New Delhi | 4 February 2025: Ms. Navin Menon, Editor, Publications, Children’s Book Trust Inaugurate The CBT Stall and address the press Meet . Children’s Book Trust Officials from CBT were present at their stall in Hall no 6 (Children’s Pavilion) at Bharat Mandapam at the New Delhi World Book Fair 2025 to address the media about their Growth plans for 2025. Ms. Navin Menon, Editor, Publications, Children’s Book Trust and Ms. Rana Siddiqui Zaman, Lead Strategist, Content, Communications & Promotions, Children’s Book Trust shared the highlights of their new marketing campaign and what the expected outcome will be.

Ms. Navin Menon, Editor, Publications, Children’s Book Trust said to the media, “Our content strategy to match our growth ambition has also evolved over the years, this year we are launching around 25 new titles and we will also be translating into many more languages to meet the requisites of our marketing reach”. Ms. Rana Siddiqui Zaman, Lead Strategist, Content, Communications & Promotions, Children’s Book Trust while addressing the media said, “Looking at the enthusiastic response in the fairs in the East and based on our internal survey, CBT is mulling over opening Book Stores designed as Children’s Fun Zones in prominent Eastern Indian Cities with engaging activities for children. The idea to engage children in good books that represent Indian cultural and moral values as well as physical games and fun activities.”

This year CBT will also be launching a 20,000 sq ft Shankar’s International Children’s Centre in Delhi where it plans to have Meeting Rooms, Activity Centre for Clay Modelling, Painting etc, Congregational Halls, Art Gallery for paintings received during previous Painting competitions, Venue for its On-The-spot Competition, Doll’s Workshop, etc to have cultural and artistic exchanges between different groups of children from different parts of India or abroad and expatriates.

Mr. Kishore Lal, Chairman, Children’s Book Trust says, “We need to help Children to stay away from screens of portable electronic devices and come back to reading good books. Books usually generate a deeper spirit of enquiry in young minds and a healthy, progressive outlook to life and living.” He continued to add, “We have had our presence internationally through our books which we sell in many countries, with the coming up of our SICC, we would like to have them here physically. We are a non-profit trust and our aim is not to make huge profits but to spread awareness about the benefits of growing up with good books.”

Children’s Book Trust is a not-for-profit organization founded by the renowned political cartoonist K. Shankar Pillai in 1957, making it the oldest Publisher for children’s storybooks in India. It has relentlessly for the last 68 years been finding new arenas and new opportunities to help children in their mental and creative growth through itself and its sister institutions.

This year, the Trust has taken up an aggressive marketing stand as a result of innumerable requests from parents to deviate children from excessive use of mobile phones. CBT’s primary aim was always to engage children in good books that represent Indian cultural and moral values as well as physical games and fun activities to help the children grow creatively and intellectually.

Keeping the idea of deviating children away from mobiles which many parents say has now become pandemic in India and Trust’s own primary aim, the Trust recently undertook an internal survey and its findings have shown the way to its new marketing strategy. Survey shows that parents and their children in Southern, Eastern and North Eastern India are still willing to buy and read books.

Before going to the Southern States, the Trust is focusing on its ‘Look East Policy’. The children’s publisher will be focused on the Eastern and North Eastern states including West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, Meghalaya and Assam where it wants to be present in Book Fairs, Schools, Public and Private Libraries and even Stores in major cities in this region. This will help in CBT’s efforts to bring children and books nearer and presenting their books in new and innovative ways.

Under its ‘Look East Policy’ this year, CBT has started the year by participating for the first time at the 41st edition of Asansol Book Fair in West Bengal’s second most populous city Asansol and is following it up with their participation at the 48th International Kolkata Book Fair from 28th January to 9th February, 2025.