BENGALURU: In 1967, Suresh Shah, the founder of Sapna Book House, set up a 10x10 sq/ft store for a bookshop. Fifty-one years on, Sapna has expanded beyond its retail business to encompass publishing, pan-India distribution, e-commerce, technology, university supplies as well as B2B supplies. Nitin Shah, the managing director of Sapna Group, speaks about his humble beginnings and the future.
It’s been 51 years since Sapna Book House opened it doors to the public. Sapna Book House was started by my father Suresh Shah, who worked as head of a Mumbai-based pocketbook distributing company’s new branch in Chennai. Later, he came to Bengaluru and on 26 January, 1967, he started the store on a small scale in Gupta Market, opposite Janata Bazaar, initially selling lilliput dictionaries. As kids, we used to sit at the bookshop after school and that is how the passion evolved. I graduated in 1981 and joined the business straight away. Today, we have 17 stores throughout the state; two in Coimbatore, nine in Bengaluru and one each in Mysuru, Mangaluru, Hubballi, Dharwad and Kalaburagi. We have recently opened one in Yelahanka.
What was the idea behind the name Sapna?
My parents had three sons, and they always wanted a girl child. It was their ‘sapna’ (dream). Another dream was to start a book shop, and that is how the store got its name.
With the online business booming, how hard has it hit the offline market? What has been your strategy to take them on?
Flipkart started with books and got into many other products. Today, the last reference I see books. Amazon is into books in a big way, but they are more into novels that are bestsellers. For the rest, you have to go offline to flip through the pages. We have published about 6,000-plus Kannada titles and about 600-plus textbooks starting from PUC, degree, management, diploma, engineering, etc, and these are books that students and parents come, see and then buy. Children’s books is another segment for which people come and buy. To give a better perspective, in the US, online book purchase is much less than what is believed.
People actually prefer going out and buy rather than sit at home and order. The experience matters. In the last five years, the online share has been increasing, but we have opened about six more stores. So the revenue is increasing every year. But we had to change our marketing strategy. So now it is not just booked, we have other verticals that include gift items, arts and crafts, writing instruments, notebooks, among others. We have our own products under the brand, Store67, wherein we manufacture all stationery products like files, mugs, notebooks, jute bags, etc. and we are doing tremendous business there. It has now become more of a family store.
Other than Coimbatore, why is it that you have not ventured out of Karnataka? Are you looking at more stores in the state?
We had the confidence of succeeding in our own state. Going out, the biggest hurdle is getting good staff, training them, and taking the risk of whether they will be continuing with us. It is a challenging task. But we have tried and are still trying and might look at Chennai. We are looking for more ideal places in Karnataka, especially Belagavi.
Tell us about any innovation that you have come up with as a marketing tool.
We have launched Sapna Kiosk and have placed it at eight places in Bengaluru. One can search for over 20 million books from around the globe, and whichever is not available at the store, one can just place an order, pay by credit or debit card and get the book delivered at home. We can install the kiosk at railway stations and airports. This is India’s first omni-channel bookstore.