Indian online bookstore Pustak that claims to have a database of over 12 million book titles and offers free international shipping to India.
There’s hardly any online bookstore left which hasn’t been overshadowed by Amazon in U.S. and Europe but India is still a massively populated country(accounts for one-sixth of world’s population) where Amazon isn’t looking much interested at the moment.
There’s still not a massive business coming out of India to Amazon and many of the books can’t even be shipped to India(limited delivery to few countries).This surely creates a space for a startup to fill out this void and aim to serve as an ‘Amazon for indians’.
That’s the one Pustak is trying to become.It’s an online bookstore that claims to have a database of over 12 million book titles and offers free international shipping to India.
As this startup is based out of bangalore,all the books which are hard to find at common bookstores(offline) will be made available at Pustak through international shipping.
What projects ‘Pustak’ unique is the huge scope of finding books within their catalogue(over 12 million) and also their much boasted “Free international shipping”.
The book prices are quite competitive at Pustak and can be preferred over other options available for indians.
Anand Rao,Founder of Pustak plans to offer shorter delivery time for imported books and also add an Indian-database to their catalog.
Here is the press release of Pustak’s launch.
What’s the B-logic ?
The business logic seems fairly simple.They have managed to create a huge database by taking a some inspiration from Amazon.Whatever orders they receive,they use an established online bookstore(nobody but Amazon) to further place the order.After receiving the books at their end,they forward it to the actual customers.
Now,the shipping cost is actually pre-included into the cost shown on their website and therefore the customer is actually paying for both shipping as well as book in the form of combined shown price.Within this amount,Pustak takes a small share of its profit.
What they need to worry about !
It takes hardly a minute for a user to form an impression about any website,whether it provides free or paid service.Pustak’s user interface is disappointing enough to disbelieve their claims(12 million book titles) and reliability.They seriously need to work over the GUI otherwise they will soon find themselves in troubled health
Pustak will also have to cope up with known(if not established) brands such as FirstandSecond, A1Books,landmarks and flipkart which are having huge book collection and multiple offline stores across India as well.