Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

Booksvilla is a startup which is joining the crowded online bookstore space. Booksvilla is founded by Chirag Rathod and Rohan Pimparkar, both students of Entrepreneurship Development Centre at Mudra Institute Communications. Both are voracious readers and very passionate about books which propelled them to develop an ecommerce site on books which will improve browsing and shopping experience.

Booksvilla has put up books 90+ categories ranging from acting to tarot, search feature is implemented well. Though prices are not very competitive when compared to flipkart.

Besides selling new books Booksvilla offers a unique, first-of-its-kind online book exchange program through its portal. The website enables its users to put up a list of books they own and also put up a wish list of books they would like to read and thus facilitates a barter system amongst its users by registering online.

After a good deal of research they realized that there was no such platform for online exchange of books and started working on this idea which became an entrepreneurial reality after putting in a lot of hard work for over a year. Cost is one of the critical factor for Indian consumers when it comes to buying any commodity, it also solidified their decision for exchange platform.

This program will indirectly also reduce piracy since the program focuses on exchanging original copies of the books.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Its been quite sometime i have bought books from offline stores since i generally don’t browse the bookshelf and buy books, i know which books i need to buy and i order it through online bookstores since its quite convenient and they offer decent discount. Before ordering i check the pricing and availability across all of them, and this process is certainly tedious and time consuming.

Indiabookstore is here to address the need of a average buyer like me,  Indiabookstore enables user to check the pricing of book, availability of book, days to deliver the book across various online bookstores. 

Indiabookstore is one of the first online book shopping aggregator to hit the market. Its a hobby project stated by Animesh Jain, founder of iTasveer and it is generating good traction.

This meta book search compares online bookportals at a time and It pulls textual data through its servers while images are fetched from the online stores at the client’s end which increases the speed of searching. I searched for Chetan Bhagat’s ’2 States’ and here is the result set -

UI is simple, clutter free and quite user friendly. Search speed is amazingly quite good and user doesn’t encounter any lag. Search results are based on relevance and ISBN. Indiabookstore supports 8 online bookstores and via affiliate programs Indiabookstore generates revenue.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Bookshelf is a newly launched portal which deals focuses on selling educational books online, Bookshelf intends to sell books from nursery to post graduation books published by various publishers. Bookshelf delivers book all over India and books below INR 150 will incur a shipping charge of INR 30/-

The objective of launching this service is to facilitate students, parents and working executives to buy academic books and other reference books online. The whole process of purchasing and delivery of educational books in this context could be simplified. Currently the books available are in the major categories of School, Diploma Engineering, Degree Engineering, Graduation, Management, Aayurved, Pharmacy and Law etc.

Bookshelf is launched by Splashgain Technologies which earlier in this year launched ePravesh, a pre admission portal. It has made life simpler for parents by simplifying the admission process. Splashgain intends to integrate both their platform and drive the registered users of ePravesh to bookshelf for buying books online, thus trying to make a complete marketplace.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

if you are avid book reader, love buying books and always look out at best price here is a web utility which will further enhance your buying experience.

Mysmartprice is a book comparison utility and it compares the price and availability across well known online book portals like Flipkart and Infibeam in India. In short its an aggregator.

Mysmartprice UI is simple and easy to use, their auto suggest works pretty well. I searched for book title “Devil” in Pinstripes” and here is the result page -

As per result page i find the best price from Infibeam, One column missing in their result page is “Availability” against the respective online stores, it may cause disappointment if as a user clicks on “Buy Now” on the cheapest price offered by bookstore and find out its not available.

Not sure of their exact business model but one obvious way of monetizing is through affiliate programs run by mostly all the prominent online bookstores. Do check out Mysmartprice and share your feedback.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Products from the homeland invoke a sense of nostalgia for Non Resident Indians that are separated by distances from their loved ones. Infibeam embarks on international expansion by launching a website Infibeam.us to cater to the Indians living abroad in US & Canada. The website will offer products from retailers in India for sale in the US & Canada.

