Publishing battle over textbooks heats up

S Chand and Navneet are on an acquisition spree as they fight for the top spot

In the first week of December, the Rs540-crore Delhi-based S Chand & Company acquired a majority stake (74 per cent) in Kolkata-based Chhaya Prakashani. This is its third acquisition in four years, and the company wants to come out with an initial public offer of Rs 650-700 crore later this year.

S Chand is the publisher of some of the largest selling textbooks on science, maths and English, among other topics, in India. 

Just two months before that, in October, the Rs949-crore Mumbai-based Navneet Education acquired the India curriculum business of Chicago-based Encyclopaedia Britannica. It includes titles such as Know