Jagran Prakashan has acquired Suvi Info Management (Indore) Private Ltd, and through this acquisition, its subsidiary Naidunia Media Limited, which publishes the Naidunia newspaper in Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh, with a circulation of 5 lakh copies per day. Naidunia doesn’t have a website (apart from a corporate site here), but does publish an e-paper. The paper has editions published from Indore, Gwalior, Jabalpur and Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, and Raipur and Bilaspur in Chhatisgarh. Naidunia was promoted by Vinay Chhajlani, who, alongwith Jehangir Pochha, also bought INX News from Peter Mukerjea in 2009. Note that Suvi Info Management might be different from Suvi Information Systems Pvt Ltd, another company promoted by Chhajlani.
A few days ago, Business Standard had reported, citing sources that the Jagran-Naidunia deal was valued at Rs 300 crore, although another source told Mint that the deal size might be lower. The acquisition apparently doesn’t include the Delhi edition, which was shuttered just a few days ago, as per a report in Exchange4media.
Jagran Prakashan publishes 37 editions and over 200 sub-editions of its newspaper Dainik Jagran, a tabloid called City Plus (23 editions), and I-Next, a bilingual newspaper. It had also acquired Mid-Day Multimedia’s print business inluding publication brands Mid-Day (published from Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and Delhi), Sunday Mid-Day, Gujarati Mid-day and The Inquilab.
Jagran reported a total income of Rs 324.03 crore for the quarter ended 31st December 2011, with a profit after tax of Rs 41.30 crore (operating profits down by 26.27% YoY to Rs 85.12 crore), and Digital Revenues excluding advertisement revenues at Rs 2.32 crore. On the digital side, Jagran has a tie-up with Yahoo India for Jagran.com, Online Classifieds businessKhojle.in, reverse auction portal Jeetle.in, and also a Mobile Value Added services company called J9 Ventures. Last year, the Jagran had restructured, making Jagran Media Network Investment Private Limited (JMNIPL) the holding company of Jagran Prakashan Limited (JPL).
Jagran Prakashan is a public listed company, and its holding company is backed by Blackstone.
In other news: Business Standard reported that the Zee Group is close to buying Dainik Bhaskar’s stake in Diligent Media, which published the newspaper DNA. DNA is a joint venture between the two firms.
