''Divya Bhaskar'' () is a Gujarati newspaper in

Gujarat Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the nin ...

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

, owned by

D B Corp Ltd. D B Corp Ltd., informally known as the Dainik Bhaskar Group, is India’s largest newspaper group with 66 editions published in 4 languages, read by 4.4 cr readers (IRS Q4,2012) across 12 states. The major newspapers published by the group ar ...

It is one of the highest circulation Gujarati dailies. With the most local editions in Gujarat, it is published from Ahmedabad,

Vadodara Vadodara (), also known as Baroda, is the second largest city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It serves as the administrative headquarters of the Vadodara district and is situated on the banks of the Vishwamitri River, from the state capita ...

Surat Surat is a city in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The word Surat literally means ''face'' in Gujarati and Hindi. Located on the banks of the river Tapti near its confluence with the Arabian Sea, it used to be a large seaport. It is no ...

Rajkot Rajkot () is the fourth-largest city in the Indian state of Gujarat after Ahmedabad, Vadodara, and Surat, and is in the centre of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat. Rajkot is the 35th-largest metropolitan area in India, with a population of ...

Jamnagar Jamnagar () is a city located on the western coast of India in the state of Gujarat of Saurashtra region. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jamnagar district and the fifth largest city in Gujarat. The city lies just to the south o ...

, Mehsana, Bhuj,

Bhavnagar Bhavnagar is a city in the Bhavnagar district of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, a state of India. It was founded in 1723 by Bhavsinhji Takhtasinhji Gohil (1703–1764). It was the capital of Bhavnagar State, which was a princely state befo ...

(as ''Saurashtra Samachar'') and

Junagadh Junagadh () is the headquarters of Junagadh district in the Indian state of Gujarat. Located at the foot of the Girnar hills, southwest of Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar (the state capital), it is the seventh largest city in the state. Literall ...

(as ''Sorath Bhaskar'').
DivyaBhaskar is published in Junagadh from 27 March 2011.

History

In 2003, the

Bhopal Bhopal (; ) is the capital city of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and the administrative headquarters of both Bhopal district and Bhopal division. It is known as the ''City of Lakes'' due to its various natural and artificial lakes. It ...

-based Bhaskar Group identified Ahmedabad,

as the city with highest potential for the fourth launch of Dainik Bhaskar outside

Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (, ; meaning 'central province') is a state in central India. Its capital city, capital is Bhopal, and the largest city is Indore, with Jabalpur, Ujjain, Gwalior, Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, Sagar, and Rewa, India, Rewa being the othe ...

(MP). It surveyed 12

lakh A lakh (; abbreviated L; sometimes written lac) is a unit in the Indian numbering system equal to one hundred thousand (100,000; scientific notation: 105). In the Indian 2,2,3 convention of digit grouping, it is written as 1,00,000. For ...

() households, with a team of 1050 surveyors, 64 supervisors, 16 zonal managers and 4 divisional managers. The surveyors were gathered largely through posters at colleges and word-of-mouth publicity, instead of expensive print and TV advertisements. Nearly 40-50% of the surveyors were later absorbed in Dainik Bhaskar or Divya Bhaskar, while the rest were given a certificate of appreciation. The team was trained to reach out to 8 lakh () households in Ahmedabad and 4 lakh () households in adjoining districts, in a time span of 40 days. The newspaper was launched in Ahmedabad on 23 June 2003, under the name Divya Bhaskar, as No. 1 with 452,000 copies (a world record). Within 15 months, it entered two more cities of Gujarat:

and

. To counter the Bhaskar's group's threat, the leading Gujarati newspapers came up with color pages, price reductions and several high-value customer offers. However, by 2009, Divya Bhaskar became the largest circulated Gujarati daily with 11.5 lakh () copies. The group's pre-launch door-to-door twin-contact launch program has been recognized as an orbit shifting innovation. It has won Business Process Innovation award by Marico Foundation, and is a case study in several B-schools including Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and SPJIMR. The case study reveals, Divya Bhaskar become most popular among all other Gujarati news papers because of its erotic news and relationship related column. Following its launch, ''Divya Bhaskar'' has become the largest circulated daily of Gujarat according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (India) and has the most local editions by any newspaper in Gujarat.

References

2003 establishments in Gujarat Gujarati-language newspapers published in India Mass media in Ahmedabad Publications established in 2003 {{India-newspaper-stub