Exclusive | The appeal of Amar Chitra Katha is unabated: Manas Mohan

Its popularity has stood the test of time and even today it continues to inspire Indian kids through accurate depiction of Indian values and the valour of our national heroes, the mythological God and the epics. First created in 1967 by Anant Pai, fondly called as Uncle Pai, most of the stories in Amar Chitra Katha have stood for 5000 years. And the newer stories bring out the values that define humanity and culture. The style of story-telling seems to be evergreen. 

 

Speaking to Adgully, Manas Mohan, Chief Operating Officer- ACK Media says, “The appeal of Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) is unabated. It seems to be ‘timeless’, defying the passage of time.”

 

As a tribute to the creator, ACK Media has recently launched the Amar Chitra Katha collector’s series “Complete Collection”. It is a collector’s item for ACK fans; the USP is that it has 300 + 10 glorious titles. Talking about the idea behind bringing out the complete collection of ACK, Mohan says, “The pattern of buying Amar Chitra Kathas has moved from buying a single title at a time to buying collections. For those with paucity of time, this presents an opportunity to buy all the Amar Chitra Katha titles currently in print and overcome the problem of building up a collection, which most people do anyway.”        

 

The single-box complete collection is available in retail for about Rs 15,000 (depending on how the retailer wants to offer its customers) for 300 titles while the 3-volume collection costs approximately Rs 5000 per volume for 100 titles per volume. While as a single product, the complete collection is not available for download yet, the company is cleaning several older titles. Adds Mohan, “presently more than 100 titles available as ebooks – to read online or for download on touch platforms.  Further we are increasing are the media in which Amar Chitra Kathas are available to its readers. With a massive digitization effort, Amar Chitra Katha  is already available on several touch platforms and will continue to offer its content in newer media like television, film and mobile.”

 

The primary target age of ACK is the 8-14 year child, across India. The titles are also popular amongst the Indian diasporas and to readers at large across the US, UK and South East Asia, resulting in very significant sales to these regions.        

 

Whether the availability of substitutes in this age of mobile and internet has made any difference to the popularity of ACKs, Mohan says, “the presence of so-called ‘substitutes’ only make Amar Chitra Katha stand out more for sheer quality of story-telling and visualization. Yes, we have made some ‘contemporarisation’ alterations in terms of  the style of art and the selection of ‘contemporary classics’ to be converted into Amar Chitra Kathas… but some of the old favorites continue to be amongst the perennial best sellers – including ‘Gandhi’, ‘Dashavatar’, ‘Vivekanda’, ‘Mahabharata’, ‘Stories of Birbal’, etc.”        

 

ACK media plans to rapidly expand the titles and has already released 15 new titles in less than 15 months. Concludes Mohan, “we will grow the title pipeline significantly in the coming months.”