Indian Express was first published on 5 September 1932, in
Madras (now
Chennai) by an
Ayurvedic doctor and
Indian National Congress member P Varadarajulu Naidu, publishing from the same
press where he ran the
Tamil Nadu Tamil weekly. But soon, on account of financial difficulties, he sold it to
S. Sadanand, founder of
The Free Press Journal, another English newspaper. In 1933,
The Indian Express opened its second office in
Madurai and launched the
Tamil daily
Dinamani on 11 September 1934. Sadanand introduced several innovations and reduced the price, but later sold part of his stake in the form of convertible
debentures to Ramnath Goenka due to financial difficulties. When
The Free Press Journal further went into financial decline in 1935, Sadanand lost ownership of
Indian Express after a long controversial court battle with Goenka, where blows were exchanged. Finally, a year later, Goenka bought the rest of the 26 per cent stake from Sadanand, and the paper came under his control, who took the already anti-establishment tone of the paper to greater heights. At that time it had to face stiff competition from the well-established
The Hindu and the
Mail, besides other prominent newspapers. In the late 1930s, the circulation was no more than 2,000. In 1939 Goenka bought out
Andhra Prabha, a prominent
Telugu daily. It gained the name
Three Musketeers for the three dailies. In 1940 the whole premises were gutted by fire.
The Hindu, its rival, helped considerably in re-launching the paper, by getting it printed temporarily at one of its Swadesimithran's press and later offering its recently vacated premises in Madras at 2, Mount Road later to become the landmark
Express Estates. This relocation helped the
Express obtain better high-speed printing machines. In later years,
Goenka started the
Mumbai edition with the landmark
Express Towers as his office when the
Morning Standard was bought by him in 1944. Two years later it became the Mumbai edition of
The Indian Express. Later on, editions were started in cities like
Madurai (1957),
Bangalore (1965) and
Ahmedabad (1968). The
Financial Express was launched in 1961 from Mumbai, a Bangalore edition of
Andhra Prabha was launched in 1965, and
Gujarati dailies
Lok Satta and
Jansatta in 1952, from Ahmedabad and Baroda. The
Delhi edition started was when the Tej group's
Indian News Chronicle was acquired in 1951, which from 1953 became the Delhi edition of
Indian Express. In 1990 it bought the Sterling group of magazines and, along with it, the
Gentleman magazine. After Goenka's demise in 1991, two of the family members split the group into
Indian Express Mumbai with all the north Indian editions, while the southern editions were grouped as Express Publications (Madurai) Limited with
Chennai as headquarters. ==Editions==