From Democratic-Era Newspaper Startup to a Nepali Media Dynasty: The Kathmandu Post, Kailash Sirohiya, and the Capital, Power, and Generational Transformation of Kantipur Media Group

The first and most important correction is that Kailash Sirohiya was not the original founder of The Kathmandu Post or Kantipur. Shyam Goenka was.

In 1993, Shyam Goenka founded the Nepali-language daily Kantipur and the English-language The Kathmandu Post. Kailash Sirohiya entered the ownership structure after the initial founding period, jointly controlled the business with the Gyawali family, and eventually consolidated control under the Sirohiya family. The most accurate ownership sequence is therefore:

Shyam Goenka founds the newspapers → Goenka exits → the Gyawali and Sirohiya families jointly control the company → the Sirohiya family consolidates full control in 2008 → second-generation Sambhav Sirohiya moves into operational leadership → Sambhav publicly breaks with the group’s editorial direction and resigns in 2026.

This distinction is crucial. The Sirohiyas did not originate the Kantipur model. Their importance lies in taking over an early democratic-era newspaper venture, expanding it, turning it into a cross-media conglomerate, consolidating family ownership, and sustaining control for decades.

The original founder, Shyam Goenka, was fundamentally a product of Nepal’s post-1990 democratic opening.

Goenka was born on March 7, 1963, in Dhanusha. He attended Birla Higher Secondary School in Rajasthan, India, graduated from Punjab University in Chandigarh, and completed postgraduate study at Utkal University in Odisha. His educational trajectory was therefore regional and heavily connected to India.

Goenka later said the immediate political context for founding Kantipur and The Kathmandu Post was Nepal’s 1990 constitutional transition, which institutionalized greater press freedom and opened a market previously dominated by state-owned media to private and independent institutions. He associated the launch with Democracy Day in 1993 and recalled an initial team of roughly 200 young people committed to freedom of expression, civil liberties, human rights, rule of law, social justice and good governance.

The Kathmandu Post was therefore not born purely as a commercial newspaper. From the beginning, business opportunity and democratic mission were intertwined. Nepal’s advertising market was still immature, and there was no certainty that a large private newspaper investment could generate sustainable profits. Goenka recalled that many people considered the idea a poor business decision.

Goenka did not ultimately build a family media dynasty around his ownership. Later accounts associated with him describe his involvement in soil and water conservation, sustainable agriculture, disaster mitigation and Vetiver-based bioengineering. His historical position is better understood as that of an institutional pioneer and founder, rather than the patriarch of the media conglomerate that later emerged.

Kailash Sirohiya came from a Janakpur business family rather than from professional journalism.

In a 2024 court statement, Kailash Sirohiya said he was born in Dhanusha on December 14, 1962, attended the local Saraswati Secondary School and later studied at Ramswarup Ramsagar Multiple Campus in Janakpur. There is no strong public record showing that he received professional journalism training.

His father, Ghansiram/Ghasiram Marwadi, also known as Sirohiya, was a businessman in Janakpur and was involved in the local chamber-of-commerce network. Kailash’s court statement described him as a founding general secretary of the Janakpur Chamber of Commerce and Industry, while reports on his death in 2012 likewise identified him with the local business community.

This suggests that Kailash entered media with a different resource base from Goenka. Goenka’s advantages were the democratic opening, editorial mission and first-mover entrepreneurship. Sirohiya’s path was closer to a commercial family and local business network entering the news industry and then developing corporate operating capacity. Reliable information on the family’s exact wealth at the time

Questions surrounding his father’s citizenship and Kailash’s own citizenship classification later became highly politicized during the 2024 criminal investigation. What can be established is that Kailash was born in Dhanusha and that his father had long been engaged in business in Janakpur. Allegations not established by a final judicial ruling should not be presented as facts.

Sirohiya’s defining entrepreneurial act was not founding the newspapers but taking them over, expanding them and consolidating ownership.

