Andhra fairy tale: Sakshi turns 2, turns on heat on No 1

Once upon a time, in a land known as Andhra Pradesh, the undisputed and unchallengeable leader of the newspaper industry was Eenadu. The rule of that paper spanned more than three decades. In fact, Eenadu was so powerful, that its closest rival was far, far away from it in the circulation race. For example, in 2007, Eenadu's circulation was 10.47 lakh, and that of its most formidable competitor, Andhra Jyoti, was 3.72 lakh. Then in 2008, was born the miracle baby of India's newspaper industry. Its name was Sakshi, it was all colour and had more pages than Eenadu. Sakshi was the first Telugu paper to be designed by the god of newspaper layouts, Mario Garcia.

When Sakshi turned just 18 months, it set a circulation record for any newspaper in any language: 12.20 lakh copies!

Today is the second birthday of the miracle baby Sakshi. Adgully speaks to its chief general manager P Sridhar to find out what new amazing feats the paper is planning.

Sridhar told Adgully that the future looked good because Sakshi has already cornered 35% of advertising share in Andhra Pradesh's newspaper space. In fact, he said that the paper was feeling confident enough to launch two more editions by end the 2010. As for other media platforms, Sakshi TV, a news channel, is a year old already.

The paper itself, Sridhar said, would not be the number 2 in Andhra Pradesh for too long. "We will be number 1 very soon, we are working on it," he said.

Finally, Sridhar passed a message to media, advertising and marketing fraternity through Adgully. "Advertisers and advertising agencies should change their mindset, like the readers have done, and try the alternative medium in Andhra Pradesh," he said. "They should also note that the language-media outlets deliver far better than the English-medium ones because of their capacity to penetrate deeply into potential markets. Sakshi is young and upwardly mobile, and its deliveries are guaranteed."