Meet The Team

Reena I. Puri, Executive Editor, Amar Chitra Katha, has been with the company since 1991. Earlier, she worked with various newspapers, magazines and television production houses, even becoming a radio jockey with All India Radio for a short while, till she discovered that writing and editing comics was what she loved best.

Reena was Associate Editor of Tinkle from 1991 and worked with its founder-editor Anant Pai till 2005. During these years, she learned from Mr Pai how to communicate effectively with children and use the comics format to convey inspiration, encouragement, hope and joy.

In 2008, Reena took over as Executive Editor of Amar Chitra Katha and has led the team in the creation of fresh content for the series. Her special interests lie in story-telling, team-building and communicating with children. Her vision is to see more stories about environmentalists, sportspersons and social changemakers make it to the pages of Amar Chitra Katha.

As Associate Editor of Amar Chitra Katha, Sanjana Kapur is always on the lookout for new stories to tell. She enjoys interacting with children and has designed and conducted various workshops and story-telling sessions in schools across India. Besides this, she has created and conducted Amar Chitra Katha quizzes at Comic Con India, schools and a multitude of events over the years.

In her 14 years as a writer and editor, she has written several books for children across genres. Her hope is to be able to tell important stories and explore different mediums of storytelling while doing so. She never tires of telling people that she writes comics for a living!

Krithika Nair is the Assistant Editor at Amar Chitra Katha, where she writes and edits stories and comics. She is a former student of literature, communication and psychology. In her spare time, she likes to rewrite the fates of her favourite fictional characters. She also likes watching crime dramas and exploring new places.

Kayva Gokhale works as the Junior Sub-Editor for Amar Chitra Katha, creating content for the comics as well as digital platforms. She was a student of literary and cultural studies and psychology in college. When she’s not working or reading, she’s always on the lookout for new scary movies and creepy trivia.

Growing up with a galaxy of characters from Tinkle and Amar Chitra Katha, Savio Mascarenhas subconsciously chose to belong and live in this Neverland. Thus for the past 28 years, he has spent most of his time with the comically indomitable and unarguably hilarious characters from Tinkle and the heroes and legends of Amar Chitra Katha.
With a flair for drawing since childhood, doodling and sketching on the back pages of his and his friend’s notebooks Savio breezed through his educational journey. He is a commerce graduate with a post-graduation in advertising and public relations from Mumbai University. This led him into the world of advertising where he started his career as a copywriter. And as luck would have it, he got an opportunity to freelance for Tinkle, drawing comic gags called See’n’smile. That was the beginning of his life as a comic book artist, freelancing with Tinkle and eventually joining as a staff artist in 1994.
While at Tinkle, Savio co-created some amazing characters like Mopes and Purr and Little Shambu with writer Reena Puri, Janoo and Wooly Woo with writer Vineeta Vaid, Super Suppandi and finally Shikari Shambu that he continued illustrating after the legendary creator of the legendary hunter, Vasant Halbe. the legendary Mr Vasant Halbe.
Savio Mascarenhas is the Group Art Director at Amar Chitra Katha Pvt Ltd. He is also a TEDx Speaker on the use of visuals in learning. He has been sharing the idea of VAL (Visual Art Learning) with schools. He visits schools regularly conducting comic-making workshops for children.

Ritoparna Hazra is the Deputy Art Director of Amar Chitra Katha. She is in charge of design, art and production. She has illustrated several stories for Amar Chitra Katha. She joined Amar Chitra Katha in 2014 and has grown in her role as a designer, eventually taking over the day-to-day workings of the art department and planning for the future. Highly creative and a constant learner, she has a keen sense of design and a unique style of drawing and loves experimenting with various mediums.

She has done her graduation in Communication Design from Symbiosis and her masters from MSU Baroda in Visual Art. In her spare time, she loves painting and making short films.

Mala enjoys anything that is aesthetically pleasing and artistically creative. She is proficient at creating incredible backdrops with limited resources and constructing art out of almost anything. She loves to see the world with rainbow-tinted glasses and show her perspective of the world to others through her art.

At Amar Chitra Katha, Mala Narwani works as a Junior Graphic Designer. She designs creatives and edits videos for the digital channels of the brand and develops innovative layouts and covers for comic books. She also handles and trains young designers in the team. She is an alumna of St Andrew’s College. After her work hours, she escapes into the peaceful world of watercolours, yoga and meditation.

Tithee Dixit is a Junior Graphic Designer for Amar Chitra Katha, she illustrates and designs creatives for digital platforms of the brand. She holds a degree in Architecture. Having grown up in her parents’ architectural studio home she was fed on a constant diet of sketches, drawings, books and comic illustrations. She is found forever sketching or clicking scenes, people and buildings she finds interesting and aesthetic. She loves her cups of coffee in selected arty mugs. Crochet, cooking and swimming are her other passions.

Bhavani works as a Junior Designer for Amar Chitra Katha, where her work involves illustration and lettering for comic books. She enjoys experimenting with diverse painting media and exploring different art styles. She was a student of Information Design in college. In her spare time, she likes to write speculative fiction, play the guitar, and turn dubious ghost stories into song lyrics.

Harshal Narse is a Junior Designer at Amar Chitra Katha. After completing his education at the ICE Institute, Harshal began working as a vector artist. He currently works on layouts, art and regional language titles for Amar Chitra Katha. In his free time, he likes to draw.

