The Hindu is an Indian English-language daily newspaper founded and continuously published in Chennai since 1878. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, it has a circulation of 1.46 million copies as of December 2009. The enterprise employed over 1,600 workers and gross income reached $40 million in 2010. According to the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) 2011 The Hindu is the third most widely read English newspaper in India (after the Times of India and Hindustan Times) with a readership of 2.0 million people. It has its largest base of circulation in Southern India, especially in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. It is the most widely read English daily in Kerala. Headquartered at Chennai (formerly called Madras), The Hindu was published weekly when it was launched in 1878, and started publishing daily in 1889.


The Hindu became, in 1995, the first Indian newspaper to offer an online edition.


The Hindu is printed at 17 locations — Chennai, Coimbatore, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Madurai, Noida, Visakhapatnam, Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Vijayawada, Mangalore, Tiruchirapalli, Kolkata, Hubli, Mohali, Allahabad, and Kozhikode.