Laxmi Publications, Delhi

Saurabh Gupta,Laxmi Publications is a privately held publishing company headquartered in New Delhi, India. Since its inception in 1974, it has grown tremendously as one of the leading publishers of engineering, computer, college, school (CBSE boar d ) and children books in India and abroad. It has various subsidiaries and imprints through which it caters to different niches of educational and professional book markets. Current years have brought tremendous growth and opportunities for Laxmi Publications. Saurabh Gupta, managing director, has taken aggressive steps to increase the brand awareness and diversify the portfolio of the company to take the business further.

Saurabh strongly believes that technology will decide the future of publishing houses; he is currently working on a unified content management system so that they have a uniform system where content can be plugged into and delivered to multiple systems. Secondly, he has almost converted forty to fifty percent of their catalogue into digital e-book format. The books of Laxmi Publications are already on sale with multiple vendors across the globe. The company has launched a website called digitests.com for online assessment. It is also at the stage of launching its online digital library called digitotheque.com. All the books would be converted into the e-book format and delivered through the company’s websites also. Their titles are also sold via Flipkart.

During the year 2013 Laxmi Publications had acquired Macmillan Unit which Saurabh terms as a happily arranged marriage for Laxmi Publications. They have also entered into a strategic tie-up with McGraw-Hill Education to co-publish, market and sell their school textbooks. It has invested into Liqvid, a leader in digital English language training, and has also obtained ISO 9001:2008 registrations. The growth of the company can be seen with number of titles it holds now as 350 as against just 300, a decade ago with more than 500 employees of which 40 as an editorial team.

Talking about the challenges in publishing today with an elongated payment cycle and lack of skilled editors, Saurabh believes it is increasingly becoming difficult for a publisher to survive without a good amount of seed capital. There will only be a few big players who would be able to sustain the test of time. In the coming years, we will see more mergers and acquisitions in the industry. “We have already built a strong network of distributors and our acquisitions have enhanced our reach in the market. The current haywire, skewed model of publishing operations in India is simply non-sustainable. Thus, we are working towards critical organisational reforms which will transform Laxmi Publications into a globally recognised and respected publishing house. We are heading towards becoming an educational and a digital publisher as well. This would open more streams of revenues and would bring stability through diversity,” he concludes.