As an outsider, it is very difficult to make guesses as to why DB gave a pass to UP market. However, we may look at the decisions along with industry dynamics/characteristics and their company’s own peculiar circumstances
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DB Corp from 2003 onwards have launched it’s edition in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Bihar. If we carefully look at it in most of the markets ( except Bihar) they have chosen where the competition is prima-facie local or regional. Be it Gujarat Samachar in Gujarat, Rajasthan Partika in Rajasthan, Punjab Kesari in Punjab, Lokmat in Maharashtra or hindustan/Prabhat Khabar in Jharkahnd. They have refrained from or have not agressively entered the markets where much larger players such as Dainik Jagran is leading the market. It may be a coincidence or a calibrated strategy
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Another interesting thing is that DB Corp has first focused on markets that are relatively well urbanized (Gujarat/Maharashtra/Punjab/Rajasthan) and have higher prosperity and hence are large ad markets. This is a very smart strategy. In fact, DB Corp always position itself as first choice of urban readers/ SECA/SEC B category of readers.
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Now considering this strategy to focus on more urbanized markets and the typical break even time of 5 years for a news paper business, DB corp had hardly any room to look at any other market till 2010/11.
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However, after capitalizing on the Urban market, it has in last 4 years started to focus on more Rurban/rural focused markets like Jharkhand/Bihar. However, by 2010/11, HMVL had entered UP/UT markets and hence they may have decided against entering that market as typically it is difficult to sustain more than 3 players in a market and new entrants always face tough time.
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Only lately, in last 5-7 years, advertisers have woken up to the aspiring market of rural/rurban area and increasing their ad spend. While this happened, DB Corp, due to its strategic priority may have missed the UP market.
Again, this is nothing more than best guess and as I said earlier, it is very difficult to pin point exact reason for not entering UP earlier.
- On your question of entry of DB in UP: I feel it may not happen for 3-4 years at least. Reason is simple. Their Maharashtra business has only recently come out of investment mode while Bihar business will bleed for 2-3 more years. Also, the will first want to consolidate their position in Bihar. Frankly, Jharkhand would have been the most disappointing entry for DB as they haven’t been able to make much headway there. So, logically, they may want to wait and watch how they are able to fare in Bihar to gauge whether their entry in rural/rurban market can be as successfull as it has been in urban markets.
In 3-4 years, at the pace at which HMVL is moving, it will consolidate it’s position in UP well and entry of DB Corp may have less pronounced impact.
Again, all this is intelligent guesses and logical reasoning and reality may pan out very differently than what we anticipate.
Hope this helps
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