The precise date, valuation, financing and contractual terms under which Shyam Goenka transferred his interest to Kailash Sirohiya and Binod Raj Gyawali are not well documented in accessible English-language public records. Multiple secondary histories agree that after Goenka exited amid early financial pressure, Gyawali and Sirohiya took ownership and eventually operated with roughly equal stakes.

A much clearer turning point came in 2008. Contemporary reporting stated that the Gyawali family sold its entire 50 percent stake in Kantipur Publications to the Sirohiya family, which already held the other half. After the transaction, Kailash Sirohiya, previously Managing Director, became both Chairman and Managing Director.

Structurally, this was much more than an ordinary share transfer. It transformed one of Nepal’s most important private news institutions from partner control into a single-family-controlled private media group.

Kailash’s entrepreneurial importance therefore rests on three capabilities: taking over a high-risk existing news asset, expanding it across media, and eventually consolidating control. His role is closer to owner-publisher, capital allocator and group operator than to a founder-editor who built his reputation primarily through writing or newsroom leadership. The Kathmandu Post’s own standards page explicitly identifies it as part of KMG and states that the group is owned by Kailash Sirohiya.

Assets, Capital and Business Model

The Kathmandu Post is one of the family’s most important English-language influence assets, not merely a circulation-revenue asset.

The Kathmandu Post was launched in February 1993. The newspaper describes itself as Nepal’s first privately run English-language broadsheet and one of the country’s leading English dailies. It is published simultaneously from Kathmandu, Biratnagar, Bharatpur and Nepalgunj.

The Post estimates its combined print and online daily readership at more than 600,000. Because this is a publisher-reported readership estimate rather than an independently audited circulation figure, it should be treated as the group’s own measurement. The paper also runs the long-standing On Saturday weekend supplement and identifies investigations into corruption, malpractice and sexual harassment as part of its editorial work.

Its strategic value is broader than newspaper sales. An English newspaper gives KMG access to diplomats, international organizations, foreign investors, development agencies, policy elites and the South Asian English-language news ecosystem. The Kathmandu Post is therefore a classic influence asset: its direct commercial contribution may not necessarily exceed entertainment or sports businesses, but it has disproportionate importance in shaping how Nepal is interpreted internationally. Participation in regional networks such as Asia News Network further extends this visibility.

The newspaper’s published standards state that journalists owe their duty to truth, the community and readers rather than owners or advertisers, and require advertising and sponsored content to remain separate from editorial material. Those standards also reveal the central governance challenge of a family-owned news institution: ownership is highly concentrated, while editorial credibility depends on demonstrating that reporting is not simply an instrument of the owner’s commercial interests.

Kantipur Media Group is no longer simply a newspaper publisher; it is a media infrastructure spanning text, audio, video, sports and digital technology.

KMG currently describes itself as one of Nepal’s largest media organizations, operating across print, radio, television and digital platforms. Its major brands include Kantipur, The Kathmandu Post, Nari, Radio Kantipur, Kantipur Television, Kantipur Max and Kantipur NEO.

Kantipur Publications remains the historical editorial core. Its current corporate page highlights Kantipur Daily, The Kathmandu Post and the women’s publication Nari. Historically, the group also operated titles including Saptahik and Nepal Magazine. Because KMG’s current official pages are not completely consistent in how they describe those older titles, they are best regarded as historical publishing assets rather than assumed to be active current titles.

Radio Kantipur marked the first major move beyond newspapers. KMG says Kantipur FM began programming in 1995 using leased Radio Nepal airtime and obtained its own broadcast license in 1998. The group currently claims approximately 75 percent national coverage and more than 410,000 daily listeners.

Kantipur Television was established in 2003 and became one of Nepal’s early major private television operations. It began with roughly seven hours of daily broadcasting in the Kathmandu Valley and subsequently expanded its reach and programming.

Kantipur Max HD, launched in 2021, represents a move toward dedicated sports and entertainment. KMG says it broadcasts major cricket and football competitions, Wimbledon and other events through multiple HD feeds. This places the group in the business of sports rights, live-event attention and premium advertising inventory, not merely news production.

