Organised retail just 12% of our top line: Neeraj Jain

Interview with MD, Scholastic India

Across television, print and online, one of the fastest growing content genre is the one for kids. The $2.1 billion New York-based Scholastic Corporation is the worlds largest publishers of childrens books. Its Clifford The Red Dog and Goosebump series are a hit with children worldwide. It also has the American rights to the Harry Potter series. Scholastic India, which has more than 7,000 titles on offer, recently entered a new market with Nova, an imprint for young adults. Vanita Kohli-Khandekar spoke to Scholastics India head, Neeraj Jain on his view of the kids market. Excerpts:

On the shape of the Indian market for childrens books
When we came in 1997, nobody felt there was a market for childrens books, especially in leisure. Bookstores were not big at that time and there was this whole Delhi Book Club culture. There were hardly any publishers. There was Egmont with a small presence. Penguin was here but not its kids imprint, Puffin. There was the National Book Trust and the Children Book Trust. Now it is an estimated Rs 2,000 crore market growing at 15 per cent (CAGR).

On Scholastics strategy and position
We started with book clubs and fairs and that has remained the cornerstone of our distribution strategy. More than 70 per cent of our top line (Rs 60 crore) comes from book clubs and fairs. In a fair we set up a retail outlet in a school for three to five days and expose them to our top 600-700 titles. They can browse, read or buy, at a special price. With clubs we send the brochures for our top 40 books beforehand, the school shares it with the kids and we then take orders at a special price. We reach close to 8,000 schools this way. We did 10,000 such activities in the last year. Organised retail brings in just about 12 per cent of our top line.

On how it decides what to sell in India
It depends on what the data shows (on sales patterns), the authors that come to us, our editorial teamWe recently published out first graphic novel (by Jerry Pinto), we have done short stories in Hindi by Gulzar which did very well. Our Early Science series does very well. The market for picture books however is not well-established. If there are very few words in a book, then Indians feel it is not value for money.

On the challenges of the Indian market.
The big challenge is that 80 per cent of the books coming out are cut and paste jobs from unorganised players. They are cheaper because they dont pay author royalty and all the other costs we have. But consumers compare us to these. Also a lot of seconds books from across the world, dated reference books and so on come to India. That becomes a problem.

On the patterns in the Indian market versus other Scholastic markets
Books related to activities (art, craft, puzzles), reference books, do very well in India. Compared to other markets India is still evolving. In those markets reference or activity books dont work, fiction does.