Jagran Prakashan

Jagran Prakashan Ltd, the Kanpur-based publisher of Dainik Jagran, India’s largest-read newspaper, closed the financial year ended 31 March 2025 (FY25) with slightly lower revenue but much lower profit. Group revenue fell 2.4% to ₹1,888 crore, while group profit after tax fell 43% to ₹94 crore. At the parent company alone, things held up better: revenue of ₹1,590 crore (down 3%) and profit of ₹211 crore (down 14%).

The sharpest pressure came in the final quarter. Group profit swung from a small ₹6 crore profit in Q4 FY24 to a ₹51 crore loss in Q4 FY25. The main reason was a write-down: the company recorded a ₹130 crore non-cash charge against subsidiary assets (the previous year’s equivalent charge was ₹97 crore). A separately disclosed ₹35 crore write-down sat inside its radio subsidiary, Music Broadcast Ltd, which runs the Radio City station network and ended the year in loss. Print, by contrast, continues to fund the rest of the group: Dainik Jagran alone generated about 72% of standalone (parent-only) operating revenue and ran at a 23% operating margin.

The corporate-governance story is at least as material. Jagran Prakashan is controlled by the Gupta family, descended from the founder of Dainik Jagran, Puran Chandra Gupta. The family controls the listed company through a private holding company called Jagran Media Network Investment Private Limited (JMNIPL), which owns 67.97% of Jagran Prakashan. The remaining ~32% is held by mutual funds, foreign investors and roughly 67,000 retail shareholders. JMNIPL is itself owned 100% by members of the Gupta family. Inside the family, the dispute is now in the open. On 12 February 2026, JMNIPL formally asked Jagran Prakashan’s board to call an extraordinary shareholder meeting to remove seven independent directors and one full-time executive director. India’s company-law tribunal first paused the meeting; on 23 April 2026, it dismissed the company’s restraining application and let the meeting proceed without ruling on the underlying family dispute.

Key indicators (FY2025)

Source: Jagran Prakashan Ltd press release reporting audited results for the quarter and year ended 31 March 2025, filed with BSE (scrip 532705) and NSE (JAGRAN) on 24 May 2025. All figures rounded to the nearest crore. USD equivalents at an indicative ₹84 to US$1, broadly consistent with the FY25 average per the Reserve Bank of India’s April 2025 Monetary Policy Report.

Ownership and corporate history

Jagran Prakashan was incorporated in 1975 and listed on the BSE and NSE in February 2006. The newspaper itself goes back further. Dainik Jagran was founded in 1942 by Puran Chandra Gupta, an Indian freedom fighter who had previously published the Hindi nationalist weekly Swatantra and started Jagran during the independence movement. The Hindi daily grew across northern and central India over the following decades and became, on the most recent comparable industry survey (the Indian Readership Survey 2019 Q4 cited by the company itself), the most-read newspaper in India.

Today, the listed company is controlled through a private holding company. Jagran Media Network Investment Private Limited (JMNIPL) owns 67.97% of Jagran Prakashan. Mutual funds hold around 7.6%, foreign investors around 2.7%, and roughly 67,000 retail shareholders hold the rest, around 22%. JMNIPL is in turn owned 100% by members of the extended Gupta family (split across roughly 19 family members and a related entity, VRSM Enterprise LLP). Inside JMNIPL, no single family member owns a majority, which is what has made the recent dispute possible.

Three names matter most for governance:

• Mahendra Mohan Gupta, son of the founder, is non-executive chairman of both JMNIPL and Jagran Prakashan. He served as a member of India’s upper house of parliament (the Rajya Sabha) from the Samajwadi Party between 2006 and 2012; his late brother Narendra Mohan Gupta was previously a Rajya Sabha MP nominated by the BJP. He is the lead petitioner in a family dispute that has been before NCLT Allahabad since 2023.
• Sanjay Gupta, of the founding family, is chief executive of Jagran Prakashan and chief editor of Dainik Jagran.
• Dhirendra Mohan Gupta, son of the founder, is a whole-time director of Jagran Prakashan.

