Mathrubhumi, India’s second largest circulated regional language daily launched its Qatar edition yesterday. The 92 years -old Malayalam newspaper, with a print run of 1.9mn copies, is published from 14 centres, four of them outside Kerala.
The Qatar edition is the daily’s second in the Gulf region and it’s launched in a printing partnership with Dar Al Sharq, Qatar’s leading newspaper publishing house. The new edition was launched yesterday by Abdul Latif Al Mahmoud, CEO of Dar Al Sharq, and Sanjiv Arora, Ambassador of India to Qatar.
Mohan Nair, CEO of Mathrubhumi News, P S Srikumar, General Manager, UAE, Oman, Mathrubhumi, Dr Khalid Al Jaber, Acting Editor in Chief of The Peninsula, Hussain Ahmad, Acting Managing Editor of The Peninsula, and Neegal Noronha, Foreign Publications Manager, Dar Al Sharq were also present with other representatives.
“Mathrubhumi is one of the leading Malayalam newspapers. I hope the relations between India and Qatar will be made stronger with its launch here,” said Arora.
“The brand name Mathrubhumi is well-known among the Malayalee diaspora. This launch is an expansion of our publication,” said Nair speaking about the market potential of the newspaper.
“We have studied the market before entering. We were the last to enter the Dubai market, but within a short period of time were able to establish our place,” he said.
Mathrubhumi group publishes ten magazines covering wide range of subjects including cinema and travel. It also owns four radio stations, two television channels and its online portal receives around 150,000 hits. They have also published more than 2,000 books,
Dar Al Sharq Foreign Publications also prints Malayalam dailies Malayala Manorama, Varthamanam and Chandrika. It also prints and distributes International New York Times, Pilipino Star Ngayon, Filipino language daily paper, Rajdhani International Weekly, a Nepali language paper, Lankadeepa Weekly, a Sinhalese language publication and Tamil Times, a Tamil language weekly.
Kanthipoor, a new Nepali language weekly, will be printed and published from Thursday by Dar Al Sharq Foreign Publications.
The Peninsula
