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Even
at the imaginary Riverdale High school, it would have made for
an inspiring story for Archie and his friends. The year is 1974,
and there's a 30-year-old Indian, blind in one eye, sitting in
the New York office of Archie Comic Publications. An incredulous
Louis Silberkleit, Archie's Chairman, listens on as the strapping
Indian makes a plea for the company to dump its distributor in
India and sign him up instead. It doesn't strike him a bit odd
that Silberkleit-who along with John Goldwater and Maurice Coyne
gave America its iconic comic character Archie Andrews in 1941-has
no clue who his exotic visitor is or why the company should terminate
a perfectly happy distribution arrangement with India Book House
and entrust its lot to a man whose only virtue at that point seemed
to be persistence. Sensing Silberkleit's growing wariness, the
Indian makes a desperate offer. "I think your distributor
is not doing a good job. I can sell double the copies (1,000)
per issue to start with," he ventures. "And if your
distributor is not happy with this arrangement and wants out,
I'll make up for his sale too." When he plonks down payment
for three months' worth of supplies, Silberkleit relents. Incredibly,
the young man, an army dropout and the son of a book distributor,
is in business.
Today, Om Arora laughs as he recounts his
tryst with destiny. But what he's gone on to achieve in the 30
years is nothing to laugh about. As the proprietor of the Rs 20-crore
Variety Book Depot, Arora is by all accounts the king of comic
book trade in India. His revenues from comic book sales of Rs
3 crore are nearly 100 per cent of all comics imported into the
country. "I wouldn't say I am in the top league, but I am
certainly up there among the top players," says Arora. Apparently,
he is being modest. "As far as comics are concerned, he is
the true giant of India," says Ashok Chopra, a friend and
Chief Executive of Harper Collins India, part of the India Today
group that publishes Business Today. Agrees Hemu Ramaiah, Managing
Partner of Landmark Bookstores, a book retailer: "He's very
big. He has volumes that others don't have."
Starting with 1,000 copies an issue 30 years
ago, Arora has ramped up Archie comic sales to 10,000 copies an
issue. "I am confident that in another five years, I will
take sales up to 20,000 per issue," says Arora. Michael Silberkleit,
Louis' son and current Chairman and Co-publisher (Goldwater's
son John is President and Co-Publisher), is upbeat too: "Over
the years, we have received offers from other distributors in
India to distribute Archie comics. However, due to the long-standing
and profitable relationship with Mr Arora, we have continued to
tell other distributors that we intend to stick with (him) and
his company."
| THE ENDURING ARCHIE MAGIC |
 Before
Archie and his gang became Archie Comics' flagship characters,
the publishing house was better known for giving American
kids their first patriotic hero, The Shield. Archie didn't
make his appearance until 1941, but became an instant hit,
prompting the company, which until then was known as MLJ Comics
(for Morris, Louis and John, the three founders), to change
its name to Archie Comics. While Archie isn't the only comic
brand from the company (its Might Comics, Radio Comics, and
Red Circle Comics published a variety of other comic characters),
it is one of the longest-running lines in the history of American
comic industry. (It is popularly believed that Louis Goldwater's
inspiration for the red-haired, freckle-faced character came
from a real person.) Today, Archie comics sell more than 850,000
copies a month, and 55 per cent of their readers are female.
To the credit of the founders' scions (Michael Silberkleit
and Richard Goldwater now run the business), the company has
stayed true to the innocence and plain fun that have been
the hallmark of Archie comics. Therefore, very little has
changed in Archie's Riverdale High school, although he's been
in it formore than 60 years. |
That's no wonder. Arora, now 61 years old,
has founded his business on exclusive relationship with publishers.
