Jupiter Media and Entertainment Ventures (Jupiter) and Express Publications (Madurai) Limited (EPML) have announced a strategic alliance that will jointly pursue media opportunities in various languages. Initially, this partnership will cover Jupiter taking equity investments in Kannada Prabha, a leading Kannada daily newspaper, subsequently exploring potential opportunities in other languages.
This alliance will enable a vast synergy between two of Kannada’s most respected news brands, namely Kannada Prabha and Suvarna News 24x7, especially in the wide editorial network across Karnataka and product and space marketing. This partnership and strategic alliance will help propel these two brands and products into leadership positions, by giving the best in editorial, news reporting and features acceptable to millions of readers.
This is the first time in India that two leaders and well-entrenched players of print and TV medium are coming together. The resultant alliance is bound to unlock new opportunities in Karnataka and beyond, in turn benefiting various stakeholders such as readers/viewers, employees and advertisers.
Express Publications (Madurai) Limited was founded by Late Shri Ramnath Goenka, along with other companies in the Indian Express Group. The Company now forms part of the New Indian Express Group owned and managed by Shri Manoj Kumar Sonthalia, the grandson of Late Shri Ramnath Goenka.
The New Indian Express Group is an independent Group, publishing newspapers and periodicals in the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Orissa and Union Territories of Pondicherry, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep. It brings out newspapers and periodicals from 22 Centres. The Company's publications include dailies: The New Indian Express in English, Dinamani in Tamil and Kannada Prabha in Kannada. The Company also brings out magazines: Cinema Express in Tamil (a fortnightly), Tamilan Express in Tamil (a weekly) and Samakalika Malayalam Vaarika in Malayalam (a weekly).
Jupiter Media and Entertainment Ventures ( JMEV) owns, operates or has invested in a number of market-leading media assets in South India covering television news, entertainment television and radio. These include Suvarna News 24x7, a Kannada news channel that has emerged as the number 2 news channel in Kannada in a span of six months, Asianet News, the number 1 news channel in Malayalam, Star-Jupiter Entertainment, a joint venture with Star with five GEC channels - Asianet and Asianet Plus (Malayalam), Suvarna (Kannada), Vijay (Tamil) and Sitara (Telugu). It also has radio brands Best FM and Radio Indigo, and movie production under the Jupiter Entertainment and Indigo Films banners.
