Tolivelugu: Hyderabad's Independent Telugu News Platform and Its Founder's Battles
Tolivelugu is a Telugu-language digital news platform based in Hyderabad, Telangana, publishing at tolivelugu.com. It describes itself as an independent and unbiased digital news platform reporting on the Telugu-speaking states, with its emphasis on Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and a focus on the big stories from across India. Its stated motto is that news is for the people, and it maintains a dedicated category for the public voice from all strata of society.
Tolivelugu is inseparable from its founder, Ravi Prakash — the journalist who built TV9 into a Telugu news powerhouse, lost it in a corporate takeover in 2019, and then made Tolivelugu the platform from which he refused to back down. When Hyderabad police arrested him in October 2019, the Committee to Protect Journalists took up his case, saying he was being persecuted in retaliation for critical coverage published on Tolivelugu. Few Indian regional news websites carry a press-freedom case in their biography; Tolivelugu does.
Overview
Tolivelugu operates across a website, a mobile app and a large YouTube and social presence, delivering breaking Telugu news, political reporting, exclusive interviews and in-depth coverage concentrated on Telangana. Its own app description promises the latest Telugu breaking news for Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, daily headlines, political news, Tollywood updates, movie reviews, election campaigns and results, sports and viral stories. A Justdial listing places a Tolivelugu office at Nagole in Hyderabad.
The platform's self-presentation is combative and populist: it promises in-depth stories and inside information, says it exists to tell the stories others are trying to hide, and its video channels bill it — in its own words — as Telangana's number one channel. Its core strengths, by its own account, are a widespread reporter network across both Telugu states and a team of committed, experienced journalists.
History and Founding
Tolivelugu was founded by Ravi Prakash, one of the most recognisable figures in Telugu television journalism. Prakash had been the founding chief executive of TV9, the channel that reshaped Telugu news broadcasting, and one of the partners in the Associated Broadcasting Company that operated the TV9 network. His rupture with TV9 came in 2019: amid a hostile corporate takeover by new promoters, he was forced to resign as chief executive in May of that year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists' account of the period.
Tolivelugu was his independent platform in that fight. By the autumn of 2019 the website and its YouTube channel were publishing interviews sharply critical of the Telangana government — and the confrontation that followed made the young outlet internationally known. The platform's founding ethos, as expressed in its own about text, is independent journalism: unbiased reporting, incisive editorial judgement and a reporter network across both states, built by a founder who had just lost a television empire and set out to prove a website and a YouTube channel could still trouble the powerful.
The 2019 Arrest and the Press-Freedom Case
On 30 September 2019, Tolivelugu's YouTube channel carried two interviews conducted by its reporter Raghu Ganji during a strike by some fifty thousand employees of the state-run transport corporation. In one, transport union leader E. Aswathama Reddy accused Telangana's chief minister and a leading industrialist of involvement in a public transport scam. In the second, opposition leader Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka alleged corruption by the same figures in connection with the Kaleshwaram irrigation project.
According to Tolivelugu's staff, pressure followed quickly: on 2 October a reporter received messages from unknown numbers asking that the Vikramarka interview be made private, then a call asking that both interviews be taken down. The interviews stayed up. On 5 October 2019 Hyderabad police arrested Ravi Prakash on allegations of corporate fraud from his TV9 tenure — charges his colleagues told the Committee to Protect Journalists were retaliation for the refusal to withdraw the interviews. CPJ's Asia programme coordinator stated publicly that Prakash was clearly being persecuted in retaliation for critical coverage on the Tolivelugu website, and demanded his immediate release. Separate reporting of the arrest described police allegations that Prakash and a fellow former TV9 director had withdrawn large sums as bonuses without entitlement — claims he contested as his legal battles with TV9's new owners continued for years afterward.
Ownership and Business Model
Tolivelugu is an independent digital venture associated with its founder rather than with a newspaper group or broadcaster — a deliberate contrast with the corporate structures Prakash left behind. Its business is digital advertising and video monetisation across its website, app and YouTube operation, and its later corporate expression is RTV, the news channel Prakash announced in October 2023, of which he is described as founder and chairman alongside Tolivelugu.
