Chandamama

1940s-2000s

The first edition of Chandamama was released in July 1947. The founder editor of the magazine was Chakrapani. It was printed and published by Nagi Reddi who later became a leading film producer in South India. Chakrapani, a friend of Nagi Reddy, was the force behind magazine, and his vision, perception and understanding of the target readership brought name and fame to the magazine.

Chandamama was first published in Telugu and Tamil (as Ambulimama) in July 1947. Kannada edition first appeared in July 1949 followed by Hindi in August 1949. Marathi (as Chandoba) and Malayalam (as Ambili Ammavan) editions appeared in April 1952 followed by Gujarati in 1954, English in 1955, Odia (as Jahnamamu) and Sindhi in 1956, Bengali (as Chadmama) in July 1972, Punjabi in 1975, Assamese in 1976, Sinhala in 1978, Sanskrit in April 1984 and Santali in 2004. The Punjabi, Sindhi and Sinhala editions were published only for a short period. No English editions were published from October 1957 to June 1970. The magazine ceased publication in 1998, owing to labour disputes. However, the magazine relaunched a year later. It was available in 12 Indian languages and English.

For many decades, Chandamama's illustrators defined the look of the magazine. They included such names as M. T. V. Acharya, T. Veera Raghavan, who signed his work as Chithra; Vaddadi Papaiah, who signed as Vapa; Kesava Rao who signed as Kesava; M. Gokhale; and K. C. Sivasankaran, alias Sankar, who joined Chandamama in the year 1951. Later artists such as Shakthi Dass; M. K. Basha, who signed as Razi; Gandhi Ayya, aka Gandhi; and P. Mahesh (Mahe), also continued the tradition into current times. Initially, the covers were printed in four-colours, while the illustrations inside used line drawings. Each page of Chandamama had an illustration, although in the strict sense of the term, Chandamama is not a comic book, with the exception of the Chitra-katha column.

The magazine has been in family hands since foundation, and the current publisher, B Viswanatha Reddy, continued the tradition after taking over the affairs of the magazine from his father. In 1999, the company was floated as a public limited organization, with Morgan Stanley taking a sizable stake in the company.

The last editor was Prashant Mulekar of Geodesic.

2000s-present

In August 2006, it was reported that Disney was set to buy a stake in Chandamama. In 2007, Chandamama was acquired by technology company Geodesic Information Systems.

As of July 2016, the current status of the magazine is unknown, as the parent company Geodesic is under the liquidation process and the Chandamama brand and IP is expected to be sold off in due course. The official website of the magazine was allowed to expire and drop by the magazine owners and the current website is not associated with the Chandamama magazine.

With the acquisition by a technology company, Chandamama has announced that it will digitize and make available much of its content via digital libraries and on the web. In addition, Chandamama Multimedia CDs have also been published.