In the last 10 days, two newspapers have quietly entered the markets of both the Telugu states.
One is Velugu, a Telugu newspaper launched by former MP, senior TRS leader and industrialist G Vivek, who already owns popular television channel V6.
It hit the stands on October 5, coinciding with the birth anniversary of Vivek’s father and former Union minister late G Venkatswamy.
Despite being promoted by a big commercial group, Velugu had a very soft launch without any big publicity and a launch ceremony.
The second newspaper is The Pioneer, a Delhi-based English daily, which launched its franchise editions in Hyderabad, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam simultaneously.
The franchisee is a local journalist-turned-entrepreneur. It also quietly entered the market on October 1 without any prior knowledge of the readers and publicity.
However, both the newspapers turned out to be big disappointments for the readers.
Of course, there were not much expectations from Velugu, which is owned by a TRS leader who is going to contest as an MP in the coming Lok Sabha elections from Peddapalli.
Like TRS official gazette paper Namaste Telangana daily, Velugu is also blowing the trumpet of TRS, of course with a lot of focus on K T Rama Rao, than his father K Chandrasekhar Rao.
On the other hand, The Hyderabad edition of The Pioneer, originally promoted by Rajya Sabha member Chandan Gupta, has a very poor quality in terms of news, make-up, language and presentation. There is absolutely no uniqueness in the daily and it looks like a run-of-the-mill newspaper.
One fails to understand how these two newspapers would withstand the highly competitive market, at a time when the established newspapers like Times of India and Eenadu themselves are struggling to overcome losses!
