The World: Insider's View - India.(newspaper publishing)

Mumbai, despite its size, was one of India's quietest newspaper markets. But now three new titles are battling to seduce advertisers and readers. Ravi Kiran reports.

Print adspend growth in India has slackened to single-digit percentages, so publishers are becoming increasingly aggressive in their attempts to pick up the slack.

Oddly, given Mumbai's size and position as the largest single-city print ad market (worth dollars 250 million a year), it has been one of India's quietest newspaper markets.

Until this year, it was dominated by The Times of India, which sells 480,000 copies daily and has a 70 per cent readership share. But even the most conservative reading of these figures points to a circulation gap of more than one million potential readers. It's a hole that two publishers have moved quickly to fill.

The Hindustan Times, one of the oldest publishing groups in India, launched in the city in July. It was joined last month by Daily News & Analysis, published by the Bhaskar Group in a joint venture with the broadcaster Zee Telefilms.

These launches have been interesting to watch. DNA started a high-decibel, out-of-home advertising campaign in April, recruiting a team of sales promoters that claims to have signed up more than 300,000 subscribers to a paper that aims to be 'the voice of Mumbai'.

True to its more understated personality, The Hindustan Times ran a pan-Indian TV ad and a local print campaign with the line: 'Let there be light.' It claimed to have signed 220,000 subscribers for a whole year by the time it launched on ...