Key Points
Gita Press, a non-profit publishing house, is India's biggest publisher by volume, as it has sold over 41.7 crore religious books in over 14 languages for the past 100 years..
Despite declining book sales, GST, and pandemic, its annual turnover increased from INR 39 crore in 2016 to INR 78 crore in 2021, and its sales are expected to cross INR 100 crore in 2022..
A non-profit publishing house that sells low-priced Hindu religious books, Gita Press has now been awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize for 2021 by the government for community service..
Of the 41.7 crore books Gita Press has sold so far, 16.21 crore copies are of the Bhagavad Gita, the inspiration behind the emergence of the publishing house. 11.73 crore books are of Goswami Tulsidas, the saint who wrote Ramcharitmanas, the Ramayana in Awadhi dialect, and Hanuman Chalisa, the lowest-priced edition of which is sold for Rs 2. Gita Press has published nearly 11 crore books for children too..
When the business of publishing is declining due to the prevalence of visual content and social media and fewer people reading books, Gita Press faces no such challenges..
