Gujarati News by Divya Bhaskar

Review by eFreeware

Gujarati News by Divya Bhaskar is a free Android news app published by the Dainik Bhaskar Group, one of India's larger newspaper houses. It carries Gujarati-language reporting from across Gujarat, along with national and international stories, and it has been on Google Play since January 2014. The install base is substantial: more than 10 million downloads and a 4.3 average from over 180,000 ratings.

The reason to consider it is the local focus. Rather than treating Gujarat as a single news market, the app is built around coverage of more than 300 cities and towns, so a reader in Rajkot or Bhavnagar can follow what is happening in their own area rather than only the state capital. A newsroom of more than 3,000 journalists feeds that coverage, according to the developer.

That combination of a large regional newsroom and a city-by-city structure is what separates this from a general-purpose news reader. If you read Gujarati and want reporting that starts from your own town, this is the pitch.

A city-first news app for Gujarati readers

The app is aimed at Gujarati speakers who want their news in Gujarati, and particularly at readers who care about their own district rather than only the big national stories. The city news section is the centerpiece: it covers local crime, accidents, water shortages, power cuts, road work and traffic, the everyday subjects that rarely make national bulletins but shape how a day goes.

It also suits readers who have moved away from Gujarat but want to keep track of home. Someone working in another state can set the app to their hometown and follow it the way they would a local paper, without waiting for relatives to forward links.

Beyond that core audience, the app covers the usual general-interest ground: politics and elections, business and markets, sports, and entertainment. It is a general news app in that sense, but the local layer is what gives it a reason to exist alongside a national news service.

City reporting and breaking news alerts

Local coverage runs across more than 300 cities and towns, and the developer describes updates arriving in real time as stories break. Notifications and breaking news alerts are part of the package, so you can be told about an incident in your area rather than finding out later.

The subject range within local news is broad: crime, accidents, utility problems, construction and traffic among them. That is a practical list rather than a glamorous one, and it reflects what a regional daily actually spends its reporting capacity on.

For readers outside Gujarat, the app also carries national and global news, so it can serve as a single Gujarati-language source rather than a supplement to something else.

Video bulletins and the ePaper archive

Video is a significant part of the app. Clips cover local, national and global news as well as business, sports, health, lifestyle, technology and automotive subjects, and the developer presents them in short formats. Videos can be shared with friends and family, which makes them easy to pass on in the way news often travels now.

The ePaper section reproduces the printed edition for your city, and the archive reaches back a year. There are more than 200 editions available in total. Pages can be downloaded, so you can keep an edition and read it later.

That archive is the feature that turns the app from a feed into something closer to a reference. If you want to check how a story was reported at the time, or you simply prefer the layout of a printed page to a scrolling feed, the ePaper side of the app carries real weight.

DvB Originals, politics, business and sport

DvB Originals is the app's home for investigative work and longer analysis. The developer's framing is that these pieces go past the headline to explain consequences, which is the kind of journalism that benefits from length and from a newsroom willing to spend time on a single subject.

Politics coverage follows elections and policy across the country, with the statements and positions of major figures and parties reported as they happen. Business readers get markets, indices, trading, IPOs, currency and gold rates, plus startup and small-business coverage. Sport includes live cricket scores and updates on well-known players, and there is a Bollywood section for entertainment news and reviews.

There is also a Rashifal section with daily horoscope material covering love, career, health and money, written by named astrologers, alongside tarot and numerology features. It sits oddly next to investigative journalism, but it is a long-standing part of the regional newspaper format and readers who want it will find it here.

The daily quiz and its cash prizes

A daily quiz offers cash prizes to winners. It is a small feature next to the news sections, but it gives the app a reason to be opened on a quiet news day.

I would treat the quiz as a bit of routine rather than the main draw. The value of the app is in the reporting and the ePaper, and the quiz is a pleasant extra for readers who like a daily question.

What it costs and what that buys

The app is free to download and install, and there are no in-app purchases. The app carries no ads, so reading is not interrupted by commercial breaks. That is an unusual position for a free news product, and it is worth taking at face value from the developer rather than as something I can verify.

There is no paywall and no premium tier. You install it, you read.

The app is pitched as a counter to rumors and false stories on social platforms, with reporting from a professional newsroom. That is a claim about editorial standards, and it is one every news organization makes about itself.

How it compares with other ways of reading the news

The obvious alternative is a general news aggregator, which will pull together many outlets but rarely gives a town in Gujarat the same weight as a national story. Aggregators are good at breadth; they are less good at the kind of district-level reporting this app is organized around.

A national English-language news app is the other comparison, and it serves a different reader. If Gujarati is the language you read comfortably, or the language you want your news in, a national English app is not really a substitute, however good its coverage.

A dedicated ePaper service is the third option, and some readers prefer one that does nothing but reproduce newspaper pages. This app bundles the ePaper with video, breaking news and the other sections, which is either convenient or distracting depending on how you like to read. The daily quiz and the astrology section are the parts that make it feel more like a traditional newspaper package than a stripped-down news feed.

A strong choice for readers who want Gujarat first

Gujarati News by Divya Bhaskar makes most sense for Gujarati readers who want their own city or town covered seriously, not just mentioned. The city-level structure, the ePaper archive going back a year, the video bulletins and the absence of ads together make a coherent package for that reader, and the free price removes the usual hesitation about trying it.

It has been on the store since 2014, and the developer last updated it in September 2026.

Readers who want a Gujarati-language source for state, national and business news will find those sections here too, and the DvB Originals pieces are the part I would watch if you value analysis over speed. If astrology and a daily quiz are not your interests, they are easy to leave alone. For anyone whose news diet starts with their own district, this is one of the more complete options in Gujarati.