Tata Motors vice-chairman Ravi Kant (left) and Tata Steel vice-chairman B. Muthuraman (right) with Aveek Sarkar, chief editor of ABP Group, at the launch of Fortune India in Mumbai on Friday. A Telegraph picture

Mumbai, Sept. 24: The business magazine that the corporate cognoscenti have been waiting for is finally here.

Fortune India — the magazine that melds reportage from the worlds of business in America and India — was launched here today at a well-attended event that celebrated the emergence of a country that was “confident to brush shoulders with the world — on its own terms”.

The magazine is a joint venture between Time Inc and ABP Pvt Ltd.

Top industrialists and executives, including Anand Mahindra, Shashi Ruia, Gautam Singhania, Harsh Goenka, A.M. Naik of L&T, Ravi Kant and B. Muthuraman from the Tata group, were among those present.

However, the launch of the magazine bristled with a number of ironies. When Henry Luce launched Fortune in February 1930, he had brushed aside his colleagues’ despairing talk of launching a premium product priced at $1 just four months after the Wall Street crash of 1929.

Fortune India, however, is coming out in more fortunate circumstances with the sensex riding a 32-month high at 20000 — and straining to go higher.

But that wasn’t the only irony.

Aveek Sarkar, chief editor of ABP Group, recalled that the date of the magazine’s launch also coincided with the day on which Allahabad High Court was supposed to have delivered its verdict on one of the most intractable disputes in India: the Ayodhya riddle.

“The legal eagles — the Supreme Court of India — have found an honourable answer to the riddle: the best solution is no solution,” he added.

Fortune India, Sarkar promised, would capture the story of “an emerging giant that is trying to adjust to the idea that it is no longer a weak dwarf”.

The magazine is the sixth country-specific edition of the 80-year-old publication. The first edition — priced at Rs 100 — reproduces an article that India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had written in 1942 for the US publication.

In that article, Nehru had written: “Grecian civilisation, for all its brilliance, passed away soon… but India carried on and her culture flowered again and again…. India, like China, has more staying power.”

In a foreword titled Fortune Grows, Andy Serwer, managing editor of Fortune, says: “We at Fortune’s office in New York happen to think India is a good bet…And we take heart in Pandit Nehru’s prescient words in our own publication. India, indeed, has staying power.”

The 192-page first edition of the magazine kicks off with a cover story that focuses on the biggest challenge that India Inc faces today: the task of managing a diverse workforce even as they acquire companies abroad.

The magazine is edited by D.N. Mukerjea.