Founded | September 2015 |
---|---|
Founder | Chiki Sarkar, Durga Raghunath |
Country of origin | India |
Headquarters location | New Delhi, India |
Distribution | Online and physical |
Key people | Simran Khara, Nandan Nilekani, Aveek Sarkar, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Neeraj Aggarwal, Gavin Morris, Jaishree Ram Mohan, Nandini Mehta |
Publication types | Online publishing, short stories, autobiographies, ebooks |
Official website | www |
Juggernaut Books (informally Juggernaut) is digital book publishing house headquartered in New Delhi, India. [1] [2] The publisher emphasizes on short length books written by new writers. It also allows writers to self-publish their books through their digital platform. The digital books are distributed via their website and mobile apps. [3] They also power the content library (around 70,000 books) of the Airtel Books app by Airtel. [4] They also publish physical books, which are distributed and warehoused by Hachette India. [5] The App has been discontinued since 2020.
The publishing house was founded by Durga Raghunath and Chiki Sarkar in September 2015. [6]
Before co-founding Juggernaut, Sarkar was a publisher of Penguin India and founder-publisher of Random House India. Raghunath was the CEO of Network18 Digital, senior VP-Growth, at Zomato and also founded Firstpost. [7]
Juggernaut raised Rs 15 crores in its initial round of seed funding from Fab India's founder William Bissell; former CEO and co-founder of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani and MD of Boston Consulting Group, Neeraj Aggarwal. [8]
In April 2016, Juggernaut launched India's first mobile-publishing application. [1] [9] Priya Ramani was appointed as the editor-at-large for its digital properties in the same year. [10] In February 2017, Raghunath resigned from the post of CEO and decided to continue as a shareholder. [11] Simran Khara is the current CEO of the publishing house. [12]
In December 2017, Bharti Airtel acquired a strategic stake in the house. [13] In March 2019, American publishing house HarperCollins joined in a partnership with Juggernaut Books, becoming their sales, distribution partner. [14]
Juggernaut writing platform is a self-publishing platform of the publishing house that allows writers to self-publish their books by uploading the texts and book cover through their app and website. The publisher also runs a programme named "Juggernaut Selects" that identifies and develops five new writers every month and provides them all the benefits of a publishing house. [15]
In 2018, the book Jasmine Days by writer Benyamin published from Juggernaut Books won the inaugural JCB Prize and Crossword translation award. [16] [17] In the same year, Swati Chaturvedi won the London Press Freedom Award for Courage for her book I am a Troll: Inside the Secret World of the BJP's Digital Army published from Juggernaut Books. [18] [19]
On 4 August 2017, Delhi High Court imposed a ban on publication and sale of book Godman to Tycoon: The Untold Story of Baba Ramdev from Juggernaut Books written by Priyanka Pathak Narain based on Ramdev's life. [20] After a legal battle with Ramdev, the ex-parte interim injunction was lifted from the book on 28 April 2018. [21]
In 2018, the book The Burning Forest: India's war in Bastar published from Juggernaut books, written by Delhi University professor Nandini Sundar based on Maoist insurgency and the violence in Bastar was dropped from the department's syllabus. Sundar was also indicted in a murder case filed by a woman called Vimla Baghel of her husband, a Maoist activist. But in February 2019, the professor was cleared of murder charges by police. [22]
The following authors are published by Juggernaut
Santali, Bengali: সাঁওতালী, Odia: ସାନ୍ତାଳୀ, Devanagari: संताली, also known as Santal or Santhali, is the most widely-spoken language of the Munda subfamily of the Austroasiatic languages, related to Ho and Mundari, spoken mainly in the Indian states of Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Mizoram, Odisha, Tripura and West Bengal by Santals. It is a recognised regional language of India per the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. It is spoken by around 7.6 million people in India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal, making it the third most-spoken Austroasiatic language after Vietnamese and Khmer.
Twinkle Khanna, also known as Tina Jatin Khanna, is an Indian author, columnist, interior designer, film producer, and former actress.
Maniyambath Mukundan is an Indian author of Malayalam literature and former diplomat. He worked as a cultural attaché at the Embassy of France in Delhi from 1961 to 2004, while concurrently working as an author. Many of his early works are set in Mahé (Mayyazhi), his homeland, which earned him the moniker Mayyazhiyude Kathakaaran. He is known to be one of the pioneers of modernity in Malayalam literature. Some of his best known works include Mayyazhippuzhayude Theerangalil, Daivathinte Vikrithikal, Kesavante Vilapangal, and Pravasam.
Ramdev is an Indian yoga guru, businessman and brand ambassador for Patanjali Ayurved. Ramdev is primarily known for being a proponent of yoga and ayurveda in India. Ramdev has been organizing and conducting large yoga camps since 2002 and broadcasting his yoga classes on various TV channels. He co-founded Patanjali Ayurved and Patanjali Yogpeeth with his colleague Balkrishna in 2006. Ramdev has received criticism over his comments related to modern medicine, yoga, and ayurveda.
