Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

Xelf, a kolkotta based startup is an online book rental library where in user can queue up the books and it will be delivered at user’s doorstep and both ways delivery is completley free. Xelf users can keep the book as long as they wish and without incurring any late fees.

Xelf is founded by RIdhi Agarwal an IIMK alumnus and Amit Agarwal an SP Jain alumnus, Xelf which started as pilot project initially has evolved into a promising company which caters to above 20k users in kolkotta.

Xelf aims to be like Bookrenter of India and plans to expand in 6-7 indian metros within next 2 years. Both being avid readers always wanted to create a hassle free library for book lovers.

Xelf USP is impeccable service quality with strict turn around time and easy to use service coupled with simple pricing options.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

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