Publishers HarperCollins India today named Ananth Padmanabhan from Penguin Random House as its CEO.
Padmanabhan, 40, will have overall responsibility for all divisions of the business and will report to Charlie Redmayne, CEO of HarperCollins UK, the publishers said here.
Padmanabhan, who succeeds P M Sukumar, was Senior Vice President of Sales at Penguin Random House and is slated to take up the new position at the beginning of October.
Meanwhile Nandan Jha will replace Padmanabhan as Vice President Product and Sales at Penguin Random House.
With 20 years of publishing experience, Padmanabhan served on the Management Executive and was responsible for sales, local acquisition and publishing strategy and local digital strategy at Penguin Random House. He is also a writer and his first work of fiction "Play with Me" was published last year.
Responsibility for the day to day running of the Collins India education business remains with Krishna Naroor.
HarperCollins also announced the formation of a new HarperCollins India Board. The board includes Redmayne; Padmanabhan; Colin Hughes, managing director of Collins Learning; Ed Kielbasiewicz, Finance Director of HarperCollins UK; Alex Beecroft, Corporate Development Director of HarperCollins UK; and Amit Abrol, Finance Director of HCI.
Naroor will also join the Board.
Redmayne said of the new CEO, "I am delighted that Ananth is joining as CEO of HarperCollins India at this important time. He is an experienced publishing executive with a clear strategic mind and commercial acumen, which he combines with the energy needed to build on the brilliant work already done by our team in India."
Padmanabhan said it was a privilege to have been offered such an opportunity, at a time of such rapid change in the Indian publishing industry.
"HarperCollins is a company I have long admired; for the breadth of its publishing and, in Collins, its fast growing education business. HarperCollins has one of the most experienced and dynamic teams in publishing and I am greatly looking forward to working with them."
Meanwhile, following Padmanabhan's movement, Penguin Random House named Jha as his replacement.
Jha, who fulfilled the same role at Random House India prior to the merger with Penguin in 2013, will be responsible for all sales and product development across the company. He will take up his new position with immediate effect.
"...Nandan is the ideal candidate to continue to build our business in India and South Asia. He has a background across the book trade as a retailer, entrepreneur with his own venture publishing in Hindi and English as well as heading sales and marketing for several international publishers," Penguin Random House CEO Gaurav Shrinagesh said.
