[4] Eenadu was launched from Visakhapatnam on 10 August 1974 by Ramoji Rao, a businessman who had previously achieved success with Priya Pickles and Margadarsi Chitfunds.

Eenadu hired a new set of directors to be part of its key decision and management group which drove it towards what it is today: the most highly circulated newspaper in the region.

[10] When Eenadu expanded to Hyderabad in 1975, it divided the city into target areas, recruited delivery boys three months in advance and handed out the paper freely for a week.

[14][15] Another factor that has been cited is caste politics, with both Eenadu and the TDP being perceived as Kamma-oriented organisations and both Raos being Kammas themselves,[16][17] although this view has been challenged.

This coverage led to a massive increase in subscriptions, with Eenadu going from a circulation of 230,000 copies to 350,000 in the six months of Rama Rao's electoral campaign and becoming one of the state's most popular newspapers.

[18][19] The TDP would go on to successfully sweep the election, making Rama Rao the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, and over half a million copies were printed of Eenadu to declare this victory.

[14] In response, film personality Dasari Narayana Rao and industrialist Gireesh Kumar Sanghi would launch pro-Congress newspapers of their own and eventually become members of the Rajya Sabha on the Congress ticket.

Despite Rama Rao's growing unpopularity in the later part of the decade due to perceptions of failed promises, the paper refrained from criticising him before expressing some concerns about his leadership in response to his continued loss of public support and the Congress victory in the 1989 Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly election.

[23] This took on multiple forms, from the 2004 investigation of Margadarsi for irregular financial practices to the launch of Sakshi in 2008 under Jagan Mohan Reddy's ownership as a "counter" to what his father, the CM at the time, claimed was "biased news" from traditionally TDP-supporting papers.

Eenadu's district dailies were based on market research asserting that heavy local content would generate new groups of readers and boost advertising revenue.