Kasinadhuni Nageswara Rao founded the Andhra Patrika, a weekly newspaper of the nationalist movement in the Telugu-speaking region, in 1908. Later, it became a daily newspaper before closing in 1991. This shaped both the modern Telugu language and the identity that led to the creation of the state of Andhra Pradesh. Nagaswara Rao founded the weekly because he saw the need for a Telugu language journal to campaign for the Indian freedom struggle and founded it effectively. The weekly traveled through all the territories where the Telugu language was spoken. In 1914, Rao moved the newspaper to Madras to get closer to Telugus, and within a few years, it became the first Telugu dailies.
Sivalenka Sambhu Prasad took over the operations after Nageswara Rao’s death in 1938. Following Sambhu Prasad’s death, his successors closed the Madras edition and published it from Vijayawada and then Hyderabad, the capital of Undivided Andhra Pradesh. In 1976, when Eenadu was included in the Audit Bureau lists for the first time, Andhra Patrika had a circulation of 41,000. In 1976, Eenadu had a circulation of 60,000. Ten years later, Andhra Patrika had fallen to 24,000, while Eenadu had increased to 2,82,000 and had four centres. In April 1991, Andhra Patrika ceased publication.
Despite having a circulation of less than 20,000, the descendants of Nageswara Rao and Sambhu Prasad stopped paying their dues to ABC in 1988 and sold the indebted newspaper in 1989. Afterward, a dispute arose over whether the purchaser had obtained complete legal control of the company. After lawsuits and questions in the legislature, employees were no longer paid. The newspaper could not be published on certain days due to a lack of funds.
