The New Indian Express

About The New Indian Express

The New Indian Express is an Indian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper published by Express Publications (Madurai) Limited and headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It was created in 1999 when the historic Indian Express group was divided between the grandsons of its legendary proprietor Ramnath Goenka: the southern editions, under Manoj Sonthalia, took the new masthead The New Indian Express, while the northern editions retained the original Indian Express title under Viveck Goenka. It is the flagship English daily of South India's Express group, with strong editions across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and Odisha.

Origins in the Indian Express Split

The New Indian Express traces its lineage to the Indian Express, founded in 1932 in Chennai by P. Varadarajulu Naidu and built into a national chain by Ramnath Goenka, who acquired it after a protracted legal battle with Swaminathan Sadanand in the 1930s. After Goenka's death in 1991, a family dispute broke out between his grandsons Viveck Goenka and Manoj Sonthalia. A court-adjudicated settlement formalised the split: Viveck Goenka, with a 63 per cent shareholding, received the Indian Express masthead, the northern and western editions, the Financial Express and the Marathi publications Loksatta and Lokprabha. Manoj Sonthalia, with a 37 per cent shareholding, received the business of Indian Express (Madurai), comprising nine South Indian editions — Madras, Bengaluru, Kochi, Kozhikode, Madurai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam — along with Andhra Prabha, Kannada Prabha and Dinamani. These were carved out as a separate set of publications under the new masthead The New Indian Express.

Ownership and the Sonthalia Family

The paper is published by Express Publications (Madurai) Limited, the flagship company of The New Indian Express group, under the ownership of Manoj Kumar Sonthalia. Its corporate headquarters is in Chennai. The group's digital arm, Express Network Private Limited, promoted by the group, was incorporated on 13 August 1999 under the Indian Companies Act, 1956, to run its internet operations. Santwana Bhattacharya was appointed editor-in-chief on 1 July 2022, succeeding G. S. Vasu. The group's leadership has emphasised the paper's South Indian identity while building it into a multi-language, multi-platform media house.

Editions and Reach

Express Publications (Madurai) Limited publishes The New Indian Express from 32 printing centres across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Odisha, giving it one of the widest print footprints of any English daily in South India. Its editions serve Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode, Madurai, Coimbatore, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar and numerous smaller cities and towns. The paper also publishes The Sunday Standard from New Delhi, extending its presence to the national capital. Its dense network of district editions gives it unusual depth in South Indian regional coverage for an English newspaper.

Editorial Character

The New Indian Express is known for strong regional reporting combined with national and international coverage, and for an editorial voice that speaks to South India's political and cultural concerns. Its pages carry in-depth coverage of state politics in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala — including the Dravidian political landscape, which national dailies often cover thinly — alongside business, sports, cinema and opinion. Its editorials and columnists engage with issues of federalism, language, education and development that resonate with its core readership, while its reporting maintains the Express tradition of independent, accountability-focused journalism.

Sister Publications

The New Indian Express group publishes newspapers in English, Tamil and Kannada and magazines in Tamil and Malayalam across South India and Odisha. Its Tamil daily Dinamani, one of the oldest Tamil newspapers, traces its own origins to the Express group's Madurai operations in the 1930s. The group also publishes Kannada Prabha in Kannada, Andhra Prabha in Telugu and Samakalika Malayalam Varika, a weekly in Malayalam. This multi-language portfolio makes the group one of the few Indian media houses with significant print brands in four South Indian languages plus English.

Content and Supplements

Beyond daily news, the paper offers city supplements, education pages, weekend magazines and special features tailored to its regional markets. Its cinema coverage — spanning Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam film industries — is among the most comprehensive in English-language Indian journalism, reflecting South India's enormous film culture. The paper also runs pages on careers, technology, lifestyle and health, and its Sunday editions carry long-form features, interviews and literary content. Its education and campus reporting is closely followed by students across the southern states.

Digital Presence

The paper's web portal, newindianexpress.com — relaunched from its earlier avatar as expressbuzz.com — is a leading English news site for South India-focused coverage with national reach. The group hosts multiple websites in five languages — English, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam — including dinamani.com, kannadaprabha.com and andhraprabha.com, as well as cinemaexpress.com for film news. Its mobile apps, e-paper editions, newsletters and social-media channels serve a large audience in South India and the South Indian diaspora, and its digital newsroom produces video explainers and podcasts alongside text reporting. The group hosts around nine websites in five languages — English, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam — including the portals of Dinamani, Kannada Prabha and Andhra Prabha, as well as cinemaexpress.com for film news and sites for its Malayalam weekly. This multi-language digital network mirrors the group's print footprint and gives it one of the broadest regional-language digital reaches of any Indian newspaper group.

Reputation and Influence

In South India, The New Indian Express is a paper of considerable influence, read by the region's political class, business community, bureaucracy and intelligentsia. Its investigative reporting and its sustained attention to southern states' issues — water disputes, infrastructure projects, education policy and Centre-state relations — have made it an essential source for understanding the region. The paper has won Indian journalism awards for its reporting and design, and its journalists are frequently cited in national debates on southern politics and policy.

Dinamani and the Tamil Press Legacy

The group's Tamil daily Dinamani carries one of the oldest legacies in the Express stable, dating to the 1930s when the Indian Express opened its Madurai operations and launched a Tamil edition. The name Dinamani — along with Andhra Prabha in Telugu and Kannada Prabha in Kannada — was part of Ramnath Goenka's vision of a multi-language newspaper chain serving readers in their own tongues. At one time the three dailies — Indian Express, Dinamani and Andhra Prabha — were known as the "Three Musketeers" of the group. Dinamani remains a respected Tamil daily, and its history connects The New Indian Express to the earliest chapter of the Express story in the Tamil country.

The Sunday Standard

Alongside its southern editions, Express Publications (Madurai) Limited publishes The Sunday Standard from New Delhi, giving the group a presence in the national capital's Sunday newspaper market. The Sunday Standard carries national politics, features and analysis aimed at Delhi's influential readership, complementing the group's South Indian base. Together with the daily editions and the group's language publications, it rounds out a portfolio that spans the country from Chennai and Madurai to the capital, making The New Indian Express group a genuinely national — if southern-anchored — media house.

The Paper Today

More than twenty-five years after its creation, The New Indian Express has grown from a carved-out set of southern editions into a diversified South Indian media group spanning print, digital and multiple languages. Its challenge is to defend its regional strongholds against national dailies and digital competitors while building sustainable digital revenues. With its deep district-level network, multi-language portfolio and loyal readership, it remains the English newspaper most closely identified with South India's public life.