Daily Mail to launch Indian daily

by Staff, Brand Republic 14-Nov-07, 10:10

NEW DELHI - The Daily Mail & General Trust is to launch an English-language version of the Daily Mail in India this week called Mail Today.

The 48-page paper will be launched in Delhi in partnership with the India Today Group and will be aimed at the 9m English speakers in the city and surrounding towns.

The title will have an initial print run of 120,000 and a cover price of 2.5 rupees or 3p. Like the Daily Mail, it will also heavily target a female market with the Daily Mail's familiar style of issue and lifestyle journalism.

Women are not well served by Indian newspapers and Mail Today will seek to change that with six to nine pages devoted to them.

DMGT is reported to have invested around £2m in the venture, with media planning and buying being handled by ZenithOptimedia.

Suresh Balakrishnan, CEO of Mail Today, said the agency was appointed partly because of its experience of building media brands and its experience in the media domain.

Aroon Purie, chairman and editor-in-chief of India Today Group, said: "Mail Today will be a completely different newspaper from the other existing newspapers and it will be a newspaper that the whole of India would be proud of."