hen it acquired a 100 per cent stake in Vijayanand Printers (owner of the Kannada daily Vijay Karnataka and an English newspaper, Vijay Times), in July last year, hardly anyone would have thought that the Times of India (TOI) would use the acquisition as a platform from which to launch Kannada edition of TOI.

On January 17, TOI launched Times of India Kannada. Why did TOI resort to a launch when it already had a vehicle in the form of Vijay Karnataka? Explains Rahul Kansal, director, TOI Brand: "With Vijay we could acquire expertise in this area and now with the new TOI Kannada we are experimenting. We want to overcome the typical limitations of regional language newspapers and give our readers a world of opportunity and positive outlook through our newspaper." But there is Vijay Karnataka.... more