We recently met Ajay Aggarwal and Hemant Anand, Editor-in-chief and Director, Marketing respectively of the new daily, DLA in Agra. Ajay Aggarwal was previously editor of Amar Ujala and a35.33 per cent stakeholder of that company. Amar Ujala was founded as a partnership by DL Aggarwal and ML Maheshwari in 1948 with a share ratio of53:47. The 53 per cent Aggarwal share was later equally divided among his three sons.

However, in the recent contest for control of Amar Ujala, one of the three Aggarwal brothers in fact switched over to the Maheshwari side of the partnership, which transformed the 47 per cent into a majority share of 64.66 per cent. In an environment of increasing professionalism and torrid competition within the Hindi news publishing industry, the next generation of the two partners both sought total control of the business. In the course of a complex series of deal making and deal breaking events, in the eventual settlement in November 2006, the Company Law Board Chairman S Balasubramanian directed the Maheshwari group to buy out the Aggarwal 35.33 per cent equity in Amar Ujala Publications for Rs 138 crores. The total amount was to be paid within a nine-month period beginning 1 August 2006.

Within months, in March 2007, Ajay Aggarwal successfully launched DLA an afternoon Hindi daily from Agra. Five months later in August 2007, an English morning daily tabloid DLA AM was launched, also in Agra. DLA are the initials of Ajay Agarwal’s father, the cofounder of Amar Ujala. Hemant Anand told us that DLA in Hindi was started as an afternoon paper because at the time there was no competition in the afternoon daily segment and they felt there was a need for amid-day tabloid in the city. Their erstwhile partners, Amar Ujala have recently followed suit and started their Hindi mid-day tabloid daily, Compact. DLA Hindi at Rs 1 a copy has 20 pages.

The Ghaziabad edition launched on 27 January is 24 pages and sells Rs 1.50. According to a recent AC Nielsen research report commissioned by DLA, the current circulation of the Hindi tabloid in Agra stands at 2,10,000. There are plans to launch Meerut and Noida editions before the end of March 2008.

We asked how DLA AM planned to compete in the English newspaper segment with national dailies such as the Times of India and the Hindustan Times in Agra. In answer, Hemant Anand says that DLA is the only “local” English paper in Agra and since it caters to a distinctly provincial demographic of both readers and advertisers, there is really no threat to DLA’s market from the twin national papers.

DLA’s press, located on the outskirts of Agra, is used not only to print the DLA Hindi and DLA AM but also Hindustan the Hindi daily for HT Media, for its Agra circulation. About 33,000 square feet with a built area of about 21,000 square feet the press is equipped with 2 lines of Ronald 4-colour web offset presses. One line has 4 full colour towers and a mono unit and the other 3 full colour towers also with a mono unit.

Each tower has provision for printing 4+4 colours on both sides of the web, or 2x2 colours on both sides of two webs, or single colour on both sides of four webs. The requirement of DLA is to print 70,000 tabloid copies an hour, which are printed on both the lines simultaneously and effectively, results in 60,000 copies an hour. DLA has also installed the first violet CtP from DotLine in the country in November 2007, which is used mainly to contract print Hindustan. DLA has a reciprocal agreement for contract printing with HT Media which prints the Ghaziabad edition of DLA at the HT press in Noida.

Hemant Anand is very optimistic about the future of DLA and DLA AM both. He hopes to break even by the end of 2009 and has already acquired some major advertising support for the Hindi daily.