Navneet Publications, an Indian publishing house, is going global and their strategy seems to be very interesting. Rather than going after the English market, they are going after the Spanish market.
Indiainfoline.com reports (June 29, 2005),
Navneet Publications India Ltd. said on Wednesday that it has acquired the publishing business of Spain's Grafalco along with its brand name for Euro 459,000 (Rs. 2.4 Crores). Chaplin Disenos SL, the company's 100% subsidiary in Spain has acquired tangible and intangible assets, mainly intellectual property rights from Grafalco and majority of the titles acquired are in Spanish.
Grafalco, established in 1985, is a profit making children's book publishing company in Spain. It publishes different kinds of colouring books, sticker books, activity books and story books. During the last three years, Grafalco had average annual revenues to the tune of Euro 2mn.
Navneet Publications' Annual Report 2004-2005 states
Your company has acquired the publishing business and a popular brand in Spain namely "Grafalco" from a Spanish Company, by way of of an acquisition of tangible and intagible assets, mainly intellectual property rights for a sum of EURO 459,000. The Company has initiated operations from the existing infrastructure of that Company in Spain through a wholly owned subsidiary floated by your Company in Spain. The Company intends to tap market of the Spanish speaking community across the world. The Company believes to have better footage for its existing product range in Europe, having established a base in that continent.
The acquisition is a strategic move to enter Europe for publishing business of children's books.
Out of sales of Rs. 274 Crores in FY ending March 2005, Rs. 228 Crores (83%) was in India. The next biggest chunk of Rs. 25 Crores (9%) was in North and Central America.
According to Wikipedia, the most spoken languages are
Chinese: 1.3 billion
English: 940 million speakers (340 million first language and 600 million second language)
Spanish: 417 million (330 million first language and 87 million second language)
Hindi: 480 million (180 million first language and 300 million second language)
The large number of Spanish speakers around the world and Navneet's sizeable sales to the North and Central American markets (where a large chunk of Spanish speakers are present) seem to be driving Navneet's strategy of expanding abroad with Spanish. It will be interesting to see how they fare.
Update: I found some information on the number of speakers of all major Indian languages
I am looking for a publisher who can publish my book "Handful of clay in the potter's hand" ( Un punado de Arcilla en las Manas del Alfarero ) in spanish.It is already self published for private circulation.
Posted by: Ipe Mathai | January 18, 2008 at 10:20 AM