The dispute traces back to a JMNIPL board resolution dated 14 July 2023, which authorised Sanjay Gupta and Dhirendra Mohan Gupta to act as JMNIPL’s representatives at Jagran Prakashan general meetings, replacing Mahendra Mohan Gupta in that role. Mahendra Mohan Gupta and two co-petitioners (representing 16.18% of JMNIPL) responded by filing an oppression-and-mismanagement petition (CP No. 64/2023) in the NCLT in Allahabad, alleging that the resolution was an act of oppression by the rest of the family.

The chief financial officer and company secretary, who signs Jagran Prakashan’s stock-exchange filings, is Amit Jaiswal. The registered office is 2 Sarvodaya Nagar, Kanpur 208005.

Asset map

Jagran Prakashan describes itself as a media conglomerate “with interests spanning across printing and publication of newspapers and magazines, FM Radio, Digital, Outdoor Advertising and Promotional Marketing, Event Management and Activation Businesses.” On the company’s own count, the group publishes 8 publications across 13 states and union territories in 5 languages, and operates 39 FM radio stations through Music Broadcast Ltd.

The five major business lines are:

The five business-line revenues do not add to either standalone or consolidated operating revenue, because this is a management-basis presentation that includes both the parent company (Jagran NewMedia digital, Dainik Jagran print) and consolidated subsidiaries (Music Broadcast for radio; Midday Infomedia for the Mid-Day, Inquilab and Midday Gujarati titles). Midday Infomedia’s company-level numbers are disclosed separately below.

Two listed-subsidiary disclosures are also included in the FY25 results pack:

Music Broadcast Ltd runs the Radio City network of 39 FM stations and is itself separately listed on BSE and NSE (ticker RADIOCITY). Jagran Prakashan owns 74.05% of it. FY25 revenue was ₹234 cr / ~US$28m (up slightly from ₹229 cr); operating profit fell sharply, to ₹13 cr (~US$2m) from ₹33 cr (~US$4m).

Midday Infomedia Ltd is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jagran Prakashan since a 2021 fresh-equity subscription. It publishes Midday English (a Mumbai daily), Inquilab (described by the company as the most-read Urdu daily in India, circulated in Maharashtra plus Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Bihar) and Midday Gujarati (the No. 2 Gujarati paper in Mumbai). FY25 revenue was ₹66 cr (~US$8m); the subsidiary swung to a small loss after tax of ₹2 cr (versus a small profit of ₹1 cr in FY24).

For journalism specifically, the most editorially significant assets are Dainik Jagran itself (which generates about 72% of standalone parent revenue and most of standalone operating profit); the Mid-Day group of city titles in Mumbai (small in revenue but editorially distinctive); Inquilab as the leading Urdu daily in India; and the Jagran NewMedia digital properties, particularly jagranjosh.com, which by audience size is among the larger destinations of its kind in Indian education-category digital publishing.

The Gupta family also runs the Shri Puran Chandra Gupta Smarak Trust, named after the founder, which operates schools and colleges across Kanpur, Noida, Lucknow, Varanasi, Dehradun, Campierganj (Gorakhpur), Kannauj and Basti, with around 13,000 students. The trust’s social-development arm, Pehel, has worked with the World Bank and UNICEF on field projects and on the Indian government’s Swachh Bharat (Clean India) sanitation mission. The company describes seven editorial principles, Saat Sarokaar, that it says guide Dainik Jagran‘s coverage: poverty eradication, healthy society, educated society, women’s empowerment, environmental conservation, water conservation and population management.

It is also part of the long-running record on Dainik Jagran that the paper has been the subject of regulatory and journalistic scrutiny in India. As reported by Best Media Info on 21 February 2026, in past years Dainik Jagran “faced criticism and warnings from the Press Council of India for carrying ‘paid news’ and was also cautioned by the Election Commission of India for publishing exit polls.”

