Amazon invests in Tata group-owned publishing house Westland

Westland, a subsidiary of Tata group-owned Trent Ltd, on Thursday announced it had received investment from Amazon in support of its publishing business. The amount has been not disclosed.

The investment by Amazon will enable Westland to expand their international reach, and scale their physical and digital book businesses.

Westland is one of the largest and fastest growing publishing houses in India. The publishing lists of Westland, and its imprints Tranquebar and EastWest, include bestselling authors Amish, Ashwin Sanghi, Preeti Shenoy, Anuja Chauhan, Rashmi Bansal, Rujuta Diwekar, Devdutt Pattanaik, Dheeraj Sinha, Kiran Doshi, Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, Ashok Banker and Satyajit Das, among others.

“We are very excited about this investment from Amazon and what it means for Westland, our customers and authors," said Gautam Padmanabhan, CEO of Westland. “Amazon’s roots are in books and they remain a major part of their business – this investment from a company with such deep experience in books, global reach and exciting digital platforms will help us take our Indian authors and their works globally.”

“We are delighted that our investment in Westland will help their authors reach a broader audience worldwide,” said Sarah Jane Gunter, Director of Amazon Publishing. “Our investment in Westland continues Amazon’s commitment to innovating and investing heavily on behalf of customers in India – it’s still very much Day One.”

With an estimated market segment of Rs 10,000 crore, India ranks seventh in overall publishing and third after the US and UK in English language publishing.

According to a recent FICCI Publishing Sector Report, book publishing in India is growing at a compound annual growth rate of approximately 30 percent.  With an estimated 600 million adult readers in the country and a growing young reader base (15-25 years) of 350 million, the readership in India is expected to continue growing.

Westland has a history of over 50 years in retail, distribution and publishing. The present company is an amalgamation of two companies, Westland Books Pvt. Ltd. & EastWest Books (Madras) Pvt Ltd. Westland’s focus shifted to publishing in the last eight years and under CEO Gautam Padmanabhan’s guidance, it is now among the top five largest English language trade publishers in India, according to a company press release.