Adgully Exclusive | Clutter-breaking and essentially filling the need gap: News Express' Mukesh Kumar

Sai Prasad Media Pvt.Ltd. will soon be launching a 40 pages Hindi weekly- "Hum watan". The group saw a need-gap for a weekly in the Hindi language which will give in-depth news reportage to the readers. The initial print run will be 25,000-30,000 copies.

With a turnover of Rs.1500 crore, Sai Prasad Group has been in the business of Foods, Properties, Finance, Infrastructure and Construction, Energy and Film production. The company is all set to launch its Hindi news channel - News Express. The channel, headed by CEO and Editor Mukesh Kumar, will be headquartered at Noida.

The group will launch the channel officially on the 28th of July. On the 7th the company launched a test run of the first ever HD national news channel.

Speaking to Adgully, Kumar says, "The cost of investment is atleast 30-40% high compared to investments on non-HD content. But we have decided to launch our channel in HD because in the future the technology penetration will be potential and hence we want to be prepared for it."

He further adds that the company is looking at a very low-key launch. "We want the audiences to come and sample our content and then maybe gather a feedback from them and imbibe the insights into our content plans," Kumar adds.

The tagline of the channel reads- "Khabar Andar Ki", elaborating more about the content plans, Kumar says, "First of all our channel is essentially going to focus more on political news. When I say political news, I mean politics in our everyday life like office politics, politics within the society, political turns in business etc. We are sort of looking at exploring a thematic-approach for our content, a theme which none of the news channels have tried exploring until today. So we will be covering the various conflicts and then explore the political discord that resulted in the conflict. Hence through the tagline- Khabar Andar Ki we are conveying it to our audiences that we will provide them with a detailed account of happenings."

The channel will essentially be looking at various facets of an issue at hand and thus promises to provide the viewers a complete coverage of an event. "Our primetime programming is also going to be very different from other news channels. Moreover most of the news channels today majorly run entertainment-based content. So we will be launching clutter-breaking content, as there is an urgent needgap for that," Kumar says.

He adds that the distribution of the channel is going to be across DTH and cable. "So far we have cemented 80% of our distribution strategy, in a week's time we should be able to potentially build on the strategy completely," he points out.

The team is assuring that the channel's visibility across the distribution channels will be seamless and thus more and more prospective distribution partners are being engaged to take it forward.

Kumar also adds that though the launch will not involve much hoopla, the company will surely go ahead with strong promotional activities once the offering is successfully launched. The company is looking at running high power promotions for the further sustenance of the channel.

Kumar humbly further adds, "Gradually we will explore the regional markets too. We are looking at creating a huge media organisation, so we are investing on news channels, film productions and publication, later we will also look at radio. Most importantly we want to create a name in media which is respected for the kind of work we do."

While signing off he acknowledges that the industry is very competitive and the competition is extremely fierce. "So in a genre like news a channel atleast requires two to three years to break even. We are aware of the wait and the patience that will be required for it," he adds. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]