When they decided to take this step, Butalia had worked with Oxford University Press and Zed Books in Delhi, while Ritu Menon was a scholar.
They started with very little capital but with an urgent sense that they had to make Indian women's voices heard, through academic publishing and activist works, translation and fiction.
They were followed by other Indian presses concerned with gender and social issues, such as Bhatkal and Sen who publish the imprints Stree and Samya and Tulika Books.
Widely regarded as India's answer to Virago Press, Kali for Women published some pathbreaking titles, among them the Hindi reference book Shareer ki Jankari ("About the Body").
Shareer ki Jankari was extremely frank about sex and women's bodies including issues such as menstrual taboos, shocking some commentators.