Signals

Print is still the engine: Dainik Jagran alone generates close to three-quarters of standalone revenue

The Dainik Jagran segment generated FY25 operating revenue of ₹1,146 cr (~US$136 million), about 72% of the parent company’s standalone operating revenue, or about 61% of the group’s consolidated operating revenue, and operating profit of ₹264 cr (~US$31 million), at a 23.1% segment operating margin. The margin slipped from 24.4% in FY24, and ad revenue across the standalone entity fell 5.6%, but the level itself is the story: a 23% segment operating margin shows that Dainik Jagran remains the group’s main profit engine. India’s Hindi print market remains more resilient than many mature Western print markets, but Jagran’s FY25 numbers still show clear pressure in both advertising and circulation revenue.

The smaller publications barely broke even

The “Other publications” segment, Mid-Day, Naidunia/Navdunia, Dainik Jagran Inext, Punjabi Jagran, Inquilab-North and Sakhi, saw operating profit fall from ₹30 cr (~US$4m) to ₹8 cr (~US$1m) on revenue down 11% from ₹256 cr (~US$30m) to ₹227 cr (~US$27m). Operating margin collapsed from 11.6% to 3.4%. These titles cover smaller circulation areas and weaker advertising markets, and serve language audiences (Urdu, Punjabi, English-Mumbai, Hindi-MP) where the company does not enjoy the same scale advantages as it does in Hindi. Inquilab and Mid-Day sit inside the wholly-owned Midday Infomedia subsidiary, which itself ran a small loss for the year.

Radio City remains under pressure.

Music Broadcast / Radio City revenue was about flat at ₹234 cr / ~US$28m (up slightly from ₹229 cr), but operating profit fell from ₹33 cr (~US$4m) to ₹13 cr (~US$2m), even before the Q4 write-down. Indian FM radio has been under structural pressure for some years: the digital-substitute path that streaming has provided in some other markets has not appeared in Indian radio in the same way, and advertisers have continued to migrate to digital and on-ground formats.

Digital slipped to a small operating loss.

Group digital revenue was ₹106 cr (~US$13 million) in FY25, down 4% from ₹111 cr. Operating profit went from a small +₹13 cr (an 11.9% margin) to a small −₹3 cr (a −2.9% margin). For a company that aspires to a digital-first transition, the move from a small profit to a small loss on flat-ish revenue is structurally important: the digital side of the business is not currently funding either its own growth or the build-out of paid digital news products. Jagran.com and jagranjosh.com continue to draw very large audiences (36 million and 22 million unique monthly visitors respectively, per Comscore March 2025), but those visitors are not yet monetising at a rate that covers the cost of running the digital business.

Indian news-media context: legacy print brands still trusted

A short caveat first. The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025 surveys India through an online sample that is representative of younger, English-speaking internet users (a Hindi version of the questionnaire is available, but most respondents take the English version). It is not representative of all Indian news consumers, and Hindi-language audiences in particular are under-represented. With that caveat in mind: in 2025, 76% of the Indian respondents source news online (up from 71% in 2024 but down from 82% in 2021), 39% still use print, and overall trust in news is 43% (up from 38% in 2021). All India Radio and DD India, the two government-run broadcasters, score the highest brand trust in the Indian sample, at 65% and 64% respectively; trust in regional and local newspapers is 62%. None of this is specific to Jagran Prakashan, and the report does not break out Dainik Jagran trust scores. But for a Hindi-language operator at Jagran Prakashan’s scale, the broader market signals (broadly stable print readership, high brand trust attached to legacy publications, and continuing concern over press freedom in India following the 2024 re-election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi) point to a market that should still reward sustained investment in journalism quality.

What to watch in 2026

Whether digital can be moved back into operating profit. A small operating loss on ₹106 cr (~US$13m) of revenue is a structural risk for a digital business that should, at this scale, be self-funding. The next clean read will be on FY26 H1 results in November 2026. If digital remains in operating loss, the strategic question of whether Jagran NewMedia is the right vehicle, and the right cost structure, for the group’s online ambition will have to be addressed.

