Shobha Viswanath, co-founder of Karadi Tales, has built one of India’s most beloved children’s publishing houses. Almost 30 years and 350 books later, the company remains just as warm and nostalgic as it was in 1996.
Dreams of inclusivity
Books sold along with audiobooks in the form of cassettes and CDs, tidily packed into a clear bag with a handle. 90s and 2000s kids who had a penchant for reading will remember these packets of joy. Shobha started Karadi Tales after returning from the US with her four-year-old son. He was an avid reader and developed the habit of reading through books accompanied by audiobooks—a format that was nonexistent in India at the time. She also noticed that most, if not all, children’s books or rhymes were Western influenced, with unfamiliar words like Jack and Jill, or London Bridge. What did those names have to do with India? She wanted tales for children in the Indian context, and she did exactly that. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all!
Birth of Ganesha & Kubera Meets Ganesha & Birth of Krishna & Krishna’s Conquests
“Initially, the company was called Sky Music India. We started it as a label with several verticals, publishing music by new artists, covers, or a repository of old recordings, Carnatic music, and the like. Another vertical was audiobooks for children. The name for that, Karadi Tales, came from a simple dream of ours: to retell popular stories from India’s treasure trove, Panchatantra, Jataka, or mythology,” she shares.
“When I began researching which stories to pick, I noticed that there were no stories featuring a bear. Zebras, giraffes, crows, foxes, and jackals were written about in hordes, but no bear. The West had its teddy bears, Yogi Bear, or Care Bears, as childhood icons, so I wanted to introduce stories with a bear as the storyteller, or the sutradhar (narrator). As for the word Karadi, I wanted a South Indian influence, and Karadi translates to bear in Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam, which was perfect,” she smiles.
Within three years, the Karadi Tales brand had become bigger than Sky Music, leading to a rebranding in 1999 and a dream team.
Karadi Tales’ founders, Narayan Parasuram, Shobha Viswanath and Viswanath Parasuram
The band behind the bear
The team behind Karadi Tales is a multifaceted myriad of individuals. Shobha had a teaching background, and she was a writer; her husband, Viswanath, and his family, all musicians. “All the early books were written by me, and the music was created by my husband and his brothers’ band—Three Brothers and a Violin. And they are credited for the music to date. This proved to be an advantage for us in terms of competition, because most companies outsource these tasks, which makes the products expensive overall. Since we did most of the work in-house, we got lucky. That’s what built the brand into what it is today: loved by generations of readers,” she says proudly.
While the writing and music are done in-house, the design and narration come from different people. Karadi Tales’ audiobooks have been narrated by a host of actors lending their voices to the characters—Naseeruddin Shah being the first one, and one of the most memorable, voicing Karadi himself! Eventually, Saeed Jaffrey, Jaaved Jaaferi, Gulzar, Tom Alter, and Girish Karnad became an essential part of the books too, catapulting the brand to popularity pan-India.
As theatre actors, they knew how to act with their voices, making the books distinct and unforgettable. Bringing the relevance of Indian culture to the forefront became easy with such talent. In a time before social media, the products spoke for themselves; word of mouth was key to combatting the issues, with such an innovative product range.
Usha Uthup recording the Karadi Rhymes
Bearing the hardships
Speaking of challenges, Shobha mentions that this was a product the market had not seen before, so finding willing bookstores to stock their books was hard. The stores had to create a special stand to hang the books, and retail spaces always came at a cost. Convincing stores and letting them know of their existence was a big starting problem. Once they accepted and noticed how the books flew off the shelves, it wasn’t a problem anymore. They made headway but were unprepared for the realities of the publishing industry.
“Most independent publishers do print runs of 2000-3000 copies. We were so inexperienced at the time; we made 12,500 copies! We thought India has such a vast population; surely this is a decent number. What happened was unimaginable; we sold out in less than six months and had to reprint,” she recalls.
“Our first-ever book set was The Blue Jackal and The Foolish Lion. For the audiobooks, we started with analogue recording, so if you made one mistake, you had to redo the whole thing. Every voice was that of an actor, and everyone sat together and rehearsed like they would for a play. It’s amazing how technology has evolved now. It’s become much easier to branch out into bigger, more complex projects.”
The Blue Jackal and The Foolish Lion CD packs
Going global for rhyme and reason
Karadi Tales launched a sister venture, Karadi Path Education in 2010 and has since created India-specific rhymes as part of school syllabi.
“One summer, I was at a school when I heard children singing ‘Rain, rain, go away, Little Johnny wants to play’, and I thought to myself, ‘We live in an agricultural society. If kids repeat this rhyme, God will listen to them and send the rains away.’ It was time kids stopped singing songs that had no cultural relevance, so I wrote 10 rhymes at first, which went on to become 30. The amazing Usha Uthup sang them, and they are enjoyed across India today.”
Talking about balancing Indian-ness and relatability, Shobha puts it eloquently, “Kids anywhere feel and think the same; they relate to the same things, they have the same concerns and anxieties. If you tell a good story to any child in the world, no matter what the language, it will have universal resonance.”
“Our books about farmers resonated with kids in France and Germany, and other books have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, French, German, Indonesian, and Tamil. I believe it is our innate authenticity that makes us universal. We realised then that we must be doing something right,” she laughs.
The Falgu farmer book series
Viswanath is Karadi Path Education’s CEO and is helping develop English language pedagogy, centred around audiobooks, for over 4000 schools across the country. This brand grew exponentially, with more and more educational institutions asking for syllabi. Creating the courses isn’t where they stopped; they also have training modules for the teachers. Shobha wants the brands to keep going as long as possible, positively impacting the minds of kids everywhere.
Passing the claw forward
Shobha hopes that the company is taken forward by someone who shares the same passion and cultivates stories for generations to come. She would like to hand the reins over to someone younger, a strong leader. They don’t have to keep Karadi Tales as is, she insists, just so long as the essence remains the same. What started as essentially a two-person brand has grown, but is still small, with just over 10 team members.
With graphic designers in-house now, choosing what to publish is easier, albeit only slightly. They choose stories that resonate with them, writing that sparkles, tales that aren’t run of the mill and unpredictable endings with a touch of humour. The satisfaction of doing something for children, Shobha says, is unmatched.
My Grandmother Can’t Cook & A Thousand Full Moons
“The joy and act of creating the audiobooks or picture books is an opportunity I am lucky to have found in my life. I can’t even begin to explain how fulfilling it is. When a book reaches a child’s hands, or when first-generation English learners hear Karadi’s voice as part of their school course, the twinkle in their eyes is enough. That’s what keeps me going. The fact that we’re able to touch so many lives. If I had the chance to do it all over again, I would,” she concludes.
For all those who grew up with Karadi Tales, the brand is relaunching its old titles, with a small twist—no cassettes, no CDs, no USB drives, just a QR code to download the audiobook companion to the books.
For further details, check the Karadi Tales website www.karaditales.com