For example, he prefers to be the exclusive distributor for all
book titles he brings into India. The idea, as he explains, is
to operate in niches where there are no competitors. Variety is
unlike any other book distributor also because it's largely a
one-man show. Despite supplying to smaller wholesalers and retailers
all over the country, it doesn't have any branches, and Arora
negotiates every single contract himself. Being the single point
of contact for Variety also means that he's on a first-name basis
with his business associates. Says Chopra of Harper Collins India:
"He is perhaps the only book distributor in India who's got
personal relationships with the authors (whose books he distributes)."
Testifies Silberkleit: "In many ways, I consider Om as 'family'
due to our long-standing relationship and due to the fact that
this has been a very pleasant and profitable relationship."
Blame it on Fate
Had things worked out as per Arora's early
plans, he would have spent his life in the army and not surrounded
by comic books. But fate willed otherwise. Son of a small-time
book distributor (his father used to sell sundry women's magazines
published by an English company called IPC), Arora had joined
the National Defence Academy in 1961. But just before he got commissioned
into the army, tragedy struck. While at practice at a firing range,
a stray bullet hit a stone, sending a splinter into Arora's right
eye. He went blind in that eye. "I was disheartened. Since
it was my firing eye, I knew I had no scope in the army,"
he recalls.
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| Arora accounts
for almost all of the imported comics |
Opting out, he did a couple of odd jobs, including
one as a sales executive at a piston-manufacturing company in
Jallandhar, but a year later ended up joining his father in the
family business. But bad luck dogged him here too. Within two
years of joining the family business, his father lost the IPC
contract. "That was a bad phase. I struggled for a year or
two, and then went into retail," says Arora. He started a
bookstore, Teksons, in Delhi's South Extension. It is now owned
by his younger brother Subhash. A couple of years later, he went
to London to do a six-month course in bookselling, and then went
to New York on a holiday, where he made his momentous cold call
on the Archie Chairman. But why Archie? "I used to read Archie
comics myself. Somehow, you couldn't find them readily in India,"
says Arora matter-of-factly.
While it was Archie comics that launched
Arora into the book trade, today it is a small portion (15 per
cent) of his book business. These days, he is into cookery books
(Jiggs Kalra, Tarla Dalal, Nita Mehta, and Sanjeev Kapoor are
some famous authors whose books he distributes), self-help books,
coffee table books, and novels. That apart, he imports magazines
on housekeeping, furniture, knitting, and interior design, among
others, from Germany, France and Italy. Growing affluence has
led Arora to dabble in other things. He's a part-time stock broker,
with a 50 per cent stake in Quantum Securities, a Delhi-based
brokerage firm that trades in stocks worth Rs 5,000 crore-a-year.
("I've never lost money on the stock market," boasts
Arora.) In July, he opened a cookery school called Nita Mehta
Culinary Academy in partnership with the eponymous cookery author,
whose books account for an impressive 10 per cent of his revenues
from books. Then, about a year ago, Arora ventured into book retail
by opening a chain of bookshops called Book Café. At present,
there are 21 of them across India, including Delhi, Jaipur, Kanpur,
Mohali and Chandigarh, and he plans to up the count to 75 over
the next year.
A deeply religious man who firmly believes
in destiny, Arora is wealthy and makes no attempts to hide it.
He owns six cars (a Mercedes, Toyota Prado, Honda crv, among others,
and he changes cars every two years) and several properties in
and around Delhi. Just how many? "I've never counted them,"
he says, but press a little and he adds, "about 20".
Among his hobbies is collecting pens. He's got about 400 of them,
none though more treasured than the first, a Parker, he bought
in 1962 and still uses. Although Arora has built a fortune for
himself, he's quite philosophical about what may happen to it.
For example, he's got two daughters but no son to take on his
mantle. "I will not force my daughters to into business,
but I hope to be around for another 10 years at least," he
says with a laugh. Both his daughters currently work outside of
the family business.
For the time being, Arora is gearing up for
the coming boom in book trade. "In the next five years, bookselling
is going to explode," he says. "It's already exploding,
and India needs a hell of a lot of booksellers," adds Ramaiah
of Landmark. Arora's story, then, is far from over.
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