The comic series was started by
Anant Pai in an attempt to teach Indian children about their cultural heritage. He was shocked that Indian students could answer questions on
Greek and
Roman mythology, but were ignorant of their own history, mythology and folklore. It so happened that a quiz contest aired on
Doordarshan in February 1967, in which participants could easily answer questions pertaining to Greek mythology, but were unable to reply to the question "In the
Ramayana, who was
Rama's mother?". Originally from
Karkala, Karnataka, Anant Pai left his position at
Indrajal Comics in 1967 to pursue a new mission of creating comics that would serve as educational tools to help Indian children connect with their cultural roots. Pai is referred to as the “Father of Indian Comics” by Parveen and Rajesh in their article
Amar Chitra Katha Comics in Feminist Perspective, who described his mission as giving readers a “route to their roots.” Anant Pai started Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) by buying the rights for 10
American fairy tales such as
Red Riding Hood, Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, Jack and the Beanstalk and
Pinocchio. The first Indian comic done and released in ACK was
Krishna (serial number #11). The above story is the version reported by ACK itself. However,
Outlook magazine presents a contradicting view, stating that the idea and proposal for Amar Chitra Katha was made by a Bangalore book salesman called G.K. Ananthram which led to the first Amar Chitra Katha comics being produced in 1965—in
Kannada, not English. "The English ACK titles begin from number eleven because the first ten were in Kannada," clarifies Ananthram.
Kannada is a
Dravidian language spoken in Karnataka, India. To Ananthram's satisfaction, the 1965 Kannada ACK venture was a great commercial success which led to Mirchandani in the head office in Mumbai pursuing the Amar Chitra Katha idea in English. "They brought in Anant Pai" says Ananthram. "And he built a wonderful team and a great brand." By the late 1970s, it was selling 5 million copies a year and had a peak circulation of about 700,000 a month. India Book House started to bring out at least one comic book a month by 1975, and sometimes as many as three. While Pai initially wrote the first few stories himself, he soon hired a core team of writers and editors, which included
Subba Rao. Writers like Margie Sastry, Debrani Mitra and C.R Sharma also joined the creative team of Amar Chitra Katha, with
Anant Pai taking on the role of editor and co-writer on most scripts. The illustrators were
Ram Waeerkar, who illustrated the first issue of Amar Chitra Katha,
Krishna, Dilip Kadam,
C. M. Vitankar,
Pratap Mullick and
Yusuf Lien aka Yusuf Bangalorewala. On 1 October 2025, ACK's main warehouse, located in
Bhiwandi, burned for four days and resulted in the destruction of over 600,000 units of inventory, including ACK and Tinkle comics, special edition box sets, and merchandise. It happened during the festival month of 2025. The blaze consumed lakhs of original positives, which are the hand-drawn line-art on transparent film, for approximately 200 of the earliest ACK comic titles. These original hard copies of the positives were never auctioned, so we can never know their market value. But they have been digitally archived. The fire consumed original artwork for classics like Krishna, Rama, The Pandava Princes, Savitri, Prithviraj Chauhan, and Shivaji Maharaj, marking the permanent loss of a significant part of the company's history as well as post-independence Indian history. Despite the setback, the company plans to expand its business to apparel, board books, licensing and digital subscriptions, chapter books and figurines on their online portals. == Cultural Impact and Scholarly Criticism ==