A year later, however, Kishore Biyani's Future Ventures began acquiring shares in ACK Media, and ultimately gained a majority stake, which led to both Patil and Morakhia exiting in 2012, and Sampath, appointed by Biyani, taking hands-on charge.īut print is also getting its share of fresh attention.
Other tremors in recent times include a change of ownership in 2007, when ACK Pvt Ltd - later known as ACK Media - an unknown company formed by two youngsters, Samir Patil and Shripal Morakhia, not only bought both the comic series and Tinkle magazine from IBH, but also in 2010, acquired the venerable IBH itself, and made it ACK's distribution arm.
The last such upheaval was in March 2011, when the founder-editor of the series, the legendary Anant 'Uncle' Pai, died of a heart attack. At one stage in the 2000s, it did not come out with a single new title for six years. But it has also had its upheavals and difficulties, the 1994 fire being only one of them. Since it began in 1967, ACK comic books have sold over 100 million copies in 20 languages. "ACK is one of those rare brands which have continuously succeeded, not by publicity but by word of mouth from satisfied consumers," says Vijay Sampath, CEO of ACK Media, which now owns the series. The response reflects the resilience of the team that has been producing the iconic comic series, whose 400-odd titles introduced generations of Indian children to their own mythology and history.
But we were at work the very next day and the next issue of Tinkle came out on schedule," says Reena Puri, the present Editor of the series. Though no lives were lost, it was a devastating blow - around 3,000 reference books, three files full of scripts of forthcoming comics and 200 pages of artwork related to them were destroyed. In August 1994, a major fire broke out in the Mumbai office of India Book House (IBH), the publishing company which those days produced the Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) series of comic books and the monthly children's magazine, Tinkle.
0 kommentar(er)
