Crossword Bookstores Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary Company of Shopper's Stop Ltd - India's leading department store chain with 90 stores, across 28 cities in India and as on today is India's fastest growing chain of bookstores. Among the numerous writers who have visited the store are Sir V S Naipaul, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Chandra, Vikram Seth, Kiran Nagarkar, Andrew Motion, Michele Roberts, Shashi Tharoor, Shobhaa De, Charles Handy, Ricardo Semler , Jeffrey Archer, Fatima Bhutto, MasterChef Judge Garry & George, Jack Canfield. Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull came for a signing, so did Macho Man Randy Savage, the WWF champion. Crossword launched the Crossword Book Award in 1998 to recognize and reward the best of Indian writing across Fiction, Non Fiction, Children's, Translation & Popular Literary winners include Amitav Ghosh, William Dalrymple, Vikram Seth, Vikram Chandra and many more Popular winners include Kiran Desai, Suketu Mehta, Ashwin Sanghi, Ravi Subramnain, and many more Since its inception in 15th October 1992, It has been featured in Advertising Age International, USA, as one of the Marketing Superstars for 1994. The Bookseller, UK, has also described it as 'being on the cutting edge of retailing' in India. Crossword was ranked the 6th most admired retailer in India by Business world for the year 2006. It also won the Star Retailer Award for the Best Lifestyle Retailer in Books & Music in 2011. Crossword won the Retailer of the Year Award - Leisure (Books, Music and Gifts Category) at the Images Retail Awards 2005 & 2007& 2009. Crossword won the Debutant E tailer of the year - books - at India eRetail Awards 2012. Crossword received the Federation of Indian Publishers Award for excellence in Publishing for the year 2004 on 18th June 2005 at the hands of Shri Arjun Singh, Minister of Human Resource Development. In 2013 Crossword also won The ET Retail Award for Marketing for ÔCrossword Popular AwardÕ.