages, price reductions and several high-value customer offers. However, by
2009, Divya Bhaskar became the largest circulated Gujarati daily with 11.5 copies.
[2]
Dainik Bhaskar's pre-launch door-to-door twin-contact launch programme has been
recognised as an Orbit shifting innovation. It has won Business Process Innovation
award by Marico Foundation, and is a case study in several B-schools including IIM
Ahmedabad and SPJIMR.
Page
25