Gurgaon, India, August 21, 2008
Arvato India in collaboration with its sister concern Random House India organised a Book Reading Session for its employees on the 21st of August at the Arvato premises. This session was organised with author Manju Kapur with her new novel The Immigrant, which was the focus of this Book Reading Session. Manju Kapur is the author of three acclaimed novels, Difficult Daughters, A Married Woman & Home. Manju’s Difficult Daughters has won the Commonwealth Writer’s prize (Eurasia) in 1998 and Home was shortlisted for the Hutch Crossword Book Award in 2006.

This book reading session was a one of its kind, tailor made program for Arvato employees to give them an opportunity to interact with the author in a close & personal environment. This was also an endeavour to take books outside the traditional book spaces and to allow some of Arvato employees with an interest in reading an opportunity of a tête-à-tête with one of India’s leading authors.

“This is part of a pilot initiative to reach the common working men and women and bring powerful stories outside the traditional book space. Arvato India and Random House India are both very keen to expand and replicate this project with other partner companies in the Indian market” says Ankush Bhandari, Country Manager Arvato India.

As it turned out it was not just a mere Book Reading Session but a full-scale event that ran over a period of a month. The Book Reading Session also marked the pre-launch of the book The Immigrant.  As a run up to Book Reading session and the pre- launch, the first three chapters of the book were distributed on a weekly basis to the employees, for them to get an insight into the book. The fourth week was the finale where in the author was present in person to read a few extracts from the book.

During the book reading session, Manju Kapur addressed an audience of about 40 employees and read out some of her favourite sections of the book with a lot of gusto. She also narrated to us her inspirations, her experience writing her books, reasons for writing etc. It was a novel experience for both Manju as well as the employees. Manju was very happy with the outcome. She was very animate and retained the audience’s attention and even made them laugh on occasions.

“All and all it was a very interesting session” said one of the employees attending the session. There were some employees who even bought her books and got it autographed. “It is not everyday that I get a one-to-one interaction opportunity with so many readers”,  said Manju. For Arvato, bringing in new concepts from its sister concerns within the Bertelsmann family is an initiative towards more holistic employee engagement opportunities besides the regular activities