BOOK BASKET
ABOUT THE COMPANY/PRODUCT (BUSINESS IDEA):
Book basket is a book renting service for the people who are unable to go to shops or library and want to read books. Customers can find every type of book they are looking for, right from literature, fiction, non-fiction, academic material for students, reference books, we have it all. Customers can choose from a wide range of options in every category, our app will help our customers find the books they are looking for that is available in the market and library to rent at the competitive prices. Customers can select their books and convenient delivery address and the ordered books will be delivered right to their doorstep. Customer can choose to pay online using debit/credit card or by cash on delivery.
MARKET DEMAND: Due to this pandemic many people are unable to go to library or shops to refer or buy the books they want. In these tough times, our service will be very useful for people who want to read but are unable to go out. Not always people tend to avoid buying books itself, rather prefer to rent them due to many reasons. This service is for those people who want to rent books instead of buying them. Our service will help our customers save money spend on buying expensive books by renting them at reasonable prices. Students can get the benefit of this service the most since they are unable to go to their school/college library and want to refer some reference book during online classes. Also, this service will promote a good habit of reading among all the demography in general, since everyone have more time at home to spend during this pandemic.
RELEVANT PRODUCTS IN THE MARKET: Although there many companies and portals out there in the market selling e-books, there are fewer selling hardcopies. But practically no company which rents books. In the pre-pandemic world often people didn’t need this service since they has access to libraries and book rental shops. But given the current circumstances, when people don’t want to go out but need to rent books, out service is the only one which solves this problem. Our company will connect the closed libraries and book rental shops to their previous customers.
TARGET CUSTOMERS: The main target of this service are students. During this pandemic, when all the school, colleges and educational institutes are closed, their respective libraries are inaccessible to anyone. Students often need various reference books and textbooks which are often too expensive to buy. Using our service they can rent the needed books as per their required time.
Apart from academic materials, our service will also provide literature books. In this pandemic, people of all the age group, are spending a lot of time indoors. This provides a great opportunity for everyone who wanted to read books but didn’t have enough time to do it, to read the books they so wanted to.
REQUIRED KNOWLEDGE OR EXPERTISE: To facilitate this service a web application (book basket) is needed, which can give the users the web interface to select and order the books. The application also needs to include a payment gateway, where users can make the online payment. For this we need few software developers.
On the supply side, we need to contact various school, colleges, public libraries and book rental shops and make an agreement. This requires a sales expertise.
For the delivery service, we need to hire people who will do the door-to-door delivery.
HOW BOOK BASKET WORKS:
Book basket is basically an app using which customer will provide their address, list of selected books and duration for which they want to rent the books.
Instead of buying books from market we are taking books from our suppliers (school libraries, college libraries, public libraries, book rental shops, etc). Since these libraries/shops are temporarily closed or underperforming, our platform will boost their sales as well.
Our delivery team will connect with these suppliers to get the books ordered from our customer and deliver it to the relevant customer.
When the rental period is over, our app will inform the users about the same and our delivery team will recover the books rented and return it to the supplier.
With the unemployment rates hitting new highs, we will be recruiting local people who are affected in this pandemic, to the delivery team.
ESTIMATED BUDGET: Since I have not too big startup idea it only requires coordination with all the libraries, book renting stores so I think it will not so expensive also we will hiring unemployed people for delivery of books from library to required location so I will fix their salary according to number of deliveries. For customer there will be fixed price of books according to number of days they want it for and according to how expansive book they are taking.
PRODUCT PRICING:
The rental prices will be decided on the basis of many factors, like price of the book, duration of the booking, address of the customer and the demand of the book.
Our team will connect with the supplier and decide the rental charges convenient to both our customers as well as the suppliers.
We need to keep in mind the supplier cut, delivery charges and the profit margin. Based on these factors a percentage of the actual MRP of the book will be fixed as its rental charge.
MARKETING PLAN:
Instead of going through the mainstream advertising, we will contact the students through their respective schools and colleges. We will offer discounts to students who got connected to us via their schools/colleges. Since the schools and colleges will be our suppliers, they will be willing to be part of the advertisement as well.
RISK ANALYSIS:
Since we are taking the pandemic as an opportunity to market our company. It will be a tough challenge to sustain the company after the situation improves post-pandemic. Students will have access to their respective libraries. The customers, will have then access to our suppliers directly and might prefer to connect to them directly. Our sales might decrease post pandemic.
MILESTONE AND TIMELINE: In this idea the main time it take in making the app(Book Basket ). It took 3–4 months in making the app. After that it tooks 1–2 months in advertising and people to know about this. After that it take 1–2 months to coordinate with school libraries, college libraries, central libraries, book renting shops .Approximately it take 6 months to get started with this service.
