Indian Express

''The Indian Express'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932 by P. Varadarajulu Naidu. It is headquartered in Noida, owned by the ''Indian Express Group''. It was later taken over by Ramnath Goenka. In 1999, eight years after Goenka's death in 1991, the group was split between the family members. The southern editions took the name ''The New Indian Express'', while the northern editions, based in Mumbai, retained the original ''Indian Express'' name with ''The'' prefixed to the title.

History

In 1932, the ''Indian Express'' was started by an Ayurvedic doctor, P. Varadarajulu Naidu, at Chennai, being published by his Tamil Nadu press. Soon under financial difficulties, he sold the newspaper to Swaminathan Sadanand, the founder of ''The Free Press Journal'', a national news agency. In 1933, the ''Indian Express'' opened its second office in Madurai, launching the Tamil edition, '' Dinamani''. Sadanand introduced several innovations and reduced the price of the newspaper. Faced with financial difficulties, he sold a part of his stake to Goenka as convertible debentures. In 1935, when ''The Free Press Journal'' finally collapsed, and after a protracted court battle with Goenka, Sadanand lost ownership of ''Indian Express''. In 1939, Goenka bought '' Andhra Prabha'', another prominent Telugu daily newspaper. The name Three Musketeers was often used for the three dailies, namely ''Indian Express'', ''Dinamani'' and ''Andhra Prabha''.

In 1940, the whole premises was gutted by fire. ''The Hindu'', a rival newspaper, helped considerably in re-launching the paper, by lenting their old building and allowing getting it printed temporarily at one of its Swadesimithran's press and later offered its recently vacated premises at 2 Mount Road, on rent to Goenka, which later became the landmark Express Estates. This relocation also helped the ''Express'' obtain better high speed printing machines. The district judge who led the inquiry into the fire concluded that a short circuit or cigarette butt could have ignited the fire and said that the growing city had inadequate fire control support. In 1952, the paper had a circulation of 44,469.

After Goenka's death in 1991, two of his grandsons, Manoj Kumar Sonthalia and Viveck Goenka split the group into two. ''Indian Express Mumbai'' with all the North Indian editions went to Viveck Goenka, and all the Southern editions, which were grouped as Express Publications Madurai Limited and headquartered in Chennai, went to Sonthalia. ''Indian Express'' began publishing daily on the internet on 8 July 1996. Five months later, the website ''expressindia.com'' attracted "700,000 hits every day, excepting weekends when it fell to 60% of its normal levels".

See also

* Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards
* Screen Awards
* The New Indian Express

References

External links

''The Indian Express'' website
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Indian Express, The
Newspapers established in 1931
1931 establishments in India
English-language newspapers published in India
Newspapers published in Kolkata
Newspapers published in Delhi
Newspapers published in Mumbai
Indian Express Limited
National newspapers published in India