Whether ad revenue stabilises in Hindi print. Standalone advertisement revenue fell from ₹1,089 cr (~US$130m) to ₹1,027 cr (~US$122m), a 5.6% decline. Some of that is digital migration; some is the underlying advertising-market weakness that DB Corp (publisher of Dainik Bhaskar) and HT Media (publisher of Hindustan Times and Hindustan) have also reported in their FY25 disclosures. Stabilisation in FY26 H1, particularly through the Indian festive season in October–December, would be the critical test.

Sources. Primary: Jagran Prakashan Limited press release reporting audited results for the quarter and year ended 31 March 2025, filed with BSE (scrip 532705) and NSE (JAGRAN) on 24 May 2025; signed by Amit Jaiswal, CFO and company secretary. Subsidiary disclosures for Music Broadcast Limited (separately listed on BSE/NSE under the ticker RADIOCITY; Jagran Prakashan holds 74.05%) and Midday Infomedia Limited (wholly-owned subsidiary of Jagran Prakashan since a 2021 fresh-equity subscription) are drawn from the same press release. CRISIL ratings reaffirmation referenced in the press release; the standalone CRISIL rating rationale on Midday Infomedia Limited (5 July 2024) corroborates the AA(−)/Stable rating and confirms the wholly-owned status. Music Broadcast shareholding (74.05% held by Jagran Prakashan) per Music Broadcast Limited shareholding-pattern filings on BSE and NSE. Ownership of JMNIPL by the Gupta family, the 67.97% promoter holding in Jagran Prakashan, and the 16.18% JMNIPL stake of the petitioners in CP No. 64/2023, were all confirmed via Jagran Prakashan’s regulatory filings under SEBI’s Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements (Regulation 30) and reported by the Indian media-trade outlet Storyboard18(2 August 2023). The text of the NCLT Allahabad order dated 4 September 2023 in CP No. 64/2023 (Mahendra Mohan Gupta & Ors v. Devendra Mohan Gupta & Ors) was accessed via the NCLT order docket and the legal-research database Casemine. EGM and director-removal sequence: Jagran Prakashan stock-exchange disclosures of 12 February 2026, 20 February 2026, 27 February 2026, 19 March 2026, 23 April 2026 and 2 May 2026; reporting by Best Media Info (16 February 2026 and 21 February 2026), ScanX (multiple dates), Whalesbook (multiple dates), and Capital Market via Dailyhunt. The second petition CP No. 57/2025 (Shailendra Mohan Gupta and Ors v. JMNIPL) is referenced in the Jagran Prakashan disclosures. HDFC Mutual Fund stake reduction (10 January 2026): screener.in and ScanX. FY26 Q3 figures: Business Standard, 12–13 February 2026 (Jagran Prakashan consolidated revenue down 7.7% to ₹476.71 cr; consolidated net profit down ~12–13.5% to ₹54–55 cr; Music Broadcast / Radio City revenue down 28.9% to ₹46 cr). Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025: country page for India at reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2025; Reuters Institute itself notes that the India sample is “representative of younger English-speakers rather than the national population”. Press Council of India and Election Commission of India historical scrutiny of Dainik Jagran: as reported by Best Media Info (21 February 2026); not a finding in the FY25 filing. INR amounts in this profile are stated in Indian rupees; ₹100 cr is approximately US$11.9 million at an indicative ₹84 to the US dollar, broadly consistent with the FY25 average per the Reserve Bank of India’s April 2025 Monetary Policy Report. The FY25 reporting period is the financial year 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025.

Short glossary

A short glossary, since the Indian corporate vocabulary in this profile is unavoidable: a crore is 10 million; standalone refers to the parent company only, and consolidated means the group including all subsidiaries; an EGM  is an extraordinary general meeting, called by shareholders outside the company’s normal annual cycle; a whole-time director (or WTD) is an executive director who works full-time for the company; NCLT is the National Company Law Tribunal, India’s specialist company-law court; an impairment is an accounting write-down recognising that an asset is now worth less than its book value; the promoter in Indian listed-company parlance is the controlling or founding shareholder group.