The 10 Most Creative Shepreneurs to Watch in 2019

Interview with Insights Success
ndian art and literature space have
Igiven some absolute gems to the
world, especially women. From
the devotional verses of Meera Bai, the
agape love in Amruta Pritam’s work,
the everyday emotions in Sarojini
Naidu’s work to the contemporary and
hard hitting take on society by Jumpa
Lahiri, the women power is there to
see. But every author needs a platform
to showcase her work and that is where
the publishing houses come in. But in
this sector too, women have had their
own share of fight. Determined, to
make their own mark in the field of
publishing, few Indian women left no
stone upturned to make the most out of
it. They are making a difference with
their creative ideas, running successful
ventures, and giving rise to a new
sustainable ecosystem. Each of them is
scripting her own new story in today’s
world. Hats off to all these women
entrepreneurs.
In the following interview, we get to
understand one such creative and
prolific entrepreneur, Shalini Gupta,
the Founder and Director of Zorba
Books which is one of India’s leading
self-publishing organizations.
The excerpt below showcases Shalini’s
experiences, about what it takes to
build a thriving business, to learn about
Zorba Books and what it offers, and
some insights about the current state of
self-publishing in India.
Kindly brief us about yourself, your
initial journey since the beginning of
your career?
We had an exciting beginning. It began
with a love for writing and reading
books and led quite naturally into
setting up a traditional publishing
business. When we set up Zorba
Publishers eight years back, we started
from scratch – getting to know the
book publishing business, building
relationships with dealers as the
primary distribution channel, etc. We
were in for a surprise because though
st
India has moved into the 21 century,
in the book trade people seemed to be
still stuck in the twentieth century, if
not the nineteenth! It was haphazard
and women were certainly not
welcome. There was an element of
discomfort and a casual attitude
towards women. In Europe and
elsewhere self-publishing was at its
peak. The three years of trying to fit in
and apply modern practices to the
traditional publishing business did give
us a lot of insights and connections in
book publishing. We decided to move
st
into the 21 century with book
publishing services and in 2014, Zorba
Books was born.
State your passions, aims, and goals.
The fact that we were ruled by
outsiders for centuries never sat well
with me. Even after the British left,
MNCs rule the roost. I aimed to
combine books and business practices
that were superior to those of an MNC.
The warmth and customer engagement
of an Indian business combined with
the emphasis on honesty, transparency,
quality, and timeliness of an MNC.
Zorba Books’ book publishing services
are already far superior to those offered
by the largest MNC offering publishing
services to Indians!
Please mention the challenges, issues
you have faced in your professional
journey and your efforts or solutions
you have identified to overcome the
challenges.
There were many challenges in the
early part of our journey. The first
challenge was to introduce to the
Indian market the concept of selfpublishing
or taking publishing
services from experts in order to
publish a quality book. This model is
well-established in Europe and North
America and many famous authors
have tasted their first success through
the self-publishing route. In India, we
have Amish Tripathi who first tasted
success through that route and many
others have followed them. In India,
aspiring authors were not aware that
books can be published in a services
model. We were the pioneers, we
started by creating a lot of noise
around self-publishing, reached out to
the media and they supported us by
writing about it in their newspapers
like ET, TOI, HT, and others. Since
authors stay far from the publishing
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