After graduating in Aircraft Maintenance Engineering, Naveen joined the booming Indian IT industry towards a five-year stint during which he worked in various profiles including Sales, Marketing, Training and Software Engineering before deciding to start a venture of his own.
Creatively dovetailing his experience in taking on multiple roles, working in multiple domains and his love for books, Naveen handles business operations, marketing and sales at Notion Press, and has shaped the enterprise to become what it is today. He strongly believes in technology’s ability to change lives and leverages it extensively in his endeavour to change the way books are created and authors are launched.
In conversation with Dominic Rebello, Naveen reveals his vision of creating a platform that empowers creative people from across the globe in bringing their work to the public, which is not just limited just to books, but to other media forms like music, movies, apps etc.
What is the USP of Notion Press?
Notion Press provides high-quality self publishing services to Indian writers to help them publish and sell books around the world. Our business is a
mix of extremely people driven processes like editing and design where you need creative people who lovingly handcraft a book, and technology driven processes like printing, distribution and marketing where you need very analytical people who build efficiencies at scale. Our key differentiator
is our ability to marry both these sides of our business seamlessly for the benefit of both authors and readers.
Your views on the culture of reading of the Millennials?
Millennials consume content across many formats. Reading is not just limited to books but extends to many other forms such as eBooks, blogs, apps and social media etc. Millennials are also the content creation generation. No generation prior to this has either created so much or had so many consumption choices. Combine that with the recent successes of commercial writers like Chetan Bhagat, Amish Tripathi and Savi Sharma. It only goes on to prove that reading is on an all-time high among millennials.
How do you plan to scale up?
Scaling up has not been an issue. There is more demand than supply. Once every 5 hours a new book is published by Notion Press. Our current focus is on scaling up the quality and depth of services we offer and to keep inventing new ways of marketing and selling content. In terms of scaling up the business, we have gone international and have added three new geographies – US, UK and Canada. We want to service authors from 5 more countries by end of this year.
Your vision for the company?
Our vision is to create a company that empowers creative people all over the world in bringing their work to the public. This is not just limited to books. Books are where we started. We want to expand to other media like music, movies, apps etc.
Where do you see yourself five years down the road?
We don’t just measure success by top-line or bottom-line. We measure success by ecosystem impact. Five years down the road, we see ourselves as a platform that enables both writers and readers from around the world create content, consume content and engage in meaningful ways.