The family-run business, which turns 70 in October, remains bootstrapped as it expands to more cities and revives its publishing vertical
Anuj Bahri Malhotra, second-generation owner of Bahrisons, at the bookstore in Khan Market, Delhi, in October
Image: Amit Verma
Anuj Bahri Malhotra does not believe in ending anything abruptly, be it business or tradition. In his case, one blends into the other.
The second-generation entrepreneur is sitting on a chair on the first floor of the iconic Bahrisons bookstore in Delhi’s Khan Market, which is also his office space. The store was founded and started by his father Balraj Bahri in 1953, and Malhotra has now run it for 44 years.
He was 16 years old when he started coming to the store regularly in 1979. But unlike his father, who believed that the owner should sit on the cash counter, Malhotra was a restless soul. He wanted to do more, and expand their presence to different facets of the book business. This led him to start a publishing house and a literary agency, even as he remained connected to the family’s legacy bookstore business.
Today, as the Bahrisons Booksellers in Delhi’s Khan Market turns 70 in October, there are already five more outlets in Delhi, and one each in Gurugram, Noida, Chandigarh and Kolkata. The second outlet in Kolkata will be open in 2024, and Malhotra is also considering prospects of opening stores in other cities, provided “it is profitable”, he says. “We’ll give these stores another year before planning the next one, because a business should be profitable. If I do not make money, what am I expanding for?” he says.
Each store—given the collection that he has to stock in order to cater to Bahrisons’s elite clientele of academics, diplomats, journalists, authors, foreigners, and other individuals and families of note—costs at least Rs 1.5 crore to set up, and about six months to break even and become profitable, claims Malhotra, not sharing numbers.