Manish Dalvi is a Junior Designer at Amar Chitra Katha, who works primarily on print-ready files, cut-outs and layouts. He started his journey as a mock-up designer, after completing his graphic design course at ITech Computer Education. He loves fitness as well as training others.

Preeti Vyas is the President and CEO of Amar Chitra Katha Private Limited, publishers of the iconic Amar Chitra Katha comics, Tinkle magazine and National Geographic Traveller India. She is also the Founder of FunOKPlease Publishing, which creates contemporary Indian content for children. Through her 26-year-long career in the retail, content and publishing industries, she has been a retailer, marketer, publisher, editor, author and entrepreneur.

Preeti is a seasoned bibliophile who believes the solution to any problem in life can be found within the pages of a book somewhere. She believes passionately in the power of children’s books to shape the future of India and the world.

Preeti is a practising Buddhist and lives in Mumbai with her 13-year-old son, fantasy fiction enthusiast, Neel.

Krishnanand NK completed his MBA in Marketing and has over 25 years of experience in setting up new publishing entities for iconic brands such as Birla Group and Spacetoon. He has cracked many licensing deals for publishing and merchandising in India and abroad. He has travelled to the USA, UK, Middle East, Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka & Korea for business and has attended many international book fairs and licensing shows.

Krishnanand worked for India Book House (Circulation Manager) and Regional Head for Malayala Manorama. He was involved in the launch of many reputed periodicals viz Outlook (1995), Seventeen (1996), Auto Car India (1996), Vanitha – Hindi (1998) and Magic Pot (2000). As a Regional Head for Malayala Manorama, he launched Malayala Manorama’s Mumbai edition in 2002.

At Amar Chitra Katha, Krishnanand works as the Senior Vice President of Retail Sales and is responsible for achieving sales and collection goals of retail sales in India through the companies’ regional sales teams. He also ensures the widening of the distribution network by identifying new sales channels and exploring the possibilities of expanding sales in international markets.

Krishnanand lives in Mumbai with his wife and a daughter.

Shilpi Mathur joined in 2010 as Assistant Manager of Institutional sales and has risen in her role to being Vice President of Amar Chitra Katha and Tinkle. As part of the marketing team, she launched two new brands in the market – Brainwave and Brightstar. Over the years, she has been instrumental in organizing events and book fairs to increase brand visibility. She has taken the various government and non-government projects to create some key collaborations.

Shilpi has done her master’s in marketing and loves to interact with people from every industry and bring them to the wonderful platform of storytelling. She loves numbers and likes excel sheets and formulae.

Deepesh is a cybernaut who spends a lot of time browsing the web, grasping infinite information about all things Digital and revelling in entertainment and fun. He is a startup enthusiast and a Postgraduate with a dual degree in Finance and E-Business with immense love for technology. He started working when he was 14 to learn as much as he could across different sectors of various organizations.

Deepesh is a seasoned Digital Marketing professional who has a curious brain that loves coding. He can work on any digital platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. Previously, he worked as a Product and Marketing Lead for a tech software company.

The art of storytelling inspires Deepesh. So while closing any business deals, he loves to lay down facts in the quirkiest of manners. Having worked with over 3000+ startups, he understands what the businesses require to scale and is not hesitant about any task that could scale the business up.

At Amar Chitra Katha, Deepesh is the Vice President of Digital Businesses. He works on all the brands either to create deals for other verticals or to scale the business for the Digital Division. He was successful in scaling up the Digital Businesses for all the brands at ACK. He strongly believes in a quote by ~Stephen Hawking “However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there’s life, there is hope.”

A quirky storyteller, with a knack for understanding what makes people tick. Over the last 14 years, Prateek has dabbled in the dark arts of business management, licensing and production, light arts of content (cross-industry and pan-media formats) and performance arts of storytelling, theatre, quizzing, teaching, hosting and training.

As part of Amar Chitra Katha, Prateek is the Vice President of Licensing and Educational Initiatives and the resident storyteller. You could say, he is sort of an intrapreneur. He has been part of setting up multiple internal verticals and business units, like the ACK Studio in Hyderabad, Kalagurukul and ACK Learn, Amar Chitra Katha’s learning vertical; as well as has set up the vision and deals to back it for ACK and Tinkle’s AV licensing roadmap.

Valancio D’souza has 15+ years of experience in the online and digital sectors with strong expertise in business analysis, management of strategic operations and a proven track record in transforming businesses. He has had the fortune of working with some of the industry’s best brands and people. Working across diverse sectors has given him a broad understanding and perspective of a digital consumer which he applies in all aspects of brand-building and creative problem-solving.

At Amar Chitra Katha Pvt Ltd, Valancio works as the Business Head of E-commerce and Strategic Alliances. He leads the entire eCommerce division with the responsibility of his channels P&L. He possesses an excellent ability to manage diverse work environments and build high-performance teams that can deliver results and consistent growth and profitability.

Damini Batham is the Senior Marketing Manager for Amar Chitra Katha and an astrologer by hobby. She has been working in the field of marketing for 8+ years and holds a postgraduate degree in Marketing Management. She has been passionate about Astrology, Vastu Shastra & Palmistry since childhood and has been practising these disciplines.