Since his appointment, Ananth Padmanabhan has grown the company’s revenues by 300% and expanded its publishing footprint in English-language publishing in India. His strategic initiatives include investments in new categories, imprints, markets, and capabilities. Ananth’s leadership, combined with strong partnerships with Indian and international publishers and relationships with booksellers and distributors across the subcontinent, has been instrumental in HarperCollins’ growth. HarperCollins is India’s most awarded publisher, having won Publisher of the Year seven times.

Ananth also oversees Collins, the education publishing division, which continues to be India’s fastest-growing educational publisher. Collins publishes across a range of subjects, including ELT, Maths, Science, Computer Science, award-winning dictionaries and atlases, and digital teacher resources for Kindergarten to Grade 10. In 2020, Collins launched digital products like Collins Infinity, a learning management system for blended learning, and Collins Digital Home Learning, a free platform to support school-going children during the pandemic. Today, over 6 million students across 10,000+ schools learn through Collins resources daily.

Ananth is Co-Chair of the Publishing Committee within FICCI and has served on the Executive Committee of the Association of Publishers in India (API). He is actively involved in policy-making to enable a level playing field for Indian publishing, champion inclusion and diversity, protect authors against copyright infringement, and combat digital and print piracy.

With over three decades in bookselling and publishing, Ananth began his career at a bookstore in Chennai in 1992, where he discovered his love for books.