NEW DELHI: amarujala.com, the website of the Hindi newspaper Amar Ujala, has won the WAN-IFRA award for one of the top three news websites in south Asia.

Competing against big media houses across south Asia, amarujala.com’s victory signals two important trends: firstly, the fact that the industry is paying attention to the leading voices in Hindi on digital, and secondly, the fact that Amar Ujala’s focus on global standards of product and design is paying off. It may signal a completely different approach to the Hindi audiences, according to the World Association of Newspapers.

Amar Ujala director Probal Ghoshal said: “Amar Ujala’s vision for digital media is built into its brand vision of creating a world-class experience for the Hindi user, wherever they are in the world. We are therefore creating rich and hyper-engaged media vehicles, which intend to bring the world to the local audience and carry the local audience to the Hindi diaspora. Our vision is integrated and interactive, and it allows brands to partner with us cross-media. We are expanding our media platform making it video-rich and allowing the user's voice a part of the experience of the platform.”

Amar Ujala relaunched its website early this year, making it fully responsive, with a clean design, new interactive features and non-intrusive advertising approach. Feature to feature, Amar Ujala has upped the game and matches the best of English news websites, even bettering them, in unique feature sets. This went against the approach taken by most existing Hindi news websites, which were focusing more on quantity of page views, and monetization through distracting and intrusive advertising.

"As a cultural icon, Amar Ujala sets the standards for Hindi & so we've brought the best practices of global design & packaging with a focus on re-positioning Hindi & its audiences," said Amar Ujala digital business creative and product head Arvind Joshi.

WAN-IFRA chose Amar Ujala taking into account website design, product, innovation, and audience fitment. With the digital monetization of news space trying to go beyond display and network advertising, these innovations will lead the way for business strategy as well.

Himanshu Gautam, business head, Amar Ujala Digital, explained the importance of the new website in the context of Amar Ujala’s business objectives, “This is just the first phase of our roll-out plan, aiming at creating new kinds of rich user experiences, which in turn create high-value monetisation opportunities. We refuse to commodify our users by linking our business with just page views."