Founded by New Delhi-born Akshata Malhotra, a design manager in Secaucus, and Samira Jain, a UX researcher in Montreal, Golguppa offers two books — An Illustration of the Hindi Alphabet, which reflects what it looks like to grow up in India, to evoke nostalgia or inspire one to share childhood stories like watching cricket matches, eating jalebis, and getting a champi-maalish. “As immigrants, and having grown up in close-knit families, we want kids to learn the languages their grandparents speak, share childhood stories with them, and experience the richness of our cultural backgrounds,” they express. Their second recently-launched title, Feeling Junglee, details the A to Z of emotions in Hindi and English in playful animal illustrations with phonetic spelling. The book aims to help children over two years of age build their vocabulary to express emotions in both languages. Malhotra and Jain add, “The core idea we want kids to take away is to identify their feelings without any judgment so that they can become self-aware, which is the first step towards empathy.” Their next release will be a book of rhyming opposites in Hindi, called UltaPulta. They also plan to pen books in other Indian languages.

Akshata Malhotra and Samira Jain

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As Indian kids living outside the country might often lose touch with their mother language, it can be helpful to engage with it at an early age to develop not just fluency but also a love for the language. The founders note that books should be mirrors and windows for children. “When books are mirrors, kids can see themselves reflected in the stories and pictures. And as windows, books can provide a glimpse into something outside of what they know.” With this, Golguppa strikes a balance of familiarity and newness. 

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