Brands
Cult.fit launches Evolve Yoga: A new frontier in fitness and wellness
Mumbai: Cult.fit, India’s leading health and fitness brand, today announced the launch of Evolve Yoga, a new evidence-based, transformative yoga format designed to enhance flexibility and mobility. Along with dance fitness, strength & conditioning, boxing, burn, and HRX, this addition further establishes Cult.fit’s positioning of being India’s largest and most holistic fitness brand.
Evolve Yoga offers a revolutionary adaptation to the age-old practice of yoga. Based on extensive research and study of movement, it combines traditional yoga poses with the use of a yoga wheel, a versatile prop that provides assistance in stretching, honing flexibility, and improving balance. It also facilitates the opening of the chest, shoulders, and hips. This makes it invaluable for beginners as well as seasoned students looking to deepen their current practice.
Each Evolve Yoga session is expertly designed to last 50 minutes, and features a holistic blend of centering dynamic warm-ups, meticulously crafted sequences, varied yoga poses, breathing techniques and savasana. Moreover, the wheel is just one of the props that will enhance the yoga practice as well as help in effectively performing these sequences and poses. In the coming future, more such props will be introduced to the program.
“Evolve Yoga is designed to improve flexibility, breath control and help people recover from intense workouts much more efficiently”, said cult.fit fitness expert Rishabh Telang. “The usage of props make it easier to get into poses that are otherwise challenging, thereby making the new format very accessible for members who prefer lifting weights or dance fitness as a preferred form of workout.”
“As new audiences embrace yoga, there is a need for evolution and adaptation of the art to address for relevance. India continues to be at the forefront of advancing the ancient practice and taking it to new dimensions,” stated cult.fit business head Porko Elango. “Integrated with specially designed props, Evolve Yoga represents a transformative approach that improves the practitioner’s well-being with a focus on breathing and flexibility, while also aligning seamlessly with the brand’s vision of making fitness easy and enjoyable. With this format launch and our upcoming initiatives, we continue to be deeply committed to providing our members a holistic experience with a wide variety of workout formats.”
Evolve Yoga is currently available in four cities: Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi, and Mumbai. Classes are currently conducted in 22 centers, and by the end of September, the format will be made available to 70 centers.
Brands
Estée Lauder to shed 10,000 jobs as new boss bets on digital shift
The cosmetics giant raises its profit outlook but stays silent on a possible merger with Spain’s Puig, as job cuts deepen and a three-year sales slump weighs on the turnaround
NEW YORK: Stéphane de La Faverie is not done cutting. Estée Lauder announced on Friday that it plans to eliminate as many as 3,000 additional jobs, taking its total redundancy programme to as many as 10,000 roles, up from a previous target of 7,000 announced a year ago. The company, which owns La Mer, The Ordinary, Tom Ford, and Aveda, employs roughly 57,000 people worldwide. The mathematics of what is now being contemplated is stark.
The fresh round of cuts is expected to generate a further $200 million in savings, bringing the total annual savings from the programme to as much as $1.2 billion before taxes. That money, De La Faverie has made clear, will be ploughed back into the turnaround.
A CEO in a hurry
De La Faverie, who took the helm in January 2025, inherited a company that had endured three consecutive years of annual sales declines. His response has been to move fast and cut deep. A significant portion of the latest redundancies reflects his push to reduce headcount at US department stores, long a cornerstone of Estée Lauder’s distribution model but now a channel in structural decline. In their place, he is accelerating the shift toward faster-growing online platforms, including Amazon.com and TikTok Shop, a pivot that is reshaping not just where Estée Lauder sells but how it thinks about its customers.
The numbers are moving in the right direction
Despite the pain, there are signs the medicine is working. Estée Lauder raised its profit outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year, guiding for adjusted earnings per share in the range of $2.35 to $2.45, above analyst estimates and a notable step up from the $2.05 to $2.25 range it had guided for in February. Organic net sales growth is expected to come in at 3 per cent, the company said, at the high end of the range it set out in February.
The share price tells a mixed story. After De La Faverie took charge, the stock surged nearly 60 per cent, buoyed by investor optimism that a longtime company insider could finally arrest the decline. But 2026 has been rougher: the shares have fallen 27 per cent this year, weighed down by disappointing February results and the overhang of unresolved merger talks with Spanish beauty giant Puig Brands SA. The company gave no additional details about those discussions on Friday, leaving the market to guess.
Silence on Puig
The proposed tie-up with Puig remains the most consequential unknown hanging over Estée Lauder. A deal with the Barcelona-based group, which owns brands including Carolina Herrera and Rabanne, would reshape the global luxury beauty landscape. But with nothing new to say and a turnaround still very much in progress, De La Faverie is asking investors to trust the process.
Three years of sales declines, 10,000 job cuts, and a merger that may or may not happen. At Estée Lauder, the overhaul has barely started.
