The News Minute

Indian independent news service

History and Founding

The News Minute (TNM) was founded in 2014 by three journalists: Dhanya Rajendran, Chitra Subramaniam, and Vignesh Vellore. The publication is incorporated as Spunklane Media Private Limited and is headquartered in Bengaluru, with ground reporters posted across all five southern Indian states.

The founding impulse was a gap in the Indian media landscape that all three founders had observed closely: the dominance of Delhi-based national news organisations that consistently underreported or decontextualised events in Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu. As Dhanya Rajendran has articulated, the goal was to ensure that south India was "covered from the south, by south Indian journalists" — bringing deep regional access, linguistic familiarity, and sustained editorial attention to stories that national English-language media routinely missed or compressed into brief wire items.

Dhanya Rajendran, who serves as editor-in-chief, began her career at Kerala's first 24-hour news channel India Vision in 2003, moved to the New Indian Express in Chennai in 2004, and then joined Times Now, where she became its South India bureau chief, reporting across all five southern states. She graduated from the Asian College of Journalism. She is also president of Digipub, India's primary association for digital news publishers, representing over 130 digital news outlets in advocacy on press freedom, sustainability, and regulation.

Chitra Subramaniam, the publication's co-founder and managing editor, is one of India's most celebrated investigative journalists. A graduate of Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi and the Stanford University School of Journalism, she is best known internationally for her decade-long investigation into the Bofors arms scandal (1987–1997), which implicated the government of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in illegal kickbacks from a Swedish arms manufacturer. The investigation, conducted across Sweden, Switzerland, and India, is widely credited with contributing to Gandhi's electoral defeat in 1989, and her joint article with N. Ram was cited by Columbia University's School of Journalism in 2012 among 50 great journalistic works since 1915. Subramaniam was subsequently a UN correspondent and, from 1998, worked with WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control — the world's first public health treaty. She founded a Switzerland-based consultancy, CSD Consulting, before co-founding TNM in 2014. Vignesh Vellore serves as CEO, overseeing operations, business development, and technology.

The News Minute launched with an initial grant that supported the establishment of ground reporting networks. In December 2015, the publication raised an undisclosed angel investment from Quintillion Media — the company co-founded by veteran broadcast journalist Raghav Bahl (formerly founder and managing director of Network 18) and Ritu Kapur, which also operates The Quint. The investment brought Bahl and Kapur onto the TNM board. A second undisclosed funding round followed in 2019. TNM's total reported funding across rounds stands at approximately $2.24 million from five investors.

In April 2023, The News Minute and Newslaundry announced a formal editorial and business alliance — described as a collaboration on joint investigative projects, shared strategy for audience growth, and a bundled subscription plan. The joint subscription, launched in November 2023, produced subscription growth of 214% and revenue growth of 243% within five months, according to the platform that managed the subscription technology. The two organisations share broadly aligned editorial values and an independence-oriented, public interest journalism mandate, while operating as separate newsrooms covering complementary geographic and thematic terrain.

Coverage and Content

The News Minute covers breaking news, ground reportage, long-form investigations, opinion and analysis, and multimedia content, with editorial bureaus in Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala. The publication has become a primary reference point for English-language reporting on South Indian politics, governance, and social affairs — covering state elections, legislative proceedings, caste and communal dynamics, court verdicts, environmental issues, economic policy, and cultural life across the region.

The publication is particularly known for its reporting on gender, caste-based violence, and human rights — areas that Rajendran and her team have approached with a stated commitment to changing the "language that legacy media used while discussing gender and caste." TNM was among the early Indian news platforms to adopt gender-sensitive framings in crime reporting, and has been cited by press freedom and journalism bodies for this approach.

Key editorial products include South Central, a flagship podcast co-hosted by Dhanya Rajendran that covers southern Indian politics and current affairs; the Flix section covering film and entertainment from the south Indian film industries; Let Me Explain and Yen Endra Kelvi, explainer and interview video series; In Public Interest, a video series on accountability journalism; and What's Your Ism?, a podcast covering political and social ideas. The publication also produces long-form investigations and features under its dedicated Long Form section.

