State syllabus textbooks are tough to find, especially if you are from a Tier-III city. This is not a vague statement, this is what Chandan Logunjeet, who was born and brought up in Koraput and is currently in Jeypore, had experienced first-hand. "Sometimes, neither are these books available with local publishers nor are they on any e-commerce platform," says the 20-year-old. So, he discussed the problem with his friends and when he found out that it's a common pain point, they launched the portal Bookyberg last year and the revamped version of it was launched last week.
"We follow a B2C (Business-to-customer) model, wherein we purchase books from distributors and vendors and sell them through our portal," explains the youngster. Kalyani Publishers, VK Global Publications and other local publishers based out of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack are some of their suppliers, while their inventory is in Jeypore, where they operate from. They have all kinds of textbooks that students from class VIII to graduation would need. "Another point to note is that after a semester concludes, students don't need certain textbooks that they have purchased, so we offer them our platform to sell their textbooks," says the Physics graduate from Vikram Deb Autonomous College, Koraput. So far, they have 100 paying customers in this category.
Bookyberg, which was incubated at Software Technology Parks of India, Bhubaneswar from July to September 2018 to develop a prototype and proof of concept, also has its own brand of stationery. "We just saw a huge scope in the market as no other Odisha e-commerce platform was doing this in Jeypore. So we tied up with local manufacturers to produce our own brand of stationery," explains the innovator. They have Bookyberg notebooks in A4 size along with other brands as well. They also offer pens, pencils, exam pads and so much more. One constant bottleneck they face is that Tier-III cities are not too inclined to pay online. "In fact, we have even lost customers because we did not have Cash On Delivery option. But now, we are open to it," he reveals.
Bookyberg Academy is the next mountain they want to scale. "It is at a very nascent stage, but basically, it will be a one-stop-shop for students where they will find able mentors and will be able to access lessons in video format as well. We plan to have professional courses like Digital Marketing, Accounting and so on along with educational ones," explains Chandan. Bookyberg has a range of fiction and non-fiction novels and textbooks of other boards as well. And they are always looking to add more and more books to their inventory.
The current bestsellers on their portal:
- A Thing Beyond Forever by Novoneel Chakraborty
- Bookyberg Notebook A4 – 184 Pages White
- Concepts of Biology - Class XII, CBSE
- It's Not Right... But it's Okay by Anuj Tiwari
For more on them, check out bookyberg.in