Kantipur NEO represents the newest stage: data, artificial intelligence, newsroom automation, platform distribution, audience research and digital product development. KMG’s homepage dates NEO to 2023, while its dedicated NEO page says it launched in 2025. The official sources therefore conflict

KMG also states that the Kantipur Foundation was established in 2014 to coordinate philanthropy and corporate social responsibility in areas including education, health and disaster relief. It should be regarded less as a conventional profit-generating asset and more as a reputation, social-network and public-legitimacy asset.

The second generation is more than a conventional heir: Sambhav Sirohiya extended the family network into technology and digital platforms, but left KMG’s top day-to-day operating role in 2026.

Sambhav Sirohiya is Kailash Sirohiya’s elder son. He was appointed Managing Director of Kantipur Media Group in 2023 after more than a decade of involvement in the company and previous service as CEO. The appointment represented the clearest attempt to transfer day-to-day leadership from the first generation to the second.

Sambhav’s business identity extends beyond KMG. He publicly describes himself as Founder & Managing Partner of MNS, positioning himself as a media and technology investor. MNS must be analytically separated from KMG: public evidence is insufficient to describe all MNS assets as subsidiaries of Kantipur Media Group.

In 2021, MNS Investments acquired Hamrobazar, one of Nepal’s important online classified marketplaces. Sambhav said the service would remain free to users and appointed Rohit Tiwari as CEO. The deal shows that the second generation did not intend to base its future exclusively on newspapers, television and FM radio; it was also building exposure to marketplaces, technology and digital platforms.

There is also a notable personnel bridge. Rohit Tiwari, appointed to run Hamrobazar after the MNS acquisition, now appears on KMG’s official leadership page as CEO of Kantipur NEO. This suggests circulation of people and capabilities between Sambhav’s technology network and the traditional media group, though it does not by itself establish common legal ownership.

On April 23, 2026, the succession narrative abruptly fractured. Sambhav resigned as KMG Managing Director with immediate effect. He did not frame his departure simply as a financial disagreement. He criticized some recent Kantipur reporting as sensational, sloppy and a form of “mission journalism,” arguing that he could not lead a transformation of a news organization whose journalism he did not believe in.

That is an unusually revealing event in a family media dynasty: the second-generation operating chief publicly broke with the editorial direction of the media organization controlled by his own family. It demonstrates that concentrated ownership does not eliminate conflict between business management, editorial judgment and family governance.

KMG is primarily a privately controlled family company rather than a vehicle controlled by outside private equity or foundations, but it has become an investor in financial technology.

The Kathmandu Post’s own editorial standards state that it belongs to KMG and that the group is owned by Kailash Sirohiya. Public corporate descriptions likewise characterize KMG as privately held. There is no reliable public evidence that an international private-equity fund, listed corporation, foreign media conglomerate or major foundation holds a controlling stake in KMG.

Its long-term capital structure therefore appears closer to family private capital plus reinvested operating cash flow than to an externally controlled institutional shareholder model. This provides substantial strategic autonomy, but also concentrates governance, succession and capital-allocation power within the Sirohiya family.

A particularly important outward investment occurred in 2017, when KMG acquired a stake in F1Soft International, the Nepali financial-technology company behind products including eSewa. The transaction announcement emphasized combining KMG’s nationwide communication reach with F1Soft’s financial technology to expand access to digital financial services. The most reliable announcement did not specify KMG’s ownership percentage, so the precise original and current shareholding remains unconfirmed.

Strategically, this was much more than a passive financial investment. A national news group became a shareholder in a fintech company that may itself become a subject of business and technology reporting. That creates a potential media ownership–commercial interest conflict.

A 2025 study of Nepal’s internet-governance ecosystem explicitly criticized this structure. It noted KMG’s F1Soft investment and Sambhav’s separate MNS role, and cited what it regarded as relatively limited Kantipur coverage of a negative F1Soft-related incident as a possible example of conflict of interest. This is an external analytical criticism, not a judicial finding of misconduct, but it identifies one of the most serious governance issues created by the family’s diversification beyond media.

