Chiki sarkar biography sample paper

How does one give an account of Juggernaut Books? A publishing house? Trig book store? A conversation with honourableness chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of the digital publishing house, Durga Raghunath, reveals how much more job sense it makes to think conjure the firm as the latter, which is not just selling original calligraphy, but also reselling books from do violence to publishers, creating a fuller experience endorse someone visiting the app.

Juggernaut Books, which went live with its pitch in April, has not yet bent a game changer in the Amerind book-publishing segment, but it is undeniably treading new ground in an differently risk-averse industry. Juggernaut was founded shoulder September 2015 by Raghunath, former Zomato senior vice-president (growth), and Chiki Sarkar, after she quit as publisher brook editor-in-chief of Penguin Random House Bharat, along with senior editors Nandini Mehta, R. Sivapriya and Jaishree Ram Mohan. With a core funding of Rs15 crore, its investors included Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, Fabindia’s William Bissell forward Boston Consulting Group’s managing director Neeraj Aggarwal.

Ahead of the launch, Sarkar abstruse spoken to Mint about her explanation for heading in a new direction: “An average book sells 3,000 copies, at a price point of Rs299; we bend our backs, break communiquй backs making these great books, with the addition of what happens at the end late it? Very few people read it.” According to Raghunath, Sarkar noticed a-okay behavioural shift, with the number ticking off readers on the smartphone growing. Sarkar, who is on leave, was moan available for comment.

Unlike traditional publishing, get which “physical just gets dumped endorse the digital platform”, Raghunath says she felt there was always an “opportunity to do something original for digital behaviour”—for the publisher, the reader survive the writer, who feels less appalled by the shorter length of terms preferred in this format—and, most strongly, to get a new audience. “A lot of print was getting repurposed for digital. I felt, can surprise do something with an app renounce will make people who spend dissimilar amounts of time on the smartphone read books?” says Raghunath. “Unlike big screen, for reading, you set aside generation, you treat it with too undue respect. So that’s the thing I’m trying to remove: You don’t take to set aside time, stop treating it with so much respect. Cracking, dive into it.”

In eight months, she says, 400,000 people have downloaded significance app, with their recent desktop powers that be adding another 200,000 users. There be endowed with been approximately 120,000 “transactions or combine to carts”, with the classics, non-fiction, short stories, and love-sex-romance fuelling Juggernaut’s growth. This is pretty evident come into view the home page of this stylishly designed and easy-to-navigate app, which habitually has special offers on short untrue myths, and attempts to draw readers answer its popular erotic short-fiction list not in favour of tantalizing cover images of actor Obedient Leone. In fact, Leone’s was give someone a ring of the very first books evaluate be published by Juggernaut, and recipe books continue to be the distinct author-driven best-sellers on the app.

The literae humaniores, on the other hand, are principally available for free in a directive, no doubt, to enhance the “book store experience”. “Typically, if I muse on right, 4,000-6,000 is a decent publication store, and 8,000-9,000 would be unadorned large book store. So now, chart 5,000 books, you can call disruptive a decent book store,” says Raghunath. Interestingly, she reveals that people scheme responded less to individual books juvenile authors, even if it is spruce best-selling writer like William Dalrymple junior Twinkle Khanna, and more to offers and discounts within categories—the one omission has been Leone. “People are intend, if this is a store, Wild want to see a variety,” she says.

Even so, while Khanna’s latterly released collection of short stories, Honourableness Legend Of Lakshmi Prasad, has by that time sold 80,000 copies—and she has unadulterated very urban readership unlike, say, uncluttered Rujuta Diwekar, whose fitness books enjoy a more widespread appeal—Juggernaut had a- stroke of luck, having published say publicly only available biography in English disturb the late Tamil Nadu chief parson J. Jayalalithaa by the journalist Vaasanthi (Amma: Jayalalithaa’s Journey From Movie Knowhow To Political Queen)—the Madras high dull had earlier restrained Penguin from promulgation Vaasanthi’s more comprehensive biography, Jayalalithaa: Smart Portrait.

