MOSTPOWERFUL WOMEN

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Chiki Sarkar, 

Founder and publisher
age: 42
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After successful stints as the publisher of Penguin Random House India and as the first editor-in-chief of Random House India, Sarkar, in her latest role, is trying to revolutionise reading through her publishing company Juggernaut Books. She has successfully taken a traditionally print business into the digital space, creating a platform to draw in a new generation of readers and writers. Before the lockdown in March this year, the company’s app went free-of-cost to encourage people to read. As a result, it saw a 150% growth in users—it had a subscriber base of 50,000 pre-Covid-19. And, although, the publisher has a small print list, it claims to have the highest profitability per title in the industry. And for good reason: Juggernaut has published the works of Nobel Prize winners Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Svetlana Alexievich; the country’s top-selling woman writer Twinkle Khanna, and nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar. Other authors that are part of the Juggernaut stable include Sourav Ganguly, Karan Johar, Rajdeep Sardesai, and Rajat Gupta. The company is backed by marquee investors such as Nandan Nilekani, co-founder and non-executive chairman of Infosys, Neeraj Aggarwal, CEO of Boston Consulting Group in India, and Bharti Airtel.
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