The business model has evolved from circulation and advertising into cross-media advertising, sports, digital platforms and technology investments, but the legacy model is under severe pressure.

KMG’s original economics were built around newspaper circulation and advertising. As Radio Kantipur, television and digital businesses were added, the model expanded into broadcast advertising, sponsorship, branded content, digital advertising and cross-platform commercial partnerships. The Post’s own requirement that advertising and sponsored material be separated from journalism confirms their importance to the commercial system.

Sports has become an increasingly important attention business. Kantipur Max’s strategy of broadcasting international sports creates inventory for advertising, sponsorship, live viewing and younger audiences. KMG was also recruiting for sports-streaming operations in 2026, suggesting a further move from linear television toward streaming.

Kantipur NEO addresses both the cost and product sides of transformation. Automation, AI, audience analytics and multi-platform distribution are designed to make a historically large legacy organization more efficient in a digital environment.

Meanwhile, the F1Soft investment and MNS/Hamrobazar network show an attempt to move from merely selling audience attention toward owning equity in digital transaction and technology platforms. The distinction remains essential: F1Soft was a KMG investment; Hamrobazar was acquired by Sambhav’s MNS.

The economics of traditional media, however, have deteriorated sharply. A 2026 Kathmandu Post examination reported that KMG had more than 650 employees, including about 238 newsroom staff, while group revenue had fallen by approximately 70 percent over the previous decade. Employees had experienced delayed salaries, and the company went through significant restructuring and layoffs in 2025 while investing in automated systems and technology.

In his resignation statement, Sambhav said KMG had been losing more than NPR 600 million annually when he assumed day-to-day leadership and that reforms had brought the operation close to profitability. Because this figure came from the executive himself rather than an audited public financial statement, it should be understood as management’s account. Even so, it illustrates the real second-generation inheritance problem: this was not simply the transfer of a permanently profitable media empire, but an effort to restructure a legacy company suffering from structural declines in advertising, circulation and traditional distribution.

In 2026, after the government restricted certain public-notice advertising to state-owned outlets, KMG left the Nepal Media Society. Sambhav said the company did not depend on government advertising and attacked the older public-advertising allocation system as dominated by middlemen. The position was both commercial and political: KMG was emphasizing that its independence should not be understood as dependent on state advertising.

Turning Points, Achievements, Controversies and Current Position

The group’s history is easiest to understand through its major turning points.

1990–1993: Institutional opening. Nepal’s political liberalization and constitutional expansion of press freedom created a window for Shyam Goenka to establish Kantipur and The Kathmandu Post in 1993. This was the original entrepreneurial phase.

Mid-to-late 1990s: Ownership transition. Goenka exited and Kailash Sirohiya and the Gyawali side moved into ownership. Precise terms remain poorly documented. At roughly the same time, the company began moving beyond newspapers into radio.

2001: First major confrontation with state power. After the royal massacre, Kantipur published comments by Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai, after which Kailash Sirohiya, Binod Gyawali and editorial personnel faced sedition-related action. Kantipur increasingly became a political institution rather than simply a commercial publisher.

2003: Television expansion. The establishment of Kantipur Television transformed KMG from a print-radio operation into a genuine cross-media group.

2005–2006: Confrontation with royal rule. Following King Gyanendra’s takeover, press freedom was severely restricted. CPJ and Human Rights Watch documented military presence at media organizations, censorship and government action against Kantipur FM, including equipment seizures and efforts to restrict broadcasting. Kantipur accumulated significant symbolic capital as a private media institution resisting censorship.

2008: Family control is consolidated. The Gyawali family sold its 50 percent stake to the Sirohiya family, and Kailash became Chairman and Managing Director. This is the real founding moment of the Sirohiya family’s sole-control era.

2014–2017: Expansion into social and capital networks. Kantipur Foundation was established, followed by KMG’s investment in F1Soft, extending media capital into fintech.

2021: Sports television and second-generation internet investment advance in parallel. KMG launched Kantipur Max while Sambhav’s MNS acquired Hamrobazar. Traditional broadcasting and platform investment began moving forward simultaneously.

