Tekkatte Narayan Shanbhag was an Indian scholar, bookseller and the founder of Strand Book Stores, credited with efforts in transforming bookselling into a personal experience, prompting renowned writer, Kushwant Singh, to call Strand, on a British Broadcasting Corporation show, as the only personal book shop in India.
Background
Thekkatte Narayan Shanbhag was born in 1925 in Thekkate, a hamlet near Mangalore, in the South Indian state of Karnataka to a wealthy grocer and his illiterate wife. However, family fortunes turned for the worse with the death of his father when Shanbhag was aged just over two and he had a difficult childhood.
Education
Later, he took up a part time job and joined Saint Xavier"s College, Mumbai where he completed his graduate studies.
Career
Unable to pay for the school fees, he appeared for and passed a scholarship examination which paid for his further school education. With a passion for books, he started his career in 1948 by opening a small kiosk to sell books at the Strand Cinema, Mumbai, a cinema showing mostly Hollywood movies. After the initial struggles, business began to pick up and Shanbhag moved the book shop in 1953 to more spacious in Fort, Mumbai.
He was reported to have interacted with the customers on a personal level and several dignitaries such as Sir Ambalal Sarabhai, Mirza Ismail, then Diwan of Mysore, T. T. Krishnamachari, Y. B. Chavan and Jawaharlal Nehru were known to have become his customers.
He was known to be first bookseller in India to break the Net Book Agreement of 1900 by offering 20 percent discount over the published prices and allowed customers to have unhindered browsing at his shops. Shanbhag died, aged 85, at his residence at Pedder Road, Mumbai on 27 February 2009.
She is also involved with the book festivals conducted by the store.