When was the last time you went to the neighbourhood book store? The chances are, you can't recollect readily. Gone are the days when buying books involved a visit to the trusty book store round the corner. Online book stores, with a practically unlimited collection and simple search mechanisms, have sprouted by the dozen, and the good bit is, all of them are seeing patronage.

Entrepreneur Mayank Dhingra, co-founder of Dial-a-Book, promises to make book buying even simpler. In a chat with YourStory, he speaks about his startup and how he intends to create a community of book-lovers.

If someone asked you to tell them about Dial-a-Book in about three sentences, what would you say?

I started with the aim of simplifying the process of buying books. Dial-a-Book is India's first service that lets you order all kinds of books and novels over the phone. We offer free home delivery across India and accept payment by cash upon delivery.

How is Dial-a-Book different from other online bookstore models?

While online bookstores let you order books only on their site, Dial-a-Book allows you to order books over phone, SMS, e-mail, and even Twitter or Facebook. You can even order the books that are not listed in our database but are otherwise available. We have our own delivery team for the Delhi/NCR region.

And most importantly, we just don't sell books. We are working towards building a community of avid book lovers.

Courtesy: YourStory.in

How did the business idea for Dial-a-Book come about?

I have been an avid reader since my college days. I had always thought of doing something with books at some point of time. The advent of the online bookstore concept in India intrigued me and I spent some time observing various online bookstores, their way of working and other variables. I also used to observe how people shop for other things like medicines, groceries, food etc.

It was during this time that I realised that the process of buying books can be further simplified and made more user-friendly, just like ordering burgers or pizzas. And hence, Dial-a-Book was born.

Tell us about your background.

I did my Electronics and Communications engineering from Delhi College of Engineering (2005 batch). Towards the end of my college stint, I started toying with the idea of staring my own business. I joined Fidelity Investments as a campus recruit and worked there for one and a half years, building software for internal use.

From Fidelity, I joined Slideshare where I worked on various features of the website and some back-end technologies. In Slideshare, two friends of mine and I started an online platform called Kwippy. Kwippy started as a status message aggregator and got a lot of traction in both Indian and international online media.

After working at Slideshare for a year, I left the organisation and joined MPower Mobile. I worked there for a year and quit to start something of my own. That's when Dial-a-Book happened.

Tell us about the tie-ups that you have. Is there acceptance for your concept?

We've tied up with most local distributors based out of Delhi along with a few small to medium-sized publishers and we regularly procure books from them. We did a trial run before starting the service and based on the feedback, we decided to venture into the business.

We've sold books in almost all of the 27 cities where we have cash on delivery (COD) and a few other places as well. A lot of our customers regularly buy their books from us and many of them recommend us to their friends and family.

Where do you see online book buying and Dial-a-Book five years from now?

Five years from now, a significant percentage of books sold in India will be sold online and over the phone.

In five years, we see ourselves as the number one player in the 'over the phone' category and amongst the top 5 in the online space.

Currently, there are a number of guys vying for a piece of the pie (online). But my view is that the next few years will see a lot of consolidation in this space and the market will have just a handful of players who will do a majority of the business.

In the next five years, Dial-a-Book will tie-up with more publishers, expand to other cities, explore other/faster modes of delivery, work more closely with authors and build a passionate community of book lovers. We have a lot of interesting ideas for the business which we'll put to test soon.

What is Dial-a-Book's revenue model?

Our revenue model is pretty much like that of an online bookstore. We cater to the long tail of books and procure most books on demand (orders). We get books at a discounted price and pass on a percentage of that to the customers. The rest is used for delivery, infrastructure and other projects.