Twinkling all the way!

Starting from small bookshop in a narrow bazaar of old Delhi to a publisher, distributor and a bookshop in UK, Star Publishing Group has indeed come a long way. More recently, they celebrated their 60th anniversary in publishing. The 60th anniversary celebration… Star Publishing Group recently made news for their 60th anniversary celebration in publishing. The history of Star Publishing was narrated by Amar Varma, chairman & managing director, Star Publishing Group, himself. He also acknowledged the motivational efforts of Ashoke Ghosh, who was not only a friend throughout their journey, but also their mentor. While, Ashoke appreciated the family contribution in making Star Publishing Group a name to reckon with.

The evening was star-studded with celebrity author Javed Akhtar who talked about the excellence and the culture in Star Publishing, especially Amar Varma. The celebration was attended by who’s who of the publishing world, including top officials from FIP, CAPEXIL, NBT, to name a few.

The modest beginning Interestingly, Star came into operation in 1952 with a small 10’x10’ bookshop in a narrow bazaar of old Delhi. Six years later, they started publishing low priced pocket books in Hindi and Urdu, under the banner ‘Star Pocket Book’ series, consisting of writings of eminent authors, which introduced an era of popular fiction in India.

The distribution set-up… But 1968 marked their entry as a distribution centre for Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu books published from across the country, under a new banner ‘Hindi Book Centre.’ Today, this is the largest distribution centre for Hindi books in the entire country, distributing books from over 800 publishers across the country.

The exports… An year later, they forayed into exports of Indian Books, for which they incorporated a separate 100 percent export firm ‘Star Publishers Distributors’ in 1992. Seeing the demand for Indian books abroad, they launched a regular bookshop in London – Indian Book Shelf – in 1984 to create new avenues for distribution of Indian publications to booksellers, libraries and educational institutions in many countries across the globe. Today, they not only offer books but also publish high-quality children books and general subject books under the imprint of ibs Books (UK). They also publish one to one dictionaries in more than 40 languages and still countinuing.

The printing set-up… Their understanding of the foreign market prompted them to establish a separate unit for printing and binding to offer production services to publishers of USA, Europe and Middle East, under the name of Star Print O Bind.

Last but not the least, stationery… As they say, books and stationery go hand in hand; Star Group ventured into high quality stationery for wholesale distribution as well as exports, under the brand name Starz…thus completing the full circle of books and stationery services.

On a concluding note… Over the years, Star has endeavored to promote Hindi as well as other regional languages of India, not only within the country, but also all over the world. “But, this is just the beginning, Star will continue to twinkle and there’s still a long way to go, this is what we believe!” conclude Amar Nath.