Malayala Manorama plans to spread lingual reach  ( July '17,2001, HBL)

THE Rs 280-crore Malayala Manorama group, publisher of Malayala Manorama, is planning to focus on Hindi, Bengali and Tamil as language media for its various publications, apart from Malayalam.

According to Mr Amit Mathew, Resident Editor and General Manager, Malayala Manorama, ``We are looking at alliances within the media under our diversification division. This will include diversifying to other languages.'' For instance, its Year Book has already got an extension into these languages, while its popular women's magazine, Vanitha, now comes in a Hindi edition.

Adds Mr Mathew, ``We are now concentrating on stretching our popular magazines into these three languages.'' Other diversification plans within the media includes making a foray into radio.

``We will definitely consider bidding for the FM channel if the prices of the bids were brought down in future,'' says Mr Mathew.

The publishing house plans to start a production house under the brand -- Manorama Vision. Although it has been sourcing television software from other companies and supplying it under this brand, it now intends making its own software by setting up a unit at a cost of Rs 4 crore.

Giving more details about the new production unit, Mr Mathew says, ``We intend supplying programmes to Surya, Asianet and Doordarshan under the Manorama Vision brand.''

Another revenue-generating stream will include some e-commerce transactions on its Web site. ``This will be restricted mainly to those NRIs who would like to send gifts to their relatives across the world.''

The site will thus tie up with a host of vendors ranging from sari sellers to jewellers to facilitate this gifting process. A trading facility for spices is also likely to be set up through a B2B portal in the future.

The group recently decided to spin off its Year Book in the form of the Manorama Knowledge Adventure 2001 CD-ROM, pegged at Rs 495.

Commenting on the automatic vending machines set up across the country for selling its various publications, Mr Mathew said, ``These vending machines have been set up more as a customer service initiative than for generating revenues.''

However, there are no plans to stock publications of other companies due to space constraints.

The group has launched vending machines at select airports across the country to sell its newspapers, magazines, year books and CD-ROMs. Ten machines will be installed in Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram airports.The company plans to instal more soon.

The composition of the publications will differ for each venue. For instance, English publications such as The Week will be visible at the vending machines in Mumbai, while all its vernacular editions would be made available throughout Kerala.

The group currently has 25 publications in its bouquet with its flagship brand, Malayala Manorama, selling 1.1 million copies a day.