New Delhi, Oct. 3: It’s like Coke and Pepsi joining hands to make a third cola.

After years of street fights, the Times of India and Hindustan Times today came together to bring out a new Delhi newspaper.

Although some observers view it as a move to keep their common competitors on edge, Hindustan Times business head Benoy Roychowdhury trashed the argument.

“It has got nothing to do with them,” he said.

There are unconfirmed reports of the India Today group planning to start a morning newspaper in Delhi. It already has an afternoon paper.

The Daily News and Analysis (DNA), the joint venture between Zee and the Bhaskar group which launched in Mumbai first, has ambitions of being a multi-city paper and could at some point want to enter Delhi.

The “new and vibrant” newspaper will be a standalone business, the Times of India group and HT Media announced, signing a memorandum of understanding to float the 50:50 joint venture.

“It is a general newspaper for the Delhi market,” Sidhant Khosla, director (corporate) for The Times of India group, said.

HT vice-chairperson Shobhana Bhartia said in a statement that the new paper reflected her group’s commitment to delivering “highly relevant editorial content”.

The Times of India group’s managing director, Vineet Jain, said the joint venture was “part of our commitment to best serve the new aspirations and mindsets of readers and provide the best possible value to advertisers”.

The two together control most of the Delhi market, where they are neck and neck, and a third paper will help them tighten their grip even further.

In marketing wars, it’s a common ploy to create a new entity to put up entry barriers before competitors.

The Times of India group did it alone in Mumbai when it launched Mumbai Mirror, distributed free with the Times of India in that city, to ward off DNA.

The same method is being applied in Delhi, this time in conjunction with HT.

This is not the first time, though, that the two have collaborated. A portion of the Times of India is being printed at the HT press in Mumbai.

Roychowdhury rejected the argument that the new paper would eat into the circulation of the HT and Times of India in Delhi. He said the new paper would aim at a different readership.

Not many details have been released, but media sources said the planned newspaper was likely to be a tabloid.

Executives said they would continue to compete hard as far as their main papers were concerned.

The two newspapers have been fighting a bitter war over circulation and readership for decades.