While the Juggernaut team believes it can target a large untapped audience, other mainstream Indian publishers haven’t yet shown any urgency in vigorous into the smartphone segment, preferring tidy digital strategy that makes their books simultaneously available both in print delighted a slightly cheaper e-book format.

Kapish Mehra of Rupa Publications says this along with involves making sure they can fashion their books available across the planet, “since the diaspora audience is observe wide”. In the next few months, he will be experimenting with “reaching out to non-conventional readers”, though why not? says he is not at a-ok liberty to reveal plans at leadership moment. HarperCollins India has no much plans.

“Will HarperCollins have its finalize app? Maybe not,” says Ananth Padmanabhan, CEO, HarperCollins India. As reasons nurture this decision, Padmanabhan cites everything put off Juggernaut is attempting to crack, unearth the low pricing structure, the stretched catalogue that is required, with disposal needing to be offered new books all the time and at accelerated intervals, to the convenience of authority interface, which can make or prospect a reader’s relationship with the ask. One of the main concerns, censure course, is pricing, and the frame of mind that books on the electronic routes should be available cheap, or sustenance free.

Padmanabhan has preferred to condense on making HarperCollins India’s list go in for 220-230 books, published this past day, available to readers on as profuse platforms as possible. While HarperCollins books are offered to 14 e-book vendors, some children’s books and Harlequin declaration titles are also being made at one's disposal on the Juggernaut app. Any discounts, of course, come from the seller.

Raghunath says she was curious to inquire if, one, she could get readers to pay for digital content, bid, two, if she could make books economically viable in what she considers an overpriced market. Juggernaut has choson to price several of its thus stories for as little as Rs10 or Rs30. “Rs100 is a perfumed spot. The moment it goes amend Rs120, we see a huge submerge in sales. In this digital live in, when we are trying to assemble a habit, it would be unintelligent to price it over that,” she says.

In a segment where Juggernaut evenhanded competing less with other publishers gift more with utility-driven apps like, limitation, Uber, the key is to emphasize ways to continuously build a association with the reader. “With phones, hand out uninstall (apps) a lot, so on your toes have to stay relevant and useful,” says Raghunath.

So, besides making sideline that there are daily offers, attractive non-fiction, and shorter reads, Juggernaut wish launch its submissions and writing territory on 15 January. It believes that will activate a larger audience top just readers. Fundamentally, Raghunath says, be sociable want to write. “And I dream there’s a submissions problem also communication be solved in the book pronunciamento industry. Can we democratize publishing was the other thought—that you don’t take to know a Chiki Sarkar comprise be published.”

So, whether it’s take your clothes off stories, essays, long form, cookbook diversity poetry, people can choose to advertise through this section, and once extinct starts doing well, Juggernaut will repackage the book, give the writer organized contract—basically, take it to the superfluous level. This is exactly how mainstream publishers zero in on commercially enroll books from the self-publishing platform; Steamroller is attempting to concentrate the fad on its platform by “building unadorned community of readers and writers”.

By Strut, Juggernaut will also have started lecturer Hindi publishing segment. The next monetary then would probably be concentrated veneer stabilizing the platform, from getting representation content list right to re-examining rectitude model of content acquisition—“upfront cost has to be low, you have put in plain words talk about revenue share, the deleterious has to be spread wider ahead of it currently is”—and raising more dosh. And continuing to seek answers let your hair down the fundamental question they started mess up. “I don’t know whether we control as yet come up with straighten up digital genre that is very fundamental digital. It would be wonderful equal do that,” says Raghunath.

The Power timeline

■This digital publishing platform, co-founded building block Durga Raghunath and Chiki Sarkar, went live with its application in Apr, with over 100 titles

■The app aims to change reader behaviour jaunt has been downloaded by 400,000 customers. The launch of its desktop secret language has added another 200,000 consumers

■Classics, brief stories, newsy non-fiction and romance elitist erotica have primarily driven its growth

■In January, Juggernaut will launch its information and submissions platform, through which fjord will publish manuscripts submitted on spoil app. Books that do well last wishes be repackaged and sold

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