Eenadu

Early days

Initially, the circulation of Eenadu was limited. When launched in the city of Visakhapatnam, it wasn't able to sell more than 3,000 copies a week. Eenadu found itself struggling to become a daily publication ranked amongst othlication. However, it was popular in regions and rivalry was still an issue. Eenadu hired a new set of directors to be part of its key decision and management group which drove it towards what it is today: the mostly high circulated newspaper in the region.

Eenadu was launched from Visakhapatnam in 1974 by Ramoji Rao, a businessman with other successful enterprises: Priya Pickles and Margadarsi Chitfunds. At that time, the Andhra Prabha, owned by the Indian Express Group, was the leading regional newspaper.

Eenadu began with a print order of 4,000 copies, composed by hand and produced using a second hand printing press. But by the time it was admitted into the Audit Bureau of Circulations in 1976, its circulation had already reached a readership of 48,000. By 1978, Eenadu surpassed Andhra Prabha''s circulation and, by 1995, two other rivals Andhra Patrika and Udayam folded, leaving Eenadu with over seventy-five percent of the audited circulation of Telugu dailies.

When Eenadu expanded to Hyderabad in 1975, it divided the city into target areas, recruited delivery boys three months in advance and gave away the paper for free for a week. During the 1980s, technology enabled Eenadu to spread over larger areas besides the main cities. Earlier, it was difficult to manage even the three editions of the 1970s (the Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada and Hyderabad editions) because the only communication facilities available to the publication at the time were the telegram, telephone and teleprinter, which had a limited presence in rural Andhra Pradesh. But with the introduction of offset printing, photocomposing software and computers, Eenadu was able to launch editions in smaller towns like Tirupathi in 1982. From the 1980s, the news editor of Eenadu, from his Hyderabad office, oversaw an enormous local-based news gathering and disseminating organization.

However, by the end of the 1980s, there were six substantial Telugu dailies running, and the business was highly competitive. In 1989 Eenadu introduced "district dailies (tabloid edition)" to carry its presence not only into district towns like Rajamundry, Karimnagar, Guntur and Adilabad but also taluka towns like Suryapet and Tadepalligudem. Each publication centre required forty engineers to run its printing presses. Eenadu's district dailies were based on market research purporting that heavy local content would generate new groups of readers and boost advertising revenue. Currently, the district dailies print local news specifically for each major location in the area, thereby negating the need for any separate local daily. Few special sections are published every day of the week.^[3]