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While the book industry in Maharashtra is in complete disarray about distribution of books, Granthayan, India's first books-on-wheels project, has achieved a rare feet of selling 75,000 Marathi and English books in just 50 days. This is first such project in India where, 2, 00,000 books in ten mobile bookstores are moving in rural and semi-urban areas in Maharashtra where bookstores are non-existent.
Speaking at the occasion of achieving the rare distinction, Granthayan CEO Pankaj Kurulkar said: "Selling 75,000 books across 15 districts and 115 talukas of Maharashtra speaks volumes of the success of books-on-wheels project. If this success persists for a long period, I am sure Granthayan will improve the prospects of publication industry, especially Marathi. The industry doesn't even have authentic figures to understand its business prowess and its annual turnover. Granthayan has all the potential to solve the publication, distribution and marketing problems of the publication industry."
Granthayan is a novel idea where books are sold at people's doorsteps through mobile vans. Pankaj Kurulkar, a writer who understands the problems of the industry very well, is the main architect of this project. There are as many as ten mobile vans deployed at various vantage points of Maharashtra, where book distribution mechanism is poor. These vans get books at people's doorsteps free of cost and are fitted with a global positioning system and satellite-linked point-of-sale software which helps Granthayan's 65-strong staff to keep track of the position of the mobile bookstores and the sales made.
Pankaj said: "Books are not reaching masses as expected. That's due to poor book distribution network. There are hardly any bookstores available at many places. There are hundreds of odd pizza outlets, but there are only few book stores in Mumbai and out of 35 districts only 13 districts have book store which is not sufficient compared with population in Maharashtra. Granthayan wanted to fill this gap between demand and supply. Therefore I hit upon the idea of launching Books-on-Wheels project. The project offers us tremendous advantage over conventional brick-and-mortar stores because it allows us to travel. We will reach readers with more than 6000 titles of English & Marathi over 20,000 books in each van, who have never seen a bookstore in their lives."
In future, Granthayan plans to bring the brilliant regional works into the mainstream and visit campuses and pick up students post-graduating in different languages and hire them to translate. He said 70 per cent of his stock would comprise of Marathi books and remaining would be books in English.
Granthayan is one of the revolutionary concepts designed by Pankaj Kurulkar. Granthayan is the outcome of the Group's vision to source and deliver all sorts of books in Indian regional languages in addition to English books to consumers within the convenience and comfort of his home. Granthayan endeavors to reach out to all-age groups across India, as an online and offline hub providing impressive collection of more than 9, 00,000 titles under various subjects. The ever-expanding titles of books at Granthayan encompass the literature, IT, Health, Business etc. For more details visit www.granthayan.com
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