Founded in 1932 and headquartered in Ahmedabad, Gujarat Samachar is a leading Gujarati daily that is supplied to the Indian states of Gujarat and Maharashtra. With a branch in Surat as well, the newspaper is distributed from Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Rajkot, Bhavnagar, Mehsana, Bhuj and Mumbai city.
“There hasn’t been any new development in Gujarat Samachar in the past few years. However, we’re looking to add more machines at our printing unit this year. The final decision on the machines has not yet been taken,” says Ranjeet Singh, branch manager, Gujarat Samachar.
The circulation figures of the daily stand somewhere close to 14,00,000. Though circulation figures for most of the leading dailies are going up every year, they are adversely hit by a sharp fall in revenues. According to Singh, Gujarat Samachar is a leading Gujarati daily with the highest circulation figure and readership. Other Gujarati dailies include names such as Sandesh, Divya Bhaskar and Jai Hind.
“We’ve been able to maintain the top position as our newspaper is the most renowned. I have seen some Gujaratis in Delhi buying Gujarat Samachar even though it is available at exorbitant rates in the city. Observing the circulation figures, we’ve decided to add machines at our production facility,” Singh adds.
The company has four printing presses at two locations in Ahmedabad. The Mumbai unit also has four printing presses at two different locations and has a press each at all its other locations. All the machines used by the daily are imported from other countries.
Gujarat Samachar claims to receive good support from the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) though the number of advertisements from private companies far exceed the number given by DAVP with a considerable difference in the rates.
Talking about the impact that the current government’s Make in India movement has had on Gujarat Samachar, Singh says, “The imports from China still haven’t reduced. The Chinese continue to dominate the Indian market. The Make in India initiative was primarily taken to cut the imports but there hasn’t been any significant change post implementation of the initiative. Though it is an excellent initiative taken by the government, I think it largely failed due to lack of proper implementation.”
