The Rise of  Hindu

Hindu is one of the oldest and most popular newspapers in India. The roots of this newspaper publication can be traced back to the pre-independence era. The Hindu was found in Madras on 1878 with the intent of criticizing the discriminatory policies of the British Government in India. The Hindu started out as a weekly publication with a liberal approach towards newspaper reporting. Over the years it transformed to a newspaper daily with a huge readership primarily due to its balanced and reliable presentation of news.

Reasons for popularity:

The estimated readership of Hindu is a massive 4.06 million as reported by the Audit Bureau of Circulations in 2009. Reliable reporting is not the only reason behind the constantly growing readership of the Hindu newspaper. 

Usage of advanced technology is a significant reason that separates Hindu from other newspapers published in India. Hindu uses state of the art technology for page composition and printing purposes.  It must be mentioned here that Hindu was the first newspaper publication in the country that launched a website of its own way back in 1995 to reach out to a global audience.

Widespread reach across India also helps in boosting the overall readership of Hindu newspaper daily.  Hindu is circulated across major Indian cities like Chennai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Hyderabad City, Madurai, Bangalore, Mangalore, Trivandrum, Vishakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Trichy, Mysore and Delhi. Therefore it is obvious that this newspaper has a stronghold in Southern India, particularly in Tamil Nadu.  Advertisers willing to promote their products / services in South India often prefer to book their newspaper classifieds in Hindu newspaper.

Growth of advertising in Hindu:

Hindu boasts of a huge number of loyalists in South India. Hence nowadays ad bookers all across the country prefer to book newspaper ads in Hindu to reach out to these readers. The advent of online newspaper classified booking portals like releaseMyAd further fuelled such practices.

The concept of niche marketing or target based promotion was eased out by Hindu publications. They became the first to introduce a set of special pullouts that were published every day of the week.  These pullouts made it possible for advertisers to reach out to a much germane set of target audiences. 

Here is a list of special pullouts released by Hindu publications:-

Education Plus: Published on Monday, Education Plus pullout has become the hotspot for advertisers looking to book education classifieds in newspapers.  The newspaper’s unbiased approach often prompts educational institutions to book their education ads in Hindu newspaper.

Property Plus: Published on Saturday, this pullout is dedicated to property classifieds booked for Hindu newspaper.  This property pullout has emerged as the hub of property seekers as well as property buyers,

Opportunities:  Published on Wednesdays, this is a special recruitment pullout published by Hindu. Pullouts like these has made Hindu a rage amongst younger readers.

Other pullouts include Metro Plus, Business Review, Young World, Book Review, Nxg, Retail Plus etc.

Hindu and its competitors:

As discussed earlier, Hindu is a primarily a South Indian newspaper with a huge readership in Southern India. The closest competitor of this English newspaper broadsheet is Times Of India which has decent circulations in cities like Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad etc. But Hindu emerges as the clear winner because of its content and editorial pages that makes exemplary usage of the English vocabulary. Some may argue that local Tamil newspapers like Daily Thanthi are creeping up in popularity but it has a long way to reach the standards of The Hindu.