University Press Limited
University Press Limited, commonly abbreviated as UPL, is an academic publishing house based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. UPL was established in 1975 as a successor to Oxford University Press' Dhaka branch where Mohiuddin Ahmed was chief executive. Its success in the publishing industry led to winning the National Book Centre Award 16 times since 1981. UPL is also the first publisher in Bangladesh to export books. As of 2018, UPL has published around 1,500 books.
History
Mohiuddin Ahmed was initially posted at the Karachi office of Oxford University Press. After the Bangladesh liberation war, he returned to independent Bangladesh in 1972. He then became the Chief Executive of OUP Bangladesh and a roving editor coordinating the editorial activities in the branches of OUP in Dhaka, Delhi, Karachi and the East Asian branch in Malaysia.When the OUP Bangladesh office in Dhaka was closed down in 1975, UPL took over the office and its publishing programme as the successor. Due to a lack of advanced command in Bengali literature, Ahmed focused on English language academic and research books. UPL signed a contract with OUP and Orient Longman to adapt school text books, initially starting with six books of OUP. As the successor of OUP, UPL also retained the local employees of the former.
In 2018, a function was arranged to celebrate the 40th founding anniversary of UPL at the Bangla Academy auditorium. For the first time, UPL Excellence Award was accorded to 41 different authors, institutions and patrons. The function was attended by Bangladesh's finance minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, Kamal Hossain, Rehman Sobhan, Mahfuz Anam, Rubana Huq, Moudud Ahmed, and Anisuzzaman, among others.