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Q2-17: DB Corp revenue up, radio operating profit doubles
BENGALURU: DB Corp Limited (DB Corp), home to flagship newspapers Dainik Bhaskar, Divya Bhaskar, Dainik Divya Marathi and Saurashtra Samachar reported 10.5 percent higher consolidated revenue for the quarter ended 30 September 2016 (Q2-17, current quarter) as compared to the corresponding year ago quarter. The media house’s total income from operations (TIO or revenue) in Q2-17 was Rs 528.74 crore as compared to Rs 478.36 crore.
DB Corp’s consolidated profit after tax (PAT) increased 55.9 percent year-over-year (y-o-y) to Rs 88.52 crore as compared to Rs 56.77 crore. However, quarter-over-quarter (q-o-q) it’s PAT declined 14.9 percent from Rs 103.96 crore in Q1-17.
EBIDTA (excluding other income) for the current quarter increased 38.6 percent y-o-y to Rs150.55 crore as compared to Rs 108.66 crore, but declined 16.9 percent q-o-q from Rs 181.06 crore.
Four segments contribute to DB Corp’s numbers – Printing and publishing of newspaper and periodicals (Printing) segment; Radio segment; Event segment, Internet segment; and Power segment. Its Printing and Radio segments are major contributors to the company’s top and bottomlines and have been considered here.
Radio Segment
DB Corp’s radio segment has an FM radio network under the brand My FM for which the company reported more than double y-o-y (2.15 times) operating profit for Q2-17 at Rs 12.97 crore as compared to Rs 6.04 percent. Q-o-q also, DB Corp’s radio segment’s operating profit was 69.1 percent higher (Rs 7.67 crore in Q1-17). My FM operating revenue for Q2-17 was 24.6 percent higher y-o-y at Rs 29.86 crore as compared to Rs 23.96 crore and 6.4 percent higher q-o-q as compared to Rs 28.06 crore.
Printing and publishing of newspaper and periodicals (Printing) segment
DB Corp’s Printing segment reported revenue of Rs 483.4 crore in the current quarter as compared to the Rs 443.24 crore in Q2-16. However, q-o-q, the Printing segment’s revenue declined 8.2 percent from Rs 526.55 crore. The segment’s operating profit in the current quarter increased 37.8 percent y-o-y to Rs 129 crore as compared to Rs 93.64 crore but declined 19.7 percent q-o-q from Rs 160.73 crore.
Other numbers
DB Corp’s consolidated Total Expenditure for Q2-17 increased 2.4 percent y-o-y to Rs 399.75 crore as compared to Rs 390.56 crore but declined 2.4 percent q-o-q from Rs 410.33 crore. Consolidated Cost of raw materials consumed in Q2-17 increased 9.1 percent y-o-y to Rs 163.34 crore from Rs 149.69 crore and increased 1.8 percent q-o-q from Rs 160.46 crore. Consolidated Employee Benefits Expense in the current quarter increased 11.5 percent y-o-y to Rs 107.41 crore as compared to Rs 96.3 crore in Q2-16 and increased 0.6 percent q-o-q from Rs 106.77 crore. Consolidated Total comprehensive income in Q2-17 increased 53.5 percent y-o-y to Rs 85.21 crore from Rs 55,51 crore, but declined 17.9 percent q-o-q from Rs 103.8 crore.
Note: The unit of currency in this report is the Indian rupee – Rs (also conventionally represented by INR). The Indian numbering system or the Vedic numbering system has been used to denote money values. The basic conversion to the international norm would be:
(a) 100,00,000 = 100 lakh = 10,000,000 = 10 million = 1 crore.
(b) 10,000 lakh = 100 crore = 1 arab = 1 billion.
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Samsung certifies 1,000 Maharashtra students in AI and coding
The South Korean electronics giant marks its first large-scale skilling push in the state, with women making up nearly half the national programme’s enrolment
PUNE: Samsung has put 1,000 students in Maharashtra through a certified training programme in artificial intelligence and coding, the largest such drive the South Korean electronics company has run in the state and a signal that corporate India’s skilling ambitions are moving well beyond the boardroom brochure.
The certifications were awarded under Samsung Innovation Campus (SIC), the company’s flagship corporate social responsibility programme, which launched in India in 2022 with the stated aim of democratising access to future-technology education. The 1,000 graduates were drawn from four institutions: 127 from Savitribai Phule Pune University, 373 from Pimpri Chinchwad University, 250 from D.Y. Patil University’s Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology and 250 from Anjuman-I-Islam’s Kalsekar Technical Campus. All completed training in either AI or coding and programming, the two disciplines Samsung has identified as the critical pillars of the digital economy.
The programme does not stop at technical training. Soft-skills development and career-readiness modules are baked into the curriculum, a deliberate attempt to close the gap between what universities teach and what employers actually want.
“India’s digital growth story will ultimately be shaped by the quality of its talent pipeline,” said Shubham Mukherjee, head of CSR and corporate communications at Samsung Southwest Asia. “As technologies like AI move from the periphery to the core of industries, skilling must evolve from basic training to building real-world capability. This milestone in Maharashtra reflects how industry and academia can come together to create a future-ready workforce that is both globally competitive and locally relevant.”
The Maharashtra drive sits within a rapidly scaling national effort. Samsung Innovation Campus trained 20,000 young people across India in 2025, hitting its stated target for the year. Women account for 48 per cent of national enrolments, a figure the company cites as evidence of its push for an inclusive technology ecosystem. The programme is implemented in partnership with the Electronics Sector Skills Council of India and the Telecom Sector Skill Council.
Samsung, which is marking 30 years in India this year, runs SIC alongside two other initiatives, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow and Samsung DOST, as part of a broader effort to build what it calls a generation of innovators with both the technical depth and the problem-solving mindset to thrive in a fast-moving digital world.
A thousand certified students is a tidy headline. Whether they find jobs that match their new skills is the harder question, and the one that will ultimately determine whether corporate skilling programmes like this one are genuine pipelines or well-photographed gestures.
