Chiki Sarkar
Founder and publisher, Juggernaut BooksAbout
After successful stints as the publisher of Penguin Random House India and as thefirst editor-in-chief of Random House India, Sarkar, in her latest role, is trying torevolutionise reading through her publishing company Juggernaut Books. She has successfully taken a traditionally print business into the digital space, creating a platformto draw in a new generation of readers and writers. Before the lockdown in March thisyear, the company’s app went free-of-cost to encourage people to read. As a result, it sawa 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 theindustry. And for good reason: Juggernaut has published the works of Nobel Prize winnersAbhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Svetlana Alexievich; the country’s top-selling womanwriter Twinkle Khanna, and nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar. Other authors that are part ofthe Juggernaut stable include Sourav Ganguly, Karan Johar, Rajdeep Sardesai, and RajatGupta. The company is backed by marquee investors such as Nandan Nilekani, co-founderand non-executive chairman of Infosys, Neeraj Aggarwal, CEO of Boston Consulting Groupin India, and Bharti Airtel.
