MAM
BBC introduces ‘Top Gear’ magazine for car crazy kids
LONDON: It is not just the youth that the beeb has set its eye on with its Top Gear initiative. BBC Magazine is giving car-mad kids their own motoring magazine. BBC’s Top Gear Turbo, aimed at boys aged from eight years old, launches on 23 May, initially as a one-shot.
An official release informs that while younger football fans have long enjoyed their own titles as they grow up, there has never been a magazine aimed at junior car fans and they have had to make do with adult motoring titles. Top Gear research has shown that there is a significant market of younger, mainly male, car enthusiasts.
The core market for the title will be boys aged 8-12, although it is also expected to appeal to older boys and is by no means being written exclusively for a male audience. The 40-page magazine comes with a specially bagged double-sided mega-poster and a range of sticker sheets.
The content will blend the recognised and popular personality of both the main BBC Top Gear magazine and its television counterpart with individual features, insider-information and photographs of the kind of cars that set the pulse racing in kids of any age!
From supercars and the world’s leading designers to race-track heroes and how new technology works, the pages of Top Gear Turbo will be packed with the funniest, scariest, cleverest and most notorious automotive tales.
Top Gear publisher Adam Waddell said: “Initially the magazine is a one-off, but if the marketplace responds as we anticipate it will, Top Gear Turbo could become a regular title very quickly. The magazine will talk to the target audience on its own level, without being patronising. Our research has proved that there is a significant number of readers who currently buy an adult car magazine, simply because there is no alternative. But what they really want is their very own product.”
BBC’s Top Gear magazine is Britain’s best-selling general motoring monthly, with a circulation of 144,104 (ABC: Jul-Dec 2002).
Brands
Reserve Bank of India cancels Paytm Payments Bank licence
Central bank cites compliance failures; curbs tighten as wind-up looms
MUMBAI: India’s banking watchdog delivered its sharpest blow yet to Paytm Payments Bank, cancelling its licence and effectively ending its ability to operate as a bank under the law.
The Reserve Bank of India said the entity can no longer conduct banking business under the Banking Regulation Act, citing concerns that its affairs were not being run in the interest of depositors or the public and that it had failed to meet licence conditions.
The move escalates a crackdown that has been building for months. The bank had already been barred from onboarding new customers since March 11, 2022, and later faced restrictions on deposits, credit and wallet top-ups. In January 2024, the central bank ordered it to stop accepting fresh deposits, pointing to persistent non-compliance, including lapses in customer due diligence, use of funds and technology systems.
Operationally, the bank is now on a tight leash. It may process withdrawals of existing deposits and facilitate loan referrals through banking correspondents, but it cannot take fresh deposits.
The central bank said it would apply to the high court to wind up the bank.
Paytm sought to ringfence the fallout. In a regulatory filing, it said the licence cancellation applies to Paytm Payments Bank Limited, a separate entity, and should not be attributed to One 97 Communications. It added that there is no exposure or material business arrangement with the bank and that it operates independently, without Paytm’s board or management involvement.
“As informed earlier, Paytm (One 97 Communications Limited) and its services, which have been operating without interruption, will continue to operate uninterrupted. These include the Paytm app, Paytm UPI, Paytm Gold and all other services offered by its subsidiaries and associated companies,” the company said.
The distinction may reassure users of the app ecosystem, but the regulator’s verdict is unequivocal. After years of warnings, caps and curbs, the payments bank experiment at Paytm is being shut down—decisively, and with little room left to manoeuvre.
