The Express Group forges content sharing alliance with The Financial Times

As per the tie-up, The Express Group will have access to daily news and feature articles from The Financial Times.

The Express Group, publishers of The Indian Express and The Financial Express, has forged a content sharing alliance with the Financial Times (FT) in India. As per the tie-up, the former will carry content from the FT on the branded pages, in both The Financial Express and The Indian Express.

The tie-up will be extended to daily news and feature articles of the FT, sourced from its bureaus around the world. Apart from this, The Express Group will also have access to opinion pieces, weekend features and columns by writers of FT, including Martin Wolf, Lucy Kellaway and Simon Schama.

The Indian Express group already has a line-up of columnists, including Sir Meghnad Desai, Rajesh Chakrabarti, Surjit S Bhalla, M Govinda Rao, Arindam Bhattacharya, Mahesh Vyas, Ila Patnaik, Sunil Jain and M K Venu. The group is hopeful that this alliance will provide readers of The Financial Express and The Indian Express an enhanced offering of news and analysis with a global perspective.

In an official communique, Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief, The Express Group, says, "Our partnership with the Financial Times grows from the Express Group's commitment to our readers and to their need for quality content."

As per the agreement, only The Express Group will carry content from FT, and not the other way round.

"There is keen interest in global business markets within the Indian corporate community -- given FT's global reputation, it was the perfect choice. At the Express Group, we are strongly committed to deliver more value to our readers. The FT content tie-up is a move in the same direction, allowing us to offer a keen insight into the rapidly shifting global business market," says Pavita Puri, group head, brand marketing, The Express Group.

Angela Mackay, executive director - Asia-Pacific, Financial Times, says, "The relationship with The Express Group in India will grow our print offering in what is already an important digital market for us."

For the record, The Express Group runs 35 national newspapers, and seven regional language dailies from 14 publication centres across India, including Loksatta, a Marathi daily in Mumbai, Jansatta in Hindi, and Screen -- a weekly entertainment magazine.

The group was founded by Ramnath Goenka in 1932, and is headed by his adopted son, Viveck Goenka, chairman and managing director of the company.