Shri Shyam Sunder Born on 1 September, 1927 in a reputed publishing family in Mathura, Shri Shyam Sunder obtained his Masters degree in Commerce from the prestigious Allahabad University which was then known as the Oxford of the East. Subsequently he completed his LL.B. from the same University. He was an outstanding student throughout his academic career and also took active part in social and cultural activities. This made him popular amongst both teachers and students.

Though he had a bright future in pursuing law as a profession yet he decided to take up the innovative career of publishing with the motto of providing quality reading material to the masses and thus, spread knowledge and information. Under the able guidance of his late father Shri Shiv Charan Lal, he established Prabhat Prakashan in 1950 at Mathura, Uttar Pradesh and later in 1958 he shifted the business activities in Delhi.

He headed the Prabhat Group (incorporating Prabhat Prakashan (P) Ltd., Sahitya Amrit, Ocean Books (P) Ltd. Ocean Media (P) Ltd. Defence and Security Alert (DSA) monthly magazine and Prabhat Paperbacks). Prabhat Prakashan, one of the leading publishing houses of India, has till date, published over 6,000 titles of quality books on almost all streams of literature, viz. children’s books, fiction, dictionaries and encyclopaedia, science, quizzes, humanities, personality development, health, etc. The galaxy of authors includes Former Presidents of USA Mr. Barack Obama, and Mr. Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Presidents of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma, Nobel Laureate, Sir V.S. Naipaul, former Prime Minister of India, Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, former Deputy Prime Ministers of India, Shri L.K. Advani, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Union Home Minister Shri Sushil Kumar Shinde, former Chief of Indian Army Gen. J.J. Singh, H.H. Dalai Lama, J.R.D. Tata, Shri Verghese Kurien, Shri R.A. Mashelkar, Mrs. Sudha Murthy, Dr. L.M. Singhvi and Dr. Vijaypat Singhania to name a few.

His life he has been very popular amongst the authors throughout his life and he was an inspiring figure for the upcoming writers in Hindi literature who were well established in due course of time after he initiated publication of their works for the first time.

It is only the hard work, vision and efforts of Shri Shyam Sundar that Prabhat Prakashan leads the Hindi Literature Publishing world today and has become a synonym for quality books in Hindi. Prabhat Prakashan is the first Indian publishers to be awarded ISO 9001:2008 certificate for quality publication of Hindi books. His constant vigil for excellence and perfection has brought laurels to the organisation and continuously for the past more than twenty years it has bagged the first prize for excellence in production instituted by the Federation of Indian Publishers, the representative body of the Indian publishing industry.

Apart from his business operations, he was very proactive in the social and cultural events. He was committed to the cause of propagation of Hindi with a vision towards excellence in Hindi publishing. At a time when all Hindi literary magazines were being discontinued, inspired and blessed by the then President of India Hon’ble Dr. Shanker Dayal Sharma, he decided to bring out a monthly Hindi literary magazine “Sahitya Amrit” under the editorship of renowned litterateur Dr. Vidya Niwas Misra in August 1995. Since then it is being published successfully and continuously for the past twenty five years.

He was a well-known nationalist in the circle and was always an inspiring figure to all the young minds to be a nationalist. After the Mumbai blasts in 2008 he decided to create a strong platform to bring awareness on the defence and security matters and thus introduced a monthly magazine Defence and Security Alert (DSA)which is the only ISO 9001:2015 certified magazine in this genre. It was his vision that today DSA proudly features on the INTRANET of Indian Air Force (IAF) continuously for the past six years which itself is a self-explanatory on his hard work and vision.

Shri Shyam Sundar left for the Heavenly Abode in December 2019 at the age of 93 leaving his great footprints on the Hindi publishing industry and the society.