Who is behind this
Press Setu, प्रेस सेतु, a bridge for the press. It grew out of building and running one Indian newspaper’s website, and finding that almost none of the hard parts were specific to that newspaper.
The hard parts were the same ones every regional publication hits. Getting Urdu to set properly rather than approximately. Making a story filed at six in the morning reach Google News while it is still the morning. Keeping ten years of archive addressable after a redesign. Proving to a search engine that a real named journalist wrote a piece and a real named editor checked it.
None of that is a differentiator for a newspaper. A paper in Shimla does not compete with a paper in Srinagar on whose sitemap is better formed; it competes on knowing Shimla. So the sensible thing was to build the shared part once, properly, and let each publication put its own name and its own judgement on top.
That is the whole idea. One codebase, many mastheads, and a reader who never learns our name — which is deliberate, and written into how the product is built rather than left as a promise.
The particulars
- What it is
- Software that runs a newspaper's website, newsroom and e-paper. One codebase serving every publication on it, each on its own domain under its own masthead.
- Publications running on it
- Two, today. That is a small number and there is no version of this page that makes it a large one.
- Languages in production
- Hindi, Urdu and English, with Urdu composed right to left in the newsroom as well as on the page.
- Where it runs
- A single server in Mumbai, serving every publication's domain. Indian readers reach an Indian machine.
- How it is sold
- Two ways, and both end in the same newspaper. Most publishers start it themselves at press setu dot in — an account, a few questions, and the paper exists. Some would rather talk first, and we still set it up with them. The price is the same either way.
- What it costs
- ₹499 per portal per month before GST, with the arithmetic on the pricing page.
What we will not do
Machine-written stories do not publish themselves here. The drafting tools produce drafts, a person publishes them, and every piece a model touched says so on the record and in a note a reader can see. There is no setting to turn that off, and asking for one is the one request we say no to — undisclosed AI use is how publishers get demoted or removed from Google News, so hiding it would damage the customer who asked.
We also do not put our own name on your newspaper. No badge in your footer, no credit in your metadata, nothing in your sitemap or your robots file. If you want to tell people what you run on, that is your decision to make and your sentence to write.
What it does, what it costs, or a conversation about your paper.
Start your paper, and see it before you pay.
Setup is a conversation rather than a wizard, and the price is the same whichever way you begin.