The Nod goes live with Alia Bhatt as cover star

On the morning of May 13, 2024, The Nod (thenodmag.com) went live, with Alia Bhatt as cover star. The Nod is a digital lifestyle publication from The Right Side, the creative arm of Reliance Industries, helmed by Priya Tanna, the former editor-in-chief of Vogue India. ‘The Right Side’ is a vertical under Isha M Ambani.

With Megha Mahindru and Ridhima Sapre as co-editors, The Nod is a highly curated online destination that aims to become an authority in culture commentary, through short, incisive pieces as well as long, insightful reads. The differentiator is its 3Cs proposition: current, crisp, and clever.

Current stands for everything you need to know to be in the know. Crisp, as the word suggests, is about being succinct in the what, the where, and the why. Meanwhile, Clever refers to unique voices and angles for smart storytelling. The logo, a version of which has the 3Cs, animates to a sonic signature that everyone will come to associate with the platform.

The Nod aims to give the time-strapped reader content that they can consume on-the-go. It aims to sharpen viewpoints, and help readers stay up to speed with the biggest talking points of our times. Capturing what readers want today, The Nod will spotlight interests as varied as fashion, beauty, pop culture, work life, design and sustainability to build its authority on cultural commentary.

With a team of journalists (editors, writers, photographers, stylists), who have worked at titles ranging from Vogue India, Elle India, Hindustan Times, Architectural Digest, Conde Nast Traveller, Rolling Stone India, The Print and more, The Nod will cover a wide gamut of genres with the aim of exploring all the essential reads around modern living for the time-crunched.

Speaking about the publication, Priya Tanna, president- The Right Side, says, “After working in print media for three decades (at newspapers and magazines), I knew the time was right for a new digital platform. With The Nod, we wanted to create a space where even our readers find a space to escape the digital clutter we all encounter on our feeds every day. There’s so much info, endless content to watch and so much to read that our tabs are always open, but we never get to it. So The Nod in that sense is focused on simplifying the modern world around us.”

Megha Mahindru elaborates on her editorial vision, “When we started planning The Nod, we wanted to fill in a gap that was evident in the publishing world. Our starting point was to take features and culture reporting away from its lip-gloss and bubblegum image, and introduce our readers (through our articles, videos and shoots), to new perspectives and engaging conversations, while covering what’s important today.”

The publication features Alia Bhatt seen through the eyes of her mother, Soni Razdan Bhatt, and Ridhima Sapre explains why they took this route: “With an actor who has been in the media spotlight as much as Alia Bhatt—we know everything from her cat’s name to her favourite cake—it was important to uncover something new. How do we delve into the private lives of such public figures, who already have hundreds of thousands of articles online dedicated to them? That’s the challenge that we’ve set for ourselves with all our content.”

afaqs! received this information in a press release.