3. The Elevator Pitch
For people, especially students, who finds books expensive
we provide a book sharing platform
Unlike current models, on our used books focused platform ,
Users can list their books that they want to sell/donate/rent.
Interested users can search listings in their vicinity and directly
contact the owner of the book. Logistics is arranged by the
users themselves. We just maintain a connecting platform with
no warehousing, logistics etc
5. Solution
Used Books Are Cheaper
But they lie idle
If they can be shared around the community
more efficiently, book ownership costs will fall
6. Key Issue
Everyone has books and they
are not reading all of them
But…
They just do not know what to do with them
They do not know who wants them
They do not know how to share them
7. Solution: OffersnBooks
Innovative Used Book Sharing Platform
List books you want to sell, donate, rent out
Interested users can browse/search listings
Contact each other directly
Logistics is user based. Focus on same city community
10. Global Scale Of The Problem
• Google estimates there are 120 million books in
the world
• Every year 1 million new titles are published in
top 15 publishing countries
• E-Books are still 15% of the market. Hard copies
are around us in huge volumes, especially text
books
• Millions of people could end up sharing tens of
millions of books around their local communities
11. India – What size we can address
• Neilson estimates 12mn English books sold in India in 2011
alone. Flipkart sells approx 1.2mn books a year.
• For textbooks -- As of 2011, there are 1,522 degree-granting
engineering colleges in India with an annual student intake of
582,000. Each student with 5-10 books to share, gives us a huge
potential user base.
• Add the competition preparing crowd with lots of books to get
and give.
• E-books still small market. Not a big threat, as its new and reach
limited. At a later stage, licensing arrangements can be
made, on the lines of Netflix.
12. Business Basics
• Business model – Ads + Freemium
• Big user base potential
• Massively globally scalable considering high book costs
overseas
• No warehousing and logistics means lean operations
• Only costs – tech team, marketing expenses, biz dev
13. Competition
No Sharing Platform available as of now
On Mobile, we could make it location
aware, making hyper-local sharing possible
14. Marketing Plan
• Start with developing key city clusters
• Students in campuses obvious choice for first round
marketing in chosen 1-2 cities.
• Expect benefits from credibility achieved by the fact that
platform would be in use in IITs and IIM.
• Reading clubs another target – area level reading clubs –
Greater Kailash Reading Club, Bandra Reading club etc.
• Expand cities list after traction in one city achieved.
Same marketing plan to replicate in each city.
15. Where We Are
• Product Live
• Some users but due to lack of marketing funds, no meaningful
traction
• Gave away source code to IIT Roorkee and IIM Calcutta for free for
campus specific customization. Both institutes are developing
campus based book sharing platform on our software
• IIT Kharagpur and IIT Madras – Code given. Work to start soon
• Expecting the collateral effects to boost the website appeal for non
campus users
16. Where we want to be
• Be the most popular used book
sharing platform
• Scale to new countries post a
year long stabilization in India
17. Team
• Sandeep Srivastava: Mentor/Advisor – Sandeep, a Stanford, IIT and Wharton
School Alum, is a serial entrepreneur, having started and successfully exiting his
first business in US. Now, he is running a new venture in India in healthcare space.
He helps us with big picture guidance and strategy.
• Varun Kumar: Founder/CEO – Varun has worked in Financial Services for around
7 years at firms like CLSA, Morgan Stanley. In his last role at Religare, a leading
Indian Investment Bank, he was responsible for building Indian Equity Sales
franchise in Singapore. Varun earned an MBA from IIM Calcutta and BTech from
Indian Institute of Technology. He held merit scholarships at both the institutes.
• Vikas Kumar: Engineering Director (Advisor) – Vikas helps us with tech related
issues. He has a masters in Computer Science from Indian Institute Of
Technology, Kharagpur and work experience with Yahoo and LinkedIn in senior
roles
• Vishan Yadav: Asso Director, Engineering – Vishan comes with 8 years of solid
experience in Open Source technologies.
