Second-hand success
CHENNAI : Even with the advent of online book stores and platforms offering softcopies of bestsellers at the click of a button, used books or ‘second–hand’ books have a fair number of buyers among bibliophiles. However, in states like Kerala, the sale of second-hand books is normally confined to small outlets or stalls in towns, thus restricting the availability of the books to few readers.
‘Entebook’ was born out of this idea to create easier access to second-hand books through the digital platform, and to encourage a reading habit among students. Founded by a team of four engineering graduates from Kozhikode, the e-commerce startup has been acting as a medium for people and organisations to buy and sell used books, since its inception a year ago.
“We started off with an investment `2 lakh, and a collection of a 100 engineering books and 150 novels,” says founding member, Amjad Ali E M. Since the team was already familiar with graphic designing and web-page making, creating their online platform www.entebook.com was a cakewalk. Nearly 50 per cent of the used books were sold within the first half of the year.
The startup witnessed a surge in growth after they found a good samaritan in Oman-based investor Muhammed Najeeb, who backed them with a funding of `20 lakh. “We were able to expand the online network with 5000 more books as well as collect additional one lakh books,” he shares. The collection ranges from novels, fictions and children’s books to self-help writings, scientific books and academic works.
While some of the books were bought from individuals and organisations, some were imported and others were collected from book donors. “A couple of books by new writers who were searching for a platform to sell their works, were also brought under our umbrella,” says Amjad.Post the Kerala flood, the youngsters supported four schools across the state by contributing the collected books.
They also agreed to re-setup the libraries in two schools that were damaged in the flood. When asked what the major hiccups they had to face initially were, Amjad replied, “It took a while for people to notice our webpage. We also had to ensure that the quality of the used-books that we were receiving were up to the mark. In addition, the profit was low during the initial months. However, since August, we have been witnessing a large number of buyers and sellers”.
As a baby step towards expanding ‘Entebook’ offline, the team conducted a 10-day ‘Used Book Fest’ in Kozhikode, which had a footfall of over 2,000 buyers. The books were sold at 10 to 80 percent discount and were coupled with a ‘box challenge’ where customer could buy small, medium or large sized boxes at `499, `799 and `1299 and fill the cardboard boxes with as many books as possible. Talking about the future plans for their venture, Amjad added, “ We are planning to add 20,000 more books to our online network and conduct book fests in schools across the state.”
In a nutshell
● ‘Entebook’ is a Kerala-based e-commerce startup, founded in 2017
● It acts as a an online as well as offline platform for selling used books. It started with an investment of `2 lakh
● The team of four has also helped schools in setting up libraries.