2023: Formal succession. Sambhav became Managing Director, while Kailash shifted more clearly toward the role of chairman and controlling owner.

2024: Kailash is arrested. A citizenship-document investigation placed the controlling owner himself under criminal investigation and transformed KMG’s conflict with then Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane into a national debate about press freedom and alleged political retaliation.

2025: Gen Z protests damage physical infrastructure. Kantipur Publications, Kantipur Television and other media facilities were attacked and burned; KTV temporarily stopped operating, while eKantipur and The Kathmandu Post websites went offline for several days.

2026: Economic restructuring and second-generation exit. KMG confronted falling revenue, salary delays, layoffs and digital restructuring, while Sambhav resigned over editorial disagreements. The apparently settled succession path became uncertain again.

KMG’s greatest achievement was not simply building a successful newspaper; it helped reshape the scale, professionalization and organizational structure of Nepal’s private news industry.

Before 1993, Nepal’s large formal media market was still heavily dominated by government institutions. Goenka’s launch of Kantipur and The Post demonstrated that large national private news organizations could become durable institutions. Journalists and academics later described the early Kantipur initiative as a major institutional breakthrough for private-sector journalism.

Kailash Sirohiya’s contribution was to turn that breakthrough into a durable conglomerate structure: a national Nepali-language daily, an English daily, radio, television, women’s media, entertainment, sports, digital products and technology investments were progressively connected under one capital-control network.

Kantipur also became a talent-production institution. Goenka recalled that many members of the original roughly 200-person team later moved into leadership roles across Nepal’s media industry. The company therefore produced not only journalism but also part of the country’s professional news class and personnel network.

Politically, Kantipur’s repeated confrontations with the monarchy, Maoist conflict, courts, corruption investigations and foreign diplomatic actors demonstrate an influence far beyond that of an ordinary business. One of its most valuable intangible assets is that governments, political parties, courts and foreign embassies repeatedly regard its reporting as important enough to answer, challenge or pressure. That is both evidence of influence and a source of controversy.

The most important controversies are not reducible to one scandal; they arise from the multiple conflicts created by concentrated media power.

First, conflict with state power. Kantipur management faced sedition-related action after the 2001 royal-massacre controversy, and the group was later targeted by censorship and broadcast restrictions during royal rule. International press-freedom organizations generally treated these episodes as political repression of KMG rather than evidence of unlawful business conduct by the company.

Second, conflict with the judiciary. Kantipur has repeatedly faced contempt proceedings connected to critical reporting about courts and judges. In the 2018 dispute involving then Chief Justice Gopal Parajuli, proceedings included Kailash Sirohiya, Swastika Sirohiya, editors and reporters. These cases illustrate the legal boundaries KMG repeatedly encountered while investigating or criticizing judicial power.

Third, the Chinese Embassy dispute. In 2020, The Kathmandu Post republished an article criticizing China’s transparency in its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, accompanied by an illustration showing a mask on an image of Mao Zedong. The Chinese Embassy in Nepal publicly criticized then editor Anup Kaphle and used language suggesting possible further action. Leading Nepali editors subsequently condemned what they saw as diplomatic pressure on a newspaper. The episode demonstrated both the Post’s international reach and the diplomatic risks that accompany it.

Fourth, Kailash Sirohiya’s 2024 citizenship case. Police investigated alleged inconsistencies in his citizenship documentation, including a number said to match another individual. Sirohiya denied wrongdoing, argued that citizenship numbers are issued by the government, and alleged that then Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane was retaliating against Kantipur for investigative coverage. Reuters, AP, CPJ and IFJ all covered the dispute.

CPJ said the arrest appeared to be an effort to muzzle KMG’s critical reporting, while Nepali journalist organizations and opposition figures also questioned its timing. At the same time, documentary inconsistencies were serious enough to generate a formal investigation, so the case cannot responsibly be described as proven political fabrication. Sirohiya was released on May 29, 2024.

