Hachette India

Hachette India is the Indian arm of the world’s largest general books publisher, Hachette. It began its local publishing programme in May 2009 with Amit Varma’s My Friend Sancho, the highest selling fiction debut of the year. This was followed by such books as Manjit Kumar’s Quantum (shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2009) and Seeds of Terror by Gretchen Peters. The Children’s books division got off to a great start as well with the bestselling The Mahatma and the Monkeys.

Hachette India is part of Hachette UK, which is made up of companies like Headline, Hodder & Stoughton, Little, Brown, Octopus, Orion, Chambers-Harrap, Piatkus, Hodder Education including Arnold, and Hachette Children’s Books; with legendary imprints like John Murray, Everyman, Gollancz, Orbit, Abacus, Sceptre, Virago, Business Plus, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Cassell, Hamlyn, Bounty, etc.; and brands like Asterix, Enid Blyton, Horrid Henry, Stephen King, Steve Berry, Jeffery Deaver, Jodi Picoult, Alexander McCall Smith, Gregory David Roberts, Martina Cole, James Patterson, Robert Ludlum, Vikram Seth and Amitav Ghosh (in the UK), and Lavanya Sankaran, to name a few.

Hachette UK is in turn a part of Hachette Livre France, the leading publisher in France by a mile. The Hachette group is also the world’s number 1 magazine publisher as Hachette Filippachi, (Paris Match, Elle magazine, etc.). The Hachette group further is owned by the Lagardère group, also the owners of Airbus.

What is unique about the Hachette group is its sense of federalism. So, despite common group objectives or PR initiatives, we are quite clear that we want to preserve the individual flavour and creative drive of each company. Often group companies may even bid against each other for the same book.