According to a report published in The Indian Express on 30 July, Blaise R Simqu, chief executive officer, Sage, broke the news to the employees in India in an email. 

The email read: “We have recently made a very difficult but carefully thought through decision about the Sage India book programme. Over many years now our attempts to make domestic book publishing at Sage India commercially viable have faced significant challenges and the pandemic has only made it more problematic. What we have reluctantly and unfortunately concluded is that despite these many efforts the combination of low-price points and the lack of an established adoption market as well as other external factors (including the prevailing Covid situation) have proved an impossible hurdle for us to climb despite our best efforts over the past several years…While we remain committed to our mission to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and to educate a global community, we have decided to divest the Sage India book programme.”

The letter, signed by Simqu and Sonia Kumar, executive lead for SAGE India and finance director, added, “We want to reinforce that this decision is very specific to books, it does not affect our thriving domestic and imported journal publishing, nor the marketing and selling into India of imported Sage books that continues to be an important part of the international book program…”

The Indian Express has reported that the company has already informed nearly 70 employees of their termination. 

Sage was founded in New York in 1965 and is currently headquartered in California. Its India arm was established by founder and chair Sara Miller McCune in 1981 together with George McCune and Tejeshwar Singh. The publishing house specialises in books on social science, medicine, technology, science and humanities.