Published On:Tuesday 14 February 2012
Times of India to align its news paper prices to rates of raddi in Mumbai
Promoter complained about getting peanuts for his social work
Times of India, India's most entertaining and informative news paper plans to align its prices to the rates of raddi (old news papers). The development came after the company's MD Vineet Jain became furious to see his maid's monthly raddi fetched Rs 180 after spending paltry Rs150 for the month.
"This is real bullshit. While we are performing our social responsibilities by printing news paper for every kind of audience, from kid to old, it is really annoying that readers use our paper to collect some money by selling it to Raddiwalas (old paper collector)," said MD Vineet Jain.
Vineet's maid Hansabai confirmed the story. She said "I don't understand English but I know that collecting Times of India (TOI) along with Mumbai Mirror pays back huge sum."
Vineet Jain said "Rates of raddi paper (old news papers) sky rocketed by almost 100% from Rs 5-7 per kg in January 2011 to around Rs 10-11 per kg in January 2012 while our news paper prices remained at Rs 4.50 per for combination of TOI and Mumbai Mirror."
TOI along with Mumbai Mirror contain more than 100 pages everyday and it is a most selling news paper in Mumbai.
"Yea, TOI is my most favorite news paper because of double benefits as it contains Bombay Times (an entertaining supplement of the TOI) while rest of the news paper can be sold to Raddiwalas and gets a lucrative amount," said Shweta Parthsarthi, a Mumbai based loyal reader of Times of India.
When DCFC correspondent asked her whether she reads the main news paper and Mumbai Mirror, she said "Rest is trash, yea but very useful to get some money back by selling it to Raddiwala. It is just like 80-90% cash back offer from Times Group."
"These days news paper has only two purposes one is to read and other is to sell it to Raddiwala. Earlier, almost around 10 years back there were few more usages of the news paper. They could have been used to collect garbage or to collect Kid's sh*t. But with growing awareness people come to know the utility of the news paper and they stopped using it for garbage and sh*t collection," said a news paper analyst Deepak Bhawra.
He said "Now usages of news paper other than reading and raddi purposes declined to 8% from 50% 10 years back and with more sanitation we shall see 100% news paper moving towards raddi."
Vineet Jain said "I don't understand weird mentality of Indian consumer. When we supply news papers at very cheap rates it is their responsibility to appreciate our efforts. However, our survey made last month showed that almost 90% of our readers like Times of India because the news paper fetches good return from raddis."
Jain further said "The survey also pointed that there is a general perception among the readers that printing such a large news paper means cash back offer from Times Group. How ridiculous it is!"
Young college student, Sneha Awasthi said "We generally don't give damn to main news paper and likes to keep it simple with Bombay Times and some part of Mumbai Mirror, as these papers have entertaining news and lots of offers."
Deepak Bhawra said "Generally, Mumbai Mirror is considered as Uday Chopra to Times of India while Bombay Times as Aditya Chopra. As Uday Chopra i.e., Mumbai Mirror is useless to Yash Chopra, i.e. Times of India, Aditya Chopra i.e., Bombay Times is real money spinner."
After knowing all the rave reviews about his news paper, Vineet Jain gave his final remarks.
"I am not going to tolerate anything further and now going to align prices of Times of India to Raddiwala's raddi rates and will stop this unannounced cash back offer," said Vineet Jain.