Mumbai-based Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) is an iconic Indian publisher offering comics based on epics, religious legends, folktales, cultural stories, biographies and historical figures. Indian Printer & Publisher recently visited Amar Chitra Katha’s office in Andheri and interacted with CEO and president Preeti Vyas and vice president – digital and D2C Businesses Deepesh Kothari for a conversation on the evolution of the popular comics.
According to Kothari, founder Anant Pai, popularly known as Uncle Pai, was watching a quiz on Doordarshan in February 1967 when he realized that Indian children could easily answer questions on Greek and Roman mythology but were clueless about Indian mythology.
To bridge this gap, Pai started Amar Chitra Katha a few months later to teach Indian cultural heritage to children. The first comic book, based on Indian mythology, was Krishna, which sold more than 15 million copies since it first came out, he said. Krishna has been read more than 11 lakh times in the last six years on the company’s app and is free to read online.
Today, Amar Chitra Katha publishes in over 30 languages, including Tamil, Telugu, Assamese, Kannada, Hindi, and Marathi, along with Mandarin, Filipino, Cantonese, Burmese, Bangla, Sinhala, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. “This is a game of supply and demand. We have the transcripts with us. The moment demand comes from a particular region, we convert the titles and deliver them in less than 30 days,” Kothari said.
Each 32-page single non-fiction Amar Chitra Katha comic is priced at Rs 99 while the 48-page fiction-based monthly Tinkle magazine costs Rs 60. “The prices depend on the cost of paper, printing, and the number of people working on a comic. Earlier, we were creating 500 pages of comics per year, which has grown to 3,000-3,500 pages per year in the last five years,” Kothari said.
Tinkle has a lot of holiday and festival specials. Two commissioned comics are brought out every month in collaboration with the government of India, Tata, Godrej or other entities, depending on their requirement, Kothari said. These products are not released publicly without permission. Recent commissioned projects covered road safety, menstruation, women entrepreneurship, financial independence and bullying.
From print to digital
Amar Chitra Katha has three digital apps – ACK, ACK Junior and Tinkle. “ACK, traditionally a print-heavy company, created a large digital user base after the Covid-19 pandemic. Digital platforms form a chunk of the company’s revenue. There are 400 paid comics on the digital platforms, which contribute to 35-40% of a comic’s readership percentage,” Kothari said.
The Ramayana and the Mahabharata continue to remain bestsellers. Tinkle, now in its 45th year, is one of the few Indian children’s magazines to have an uninterrupted run for almost half a century. “Overall, we do about 3.5 million print copies every year. Our apps have a combined user base of 2.5 million. The digital reader base is quite substantial and not just limited to India,” Vyas added.
To stay relevant among young readers, ACK has employed youngsters, well-versed with current ideas and trends, to complement the veterans. Brand guidelines created by Pai are still being followed. All our channels – D2C, retail, partnership, licensing are committed to bringing in revenue, Kothari said.
“Apart from ACK, Delhi Press‘ Champak is the only children’s magazine to have stood the test of time. Our social media handles are upbeat with events, happenings, achievements, customer interactions and new releases with high engagement. We follow media houses and independent cartoonists such as Marvel and DC Comics to learn how to better market ourselves.”
“Every month, we come out with a fresh or refurbished product with a new design and packaging, focusing on the consumer experience. Recently, we became the first comic house to represent India at Comic Con San Diego. The US and Canadian diaspora loved what we were doing. In recent years, we diversified into podcasts, audiobooks, and video animation along with merchandising such as games, toys, and non-tearable books. Movies such as Padmaavat and Tanhaji have taken inspiration from ACK titles. Several OTT platforms and media houses have approached us for content creation around our characters,” Kothari added.
Challenges ahead
Vyas said the challenges faced by the Indian comic book industry are the same as any media house. The reader, mostly a child in our case, is overwhelmed with choices with multiple devices, screens and activities. Trying to grab a few moments from the 24 hours in a child’s day is a challenge, she said.
ACK uses India-manufactured paper to print its comics, Vyas said, while adding that paper availability has been a major challenge. “Paper pricing is another major factor as we are a mass market brand,” she said. The company uses both art paper and maplitho paper for its production. “As comics involve 4-color printing, the bleed factor is very important. We have to take precautions to ensure the colors don’t bleed,” she said.
Parental prejudice against comics was a huge issue 30-40 years ago, when the genre was relatively new in India, she said. During the initial days, Pai contested the notion that considered comics as a frivolous activity rather than a serious form of learning.
“Over the last 50 years, two or three generations of Indian readers have grown up and learned with ACK comics compared with what they read in school textbooks. This was due to the amalgamation of text and visuals in comics, which creates a strong and lasting imprint on the brain,” Vyas said.
The last two generations of Indians that grew up on comics are now principals, parents, teachers and booksellers, and understand the inherent value of comics, Vyas said, adding the prejudice is now much lower as parents have witnessed the impact of ACK comics on their lives.
Be it the motivation, determination, discipline, staying abreast with Indian culture, or gaining knowledge, ACK impacts lives and this can be seen in our consumption pattern, Kothari said.
Today, ACK and Tinkle are supplied to over 1,000 schools in Maharashtra alone for pedagogic purposes, Kothari said. These bulk orders come only once a year. Non-tearable books are working well for schools due to high damage and pilferage. Bulk subscriptions on the digital apps for moral science and value education lessons for pre-primary to class VIII have increased, Kothari shared.
Research and accuracy
Research for a new comic can take up to a year, Vyas said. Clothing, a character’s figures, ancient texts, temple sculptures, calendar art and background settings have their role to play. The research includes consultation with experts, visits to universities, collecting reference material from libraries, and looking at other cultural experiences from that period, she said.
ACK did a biography on the founders of Godrej – Ardeshir and Pirojsha Godrej. Vyas explained how the comic’s art gives a detailed visual narrative of the Parsi culture, including the way the borders of Parsi sarees look, how Parsi women wear their sarees, and the Parsi headgear, which had to go through a few rounds of rejections before the final outcome was approved. “The details are very minute and every panel has to have the right amount of research, whether it’s text or art,” she said.
ACK’s art director Savio Mascarenhas has been leading the layout and design team for the last three decades and has personally witnessed its evolution. In the initial years, everything was done by hand on paper with paint brushes and colored pencils with a 24-color palette and all the older comics look similar. Nowadays, Adobe software design applications such as Photoshop, InDesign and Premiere Pro offer choice in terms of textures, brushes and shades of colors, Vyas added.
