Mid-Day announces salary cuts till the company hits break even
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Context: The following email was sent to the employees of Mid-Day on 30 June 2020 by Mona Tripathi, head HR at Mid Day. The email was written and signed by Apurva Purohit, president of Jagran Group. Mid-Day is owned by Jagran Group. The tabloid published and circulated in Mumbai saw a 4% increase in readership in the last quarter of 2019–2020 and is cash-flow positive, Purohit said in a recent interview. On 17 July, the tabloid announced subscriptions for its epaper and laid off 47 employees at its printing press.
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From: Mona Tripathi
To: mona tripathi
Sent: Tue, 30 Jun 2020, 10:38:34+0530 (IST)
Subject: Message from Apurva
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Dear team,
We all know hoe difficult the last fw months have been for all of us. The continuing crisis is not likely to dissipate in a hurry and will leave in its aftermath much despair aling with a broken health, economic and social system which will take a very long time to heal. It has impacted all of us as individuals as well as bsinesses and I believe the coming year will see several businesses collapse on the back of an already slowing economy brought to a standstill by Covid.
At MIL we have all been working tremendously hard at coming out with the newspapers amidst the lockdown and distributing them as seamlessly as we were allowed. I congratulate the editorial and circulation teams on their sincere efforts amidst such trying circumstances. At the backend too we have been working very hard to minimise the damage to the P&L by reducing every cost possible, however the business continues to bleed and will do so for a few more months.
As a consequence we now have to move to the last costs that was not touched so far which are the staff costs. From July onwards we will be implementing a salary cut of 15% for all those earning a CTC above Rs 5 Lakhs. This cut will continue every month till we break even at the EBITDA level.
It is my sincere hope that this cut will not last for more than a few months especially if Mumbai continues its journey to open out the lockdown, advertisers restart their businesses and our revenue teams push hard for conversions.
There is always a silver lining in any situation and the huge success of MD’s and GMD’s digital product and its massive acceptance across a national reader base has emboldened us to convert this reach into a paid subscription base. We are optimistic that this initiative will go a long way in mitigating the revenue loss and move MIL to a breakeven situation faster. I look for your support in making this endeavour a resounding success.
Best regards and stay safe,
Apurva
