Urvashi Butalia

director, Founder and CEO

Urvashi Butalia co-founded Kali for Women in 1984 and in 2003, Zubaan. With over 35 years of experience in feminist and independent publishing, she has a formidable reputation in the industry in India and abroad. She also has a long involvement in the women’s movement in India, and is a well-known writer, both in academia and in the literary world. She has several works to her credit, key among which is her path-breaking study of Partition, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India which won the Oral History Book Association Award and the Nikkei Asia Award for Culture. She has also taught publishing for over 20 years and is on the advisory boards of a number of national and international organisations. She has received many awards, among which are the Pandora award for women’s publishing, the French Chevalier des Artes et des Lettres and the Padma Shree, the highest civilian honour awarded by the Indian government.

Anita Roy

Director, Founder of Young Zubaan

Anita has wide experience in publishing, having worked with Routledge and Manchester University Press in the UK. She worked as academic commissioning editor for Oxford University Press in New Delhi and then helped to set up the Dorling Kindersley office in 1998, which she ran as Executive Director until 2002 when she left to join Zubaan. She is one of the founders of Bookaroo, a children’s literature festival, and chief consultant to Jumpstart, a two-day event for professionals in the field of children’s books. She is also a writer, with a number of essays to her credit, and has edited several books.

She relocated to the UK in the summer of 2015 and continues to work from there, remaining a much-loved Skype presence in the Zubaan office.

Satish Sharma

Director, Chief Financial Officer

Satish has over twenty-seven years of experience working in non-government organizations. He has been with Kali and then Zubaan for fourteen years. He manages the sales figures and accounts of various projects undertaken by Zubaan, as well as contributes a lot to the unhindered functioning of the office space. He can also manage a mean backhand in badminton and give players younger than him a run for their money.

Nithya V

production COORDINATOR

Nithya is a designer and illustrator and also happens to make all of our books with our trusty friends at the local presses.

Tanvi Joshi

Assistant editor

Tanvi swooped in during the pandemic to save us from editorial overload, and we haven’t let her leave. Based in Pune, you will find her cycling up and down hills or hanging out with her vegetable cats. She will shortly appear in picture form. Not that she’s short. Not that she isn’t.

Siddhesh Gooptu

sales coordinator

Our resident tortured Bengali, Siddhesh usurped sales responsibilities from Meghna while she was busy feeding Shahpur Jat’s dogs all her spare bananas. He has previously worked at Carnegie India. He’s cleaning up our act, but more specifically our warehousing and stock management. If you show him a book shelf, he’ll drape it with fairy lights (and perhaps donate a few books to the book fairies).

In his spare time, Siddhesh enjoys listening to music, watching films, and attacking his colleagues with food delivery.

Purnima P. Vijaya

Social Media & Publicity Manager

Purnima is the intrepid champion of all our books, getting them to reviewers and your Twitter feed so you know what’s going on. She is taller than you would expect from Zoom, and also does not bring her cat to meetings unless they are on Zoom.

Ishani K B

Commissioning editor, young zubaan

Ishani publishes the Young Zubaan list (sometimes overstepping into trade and academic) and previously worked on both the Sexual Violence and Impunity (SVI) Project and the Women’s Museum Project. She is trying to stop uttering the phrase “But what if we moved that shelf to this side?” and spend less time obsessing over minute details of our internship programme. Previously, Ishani has worked with The YP Foundation and Music Basti in New Delhi and Rubbabu Inc. in New Jersey.

Elsy Paul

Secretary and Receptionist

Elsy has been a committed employee with Kali, and then Zubaan for over twenty-two years. She manages to be Zubaan’s secretary, bookkeeper and receptionist all at the same time! She very grudgingly agrees to give discounts, occasionally.

Santosh Singh

Logistics

Santosh is our office assistant and postal in-charge. He helps with the delivery and processing orders as well as running important errands which enable the smooth functioning of the office.

Usha

Chef

Usha is an office assistant and our resident cook, and has been working with Zubaan since 2013. She is Young Zubaan’s greatest fan and is slowly and steadily devouring all the children’s books here to improve her English reading and writing skills.