Sakhi
Overview
Sakhi is a Kannada-language fortnightly women's interest magazine circulated in Karnataka, India. Its headquarters are in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, and it is published by Express Publications, Madurai, as part of The New Indian Express group. The magazine's profile is straightforward and distinctive: a women's magazine written not in Hindi or English, but in Kannada, for women readers in Karnataka, produced by one of south India's established newspaper houses. Its directory listing summarises its contents as family, health, fashion and social topics for women readers in Karnataka.
The name Sakhi means a woman's female friend and confidante, and it sets the tone the magazine aims for: advice and companionship rather than instruction from above. As a fortnightly, Sakhi appears twice a month in print and digital form. Its combination of a Chennai editorial base, a Madurai publisher and a Karnataka readership makes it a good example of how south Indian media groups publish across state and language lines from shared editorial infrastructure.
Founding and Ownership
Sakhi was founded in 2001. Its publishing record places it within the Express group: its publisher is Express Publications, Madurai, and its company is The New Indian Express. The digital editions of the magazine are published under the name of the New Indian Express Group, and its e-magazine pages are credited to Express Network Private Limited, which the group's own description identifies as part of The New Indian Express Group, promoted by Express Publications (Madurai) Limited, the flagship company of the group.
That group background matters. Express Publications (Madurai) Limited publishes The New Indian Express, the English-language broadsheet, from printing centres across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Orissa, together with the Tamil daily Dinamani and the Malayalam weekly Samakalika Malayalam Varika. Sakhi was therefore not the product of a small independent publisher but of a group with presses, distribution and editorial operations across the south, which could sustain a Kannada magazine for women from a Chennai headquarters.
A Kannada Magazine from a Chennai Base
Sakhi's geography is one of its most interesting features. The magazine is in Kannada and circulated in Karnataka, yet its headquarters are located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. This arrangement reflects the structure of the Express group itself, whose flagship newspaper has long been published across state boundaries. Editorial work for a Karnataka audience can be organised from Chennai while printing, distribution and sales are handled through the group's Karnataka operations, including its Kannada daily newspaper infrastructure.
Within the group, Sakhi's sister publications are The New Indian Express, the English broadsheet daily, and Kannada Prabha, the daily Kannada-language newspaper. Sakhi complements Kannada Prabha neatly: the daily serves Kannada readers' news needs every morning, while the fortnightly serves Kannada women readers with the slower, service-oriented material that a newspaper cannot carry at length, features on family life, health, fashion and social questions, written fortnight by fortnight.
Language, Frequency and Format
Sakhi is published in Kannada, the language of Karnataka, and its frequency is fortnightly. Its digital archive shows the rhythm clearly, with issues dated the 1st and the 15th of successive months. It is published in print as a paperback magazine and also online, and its catalogue entry lists both formats, print and online, side by side. That dual existence is typical of Indian magazine publishing in the 2010s, when established print titles added e-magazine editions for readers who had moved to phones and tablets.
A fortnightly cycle suits a women's interest magazine. It is frequent enough to follow seasons, festivals, fashion and family concerns as they change, and slow enough to allow reported features and advice columns to be prepared properly. For readers in Karnataka, a Kannada magazine on this cycle from a major group offered an alternative to the state's established Kannada weeklies and to national English women's magazines that did not address their lives in their own language.
What Sakhi Covers
The magazine is categorised as a women's interest title, and the directory description of its contents names family, health, fashion and social topics. Those four headings cover the practical core of the magazine's service to its readers: running a household and family relationships, looking after health, keeping up with fashion and personal presentation, and understanding the social questions that affect women's lives in Karnataka. It is the classic contents mix of an Indian women's magazine, delivered in Kannada.
Because Sakhi is written for Karnataka's women specifically, its coverage is rooted in their context rather than translated from a metropolitan English template. Family structures, festivals, food habits, work patterns and social debates in Karnataka differ from those addressed by Hindi or English women's magazines aimed at north Indian readers. A Kannada fortnightly from the Express group could write about these subjects from inside the culture, in the language its readers speak at home, which is the fundamental reason for the magazine's existence.
Digital Editions and the E-Paper
Sakhi's official website, given in this directory, is its e-paper site, sakhiexpress.epapr.in, reflecting the Express group's practice of putting its magazines online as page-for-page digital editions. Its issues were also distributed through Readwhere, the Indian digital magazine platform, where the Sakhi page of the New Indian Express Group listed dozens of issues, 67 in the platform's count, available to read on mobile phones and tablets. Issues available there run through 2013, 2014 and 2015 into February 2016, each dated by its fortnight.
The Readwhere archive shows the magazine's regularity in digital form: issues for the first and second halves of each month, year after year, from 2013 to early 2016. For readers outside Karnataka, including Kannada-speaking women who had moved to other cities or abroad, these digital editions were the practical way to keep reading a Kannada women's magazine that was physically distributed in one state. The e-paper and platform editions together extended Sakhi's circulation well beyond its print geography.
The Express Group Context
To understand Sakhi, it helps to see it as one element in a multilingual southern portfolio. The Express group publishes an English broadsheet, a Tamil daily, a Malayalam weekly and a Kannada daily, among other titles. Adding a Kannada women's fortnightly allowed the group to serve a specific and loyal readership segment, women readers in Karnataka, with a product its existing Kannada infrastructure could support. Magazine publishing of this kind is portfolio publishing: each title is modest, but together they occupy a language market thoroughly.
Express Network Private Limited, the company behind Sakhi's digital editions, was incorporated on 13 August 1999, according to the group's own description carried on its magazine pages, shortly before Sakhi's 2001 founding. The timing fits the group's expansion into network and magazine ventures around the turn of the century. Sakhi's birth in 2001 belongs to that phase of Indian media history when large newspaper groups were launching niche magazines in regional languages to deepen their hold on readers whom national titles did not serve.
Audience and Circulation in Karnataka
Sakhi is circulated in Karnataka; that is the magazine's stated circulation territory, and its readers are women across the state who read Kannada. No audited circulation figure for Sakhi is published in the sources available for this profile, and this directory does not invent one. What can be said is that a fortnightly women's magazine in Kannada, backed by a major group's distribution, addresses a readership that advertisers and publishers have long recognised as substantial: household decision-makers who buy for families and who read service journalism closely.
The magazine's persistence in digital archives across many years of fortnightly issues indicates a stable, continuing publication rather than a short-lived experiment. Sixty-seven issues on a single digital platform, spanning 2013 to 2016 alone, represent more than two and a half years of unbroken fortnightly publishing in that window, on top of a print history beginning in 2001. For a regional-language niche magazine, that continuity is itself the meaningful measure of its audience.
Its Place Among Kannada Magazines
Sakhi appears in listings of Kannada-language magazines and in accounts of media in Karnataka as the Kannada women's title of the New Indian Express group. Kannada magazine publishing includes famous general weeklies and literary journals; a dedicated women's fortnightly is a more specialised offering, and Sakhi's group ownership gave it production values and distribution that independent titles struggle to match. Its red-and-white cover identity, visible on its February 2016 issue, made it recognisable on Karnataka newsstands as the women's magazine in Kannada from the Express house.
For worldnm.com readers, the essential facts are these: Sakhi is a Kannada fortnightly women's interest magazine, founded in 2001, published by Express Publications, Madurai, for The New Indian Express group, headquartered in Chennai and circulated in Karnataka, covering family, health, fashion and social topics, and available in print and as a digital e-magazine. It stands as a clear example of south India's multilingual magazine industry, in which a Chennai-based group speaks to Karnataka's women in their own language, every fortnight.
