The Times of India (TOI) is an Indian English-language daily news and digital news media outlet. It is the third-largest newspaper in India by circulation and the ninth-largest selling English-language daily in the world. It is the oldest English-language newspaper in India and the second-oldest Indian newspaper still in circulation, with its first edition published in 1838. It is nicknamed "The Old Lady of Bori Bunder". It is considered a newspaper of record.
Near the beginning of the 20th century, Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India, called TOI "the leading paper in Asia". In 1991, the BBC ranked TOI among the world's six best newspapers. It is owned and published by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. (BCCL), which is controlled by the Sahu Jain family. In the Brand Trust Report India study 2019, TOI was rated as the most trusted English newspaper in India. In a 2021 survey, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism rated TOI the most trusted news brand among English-speaking online news users in India. Since the 2000s, the newspaper has also been criticised for establishing the practice of accepting payments in exchange for positive coverage in the Indian news industry.
TOI issued its first edition on 3 November 1838 as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce. The paper was published on Wednesdays and Saturdays under the direction of Raobahadur Narayan Dinanath Velkar, a Marathi social reformer, and contained news from Britain and the world, as well as the Indian subcontinent. J. E. Brennan was its first editor. He died in 1839, and George Buist became the editor. It became a daily in 1850 under him. George Buist had a pro-British editorial policy, and a Parsi shareholder, Fardoonji Naoroji, wanted him to change it, particularly in the context of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. However, Buist refused to change his editorial policy or give up his editorial independence. After a shareholder's meeting he was replaced by Robert Knight.
In 1860, editor Robert Knight (1825–1892) bought the Indian shareholders' interests, merged with rival Bombay Standard, and started India's first news agency. It wired Times dispatches to papers across the country and became the Indian agent for Reuters news service. In 1861, he changed the name from the Bombay Times and Standard to The Times of India. Knight fought for a press free of prior restraint or intimidation, frequently resisting the attempts by governments, business interests and cultural spokespeople, and led the paper to national prominence. In the 19th century, this newspaper company employed more than 800 people and had a sizeable circulation in India and Europe.
Subsequently, TOI saw its ownership change several times until 1892 when an English journalist named Thomas Jewell Bennett, along with Frank Morris Coleman (who later drowned in the 1915 sinking of the SS Persia), acquired the newspaper through their new joint stock company, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd.
Sir Stanley Reed edited TOI from 1907 until 1924 and received correspondence from major figures of India such as Mahatma Gandhi. In all, he lived in India for fifty years. He was respected in the United Kingdom as an expert on Indian current affairs. Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd was sold to sugar magnate Ramkrishna Dalmia of the industrial family, for ₹20 million (equivalent to ₹3.1 billion or US$32 million in 2026) in 1946, as India became independent and the British owners left. In 1955, the Vivian Bose Commission of Inquiry found that Dalmia, in 1947, had engineered the acquisition of the media giant Bennett Coleman & Co. by transferring money from a bank and an insurance company of which he was the chairman. In the court case that followed, Dalmia was sentenced to two years in Tihar Jail for embezzlement and fraud. He managed to spend most of the jail term in hospital. Upon his release, his son-in-law, Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain, to whom he had entrusted the running of Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd., rebuffed his efforts to resume command of the company.
Jain family (Shanti Prasad Jain)
In the early 1960s, Shanti Prasad Jain was imprisoned for selling newsprint on the black market. And based on the Vivian Bose Commission's earlier report which found wrongdoings of the Dalmia–Jain group, that included specific charges against Shanti Prasad Jain, the Government of India filed a petition to restrain and remove the management of Bennett, Coleman and Company. Based on the pleading, the judge hearing the petition directed the Government to assume control of the newspaper, which resulted in replacing half of the directors and appointing a Bombay High Court judge as the chairman.
Following the Vivian Bose Commission report indicating serious wrongdoings of the Dalmia–Jain group, on 28 August 1969, the Bombay High Court, under Justice J. L. Nain, passed an interim order to disband the existing board of Bennett, Coleman & Co and to constitute a new board under the Government. The bench ruled: "Under these circumstances, the best thing would be to pass such orders on the assumption that the allegations made by the petitioners that the affairs of the company were being conducted in a manner prejudicial to public interest and to the interests of the Company are correct." Following that order, Shanti Prasad Jain ceased to be a director, and the company ran with new directors on board, appointed by the Government of India, except for a lone stenographer of the Jains. The court appointed D K Kunte as chairman of the board. Kunte had no prior business experience and was also an opposition member of the Lok Sabha.
In 1976, during the Emergency in India, the Government transferred ownership of the newspaper back to Ashok Kumar Jain, who was Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain's son and Ramkrishna Dalmia's grandson. He is the father of the current owners Samir Jain and Vineet Jain). The Jains too often landed themselves in various money laundering scams and Ashok Kumar Jain had to flee the country when the Enforcement Directorate pursued his case strongly in 1998 for alleged violations of illegal transfer of funds (to the tune of US$1.25 million) to an overseas account in Switzerland.
On 26 June 1975, the day after India declared a state of emergency, the Bombay edition of TOI carried an entry in its obituary column that read "D.E.M. O'Cracy, beloved husband of T.Ruth, father of L.I.Bertie, brother of Faith, Hope and Justice expired on 25 June". The move was a critique of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's 21-month state of emergency, now widely known as "the Emergency" and seen by many as a period of broadly authoritarian rule in the Indian government.
The Bombay Times is a free supplement of The Times of India, in the Mumbai (formerly Bombay) region. It covers celebrity news, news features, international and national music news, international and national fashion news, and lifestyle and feature articles pegged to news events, both national and international, with local interest. The main paper covers national news. Over ten years of presence, it has become a benchmark for the Page 3 social scene. The Times of India—and hence the Bombay Times—are market leaders in terms of circulation. The name of this supplement contains the word Bombay, which is the older Portuguese name for the city. It is not retained in the new supplement Mumbai Mirror that comes with Times of India. Thought it was halted in 2020 due to pandemic but returned as a daily in 2025.
In late 2006, Times Group acquired Vijayanand Printers Limited (VPL). VPL previously published two Kannada newspapers, Vijay Karnataka and Usha Kiran, and an English daily, Vijay Times. Vijay Karnataka was the leader in the Kannada newspaper segment at the time. The paper launched a Chennai edition on 12 April 2008. It launched a Kolhapur edition in February 2013.
Introduced in 2013 and awarded for the second time in 2016, "The Times of India Film Awards" or the "TOIFA" is an award for the work in Film Industry decided by a global public vote on the nomination categories.