In the early Seventies, students didn?t clamour to get into B-schools as they do now. But some like Pramod Kapoor thought it was the best choice. ?For a while, I was exploring an array of career options, from aeronautical engineering, to medicine,? the very successful publisher of Roli Books confesses. But life for him took a definite turn when Benaras Hindu University (BHU) decided to start a novel course in management. Kapoor, who grew up in Varanasi, decided to take it up. And he hasn?t regretted it once.

Roli Books is India?s biggest coffee-table books publisher. In fact, they hardly have any competition in this country. Kapoor has perfected the art of getting together the best writers and photographers. He provides the best packaging and international printing standards, which make his books a treat.

?We have a huge market for our books in Europe,? he says. In fact, his books are packaged with the European market in mind. But Kapoor also stresses that he has an equally big market in India, where the glossy, illustrated books make perfect gifts, and even good reading and reference material.

All this started with a marketing management course at BHU in Varanasi in 1974. Kapoor?s father owned a newspaper distribution agency. Publishing house Rupa & Co was owned by his maternal family, some of whom were based in Calcutta (Kapoor was born there). Publishing, you could say, was in his blood.

That, and his love for reading, prompted the 19-year-old Kapoor to take up summer training in Delhi with publishing house Macmillan. They were new to India then, and experiencing the proverbial teething troubles. Kapoor impressed them so much with his managerial and administrative skills that they offered him a job immediately, asking him to come back as soon as he had finished his course.

In 1975, Kapoor came to Delhi to chart out his career. He lived in Karol Bagh initially, but for all practical purposes he lived at the Macmillan office at Daryaganj. ?I was hired to sell academic books, but in truth, we had to do all kinds of jobs,? he says. That included packing books in the warehouse, slotting them, and even doing all kinds of back-office work. There were times, says Kapoor, when he would go home for an hour everyday, for three to four days, to freshen up and come back and work again. ?I was alone, didn?t know anyone in Delhi, and so could devote all my time to my job,? he says.

The hard work, however, paid dividends. In the three years that Kapoor worked with Macmillan, his salary was hiked to five times its initial level. However, Kapoor decided to leave his cushy job and try out new vistas. In August 1977, he took up a job with a Singapore-based publishing house, although his work was the same. He was still selling textbooks. Six months after he joined, however, the company went bust. It was then that Kapoor decided to start Roli Books.

?I started Roli Books in a 350-square-feet run-down warehouse in Daryaganj with one-and-a-half people,? says Kapoor. A part-timer and he himself would look after the entire business. By then, with his textbook-selling experience, Kapoor had also made friends in the publishing industry. Neil ?Brien, then head of Oxford University Press (OUP), India, gave him an assignment, the first time that OUP had outsourced its publishing. Kapoor had to adapt Singaporean textbooks to Indian ones. The OUP team would change the basic characters and do the translation, but Kapoor had to do the rest.

Along the way, Roli Books has acquired India Ink and has ventured into publishing fiction. The glossy pictorial books, though, remain Kapoor?s favourite. He works with a dedicated team of 41 at his posh Greater Kailash II office. Frantic brainstorming sessions, attention to detail, involving the best people in the business, Roli Books leaves no stone unturned when it comes to churning out the perfect product. At the helm of it all is Kapoor, who still looks after the details of each and every book that comes out of the Roli stable.

Roli Books has gone from strength to strength, despite its focus on a niche market. ?At BHU, the visiting American professors had taught us that we needed to make products that the market demanded, not thrust our products on it,? Kapoor reminisces. He?s definitely proven to be a good student.