In yet another international felicitation, Rashtradoot was named the winner of a Silver Stevie® Award in the “Most Valuable Corporate Response to COVID-19” category at the annual Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, making it the first and only print publication from India to ever win a Stevie in the award’s history.
The Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards are the only business awards program to recognize innovation in the workplace in all 29 nations of the Asia-Pacific region. The Stevie Awards are widely considered to be the world’s premier business awards, conferring recognition for achievement in programs such as The International Business Awards® for 19 years.
Nicknamed the Stevies for the Greek word for “crowned,” the winners will be celebrated during a virtual awards ceremony on Wednesday, 14 July 2021.
More than 900 nominations from organizations across the Asia-Pacific region were considered this year in categories such as Award for Excellence in Innovation in Products & Services, Award for Innovative Management, and Award for Innovation in Corporate Websites, among many others. Rashtradoot won in the COVID-19 Response category for its initiative “Stand Tall with Rashtradoot”.
Launched last year at the onset of the pandemic, the humanitarian initiative “Stand Tall with Rashtradoot”, focused on ensuring that all stakeholders of the newspaper – from employees and hawkers to readers, contributors and journalists – were not impacted by the pandemic. At a time when the entire newspaper industry was badly affected and reacted by making cut downs at the expense of their employees, Rashtradoot was one of the few newspapers in the country to swim against the tide. Some key highlights of the program are – zero reduction in salaries, zero layoffs, health insurance for hawkers, food and transportation provided to employees in curfew zones and no reduction in number of pages printed, among others.
“The eighth edition of the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards attracted many remarkable nominations,” said Stevie Awards president Maggie Gallagher. “The organizations that won this year have demonstrated that they have continued to innovate and succeed despite the COVID-19 pandemic, and we applaud them for their perseverance and creativity. We look forward to celebrating many of this year’s winners during our virtual awards ceremony on 14 July.”
With a legacy spanning 70 years, Rashtradoot is not just Rajasthan’s first and oldest newspaper, but in recent times also the most innovative – a one-of-itskind English centre-spread ‘ARBiT’ – has made it the first bilingual newspaper of Rajasthan. Over the course of the last year, the newspaper has won awards and earned recognition for not just excellence in journalism and consumer engagement, but also for the humanitarian approach to its stakeholders during COVID. With the Stevie, Rashtradoot has hit a sixer in terms of wins, making it the most awarded newspaper of Rajasthan in recent times.
Among its initiatives last year; the brand proactively scaled up its marketing presence by roping in MOVIEMATH STUDIOS PVT. LTD. to partner in their growth story! Moviemath Studios is headed by M.S. Mahesh, Subramanian Iyer & Chandan Yadav & they have a presence across in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, & Kolkata!