Digital
Bhaskar breaks the news and the numbers with 2.1 crore MAUs on poll day
MUMBAI: When Bihar went to the ballot, India went to the Bhaskar app. Election Result Day on 14 November didn’t just reveal political winners, it also crowned a digital one, with Dainik Bhaskar registering a staggering 2.1 crore monthly active users (MAUs) nationwide and clocking an industry-leading 21 minutes of average time spent per user, the highest among all news apps in the country.
For India’s largest-circulated newspaper group and one of the biggest Hindi and Gujarati digital news platforms, the day marked a decisive win in the battleground of credibility, speed and engagement, the very pillars that shape election-day news consumption.
Driving this surge was a full suite of bespoke, high-engagement election features built specifically for the Bihar polls. The app rolled out everything from deep-dive programming on Bihar’s political history to second-by-second results updates, an AI-powered election chatbot, Bhaskar’s Reporter Poll, interactive quizzes, short reels, live video streams, a constituency-wise results map, a candidate suggestion survey and even a civic-issues portal.
The result? Not just page views, but stickiness, the kind every digital news brand chases, but few achieve at scale.
Dainik Bhaskar Newspaper Group promoter director Girish Agarwal summed up the moment with clarity, “When India and Bihar wanted credible, real-time information on elections, they turned to the Dainik Bhaskar App and they stayed with us for an average of 21 minutes. This unparalleled engagement positions Dainik Bhaskar App as the most powerful and effective platform in India at scale.”
As political tides shifted in Bihar, so did the digital scoreboard and on this front, Bhaskar didn’t just break the news. It broke the numbers too.
Digital
Ethical AI must benefit society, not dominate it, says WFEB chief Sanjay Pradhan at IAA event
At Mumbai event, ethics expert urges businesses and governments to shape AI responsibly
MUMBAI: Artificial intelligence may be racing ahead at lightning speed, but its direction must still be guided by human conscience. That was the central message delivered by Sanjay Pradhan, president of the World Forum for Ethics in Business (WFEB), during the latest edition of IAA Conversations held in Mumbai.
The session was organised by the International Advertising Association (IAA) and the Artificial Intelligence Association of India (AIAI) in association with The Free Press Journal at the Free Press House on 7 March. Addressing a packed audience, Pradhan called for stronger ethical leadership to ensure AI remains a tool that benefits humanity rather than one that governs it.
“Artificial intelligence has rapidly become one of the most powerful technologies humanity has created,” Pradhan said. “It is unlocking breakthroughs in medicine, science and creativity at a pace unimaginable just a few years ago.”
But he warned that the same technology carries serious risks. AI, he noted, can amplify disinformation faster than facts can travel, compromise privacy, deepen discrimination and disrupt millions of livelihoods. Referencing concerns raised by AI pioneers such as Geoffrey Hinton, often called the godfather of AI, Pradhan stressed that the real challenge is not whether AI will shape the world, but whether humans will shape it with ethics and wisdom.
Structuring his talk around four guiding questions, why, what, how and who, Pradhan introduced the audience to WFEB’s emerging AI Ethics Partnership, a global platform aimed at advancing responsible artificial intelligence. He outlined four priority concerns that demand urgent attention: disinformation, bias and discrimination, data privacy and job security.
To make the idea of ethical AI easier to grasp, Pradhan offered a simple metaphor. Ethical AI, he said, is like a three layered cake. The outer layer represents the visible value ethical AI creates for businesses and society. The middle layer is organisational culture that moves ethics from written codes to everyday practice. The innermost layer, however, is the most crucial, the conscience of individual leaders.
Drawing from Indian philosophical thought through WFEB co-founder Ravi Shankar, Pradhan noted that while artificial intelligence can reproduce stored knowledge, true intelligence is boundless and rooted in conscience, creativity and compassion. Practices such as breathwork and meditation, he suggested, can help leaders develop the calm clarity needed for ethical decision making.
The event also featured a discussion with Maninder Adityaraj Singh, chief of staff and head of innovation at Rediffusion Brand Solutions Pvt Ltd, and Yash Johri, lawyer, Supreme Court of India.
Opening the session, IAA India chapter president Abhishek Karnani, highlighted the need for industries to understand and engage with AI responsibly.
“AI has to be befriended and understood,” added Rediffusion managing director and AIAI national convenor Sandeep Goyal. “Its ethical use will determine whether it becomes a friend or a foe.”
As AI continues to reshape industries and societies, Pradhan ended with a simple but powerful call to action. Businesses, governments and individuals must work together to ensure that the algorithms shaping the future reflect human values rather than just cold logic.
