The TOI story: how a newspaper changed the rules of the game Menon Malhan, Sangita P.

The Times Group transformed the mediascape in the 1980s and '90s.

The TOI Story is about the Times of India Group, its journey during the early 1980s and ’90s. During this decade, it reinvented itself from a staid, conservative, low-profit group running multiple publications and journals, to a market-focused, lean, innovative and profitable group, driven by only a handful of brands.

While the driving initiatives sparked numerous controversies within and outside the group, eventually the Times Group helped redefine the media space in the country, expand readership, transform content and advertising. It persuaded publishers to see newspapers as a profitable business rather than a lever for political influence.

At the centre of this transformation was Samir Jain, the youthful, maverick, visionary, reclusive owner of the group, blending spiritual values in his personal life with audacious commercial ambitions and courage and an uncanny sense of how the world around him was changing.