Interviewer: How did you generate the unique idea of books by kilo?
Mr. Abhishek Sayam: ‘Booksbykilo’; to term this as a unique idea would be generous, although it is not, but we may call the idea of execution as unique.
Today, when the habit of reading books is almost dying, we wanted to reintroduce the physical book which no matter what cannot be replaced, may it be e-books or audio format books. Yet, the digital, expensive and fast-paced era has lost the interest of a book lover to visit shops, buy high-priced books, carry them back home to read and repeat this tedious process over again.
Therefore, the introduction of ‘Booksbykilo’ the very first online platform which brings books to readers of great quality, extremely low priced as per their weight and not as per discounted MRP and most importantly at their doorstep. The alternate is also available in the form of our offline store ‘Booksbykilo’ located in Navi Mumbai. This allows book readers to re-embrace the joyous feeling of turning a page all at ease.
Being a part of the books industry for some time now, we all have seen temporary book exhibitions which sell books by weight, and shops which sell books at a low price but the books there were of poor quality. Hence, by launching the website and offline store at Kamothe, New Mumbai which solves all the downsides of making good quality books available to readers at an economical and easy way; the idea of ‘Spend Less and Read More’ is no longer an idea.
Interviewer: Do you deal in all genres of books?
Mr. Abhishek Sayam : ‘The more you read, the more you know; The more you know, the more you aspire to read’. We have a wide book collection comprising of thousands of titles, including award winning and critically acclaimed fiction, non-fiction books by National and International writers.
Our Children Category includes not only fairy tales and boogeymen story books but also activity and colouring books.
We also offer vivid coffee table books ranging from Photography to Earth Science. In the future, we are looking forward to expanding our current collection of regional language books.
Interviewer: Can you explain about the working of this site to our budding entrepreneurs in order to answer their curiosities?
Mr. Abhishek Sayam : The ‘Booksbykilo website is most importantly customer-friendly. It neatly categorizes books as per their weight into three categories: Premium, Classic, and Standard Collection as per book quality and market value of books, making it very simple for readers to pick their choice of books.
The website tries to solve all the problems a reader faces while shopping offline at book exhibitions and stores and online at other e-commerce book portals. At ‘Bookbykilo’, a customer’s choice unlike at other outlets is not restricted to just one book category or the customer is not forced to buy books in a kilo. The reader as per their wish may pick up books across different categories and may even choose to buy a single book and not the entire book bulk.
This unique book purchase model, allows readers to avail books at an almost three-fold discounted price as compared to purchasing the same books at MRP. Speedy and economical book delivery of online orders is also our major priority. On receiving orders we ship books across India for nominal delivery charges and within Mumbai at zero shipping for orders above Rs 1000. Most of our deliveries out of Maharashtra make it in 2-3 working days whereas within Mumbai we deliver on the same day or on the next day.
Interviewer: There are a lot of book stores out there, what makes you different?
Mr. Abhishek Sayam : The name ‘Booksbykilo’ says it all. Yes, there are a lot of bookstores out there, but ours is just the one which uses the concept of selling 100% original pre-loved books priced as per their weight.
You may have heard or seen quite a few sellers dealing with books and at a low price too, but if you check the quality of such books you will know that they are mostly pirated copies, old and dusty, some with pages missing and some even beyond reading condition. At ‘Booksbykilo’, we make sure the books are available at a pocket-friendly price along with its originality and reading quality kept intact.
You may have also come across regional book exhibitions which last only a few days and disappear, making it difficult for readers across different cities to coordinate with the timings and locations of such temporary establishments. Ours is the only online and offline portal available throughout the year and accessible to readers all across India.
Interviewer: Do you plan to expand your business in the near future? What are your major areas of concern?
Mr. Abhishek Sayam : Yes, of course, we would like to spread our reach towards more and more book lovers, in the form of a chain of ‘Booksbykilo’ offline stores and more awareness regarding the website existence to readers all over India.
For this, we have a few ideas to take this business model forward and we are currently in process of executing them. To make this happen we require a lot of smart and hard work along with a pinch of investment.
Our major concern is the investment part, which will play a major role in adding flavor to the promotion of ‘Booksbykilo’ model and will give us the strength to implement other ideas to allow us to leap forward.