Still, a year of running this community paper which takes its name from the Marol area postal code has only made him more ambitious: George would like to run several more community papers. "Abroad, big companies own about 40-50 community papers. I would have to set up more here too in order to survive and also to be able to attract bigger advertisements."

Mumbai -50 was conceptualised on a hunch that local area papers had commercial potential in Mumbai. George had also seen such papers run very successfully in Chennai and while surfing the Net, realised that while large papers in the USA were suffering financially owing to television, local paperswere prospering - there were over 3,500 of them and 1,000 in Canada which included 2 specifically for a lakh-strong Indian population in Vancouver.

The idea had a gestation period for about three-four years since this pen-pusher had no reporting experience which he thought was essential if he were to bring out a newspaper. George shifted to reporting for a while and decided that the work was a bit entrepreneurial in nature. "You have to go out looking for both stories and clients, they don't come to you." When his employers offered him the option to work from home, he found the spare time for his first venture.

"It was my impression that publishing was a very expensive business but bringing out a monthly 8-page magazine size newsletter was something I could finance myself." But was there a market? He went about asking people near his house if they would like to read about local people and history, issues, events, services and products and the response was encouraging. Next, friends and acquaintancessaid 'yes' to future advertising, and after prospecting for subjects from March 1997, George found that there was enough to write on easily.

The newsletter launched in June last with a print run of 5,000 that worked out to a cost of Rs 1.25 per copy excluding editorial inputs. After a couple of issues, ads spanned two pages. "Although we have increased ad rates subsequently, today we receive about 4 pages of ads."

Till about a month ago, George was not marketing his product, "the newsletter would go out and people would phone in," but last month he hired help to send out mailers to local firms and hand out subscription copies that were requisitioned to ensure that they didn't fall out from the leading English mainstream newspapers they were tucked into.

The newsletter is distributed free of charge but it has still got around 325 subscribers (annually Rs 20) and if the cost of the hired help ("he was unemployed for a long time) is excluded then Mumbai-50 is breaking even. "The problem is there is noprecedent here for me to follow. It has to be a trial-n-error process for me," George says, pointing out that although the issue is distributed free of charge it still attracts subscribers leaving him undecided whether or not to make it subscription-based.

"I have asked school children to solicit for subscriptions and in return I pay them a fourth of the subscription charges." Some months ago, he got himself a pager to remain in touch with advertisers and subscribers.

Finally, what makes the now-occasional morning constitutional entirely bearable for George is the instant feedback from readers. He still continues to write for the business magazine and says, "The most satisfying thing is the response that you get from readers. When you write for mainstream publications rarely will anyone phone to say it was good or bad whereas in local publications the reader response is instant. It makes you feel you can have a positive impact on community."