Please see the message forwarded. Mumbai members of Lis-forum may comment on this. How can this group be successful given the geographic area they reach out being so large? What could be the secret of this (excellent) home delivery mode of books? Vyasamoorthy, P ========================== Meet the librarywalas Posted by: "karmayog.org - ganesh" info@karmayog.org Date: Thu Sep 13, 2007 1:41 am ((PDT)) Meet the librarywalas Move over dabbawalas, now six friends provide books at your doorstep. All you have to do is log on and subscribe, to choose from the 8700 titles available By: Varun Singh Librarywala.com is a website for book lovers who cannot afford to buy all the books that are written but want to read all of them. This website was launched on August 1 by a set of six friends who missed reading books because they lacked money to buy them. The six good souls (at least for the bookworms) are Hiten Turakhia (29), Amit Gala (30), Hiten Dedhiya (27), Dhairyasheel Pawar (27), Shibanarayan Rath (27) and Kunal Gala (23). How they thought of it The six entrepreneurs who are family friends had a common hobby of reading books. Due to lack of money they missed reading books that they wanted to. They started chipping in money in small amounts and collected money for buying the books. Hiten Turakhia, who sits at the office in Wadala says, "There was a time when all of us wanted a management book but it was too costly. Dhairyasheel and Hiten decided to chip in money and buy the book. So in this way we bought our first book around ten years ago." He adds, "This helped us to save money and also enabled us to read as many books as we could but then till the time the book reached the last person in the group, some of its pages were torn and the books were in a poor state." After this they all planned to come out with something that is cheap but is of help, so the six friends started this website. The making of the website took them a period of eight months. Librarywala.com As the name suggests, it's a library where one is required to register himself to become a member, pay a membership fee of Rs 499 and a refundable deposit of Rs 499. The member can choose books from the collection of 8,700 books available. The next step is to select a plan. There are three plans - a basic plan for Rs 199, classic plan for Rs 299 and children plan for Rs 199. Under the basic plan, a member can select six books for one month and can take two books at a time. Classic plan provides a member with three books at one time and a maximum of 12 books. Under the Children's plan, kids can take two books at one time and a maximum 10 books in a month. The procedure is easy. A member has to queue the book as per his priority on the site and the delivery boys of librarywala.com will deliver the books at the doorsteps of the members. Currently there are 230 members in a span of one month out of which 110 are permanent whereas the remaining have filled the first form. All the six founders are from different fields of education. Some are MBA's, while the others are IT professionals and one is a chartered accountant. The website reaches people residing up till Dahisar in the western suburbs, Thane in the central, and till Panvel in Navi Mumbai. Hiten Turakhia states that the reason behind starting this website is to increase the ratio of the readers and also to stop piracy of books. The website The website is well maintained and updated on a daily basis. It has a search engine which makes it easy to find books, the listings have a snap shot of the cover, the author and the name of the publishers, a description of the book is given alongwith the ratings and the status of whether it's available or in circulation. The books are segregated into management, religious, self-help, children, health, biography, fiction, non-fiction and films. Rohan Samant a member of librarywala.com says, "I came to know about this website through my friend who saw their delivery bikes on the roads. I immediately became a member and till now have read eight books including Umberto Eco and Agatha Christi. I found it convenient as I don't have to go all the way to a library or a store to get a book." Devendra Naik another member of the website says, "The best thing about this library is I get the books delivered at my home and within a span of one month I have read books worth Rs 5,000 rupees for just Rs 299." Publication : Mid-day; Section : Worlds worth; Pg : 13; Date : 9/9/07 -- Dr P Vyasamoorthy, Society for Serving Seniors 30, Gruhalakshmi Colony, Secunderabad 500015 Phone 27846631 / 94908 04278 http://societyforservingseniors.satyamcsr.org -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.