Speaking on the launch, CEO and Founder, Infibeam Mr. Vishal Mehta said, “For Indians living abroad, receiving products from India at your doorstep is indeed a delight. In a bid to cater to our shoppers in the US & Canada, we have embarked on Infibeam.us in time for the Rakhi season”. He added, “The website will carry the best Indian brands in lifestyle categories. We will continue to expand the selection by adding more product categories starting with Books, Movies & Music.”

Many Indian retailers, publishers and distributors who wish to have their products sold in the US will use Infibeam.us platform and fulfillment services. The new site already carries a great selection of products in Apparel & Accessories, Beauty, Titan & Fastrack Watches, Jewelry etc.

Customers can now shop for authentic religion and spirituality products, traditional Indian clothing, handicrafts created by local artisans, decorative home furnishings that add an Indian touch to the interiors, ethnic gifts that emanate an Indian aura and get them shipped directly to their addresses in US. The website launch comes right in time for upcoming Rakhi festival and will carry rakhis and festival gifts as well.

Infibeam.us targeted at residents from the US and Canada is a novel idea and with this launch, Infibeam becomes one of the first Indian retail brand which is now global.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Flipkart has raised its second round of venture funding from New York-based investment firm Tiger Global Management. Sources familiar with the development told VCCircle that the new round of funding was closed a few months back and is believed to be in the tune of $8 million to $10 million. Flipkart earlier raised funding early venture capital firm Accel India.

This development comes as Flipkart has expanded from being an online book retailer to offering products in movies, games and music. It also plans to launch sale of software like Norton Anti-virus, Adobe, Windows, and others. Indian CD/DVD market was worth approximately Rs 10 billion in 2008 and is expected to grow to Rs 16 billion by 2013 at an yearly growth rate of 10 to 15%, said Flipkart.

Flipkart currently has over 6 million titles listed ranging across all categories. The Bangalore-based company is targeting revenues of Rs 100 crore by March 2011, said a  recent release. The funding from Tiger Global, which has backed companies like local search firm Just Dial and coaching institute T.I.M.E, will help in this expansion. The new round of funding for Flipkart had attracted several venture capital firms, said a source.

Flipkart had revenue of Rs 25 crore in 2009-10, Flipkart said in an interview to CNBC-TV18 recently. It was set up in 2007 by IIT Delhi classmates Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, who later worked at Amazon before starting Flipkart. The company has a team of 200 members and currently operates from offices in Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi.

JustBooks is a bangalore based library chain and has around 25k books in their inventory. Their library is quite a lean set up in terms of workforce, its almost unmanned thanks to RFID tagging. Library Management Software (LMS) and the tag reader acts as a one stop shop for all requirements of the reader, from searching right book to returning the book after reading.

The first branch of JustBooks was set up in Whitefield, in June 2008. A thousand members in the first couple of months and a host of business opportunity related queries in many ways triggered the thought process that is now JUSTBOOKS clc – the community library chain with eight branches, two apartment libraries, a tech park extension counter and an On-Demand internet platform.

Proven practices from the retail industry, like warehouse backed operations with centralized inventory and some new generation technology usage like cloud hosted infrastructure with RFID enabled touch points combine to meet the ultimate goal of every library – Get every book a reader and get every reader his/her book .

Started by a team of Retail and Technology professionals, incubated and nurtured at NSRCEL – IIM Bangalore, JUSTBOOKSclc aspires to be the country’s first networked pan Indian community library chain catering to Indian reading requirements. Getting incubated as a startup enterprise at NSRCEL was an important point of inflection for JUSTBOOKSCLC.

The data of one year of operations of JUSTBOOKSCLCseems to indicate that reading as a habit is truly alive and kicking. Once a reader is hooked, word-of-mouth references kick in to get other fence sitters hooked. Bucking the popular opinion, TV & Internet do not seem to have captured the brain cells completely – and thank God for that, while they have been reasonably successful in capturing the eye balls.

