Modernisation and expansion makes SENSE here!

Sixthsense Publications, a 14 year old, second generation of Poongudi Publications started in 1968, is now assisted by a third generation enterprising youth. How the youth Karthikeyan is beginning to transform the activities, finds out Dr Ramalingam from AABP. Karthikeyan Pugalendi, a 27 year old Electronics engineer, has taken the challenge to modernize the activities of Sixthsense Publications, started by his father, KS Pugalendi in 2000. Karthikeyan brings with himself the knowledge and experience of working with IT major at Infosys.

Asked about his experience so far in book field, Karthikeyan replied, “Potential is enormous for growth and modernization. So far our books could not be sold on online stores due to lack of proper link codes with them. I created one and our books are catching up on online. QR codes are now carried on our books with ISBN and bar codes. The advantages are visible.”

Karthikeyan Pugalendi is keen to publish books in English and popular English books with Tamil translation. He showed a copy of the book with innovative title Please Don’t Buy This Book, English translation of its Tamil edition, a bestseller of 3,00,000 copies. The book is written by Gobinath, a popular anchor with Star Vijay Tamil TV channel. Karthikeyan added, “We have made a foray into English books with this book. Being a Tamil publisher all these years, certain procedural steps were to be cleared to become a bilingual publisher. Not to lose momentum, I got translated popular English books into Tamil, like Fountain Head by Ayn Rand, David and Goliath by Malion Gladwell, MBA at 16 by Subroto Bagchi. I have procured proper licenses from HarperCollins, Little Brown and Penguin as publishing rights. Typesetting process is on and books will come to light soon.”

Books are his interest, being grandson of V Subbaiah, who started his Poongudi Pathippagam (meaning Publications with flower plant as its logo) in 1968. The publishing house has 450 Tamil books on various genres like literature, related deep study, novels, short stories, general knowledge, self improvement, siddha medicine, yoga, cooking, family matters, sayings, children books, drama, etc. His son KS Pugalendi started Sixthsense Publications in 2000 to cater to the new genre of readers in the present century. He has already published some 150 book titles, while 20 titles are in pipeline. His self improvement books in Tamil are equally popular.

With consolidation in Tamil books publishing in conventional environment, modernization and foraying into English, the international language, seems to be the next logical step.