Pune: The hub of education and literature, the city of Pune, has a huge market for second-hand books. Whether academic or literature books, the second-hand books are in a huge demand, from all age groups. While the second-hand books until now, could be physically bought at Pune’s most popular book market at Appa Balwant Chowk, Budhwar Peth, or from the book vendors at FC Road or JM Road, now, they can even be ordered at your doorstep, thanks to a young entrepreneur in Delhi.
Book Thela, is an e-commerce company, launched by a recently graduated Riticka Srivastav, that sells classic second-hand books at reasonable rates. Launched in March this year, the services have now come to Pune as well and Puneites are taking full advantage of this new facility.
“The second-hand book market is not at all organised in our country. To search for a particular book in the second-hand stall is not an easy task. Sometimes to buy a book, I had to go around the city and travel long distances. So I decided to venture into this field, to make good books in second-hand available to the readers at their homes, anywhere in India,” Srivastav said.
The response that she has gained for this venture is amazing, Srivastav said. “We reached our break-even point in the first month itself. We have a pan India delivery, and buy books from the vendors in Delhi,” Srivastav said.
Game of Thrones book series, bestsellers like Kite Runner, Harry Potter series, etc are the books that are in a huge demand by the readers. Srivastav said,“We have to stock up these books again and again as people buy these often. Books like Harry Potter or Game of Thrones are sometimes not available easily at all the stores as they have higher demand. Also, these are very expensive. So people prefer to buy those here.”
There is also a ‘Request a Book’ section on the website where people can request for the book that they want, and Book Thela tries to find it for them. “We do get requests for many rare and old books. Although we try our best to find these, it’s not always possible as very few copies of second-hand rare books are available for sale,” Srivastav explained.
The portal has buyers belonging to all age-groups, from young to old, however, youngsters make for the most number of buyers, Srivastav added.
Plans to expand in Marathi books
“We are looking forward to expanding our business to regional languages as well in future. In fact, we get a lot of requests for Marathi books from Maharashtrian readers, and we will soon be having Marathi books as well on our website,” Srivastav said.
While Book Thela gets books from Delhi vendors now, it will soon start buying them from second-hand book vendors in Mumbai and Bengaluru as well.