JUSTBOOKSCLC is now in the process of scaling its operation outside of Bangalore, they plan to deepen presence within Bangalore. Expansion model will continue to be franchisee driven where books & associated technology will be provided by the franchisor and the franchisee will have the pleasure of getting communities to sign up for reading.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

PopAbook is startup which is joining the crowded online bookstore space. PopAbook is founded by Praveen an ex motorola architect and very passionate about books which propelled him to develop an ecommerce site on books which will improve browsing and shopping experience.

Popabook besides selling new books also sell old/used books with 50-60% discount on MRP, this is the differentiating factor from the existing online bookstores. Popabook also allow users(buyers) to sell their books, there is simple work flow has been implemented to sell books. In short popabook is aiming to become a marketplace to trade books.

Popabook claims to have 1lac new books and 30k used books in their inventory under 30 categories. 10% is standard discount user can get across all books and it can go upto 20%, all shipments are free irrespective of ticket size. I ordered a book “Management and Entrepreneurship” by Kanishka Bedi priced at Rs. 180/- and availed 10% discount so final amount i paid was Rs.162/-, surprisingly the same book at Flipkart is priced Rs. 185/- and no discount in the offering

Popabook is quite unconventional, for instance its totally secured site i.e you see “https” through out, even home page is secured. But i wonder does homepage has to be secured? not good design as per me.

Popabook user interface is quite simple and intuitive, checkout process is highly simple (i rechecked twice to believe its been done).

Try Popabook and share your feedback.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

SimplyBooks is an online bookstore joining the bandwagon in this crowded market. Simplybooks is a startup based  out of NCR region and currently in Beta stage. It is all set to make a dent in the market share of Flipkart the leader in this space.

Simplybooks have 44 main categories and 638 sub categories and altogether they claim to have 10k books in their(suppliers) inventory. Simplybooks pricing is highly competitive and majority of their books they have priced it lesser than Flipkart. For instance book ” You can sell” by Shiv Khera is priced Rs.134 at Simplybooks, while flipkart charges Rs.146. Just now i ordered a book ” I bought the Monk’s Ferrari” by Ravi Subramanian and i paid Rs.165 to Simplybooks while selling price for the same book at Flipkart is Rs.172

Simplybooks delivery time is 7-10 working days which is quite high and its quite unacceptable to users who are not very price sensitive. Simplybooks checkout process is little tedious and user gets to know the delivery time after the checkout. They need to bring down the delivery time since 3-4 working days has become the benchmark for online bookstores operating in India. They need to improve the Search functionality and make site user friendly. It takes 3 clicks to search the author

Brownie Points – Simplybooks besides books also sells CDs & magazines. They have rewards program in place called e-Points,  I eared 4 points by purchasing 1 book.

Share your views on this startup and do try them out.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Lebooks is one more online bookstore joining the bandwagon in this crowded market. Lebooks started by 2 IIM graduates is based out of Delhi and is a part of LePlaza Retail Pvt. Ltd.  Lebooks is all geared up to challenge the supremacy of Flipkart, currently the undisputed leader in this online bookstore space.

Lebooks prices are very competitive but pricing cannot be only parameter defining the success in this business, user looks for rich content i.e collection of books, delivery time, website usability. If i compare Lebook’s pricing with Flipkart some books are cheap while some are priced marginally high. for e.g “The loudest firecracker” is priced at Rs.174 and flipkart charges Rs.177 for the same book while Chetan Bhagat’s “Five point someone” costs Rs.83 at lebboks, Rs.80 is the selling price at Flipkart. To avail free shipping user needs to buy books worth Rs.150 while Flipkart’s free shipping threshold amount is Rs. 100. Lebooks levies Rs 20 as shipping charge while Flipkart charges Rs 30 if bill value hasn’t met free shipping criteria.

What impressed me is Lebooks follow up, i deliberately dropped out from their checkout page and within 2 hours i got a mail enquiring if i had any trouble with payment gateway or website’s order mechanism. I exercised this flow in other online bookstore including Flipkart but never got any mail.

Let’s wait & watch this space to see the winner in this online bookstore space.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com