NEW DELHI, Nov. 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — HarperCollins India is delighted to announce the acquisition of Navya Naveli Nanda & Samyak Chakrabarty’s forthcoming book, The Map: A playbook to navigate the new world.
Navya and Samyak are Co-Founders at Nimaya – A futuristic not-for-profit focused on teaching GenAI skills to young women from disadvantaged backgrounds and emerging towns, preparing them for meaningful roles in the post-AI world of work.
Navya, a gender equity ally with UN Women, leads Project Naveli, an ecosystem of high-impact initiatives. She also plays an active and strategic role in her family business, Escorts Kubota. Samyak, one of Asia’s most influential social entrepreneurs, designs virtual simulations to enhance cognitive skills of graduates for success at work and has led high-impact civic movements like Operation Black Dot.
Having enabled and engaged with 1,00,000+ youth through their careers, they realised that today’s generation is seeking practical mental models and behavioural techniques to maintain their agency of choice and thought in a world where businesses, governments and institutions are increasingly leveraging the power of social media and techno-capitalism to influence mass decision-making.
The Map is not a book of ready-made answers. It’s a playbook of practical questions, mental frameworks and insights that India’s Gen Z can use to navigate a future rewritten by technology. In a reality that is becoming increasingly virtual, it offers the most human skill of all: the ability to think, choose, and live independently.
“No matter how much we philosophise, or regret, we are now a generation that thrives on instant gratification, 11-minute deliveries and prefers reels over real. The real challenge now is mental independence – how do we ensure our decisions and perceptions are truly our own, and not just engineered outcomes?” says Navya Naveli Nanda.
“Imagine reading a framework on building career purpose or constructing our unique identities in a digital world built in collaboration with a top Bollywood star at one end and a young political leader from Buxar, Bihar at the other – that’s the breadth of insights and co-creation with diverse thinkers our playbook will offer,” adds Samyak Chakrabarty.
Bushra Ahmed, Executive Editor, HarperCollins India, says, “In a landscape crowded with shallow hot takes on Gen Z, The Map stands apart as the most ambitious and authoritative work on the subject. It cuts through the noise with clarity and purpose. Through years of lived experience and on-ground work, Navya and Samyak bring to this book a deep understanding of the young people shaping India’s future. Through their own insights, stories of people they meet, and collective wisdom from leaders across various areas of life, The Map becomes far more than a commentary: it is the defining guide for a generation navigating identity, work, purpose, and the digital world. This is the big Gen Z book India needs right now.”
ABOUT THE BOOK
The Map is a sharp, deeply researched and solutions-driven manifesto for India’s Gen Z – a generation coming of age in the most accelerated, high-pressure decade in modern history. As AI rewrites the future of work, social media rewires attention and identity, and techno-capitalism reshapes behaviour at every turn, young Indians are being asked to build their lives in conditions no generation before them has ever faced. The Map offers something essential: the tools to think clearly, independently and on one’s own terms.
The book is not just a collection of reflections – instead, it provides mental frameworks, questions, and stories to help readers slow down, think critically, and make choices for themselves.
In essence, The Map equips India’s Gen Z to question, recalibrate, and thrive – all on their own terms.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Navya Naveli Nanda is the Founder of Project Naveli, an ecosystem of platforms focused on enhancing quality of life for women in India. Through EntrepreNaari.i, she has paved the way for thousands of young women from under-served communities to showcase their products and enhance income. Her podcast What the Hell Navya was amongst the most impactful digital conversations of its kind in the country. She is also a gender equity ally with UN Women.
Samyak Chakrabarty has empowered over 100,000 young people through various national-level civic movements in the domains of voter awareness and volunteering. His previous B2B publication, Generation Einstein 2.0 (commissioned by UTV Disney), was read by 300+ C-suite marketing and advertising leaders as a reference book on youth trends and consumption behaviours. As Founder of Workverse – a virtual workplace simulation where learners master 21st-century employability skills through role play – he has engaged with graduates from across 20 states and 100+ universities. Before this, he built India’s most-awarded youth marketing and research agency with DDB Mudra.
ABOUT HARPERCOLLINS INDIA
HarperCollins India publishes some of the finest writers from the Indian Subcontinent and around the world, publishing approximately 250 new books every year, with a print and digital catalogue of more than 3,000 titles across 10 imprints. HarperCollins is India’s only education to entertainment publisher. Its authors have won almost every major literary award including the Man Booker Prize, JCB Prize, DSC Prize, New India Foundation Award, Atta Galatta Prize, Shakti Bhatt Prize, Gourmand Cookbook Award, Publishing Next Award, Tata Literature Live! Award, Gaja Capital Business Book Prize, BICW Award, Sushila Devi Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and Crossword Book Award. HarperCollins India also represents some of the finest publishers in the world including Harvard University Press, Gallup Press, Oneworld, Bonnier Zaffre, Usborne, Dover and Lonely Planet. HarperCollins is one of India’s most awarded publishers and has won The Publisher of the Year award several times. HarperCollins India is a subsidiary of HarperCollins Publishers.
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