The Legendary Delhi Bookstore Bahrisons’ Presence is Rising in the Book Sector

70-year-old family business thrives, expertly balancing tradition and expansion with Anuj Bahri Malhotra at its helm.

on Oct 12, 2023

The Legendary Delhi Bookstore Bahrisons’ Presence is Rising in the Book Sector | Frontlist

The family-owned company, which celebrates its 70th anniversary in October, continues to operate on a shoestring budget while it expands into new towns and revitalises its publishing division.

Anuj Bahri Malhotra does not believe in abruptly ending anything, whether it is business or tradition. One blends into the other in his situation. The second-generation entrepreneur is sitting on a chair on the first floor of Delhi's Khan Market's famed Bahrisons bookstore, which also serves as his office. His father, Balraj Bahri, founded and started the store in 1953, and Malhotra has now run it for 44 years.

In 1979, he was 16 years old and began frequenting the store. Malhotra, on the other hand, was a restless soul, unlike his father, who felt that the owner should sit at the cash register. He intended to do more and grow their footprint in several aspects of the book industry. This prompted him to establish a publishing house and a literary agency while remaining involved with the family's legacy bookshop business.

Today, as Bahrisons Booksellers in Delhi's Khan Market celebrates its 70th anniversary in October, there are five more stores in Delhi, as well as one each in Gurugram, Noida, Chandigarh, and Kolkata. The second store in Kolkata will open in 2024, and Malhotra is exploring building stores in other cities if "it is profitable," he says.

Each store, given the collection he has to stock to cater to Bahrisons' elite clientele of academics, diplomats, journalists, authors, foreigners, and other individuals and families of note, costs at least Rs 1.5 crore to set up and takes about six months to break even and become profitable, according to Malhotra, who does not provide figures.

In keeping with tradition, the company is bootstrapped, with Malhotra relying on bank loans for places where he must purchase real estate rather than rent it. He is also concentrating on his literary agency, Red Ink, which has represented and assisted in the publication of works by authors such as Amish Tripathi, Anuja Chauhan, Shrabani Basu, and Shauna Singh Baldwin.

Tara-India Research Press, his publishing firm, is also high on his priority list. He founded it in 2002 with the intention of publishing academic and social scientific publications, but gradually expanded to include narrative non-fiction and fiction. According to Malhotra, it had published around 550 titles before closing due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

With a new editorial and marketing staff in place, there's a new frontlist and a goal of publishing "12 to 15 titles per year," the first of which will be released next year. Malhotra claims he wants to resurrect Tara because he cannot bear the thought of it dying slowly. He believes that a businessman must struggle for the survival and continuance of their venture.

He is unfazed about the worry surrounding the future of bookstores in the digital age. "These days, young people ask me who reads literature. "We have 500-600 customers in our store every day, so there must be people reading them," he explains.

The durability of Bahrisons and its expansion are encouraging signs "in this day and age of Amazon, which is killing independent bookstores," says novelist Akshaya Mukul, a long-time customer of Bahrisons.

"Online browsing will never replace the sheer joy of browsing through books." "You meet interesting people and discover new book recommendations only by hanging out in a bookstore," says Mukul, author of Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India as well as the biography of the legendary Hindi writer Agyeya. "With Bahrisons, Mr [Balraj] Bahri created a culture of independent bookstores that Anuj has carried forward."

Malvika Singh, a writer and publisher, concurs, describing Balraj Bahri as a "pioneer who made Delhi a paradise for personalised, caring bookshops, where the owners loved their products and shared them with the city."