The New Indian Express is an Indian English-language daily newspaper founded in 1932. Following the death of its owner, the paper was split into two companies in 1991. The northern editions retained the name ‘Indian Express’ while the southern editions became ‘The New Indian Express’. Santwana Bhattacharya was appointed Editor-in-Chief on July 1st, 2022.
Indian Express was first published in 1932 in Madras. It was founded by P Varadarajulu Naidu, an Ayurvedic doctor and Indian National Congress member. He later sold it to S. Sadanand, founder of The Free Press Journal.
In 1933, The Indian Express opened its second office in Madurai and launched the Tamil daily Dinamani. Due to financial difficulties, Ramnath Goenka eventually bought the paper from Sadanand. With competition from The Hindu and the Mail, circulation was no more than 2,000 by the late 1930s.
In 1939, Goenka bought Andhra Prabha, a prominent Telugu daily. In 1940, the premises were destroyed by fire. The Hindu helped with the re-launch of the paper by offering their premises in Madras and providing better high-speed printing machines.
Goenka bought the Morning Standard in 1944, which later became the Mumbai edition of The Indian Express. He also started editions in cities like Madurai, Bangalore and Ahmedabad. The Financial Express was launched from Mumbai in 1961 and Gujarati dailies Lok Satta and Jansatta were launched in 1952 from Ahmedabad and Baroda.
The Delhi edition of Indian Express started in 1951 when the Tej group’s Indian News Chronicle was acquired. In 1990, the Sterling group of magazines and Gentleman magazine were also bought. After Goenka’s death in 1991, the group split into two with Mumbai having all the north Indian editions and Chennai having the southern editions.
The New Indian Express is now published from 22 major cities in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.
The New Indian Express has a net paid circulation of 595,618 copies and is published in an area covering 24% of the population. It offers insurance benefits to subscribers and its flagship publication, The New Sunday Express, includes magazine supplements on national and international themes, politics, literature, arts, cinema, travel and more.
In late 2007/early 2008, The New Indian Express underwent a major makeover with many old staff leaving to make way for new. They also launched a 40-page Friday magazine supplement called Indulge and in September 2010, the lifestyle pullout began a Bangalore edition.
The New Indian Express Group of Companies publishes Dinamani in Tamil, Cinema Express (Tamil), and Samakalika Malayalam Vaarika (Malayalam). They also have a website called Edex Live.