The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Chandamama turns a new leaf

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 03, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Chandamama turns a new leaf

Swathi. V

Popular children’s magazine has a host of offers for readers

Geodesic, Mumbai-based firm, to digitise all previous editions of the magazine
Chandamama Colours, a two-volume collection of cover pages, to be released

HYDERABAD: Chandamama — the immediate recall value associated with the word is not as much for its literal meaning, the moon, as it is for the children’s magazine widely read and cherished by the generations of yore.

Good news is that the magazine, right from its first edition of 1947, will soon be made available in the format of year-wise collections.

Geodesic, the Mumbai-based company that acquired Chandamama about a year ago is making efforts to digitise all the previous editions towards releasing collector’s copies.

“We have taken up the November 1949 Telugu edition on a pilot basis and may come up with something concrete by the end of January,” said L. Subramanyan, the CEO of Chandamama.

He also has something up his sleeve for those who dote on the curvilinear figures by the art maestro Vaddadi Papaiah. The coming festival season will see the release of Chandamama Colours, a two-volume collection of Chandamama cover pages.

“We have 960 original paintings of A-3 size that sport a brand new look even now,” says Mr. Subramanyan. Having already sold 22,000 copies of the coffee-table edition released in April, he sounds upbeat about the new formats of entertainment that the brand is set to enter.

Coffee-table book

Incidentally, the coffee-table book contained select works from previous editions of the magazine. The magazine played a prominent role in conditioning the child’s brain for the cultural setting. With the changing cultural framework, there is a need to retell the old stories in contemporary formats, observed Mr. Subramayan. Chandamama Neoclassics, to be released in November will address this very need by narrating epic tales in ‘cool’ formats. Three more comics in classical format, ‘Ramayana’, ‘Secret Agent Surya’, and ‘The Code Crackers’, will soon come out from the stables that churned out ‘Prince Arya’, ‘Eli-Puli’ and ‘Bobby and Garuda’.

One comic every month and a series of comics every quarter is the target. Mobile phones too might soon flash Chandamama if the proposed tie-up with two operators happens. Also on cards is a contract with two large studios towards making 90-minute animation films for television.

Proof of Chandamama’s success is in the circulation figures that rose from 1.1 lakh copies a month last year to 4.82 lakh now.

Target is to reach a million copies by August next. Effort will be to add more languages to the existing thirteen, informed Mr. Subramanyan.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Andhra Pradesh