Celebrating 25 years of great publishing!

HarperCollins India is celebrating its silver jubilee in India this year with authors, retailers, partners, readers and colleagues. Over the years, a firm belief in their promise and passion to deliver only the very best of the printed word has helped them become one of India’s finest in publishing. HarperCollins India celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary this year. Twenty-five years of publishing India’s finest writers and some of its most memorable books – those you cannot put down; ones you want to finish reading yet don’t want to end; works you can read over and over again only to fall deeper in love with.

Charlie Redmayne, CEO, HarperCollins UK, remarked,”India is a country with enormous heritage and some of the great writers emerged during this time and we are celebrating it. It is also the year of great change in publishing growth in India in the literary focus and burgeoning commercial fiction market. It is enormously exciting time for Harper Collins India.”

Celebrating through a film…

Harper Collins India joined hands with Dentsu One to celebrate 25 years in India through a film that celebrates books. The film shows the journey of a novel titled Journeys Never End. The film starts with an old man holding the novel whilst travelling in a bus. As the bus stops at a church, he forgets the novel behind. A young man notices the book and picks it up to give it to him but the bus leaves. A young woman boards the same bus and takes the seat adjacent to the young man. She notices the book in the young man’s hands. Seeing her interested in the book, the young man hands it to her and leaves as his stop comes. What she finds written on the first page of the novel gives the film an unexpected twist. Their trailer promotes books through a beautifully conceptualised ad that carries the message of ‘Stories create books. Books create stories.’

Ananth Padmanabhan, CEO, HarperCollins India, said, “We made this short film to celebrate our lifelong passion for storytelling. Something that simply reaffirmed the power of stories and the fact that books open up a world of unimaginable possibilities. And in Dentsu One, we found the perfect partner.”

Finest authors galore…

Through the years, they have published writers from the Indian subcontinent, and across the globe, including Aravind Adiga, Kiran Nagarkar, Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Manu Joseph, Anuja Chauhan, Upamanyu Chatterjee, APJ Abdul Kalam, Shekhar Gupta, MJ Akbar, Satyajit Ray, Gulzar, Surendra Mohan Pathak and Anita Nair, amongst others, with approximately 200 new books every year and an active print and digital catalogue of more than 1000 titles, across ten imprints.

Awards & accolades…

Publishing works of various genres including literary fiction, poetry, mind body spirit, commercial fiction, journalism, business, self-help, cinema, biographies – all with attention to quality, of the manuscript and the finished product – it comes as no surprise that they have won every major literary award including the Man Booker Prize, the Sahitya Akademi Award, the DSC Prize, the Hindu Literary Prize, the MAMI Award for Best Writing on Cinema, the National Award for Best Book on Cinema, the Crossword Book Award, and the Publisher of the Year, twice, at Publishing Next in Goa, and more recently, the Publisher of the Year Award 2016 at Tata Literature Live, Mumbai.

What people at Harper Collins say… “HarperCollins is a publishing house that values its authors, its people and the ethos of good publishing. This underlying philosophy has driven us for 25 strong years in India and 200 years globally – publishing talented writers, creating beautiful books, building strong imprints and creating a culture of reading. Together with Collins Learning (our fast growing education business), I am proud to say that we are India’s only education to entertainment publisher, with a team that is committed to pushing the bar on quality.”

–Ananth Padmanabhan,
CEO, HarperCollins India

“I feel absolutely proud and empowered in my role as a part of HarperCollins India team. It’s a bunch of some very bright, creative and imaginative minds who are totally passionate about the business of books. What sets us apart from the rest is our commitment to quality, professionalism and care for our authors.”

–Rahul Dixit,
director, sales

“HarperCollins being the second largest publisher in the world needs no introduction as a brand. Publishing international names like Agatha Christie, George R Martin, J R Tolkien, Daniel Silva, Dr Seuss, David Walliams (to name a few) and Indian authors like Aravind Adiga, Anuja Chauhan, Kiran Nagarkar, Surender Mohan Pathak, Akshaya Mukul, APJ Kalam, amongst many others, there is a universal brand love. Working with HarperCollins India for over 1.5 years now, I am living my dream! I get the opportunity to work and managing lead authors whilst having access to the best books to read. It’s a company you definitely want to work in and grow with for the next 25 years and more.”

–Shobhit Saxena,
executive – marketing

“It’s been a wonderful one year at HCI, and am looking forward to the span of opportunities in our brilliant list this year, and promotions planned for celebrations for our 25thyear in India. Our rich legacy combined with the tremendous passion for innovation and the vision to be the best makes it an ideal work place!”

–Smriti Khanna Mehra,
sr. manager- marketing

“HarperCollins is one of the coolest publishing brands in India (earmarked by the iconic blue and red colours and the fire-and-ice logo) – we’re 25 years young in 2017 and are looking forward to the next 25 years of exciting publishing!”

–Udayan Mitra,
publisher – Literary

“HarperCollins is a wonderful mix of great legacy and people who have cherished and nurtured it at every step along the way. Everyone I know in-house loves what they do and take their work very personally! This extends to our relationship with authors and stakeholders as well. We are growing everyday in the kind of books and genres we are publishing in, the people training and technology we implement, the exposure the team gets to on-ground realities and global practices. We are exactly like you – our approach is global, yet our heart is embedded in the culture that our legacy creators entrusted to us. Together, this mix drives and defines the brand we have become!” –Sonali Singh,
head – marketing & corporate communications