Hindu Business Line re-launched with new offerings

Kasturi and Sons-owned English business daily, Business Line has been re-launched with new content and a fresh design.

Kasturi and Sons-owned English business daily Business Line has been re-launched with a new design and content. On the anvil, it has some new offerings such as weekly supplements BL Ink and a refreshed Portfolio, along with others.

The new design for Business Line has been conceptualised by Aurobind Patel, a globally renowned designer. He was a former design consultant with the Daily Telegraph and The Times of London and is the former design director of The Economist.

On his endeavour with Business Line, Patel says, "I would call it rejuvenation. The idea was to ensure the design reflected the editorial changes in the paper and rejuvenate it in a contemporary style."

Besides a new design, the paper claims to have a new approach to the way it deals with the news and opinion. The daily will be featured on only six days of the week now with a dedicated page to politics and international affairs, redesigned stock pages with more graphical representation of data, articles on a broader array of subjects in the editorial and opinion pages and special columns from NSE.

Mukund Padmanabhan, editor, Business Line, says, "It is not just a redesign. The changes reflect the changes in the economy. The idea is to synchronize the design with the content, in a contemporary and easy-to-access format."

BL Ink is Business Line's new Saturday magazine, a 24-page tabloid offering opinions, reportages, Q&As and profiles. Prominent columnists from all areas of art, culture, literature and polity will feature across the book. The front of the book will largely have curious stories from across the country while the back will have stories on literature, arts, culture, entertainment and travel along with snippets on world news.

BL Portfolio is a 12-page investment feature targeted at investors which claims to score over the competition in three respects. Firstly being direct and specific in advice, secondly reaching out to primers, and finally, going beyond stocks. The new Portfolio will address high net worth investors who are evaluating passion investments like wine, antiques, art and start-ups. It also has a new page on real assets allowing investors to track materials, commodities and prices, to identify wealth creating opportunities in these areas. It is delivered along with the paper on Mondays.

Other offerings during the rest of the week such as Emerging Entrepreneurs and India File on Tuesdays, New Manager on Wednesdays, Techno Phile on Thursdays and Cat.a.lyst and Auto Focus on Fridays are also being rejuvenated to deliver a better product to the consumer.

S Padamanabhan, CFO, KSL, says, "The new Business Line holds a very important role in the umbrella offering of Kasturi & Sons, which also publishes The Hindu, Frontline and Sportstar. The new Business Line will not just attract more readers, but will also be at the core of future growth strategies for KSL. The growth necessarily does not mean only print but could be a multi-platform offering."