Radhika Menon can always remember the second she held the primary Tulika e-book in 1996. “It was an awesome feeling,” she recollects, including: “It was actually sizzling off the press as a result of we had been on the printing press in Kilpauk.” In its earlier avatar, Tulika was a prepress companies unit in Delhi, doing work for different publishers and organisations. “Someplace in our thoughts, we knew that we’d at some point publish our personal books,” she says.
Their first workplace was close to the Music Faculty atop a screen-printing unit and with a small workforce of three, Radhika began the publishing home that may go on to carry out youngsters’s books in 9 languages. For Radhika, who has had expertise in educating in Chennai and Delhi, stepping into publishing “was a pure coming collectively of my pursuits and experiences”.
A view of Tulika’s retailer at TTK Highway, in Chennai
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RAVINDRAN R
Their first e-book, Line and Circle was a bilingual, a format that was not accepted within the Indian market again then, particularly faculties. “They weren’t used to having one other language in the identical e-book,” she recollects. However to her and her workforce, it was a pure option to introduce youngsters to studying. Whereas they struggled to promote it in India, they bought rights for over 20 languages within the first 12 months.
“However we by no means lacked confidence; we had been satisfied that these books had been wanted,” she says. After lots of battle — throughout which they introduced out theme-based diaries to maintain themselves afloat — Radhika recollects the market opening up from 2010. They’ve thus far revealed round 450 titles in English; with over 3,000 inclusive of eight different languages, working with 176 authors, 150 illustrators and 120 translators.
Tulika Retailer at TTK Highway
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RAVINDRAN R
Tulika introduced in some refreshing adjustments to youngsters’s books. It focussed on an Indian setting with relatable characters. Its ladies additionally wearing saris and salwars and sported kondais; there are a number of dhoti and lungi-clad males of their pages, with characters proven as dark-skinned, on a regular basis folks one would encounter in our streets. This was potential due to their illustrators. “The pondering of lots of younger illustrators right this moment may be very rooted,” notes Radhika.
Tulika’s widespread titles
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Amongst their widespread titles are the Gajapati Kulapati books by Ashok Rajagopalan. “Ashok first wrote it as a enjoyable factor for a story-telling session; I mentioned let’s make a e-book out of it,” recollects Radhika. In the present day, it’s the first e-book for a lot of youngsters, and she or he is amazed at how far the ‘mild elephant’ has come. “We as soon as heard from a Korean youngster that Gajapati Kulapati was his favorite e-book,” she says: “We had by no means anticipated it or deliberate for a collection. It was the kids’s responses that impressed Ashok and that led us from one e-book to the subsequent! The collection took on a momentum of its personal.”
Over these years, Radhika has labored with some distinctive minds, this contains their most-loved authors reminiscent of Sandhya Rao, author and illustrator Manjula Padmanabhan, illustrators Proiti Roy and Sandhya Prabhat. Radhika feels publishing “is now not about conceptualising, modifying, designing books however about occasions and promotions,” including that it’s not simply concerning the printed e-book in bookstores and libraries however about on-line presence. “And there the probabilities and alternatives are countless and consistently evolving,” she says.
A few of Tulika’s image books
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Now that she has spent 30 years as a writer, she too has advanced. Her work, she says has made her “affected person, reflective and extra acutely aware of the accountability we stock when creating for younger minds.” She is continually searching for concepts: from conversations, movies, books, articles, and podcasts. “However translating these concepts into an imaginative, absolutely realised youngsters’s e-book is a frightening problem,” she says.
Radhika provides: “Over latest years, there’s anxiousness concerning the world youngsters are rising up in. As a writer, grandmother, instructor, I see youngsters’s books as providing hope: by creating a way and sensibility that offers them instruments and expertise to cope with the world in a subliminal means. A great youngsters’s e-book is a protected house. A supply of consolation, emotional help.”
Radhika’s favorite Tulika books
The Why Why Woman by Mahasweta Devi (illustrated by intern Kanyika Kini), Mukand and Riazby Nina Sabnani, A Tree in My Village by Paritosh Sen, 5 Implausible Info concerning the Indian Structure illustrated by Ashok Rajagopalan, India via Archaeology Excavating Historical past by Devika Cariappa, YA novel Oongaby Devashish Makhija.
Revealed – February 17, 2026 12:10 pm IST