Urvashi Butalia is an Indian feminist writer, publisher and activist. She is known for her work in the women's movement of India, as well as for authoring books such as The Other Side of Silence: Voices from and the Partition of India and Speaking Peace: Women's Voices from Kashmir.
Raghunath Murmu was an Indian Santali writer and educator. He developed the Ol Chiki script for Santali language. Until the nineteenth century, Santali people had no written language and knowledge was transmitted orally from one generation to other. Later European researchers and Christian missionaries started to use Bengali, Odia, and Roman scripts to document the Santali language. However, Santalis did not have their own script. His development of the Ol Chiki script enriched the cultural identity of the Santali society. He wrote many songs, plays and school text books in the Ol Chiki script.
Bonnier AB, also the Bonnier Group, is a privately held Swedish media group of 175 companies operating in 15 countries. It is controlled by the Bonnier family.
Bharti Airtel Limited, commonly known as Airtel, is an Indian multinational telecommunications services company based in New Delhi. It operates in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa, as well as the Channel Islands. Currently, Airtel provides 5G, 4G and LTE Advanced services throughout India. Currently offered services include fixed-line broadband, and voice services depending upon the country of operation. Airtel had also rolled out its Voice over LTE (VoLTE) technology across all Indian telecom circles. It is the second largest mobile network operator in India and the second largest mobile network operator in the world. Airtel was named India's 2nd most valuable brand in the first ever Brandz ranking by Millward Brown and WPP plc.
Amish Tripathi is an author and diplomat from India. He is the fastest-selling author in Indian publishing history, known best for The Shiva Trilogy and Ram Chandra Series.
Benny Daniel, better known by his penname Benyamin, is an Indian writer in Malayalam from Kerala. He is the author of about thirty books in various genres – from short stories to novels and memoirs. For his novel Goat Days (Aadujeevitham), he won the Abu Dhabi Sakthi Award, Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award and JCB Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. The novel Manthalirile 20 Communist Varshangal won the Vayalar Award in 2021. He co-written the screenplay of the movie Christy
Durjoy Datta is an Indian author and screenwriter.
Meenakshi Jain is an Indian political scientist and historian who served as an associate professor of history at Gargi College, Delhi. In 2014, she was nominated as a member of the Indian Council of Historical Research by the Government of India. In 2020, she was conferred with the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award, for her work in the field of literature and education.
Chiki Sarkar is a book publisher from Kolkata born in 1979 . She is a co-founder of Juggernaut Books.
Nandini Sundar is an Indian professor of sociology at the Delhi School of Economics whose research interests include political sociology, law, and inequality. She is a recipient of the Infosys Prize for Social Sciences in 2010. She was also awarded the Ester Boserup Prize for Development Research in 2016 and the Malcolm Adiseshiah Award for Distinguished Contributions to Development Studies in 2017.
Sarkar (transl. Government) is a 2018 Indian Tamil-language political action film written and directed by A. R. Murugadoss, and produced by Kalanithi Maran of Sun Pictures. The dialogues were co-written by Murugadoss and B. Jeyamohan. The film stars Vijay, Keerthy Suresh and Varalaxmi Sarathkumar in the lead roles, while Yogi Babu, Tulasi, Radha Ravi and Pala. Karuppiah play supporting roles. It follows Sundar Ramaswamy, a corporate raider, who arrives in Tamil Nadu from the United States to cast his vote in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election, only to find that his vote has already been recorded as cast, which leads him to raises awareness against electoral fraud and contest as a non-partisan politician in the elections amidst several attempts made on his life and reputation.
Aditya Sinha is an Indian author and journalist. His last assignment was as the Editor-in-Chief of the Deccan Chronicle, based in Hyderabad, which also publishes the Asian Age in Delhi. He has been a journalist since 1987, occupying positions such as Editor-in-Chief of The New Indian Express and DNA. He has reported on terrorism in Punjab, Kashmir and Assam and has also done reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan. He started out as a crime reporter in Delhi.
Salik Shah is an entrepreneur, poet, writer, editor and publisher based out of New Delhi, India. He is the founding editor and publisher of Mithila Review, a journal of international science fiction and fantasy established in 2015.
Agartala Book Fair is an annual book fair usually held in February or March in Agartala, Tripura, India.
Yasser Usman is an Indian television journalist, bestselling author, news presenter, and biographer. Born in Delhi, Yasser Usman began his career by working as a television presenter and was awarded the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award for his contribution. Usman has been recognised by the media as one of India's most successful film biographers.
Tweak India is an Indian digital media company focused on women. It was founded by author and entrepreneur Twinkle Khanna, who is also the CEO and brand ambassador.