Chopra's stature was recognised globally; he was appointed to HarperCollins India in November 2006, a decision made directly from the organisation's New York headquarters. He came to the role having already established himself at institutions like Penguin India. At HarperCollins, he was given a degree of autonomy that he leveraged for the wider literary world. While he upheld the foundational principle that major publishing houses must avoid becoming dogmatic, his defining achievement was astutely identifying a distinct new demographic of readers.
This new readership consisted of individuals who fully grasped the importance of economics and critically examined the economic and policy dimensions of politics. For this discerning group, Chopra launched Harper Business, a dedicated new imprint. His editorial prowess encouraged several high-profile figures to take up writing, including former Reserve Bank Governors Raghuram Rajan and YV Reddy, Vivek Kaul (who wrote critically on banks’ bad loans), and former NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya. Panagariya’s book, for instance, provides a comprehensive analysis of economic policies spanning the eras from Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Dr. Manmohan Singh.
Chopra's editorial vision extended to structure and relevance. In publishing the weekly columns of former Union Finance and Home Minister P. Chidambaram, he demonstrated two key insights: that subjects considered topical at one moment do not necessarily become stale years later, and that a collection of roughly thousand-word essays can be precisely curated and woven into the substantial chapters of a full-length book. Conversely, he also championed books that presented a commercial challenge, such as the excellent work, Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India.
Editing, in Chopra’s philosophy, was fundamentally the act of imparting direction, momentum, and energy to original writing. It required intellectual rigour combined with a keen awareness of context. Many former colleagues have paid tribute to his ability to meticulously deliberate which manuscript to assign to which editor and precisely how to guide them through the editing process. This commitment to the craft and to his team, indeed, was the ultimate mark of Krishan Chopra's greatness.