NCERT Ties with Amazon to Beef Up Book Distribution to Three Times by 2025-26

Amidst efforts to make education accessible to each and every one across the country, NCERT has now tied up with Amazon to e-commerce enable textbook distribution. Presided by Shri Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister for Education, the Letter of Engagement between NCERT and Amazon Seller Services Pvt Ltd was inked at New Delhi. Consequent to this, NCERT books will reach every student in the country at the print price on Amazon. This indeed would be a giant leap forward towards education being more extensive, inclusive, accessible, and affordable to the masses.

Accessibility of NCERT Books Widened

The arrangement will make NCERT textbooks available in almost every one of the 20,000 pin codes in the country by making it accessible to students at maximum retail price across India. This will eliminate the long-standing problems of shortage-supply chain gaps, delayed availability, and regional shortages of textbooks. Taking advantage of the gigantic delivery network of Amazon, the initiative has been designed for maximum accessibility of texts for the most remote of students.

On the occasion, Shri Dharmendra Pradhan stated that under National Education Policy 2020, this endeavour would address inclusivity and affordability in education. He also brought out to notice that NCERT has, since 1963, been printing textbooks and would also intensify efforts on those by printing 15 crore books for this academic year, 2025-26, three times of what the previous years were.

“This collaboration is a step towards enhancing ease of living for students and making education affordable and accessible. It’s an outstanding example of collaboration between NCERT and Amazon,” Shri Pradhan stated during the while he hailed the partnership.

Enhancing Quality and Reducing Piracy

Preventing the spread of pirated or counterfeit books will also be one of the most significant advantages through this collaborative effort. Original NCERT books will be sold on NCERT’s store on Amazon. This ensures authentic learning and teaching materials provided to students and teachers. In addition, Amazon will also collaborate with sellers in removing illegal sellers from the network selling pirated or overpriced books, thereby maintaining the authenticity of the educational materials.

Moreover, textbooks will be sold at a price not more than the price that is printed on them. This means that inflationary price becomes impossible, and this shall completely remove it. The development of equity in education comes along with this move since every student across the geography will have their textbook access standardized by using this means of exercising constant prices.

Improving the supply chain and modernization of education

Dr Shri Sanjay Kumar, Secretary Department of School Education and Literacy, drove home the need for textbooks with a strong emphasis as nearly 96% of country’s total sales correspond to books, he said, and stressed the need for an appropriate supply chain so that delivery is well in time of these very important educational resources. The partnership with Amazon bridges the supply-demand gap by focusing specifically on the areas where it has been historically challenging to reach textbooks.

This would also enable NCERT to collect customer feedback and responses from the users so that the quality of its textbooks and other material can be improved upon.
. In addition, NCERT will also receive anonymized sales and usage data from Amazon thus enabling NCERT to make forward-looking decisions on future prints, channel strategies, and picking new distributors in sought-after markets.
A Future Vision

Shri Pradhan further spoke about NCERT’s efforts in developing the 21st century textbooks that match the modern objectives of education. He also emphasized the need to develop interactive e-books that could merge the AI-driven innovations such as speaking books, to make learning interesting for 300 million students in India at Amrit Kaal. He again emphasized on the fact that textbooks form a tool of soft power, and resources should be provided in 23 languages in view of the multilingual landscape of the country.

As he reflects on the in-grained role NCERT has played in India’s education profile, Shri Pradhan candidly admitted that the organisation has produced nearly 220 crore books and journals since it was established. Therefore, an opportunity to partner with Amazon is an important step in furthering the government’s vision of ease of living and digital inclusivity as the country shifts to digital learning and more prosperous educational resources.

Conclusion

This partnership between NCERT and Amazon is a transformational shift in the dissemination of textbook material across India. In the near future, NCERT will make textbooks affordable for every student in the country as it aims at producing 15 crore books by 2025-26. This program will be at the forefront of modernizing how Indians learn and opening access to learning materials for millions of learners across this vast country through innovations such as e-commerce distribution, anti-piracy efforts, and data-driven improvements.