Among TNM's most significant investigative work was its 2022 investigation into voter data fraud in Karnataka, led by Rajendran, which revealed systematic tampering of voter rolls ahead of the 2023 state assembly elections. The investigation — which exposed an NGO named Chilume as the vehicle for the fraud — resulted in the Election Commission ordering a review of voter lists in three Bengaluru constituencies, the arrest of the Chilume director, and a government order barring private organisations from collecting voter data. The investigation earned Rajendran the 2022 National RedInk Award for Journalist of the Year from the Mumbai Press Club, making her only the second digital journalist to receive the distinction.

Awards and Recognition

Dhanya Rajendran was named to Fortune India's 40 Under 40 list in 2018. She received the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Women Mediaperson in 2022 and was nominated for Reporters Without Borders' 2025 Impact Prize for sustained press freedom advocacy.

In 2022, TNM reporters Azeefa Fathima, Balakrishnan Ganeshan, and Prajwal Bhat received Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards for narrative and investigative reporting. In 2024, senior reporter Azeefa Fathima won the Project SIREN Award from the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights for investigative work on teenage suicides in India. Reporters Sukanya Shaji and Nithya Pandian received Laadli Media and Advertising Awards for gender-sensitive reporting. The News Minute has also won WAN-IFRA South Asian Digital Media Awards.

Chitra Subramaniam holds multiple journalism awards from her career preceding TNM, including the B.D. Goenka Award and the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Women Mediaperson (1989).

Access and Funding

The News Minute operates on a mixed funding model. Free content is available at thenewsminute.com without registration. Premium subscriber-only content is available via paid subscription through the TNM membership programme. The joint TNM–Newslaundry bundle subscription, launched in 2023, provides access to both publications at combined pricing. The publication also accepts advertising. It is a for-profit private limited company.

TNM commenced a merger with Newslaundry (Delhi) in 2025.

The News Minute / Spunklane Media Private Limited
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Website: thenewsminute.com
Subscribe: thenewsminute.com/subscription
About: thenewsminute.com/about-us
South Central Podcast: thenewsminute.com/podcasts/south-central

Sources

Wikipedia. The News Minute

Wikipedia. Dhanya Rajendran

Wikipedia. Chitra Subramaniam

The News Minute. About Us

The News Minute. TNM Editor-in-Chief Dhanya Rajendran wins RedInk Journalist of the Year 2022 Dec 2, 2023

Newslaundry. Newslaundry–The News Minute alliance for more public interest journalism Apr 28, 2023

Inc42. Quintillion Media Invests in The News Minute Dec 18, 2015

WAN-IFRA. Dhanya Rajendran speaker profile

Quintype. Newslaundry and The News Minute Collaborate to Boost Subscriber Growth by 214%

Library of Congress. The News Minute

Metadata

Categories: Independent News Organizations · Digital News Organizations · India and South Asia News · Regional News · Investigative Journalism · Podcast and Audio Journalism · Subscription-Supported Media

Mission: To provide credible, independent, and incisive news coverage of South India's five states — Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala — from reporters embedded in the region, with a particular commitment to issues of gender, caste, governance, and accountability that national media underreports.

Year Founded: 2014

Description: The News Minute is a Bengaluru-based independent digital news platform founded in 2014 by Dhanya Rajendran, Chitra Subramaniam, and Vignesh Vellore, specialising in coverage of South India's five states. Known for its ground reporting on politics, gender, caste, and human rights, it has won multiple Ramnath Goenka Awards and the 2022 RedInk Journalist of the Year award for its Karnataka voter fraud investigation. Since 2023 it has operated a joint editorial and subscription alliance with Newslaundry.

URL:  https://www.thenewsminute.comTNM is owned by Spunklane Media Pvt. Ltd. Quint Digital Media Ltd. acquired Quintillion Media Pvt. Ltd, which includes TNM.