POWERFUL WOMEN
50
Prev Rank: NEW
Chiki Sarkar,
Founder and publisher, Juggernaut Booksage: 42
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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