Business Standard

Business Standard is one of the largest Indian English-language daily edition newspapers published by Business Standard Ltd in two languages, the other being Hindi. Founded in 1975, the newspaper does extensive coverage on the Indian economy, infrastructure, international business and trade, stock and currency markets, corporate governance, apart from a range of other financial news, opinions and insights.

Business Standard
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatBroadsheet
Owner(s)Business Standard Private Limited[1]
Founder(s)ABP Group[2]
PublisherBusiness Standard Ltd
EditorShyamal Majumdar
Staff writers400+(August, 2020)
Founded26 March 1975
LanguageEnglish
Hindi
HeadquartersNehru House
4, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg
New Delhi 110002
Circulation189,000
OCLC number496280002
Websitewww.business-standard.com
hindi.business-standard.com
Free online archivesYes

The main English-language edition comes from 12 regional centers, Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Coimbatore, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Pune, Lucknow, Bhubaneswar, and Kochi—and reaches readers in over 1,000 towns and cities across India.[3]

History

The newspaper's initial owner had been the Kolkata-based ABP Group. Though unquestionably a huge editorial success, BS failed to click in the market. Though circulation rose, losses mounted, possibly to above Rs 50 crore, when ABP could not support it any more. ABP had lived in the hope that the Government would allow the London-based Financial Times to take an equity stake in Business Standard Limited and bring in the much-needed funds.[4]

In 1997, it was purchased by Kotak Mahindra Finance, in a deal led by now Kotak Mahindra Bank Managing Director and CEO Uday Kotak. Kotak said in an interview in 2005 that BS was losing Rs 1.5 crore a month and ABP feared being bankrupted by the losses. The scions of the ABP group - Aveek and Arup Sarkar had spun BS off into a separate company and approached Kotak as a potential buyer, fearing they may need to close down the paper. "I did a quick calculation. I believed that if I put Rs 20 crore into the paper, we could turn it around. The cost of acquisition was virtually zero. The Sarkars were so desperate that they were ready to give the paper up for nothing. I can’t remember how much we paid but it was only a crore or so. Kotak Mahindra was flush with funds – some from the Goldman Sachs JV – so it seemed like a risk worth taking," he said.[5]

Circulation

The paper had remained for years, India's second largest business daily in terms of circulation, until in 2017, when its ranking sank. In January, 2019, it was adjudged by the Indian Readership Survey to be the fourth largest financial news daily (by an average issue readership of 107,000 copies) and third largest selling financial news daily (by Total Readership of 505,000).[6]

As of January, 2020, the paper had recovered some ground. The IRS 2019Q4 survey found the newspaper gaining 45,000 readers over the final quarter of 2019 to hit an average issue readership of 189,000 copies. It remained the third-highest selling financial newspaper in India, behind the Economic Times and Mint.[7]

Editor

Noted financial journalist T. N. Ninan was the Editor from 1993 to 2009. In January 2010, Ninan became chairman and editorial director of Business Standard Ltd and was succeeded as editor of Business Standard by Dr Sanjaya Baru, who was formerly media advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Long-term Business Standard editorial staff Ashok K Bhattacharya took charge of the paper after Baru quit to join a UK-based think tank in 2011.[8] The current editor is another Business Standard veteran Shyamal Majumdar.[9]

Employees

While exact figures are not known, more than 100 business journalists are currently employed with the publication. After the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in India, the newspaper has fired close to a 100 employees, almost half of whom were editorial staff including reporters, designers and senior editors.[10][11]

The offices with the largest editorial teams are in Delhi, which mostly covers government policy news and Mumbai, mostly dedicated to corporate, financial and share market news. As of August, 2020 other offices with reporting bureaus are present in Kolkata, Bangalore, and Ahmedabad but have seen their strength go down. The newspaper also maintains few reporters in other major cities such as Chennai and Bhubaneswar, but their numbers have been continuously reduced since 2016. Over this time, reporters based out of Lucknow, Chandigarh and Hyderabad had been let go.

Regular contributors

References
  1. Who Owns Your Daily Newspaper? at the Wayback Machine (archived 2016-11-09)March 2, 2016 The Daily Pao
  2. Sruthijith KK (4 August 2009). "Corrected: Business Standard Owner Uday Kotak Held Meetings With Potential Buyers". gigaom.com. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
  3. Business Standard. "About Us - Brand - Business Standard". Business Standard.
  4. "A distress sale". Outlookindia.com. 29 January 1997. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  5. "Profile of Uday Kotak". Virsanghvi.com. 5 September 2005. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  6. "The Economic Times is number 4 among English newspapers: IRS 2017". Economic Times.
  7. "The Economic Times continues to grow, daily readership crosses 1.1 million". Economic Times. 13 May 2020. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  8. "AK Bhattacharya replaces Sanjaya Baru as Editor of BS".
  9. "Author-Shyamal Majumdar-Business Standard-Page 1". Business Standard.
  10. "Business Standard discontinues weekend edition, initiates layoffs across bureaus". Newslaundry.com. 2 July 2020. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
  11. "Media layoffs: ET Gujarati shuts down, Business Standard initiates second round of retrenchments". Newslaundry.com. 31 July 2020. Retrieved 17 August 2020.
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