Fifth, media ownership and commercial conflicts. KMG owns a stake in F1Soft while reporting on technology, finance and digital payments, and Sambhav separately operates technology investments through MNS. A 2025 internet-governance study explicitly argued that this structure can create conflicts of interest and questioned Kantipur’s treatment of a negative F1Soft-related story. There is no evidence that this amounted to a legal violation, but it represents one of the most significant structural criticisms created by the group’s diversification.

Sixth, labor and operating problems. In 2026, The Kathmandu Post itself reported salary delays inside KMG, along with layoffs and major restructuring during the previous year. For an institution whose public identity centers on accountability, internal employment and governance problems directly affect institutional credibility.

Seventh, criticism from within the family itself. Sambhav’s description of some Kantipur reporting as sensational, sloppy and “mission journalism” was more consequential than criticism from a rival outlet because it came from the second-generation heir, former CEO and sitting Managing Director. It exposed the fact that ownership, corporate management and editorial independence do not naturally align even inside a family-controlled organization.

Eighth, anti-media violence and social distrust during the 2025 Gen Z protests. KMG facilities were burned and The Post temporarily went offline. The attacks themselves are not evidence that KMG committed wrongdoing, but they demonstrate that in an information environment increasingly dominated by younger citizens and social platforms, traditional large media institutions no longer automatically command the social authority they once enjoyed.

As of August 2026, the Sirohiya family remains firmly in control, but succession, economics and public trust have all entered a more uncertain phase.

KMG’s current official leadership page continues to list Kailash Sirohiya as Chairman and Swastika Sirohiya as Director, with Mahesh Swar as CEO and Anup Kaphle as Group Editorial Director. Sambhav is no longer listed in the group’s current leadership, consistent with his April 2026 resignation as Managing Director.

The Sirohiya family has therefore not lost ownership control. Kailash remains at the center of ownership and chairmanship, and Swastika remains at board level. What has changed is the succession mechanism: the clearest second-generation leadership path has been interrupted, and KMG’s current official leadership page does not identify a new family Managing Director.

The strategic direction is nevertheless visible: reduce legacy costs, digitize operations, unify editorial management across platforms, use AI and automation to improve productivity, strengthen sports video, and develop new digital-distribution models. The Group Editorial Director structure is intended to create a more unified editorial direction across print, television, radio and digital operations, while NEO functions as a technology and product-development engine.

The challenges are equally visible. Traditional-media revenue has contracted sharply; payroll and staffing costs are under pressure; social-native media are competing for younger audiences; the 2025 unrest damaged physical infrastructure; and in 2026 the second-generation operating leader publicly broke with the group’s editorial direction.

The Sirohiya family should therefore not be understood simply as a “Nepali media tycoon family.” It now sits at the intersection of three identities.

First, it remains one of Nepal’s most powerful centers of private news ownership.

Second, through F1Soft, MNS and Hamrobazar-related relationships, its network has expanded into digital technology, fintech and platform capital.

Third, it is confronting the ultimate problem faced by many legacy family media businesses: when the economic foundations of print and television weaken, younger audiences migrate to social platforms, and the next generation itself questions the organization’s editorial culture, family ownership no longer guarantees that the family will be able—or willing—to run the media company in the same way.

Historically, Shyam Goenka was the founder and institutional pioneer; Kailash Sirohiya was the consolidator of control and builder of the media conglomerate; Sambhav Sirohiya represented the first serious attempt to move the family’s legacy media system into investment, platforms, AI and digital transformation. Sambhav’s 2026 departure means that this succession story is not complete—it remains an evolving process.

The Kathmandu Post is therefore perhaps the best single lens through which to understand the entire system. It is simultaneously a commercial asset and an international influence platform; it proclaims editorial independence while sitting inside concentrated family ownership; it has resisted royal and diplomatic pressure while also facing scrutiny over commercial conflicts, journalistic quality, labor relations and public trust. That is the real-world position of the Sirohiya/Kantipur system today: not merely a newspaper company, but a privately controlled infrastructure linking journalism, capital, political accountability, commercial relationships and Nepal’s national public conversation.