The Madhyamam saga began in 1987 at Silver Hills near Calicut of the Indian state of Kerala. It was inaugurated by Kuldip Nayar, veteran Indian journalist. Vaikom Muhammed Basheer, the doyen of modern Malayalam literature, saw in it the birth of a silver star - a prophecy that lent substance to the evolution of the paper. The daily was led in its infancy by luminaries like K C Abdullah, P K Balakrishnan and K A Kodungallur.

Madhyamam is run by the Ideal Publications Trust, which aims at providing nonpartisan and value based journalistic service beyond considerations of profit and the demeaning compulsions of the market. Its policy emphasises the need for the media to rise above sectarianism and market driven profiteering pressures that have beset the post Independence Indian journalism. It calls for lending voice to the voiceless majority in the society. Madhyamam set new trends in news content, advertisements, visuals and social commitment.

Madhyamam has in its own small way moulded the reading habits of the discerning Malayali readers, setting the agenda for serious debates through its editorials, features and the Madhyamam Weekly magazine.

The growth of Madhyamam has been impressive. A mere two decades, it has grown into nine editions at Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Kannur, Malappuram, Kottayam, Trichur and Bangalore besides Kozhikode, and nine overseas editions for Gulf Madhyamam, at Bahrain, Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Saudi Arabia (4 editions). It is the largest circulated Asian Daily in the Gulf, and the first International Indian Daily.