Anant Pai, the Walt Disney of India

Anant Pai also known as Uncle Pai and Walt Disney of India, started Amar Chitra Katha (Immortal Picture Stories), an educational comic-book series which retold traditional Indian folk tales, Hindu mythology and biographies of historical persons.

He took on the role of writer, editor and publisher. The series went on to become a publishing milestone for the Indian comic book scene, selling over 86 million copies of about 440 titles.

The idea behind starting a comic-book series devoted to Indian culture and history came to Pai from a quiz contest aired on Doordarshan in February 1967, in which participants could easily answer questions pertaining to Greek mythology, but were unable to reply to the question "In the Ramayana, who was Rama's mother?"

The first Amar Chitra Katha, Krishna rolled out in February 1970. The script for the comic was written by Anant Pai & it was illustrated by Ram Waeerkar.

Uncle Pai wanted Indian children to be familiar with their heritage. 

The comics were colored manually with a palette of 26 colors.

In November 1980, he started Tinkle, a children's anthology of short stories, jokes and educational articles in comic-book format.

Pai was born in Karkala, in what was the erstwhile Madras Presidency of British India on 17 September 1929 to a Konkani-speaking couple. He lost both his parents at the age of two and was brought up by his maternal grandfather till his death in 1944 after which he moved to Bombay.