More opportunities for Westland’s authors to reach international readers.
After acquiring 26% stake of Westland, a Chennai-based book publishing unit owned by Tata group in February this year, Amazon has now agreed to purchase the rest of its stake, pointing towards expanding its presence in the Indian book publishing market.
In February, Amazon had spent close to $1,422,474 to buy 26% stake in Trent, the retail firm that runs Westland. Amazon was intimated during the same time that it has the option to buy rest of the stake. Now, Amazon has made the decision to buy remaining 74% of the company’s stake.
When the deal is complete, Amazon.com NV Investment Holding, Inc, will get right to name one member to the Westland board.
According to Amazon, the acquisition will give more opportunities to Westland’s authors to reach international readers through both digital and physical forms.
Westland book publishing has a list of top seller authors such as Amish Tripathi, Ashwin Sanghi, Rashmi Bansal, Rujuta Diwekar, Preeti Shenoy and Devdutt Pattanaik.
Amit Agarwal, vice-president and country manager at Amazon India said: “In just three years we have built India’s largest online store that customers can trust to find, discover and buy anything online. Our acquisition of Westland continues our commitment to India—enabling Amazon to bring Westland’s highly talented authors and their books to even more customers in India and around the world. Since investing in Westland earlier this year, we have built a great relationship with the company and its authors. With this acquisition, we are very excited to take our relationship with Westland to the next level.”
Gautam Padmanabhan, CEO of Westland said: “This is a great day for our authors and their readers across the globe,” adding, “Amazon’s roots are in books and we are excited to be part of that team in the next phase of our journey.”
Amazon had a humble beginning in 1994 by selling books of third-party publishers. Amazon since 2009 has owned its own publishing unit called Amazon Publishing that publishes a variety of books from different genres such as romance and thrillers to spirituality, comics, and science fiction.
Westland began its operations in Chennai in 2007 as a book distribution firm. Currently, Westland is one of the top five English-language trade publishers in the country and its imprints include Tranquebar Press (for literary fiction and non-fiction), EastWest (focusing on South Indian heritage) and Westland (for trade books, both fiction, and non-fiction).