Shobhna Bhartia, vice chairperson and editorial director, HT Media, throws some light on the group's proposed new business paper in association with The Wall Street Journal. CNBC-TV18 shares with domain-b its exclusive interview with Bhartia.

HT Media has entered into a content partnership with the The Wall Street Journal (The WSJ) through which it will publish WSJ branded news in its new business paper.

Shobhna Bhartia, vice chairperson and editorial director, HT Media, says that this is purely a content sharing agreement with WSJ. She adds that HT media is likely to launch a business paper by the year-end.

The new business paper will have a Delhi, Mumbai edition initially. CNBC-TV18 shares with domain-b its exclusive interview with Bhartia:

Will the new paper will carry The Wall Street Journal masthead, or is it just going to be branded pages?
This is a decision, which still hasn't been arrived at. But under the agreement that option would remain with us. We will explore the option and take a decision a little closer to the launch.

Does that option also depend on government permissions coming through because we believe that The WSJ was in negotiations with Bennett Coleman for a long time and there were issues on your selling such a venture's media space and sharing advertisements?
No, we weren't really entering into a deal for sharing of advertisements. Ours is purely a content sharing agreement. We hope to leverage our respective brands. So I don't think that the advertisement bid would really affect us.

But looking at the overall cap that the government has stipulated for sharing of content, we will be working within that and whether it is going to be in the form of branded pages, or whether it is going to be using their news and using the brand otherwise, are certain decisions, which we are yet to make.

You are saying that your new newspaper could be called The Wall Street Journal something?
It would not be called The Wall Street Journal-something, but it could have The Wall Street Journal brand as well.

So some pages could have The Wall Street Journal masthead as of now, is that the plan?
That is right.

Can you tell us more details about the business paper itself, when is the likely launch and what are the cities you are looking at, any details on that product?
We are yet to actually finalise the strategy. We are looking at a launch towards the end of the year. We would be launching the paper from Delhi and Mumbai to begin with and then scaling it up after that.

Is this likely to be only an English language paper or will you look at regional language variations as well?
At the moment, we are only looking at English.

You have some expansion plans in Madhya Pradesh as well for Hindi newspapers; can you take us through your other expansions as well?
There is nothing on the anvil for the moment. We are examining the Madhya Pradesh market. For the time being, we have really expanded our strategy in Hindi through Uttar Pradesh market, where we were already a big player.

Being the No.2 player in Lucknow and having a presence in Varanasi, we have subsequently gone to Agra, Meerut and Kanpur. That is where we will be consolidating our position over the next few months.

What about Hindustan Times in Mumbai, when do you expect to breakeven?
It will be as per the projections, which will be quite soon now.

What is the outlook for advertising looking like in this quarter?
It is still looking buoyant. The last quarter was pretty exceptional. This quarter too is looking buoyant. We are in a growth phase. We are performing well, we are happy with the performance.

The last quarter saw a fairly exceptional performance, 33 per cent increase in revenues, we were expecting a 22 per cent, do you see that sustaining?
It is a little early to say, but it is going to be a good quarter as well.

There is an issue with the raw material cost. Is it rising significantly, is it likely to impact margins?
The raw material cost has risen already. We don't see it softening this quarter either. But with some luck, we hope that in the next quarter will not see the increase that was being expected.