A book rental platform and its cutting edge initiatives 'IndiaReads.com'
A book rental platform and its cutting edge initiatives 'IndiaReads.com'

The market for online book renting libraries or to better put it in a retailing phrase ‘book rental marketplaces’ have seen a gigantic growth in the past couple of years. The model has created a niche in the market in almost no time.
As Indian consumers run for discounts and competitive pricing while shopping, same is the case here. Imagine a customer paying a mere 25-35 per cent of the original price of a book? What else to ask for! Needless to say, the renting model in books space has piqued not only students but many working professionals from various segments.
IndiaReads.com which is more of a resource sharing platform, has went out of the box to target working professionals with their new initiative called “corporate reading platform.” In a conversation with Retailer Media, Pranil Bafna, CEO, IndiaReads.com shared some interesting knowhow of the emerging book renting space in the country. He also shared his vision towards the helm of the company.

Talk to us about IndiaReads.com and the journey so far?
IndiaReads.com is an online book rental platform. Shipping to over 500 cities across India, IndiaReads.com is currently India’s biggest online Library.
Started in 2009 by Gunjan Veda, Noida based IndiaReads.com is first of its kind E-commerce website that offers an affordable, cheaper and reliable reading platform to readers in India.
The company has its own inventory offering its user’s over 1.8+ million titles from different writing genres like fiction, romance, self help, and autobiographies. Further, there is a huge collection of books for academic purpose especially competitive exams. Today, the company has about 1lakh corporate users, nearly 60 thousand retail customers and counting.
IndiaReads.com aims to build a resource sharing platform. It’s 30+ member team strives to build a reader’s hub by using technology and design, keeping the words ‘Affordable’, ‘Reliable’ and ‘Knowledgeable’ as an integral part of the Vision. Company’s mantra-“Why buy when you can read and return” is accompanied by quality in terms of functionality and services. In a fast growing economy like India, creating platforms for sharing economy will ensure a sustainable, affordable and greener future.
So far the Journey has been a mixed one. Although there were rock bottoms in terms of initial business establishment, the challenges have groomed the team and the concept to an optimized product and position. Needless to mention, it has been a journey of immense learning and growth. While achievements have boosted the moral from time to time, failures have helped things stay grounded and opened new doors to challenges with wide scope of growth through learning by mistakes and experiences.

How has been the response towards your corporate reading platform?
A sizeable revenue of the current business model flows from the corporate vertical of the company that offers books on rent to more than 80 corporate firms in India such as HDFC, Axis bank, Genpact, Mahindra and Mahindra, etc among many others. . Apart from casual reading, corporate employees benefit from e-book summaries and corporate recommendations for self improvement and motivation. Apart from book renting, corporate benefit from extra features added to account like Competency building to cultivate specific competency amongst employees of the firm, Intra firm social network to cultivate a social culture around books amongst the employees. Through this feature, employees can connect to fellow readers, see who is reading what? Upload reading status as well as recommend and comment on posts. Along with this, weekly and by-weekly mails are sent to all the employees to help push the habit of reading through recommendations and offers. Employees get to read blogs, author interviews, excerpts, latest news etc. In short, Indiareads.com corporate reading platform is a one stop answer to corporate reading culture.
Today, the company has about 1lakh corporate users from not just the metro cities but also tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Indiareads.com offers a white label user driven corporate Library platform that is not just rendering an easy employee engagement program but also connecting masses under the umbrella of books.

What were the initial challenges faced while rooting this business in the market?
The concept of online rental business, as beneficial as it sounds, is new to Indian economy and tough to establish. A significant amount of challenge lies in convincing the client about the benefits of rental economy. Thus the initial challenge is how to get more people using this concept. Although Indian economy is more savings based, users wish to own articles rather possessing it for an interval of time. So maintaining the quality of product is also of utmost importance. While a fresh product needs lesser attention in terms of quality, a rented one might not be a choice of many.

Where do you see the future of renting (not only books) 3-5 years down the line?
Offline renting is a very old concept. Getting the same online is fresh and growing. While books’ is a 2 billion USD market, the education services market is over 20 billion USD. With more stress on an eco-friendly approach, economies are gradually shifting to resource utilization based on sharing. Thus before the end of a product’s life cycle, it would have benefited more than 4 to 5 users, thus cutting down individual expenditure cost and maintaining a sustainable environment. In times ahead, more and more users will adapt the idea of sharing a product or service rather owning it. We are already seeing this happening in transportation though car pooling, education through book renting, etc mostly because of the unpredictable lifestyle and depleting resources and in a short time, more and more people will identify the benefits of this concept for greener and sustainable progress. Indian market is witnessing an upward steep gradient in the number of start-ups based on the concept of renting and sharing. Users are now realizing that owning a product permanently is more cost consuming, space consuming and mind consuming. Renting on the other hand is empowering individuals to save more and possess less. Speaking of 3-4 years, the idea of rental business will find more logic in the mind of users, courtesy technology.

Do you think renting space can pose a threat to regular retailers and cut down their sale’s pie? Why?
To an extend it may. Renting of course cuts down the quantity of an entity required in the market but at the same time, demand is rising owing to demographics of India. Since the customers get to save more on a single product, they would want to rent more and more. Speaking in terms of books, more savings over one book will encourage readers to buy more books under the price of one. Thus, even though the number of fresh books to be there in the market might be less, their demand will certainly rise due to savings incurred. Mathematically speaking, rather than one time value return for a product, multiple returns will ensure more profit.

What potential do you see in tier II and III cities of the country?
A large section of India’s population resides in Tier 2 and 3 cities. With Indian internet market is growing each day scope of doing an online business is growing leaps and bounds. Penetration of internet in the remote locations of the country is helping business players connect to users on a large scale. Although logistics in tier 2 and 3 cities are still facing issues, very soon with the help of technology, online business will find its roots grown efficiently in the tier 2 and 3 cities.  A very special advantage rises from the fact that the mindset of users in these cities is still more savings oriented. Rental business especially like Indiareads.com will certainly help curb the cost of education without compromising with the quality. 

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