JUMPSTART started off being a series of workshops in 2009 for children’s' book writers and illustrators. As a result of this initial venture, a bunch of professionals from the world of children's books – writers, illustrators, educationists & publishers put their heads together to create a platform for discussions and exchange. The following year, 2010 saw the birth of the current form of our much-loved and anticipated fest in Delhi and Bangalore.

Every year it elicits tremendous enthusiasm from our participants, coming from all over India. Today, it is India's only annual congress of children's content creators, reaching out to hundreds of professionals- designers, artists, educators, publishers, book-sellers and story-tellers.
We constantly strive to make this a platform that encourages and nurtures existing and new talent, innovations and ideas.
We are here to work with and for people who are in the business of creating content for children across media- people who will go on to create work that will influence new generations of children. It is critical to create a community of such practitioners so that pioneering and original ideas can be shared and debated in order to improve the quality of content being produced.
We are here to create a supportive environment for such a community and to create a space for discussion around new concepts and issues.
We hope that everyone participating in JUMPSTART takes back something of value- an idea, a thought, a contact, a conversation- that will act as a catalyst for their own work with children's content.

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“It’s great to be at JUMPSTART and it's great to see so many people here, all ready to write books for children. They're not just writing but getting through to publishers, understanding what the process is… I hope that many more people write for children and I'm sure they will and JUMPSTART can legitimately claim to have played a big role in this whole process. Equally good to be here in a personal capacity as a translator and to be able to meet and address questions from people who are interested. India being uniquely multilingual, translation plays such an important role in getting children's books across to a larger set of readers.”

Arunava Sinha (Translator and author)

“This is my second time at JUMPSTART. I absolutely love being here because it does what it promises to do. It jumpstarts parts of your brain that either have been dormant or haven't been exercised in that particular way. So what interests and excites me about JUMPSTART is that I get to hear from other professionals and sometimes get to hear very radical and exciting things; learn a lot, laugh a lot and I go away richer for it.”

Sampurna Chattarji (Author, Poet and translator)

“I think JUMPSTART is very particularly important because it’s dedicated to children’s books, which requires a different kind of writing as well as a different editorial process…people have a lot of questions in relation to publishing, generally, and also in relation to digital opportunities. I think JUMPSTART really creates a forum for people to canvas their opinions and contribute in a dialogue and create a familiarity with this ‘Brave new world’ we have.

Philippa Donovan (Comissioning Editor, Egmont, UK)

The Hindu

27th August 2014

"Play is the work of the child," Maria Montessori had said nearly a century ago, and in the ensuing period, this idea appears to have lived a strange double life. While there has been an explosion of play schools, these places have perhaps also had a role to play in taking children away from the true spirit of play. It is this spirit that the sixth edition of Jumpstart Festival was animated by."

The Duckbill Blog

03rd September 2014

"The aptly named Jumpstart kept up its reputation by turning it up a notch yet again this year. "Let's play" was the theme, and we came wondering what would be playing for us. Loads, we discovered. The speakers' jolts of lightning had us sparking through the two-day festival. (Okay, it's a conference, but it's festive enough to merit using the word 'festival'.

Deccan Herald

17th August 2014

"Some books have games in them and some books are game-books. The many presentations, master-classes for writers and illustrators and the panel discussions, include many new aspects, in line with a highly dynamic and ever-changing children's content space."