The Tolivelugu model is personality-led and lean: a founder with a famous name, a reporter network across two states, and distribution through platforms — YouTube, WhatsApp channels, Facebook, Instagram and X — that cost a fraction of satellite carriage. Its app promotes itself as the only Telugu news app a smartphone user would require, a claim that captures the venture's platform-native economics.
Language and Regional Focus
Tolivelugu publishes primarily in Telugu — its app presents headlines and categories in Telugu, with English supported in the reading experience — for the two Telugu-speaking states. Within that, Telangana comes first: the platform's video branding centres Telangana breaking news, Telangana politics and interviews with Telangana personalities, reflecting both its Hyderabad base and its founder's defining political confrontations with the Telangana establishment.
Andhra Pradesh remains the second pillar, with politics, current affairs and Tollywood — the Hyderabad-based Telugu film industry — covered for both states, and major national stories added where they bear on the region.
Coverage and Content
The platform's declared editorial offer is in-depth stories, inside information, insightful analysis, undiluted opinion and incisive editorial judgement, organised around a reporter network across both states and a public-voice category dedicated to people from all strata of society. In practice its daily output spans breaking news and live coverage, state politics in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, exclusive interviews with political leaders and celebrities, current affairs, sports, viral stories and entertainment, including Tollywood news and movie reviews.
Interviews are its signature format — the genre that made its founder's television reputation and the genre that triggered its 2019 crisis. Its YouTube operation runs live streams and interview-led programming around Telangana politics, and its social channels push the same material continuously. The two September 2019 interviews — a union leader and an opposition leader accusing the chief minister of corruption — exemplify the platform's house style: give the government's critics a camera, and keep the recording public.
Audience and Reach
Tolivelugu's audience is the Telugu digital public — younger, platform-first news consumers in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and in the diaspora, reached through YouTube live streams, WhatsApp channels and social feeds as much as through the website itself. Its video descriptions invite viewers to subscribe for updates and promote its Android app, Facebook page, Twitter and Instagram accounts and WhatsApp channel as one connected audience system.
The founder's fame is a reach multiplier: Ravi Prakash's interviews with celebrities and political leaders were a hallmark of his television years, and audience coverage of his later ventures credits RTV and Tolivelugu with becoming go-to sources for viewers seeking his interviewing style in the digital era. The 2019 CPJ case also gave the platform a name-recognition among press-freedom watchers far beyond its language market.
Digital Presence
Tolivelugu is digital by birth and design: website, Android app with a clean interface and dark mode, a YouTube channel carrying live streams and interviews, and official presences on Facebook, X, Instagram and WhatsApp. Its app store description emphasises notification-driven reading — the latest breaking news and in-depth coverage pushed to the phone — and bilingual usability in Telugu and English.
The platform's connection to rtvlive.com, promoted in its own video descriptions, reflects its evolution from a standalone website toward a small digital network centred on its founder's brands.
Notable People
Ravi Prakash dominates Tolivelugu's story: founder of the platform, founder-CEO of TV9 before it, and from 2023 founder and chairman of RTV. His career — building TV9, losing it in a takeover he disputes, arrest in 2019, years of litigation including a later Delhi High Court petition over the TV9 logo in which he claims proprietorship — is the backdrop against which the platform's independence claim is made. Tolivelugu's reporters entered the record too: Raghu Ganji, who conducted the September 2019 interviews, and Narsimha Reddy, who received the takedown pressure, both named in the Committee to Protect Journalists' reporting.
Its interview subjects — union leaders, opposition politicians, film and political personalities — supply the other half of its public identity.
Recent Developments
In October 2023 Ravi Prakash formally returned to the front of the camera with the announcement of RTV, presented in launch coverage as his comeback after four years away from news media, with messaging about self-identity and social responsibility. Tolivelugu has continued alongside as the network's digital and YouTube arm, publishing live Telangana coverage, interviews and breaking news through the mid-2020s, with its legal and corporate disputes with TV9's owners still generating headlines as late as 2025.
For a directory of Indian online news, Tolivelugu stands out as the rare platform whose biography is a press-freedom case study: an independent, founder-led Telugu news site from Hyderabad that kept two interviews online, saw its founder arrested within the week, won the backing of an international journalists' body — and is still publishing.
