READING ROOTS

So,on August 30,Joglekar — who runs multiple internet ventures for the NRI audience,like citizen journalism website globalmarathi.com and social networking initiative myvishwa.com— launched bookganga.com. This,Joglekar hopes,will become the amazon.com for Indian literature soon. The website already has on sale close to 7,000 titles across English,Hindi,Marathi and Sanskrit in the e-book as well as hard copy format. And in the short time since its inception,it already has more than 150 orders from within India and many others from countries like Australia,Peru and the US.

The idea behind the portal,says Joglekar,is to offer books at a discounted rate. “We suggested to publishers that for the e-book version,they keep their prices low,often as much as 50 per cent less than the hard copy,since there is no physical publishing involved here. This helps the books reach out to the masses,” he points out. And in return,Joglekar’s team has developed a system that helps avoid piracy of these books,which further pushes sales. “To purchase e-books from bookganga.com,one has to first become a member. Each member is given a unique code and our proprietary e-book reader,which the user has to install on his device/ computer. However,this reader cannot be downloaded on multiple machines. The purchased book comes in a format compatible to our reader as opposed to PDF files,which easily lend to piracy.”

The 38-year-old entrepreneur points out that he is also looking to tie up with various authors,especially first-timers. The website will publish the first edition of their book and then,depending on the sales,the author can choose to publish it in physical form,thereby saving cost.

The initiative,when being planned,was targeted at the NRI audience so that apart from buying books for themselves,the second-generation NRIs could gift books to their Indian relatives. But Jogleka,a Pune resident who moved to the US 15 years ago,is surprised at the response from within India.

The main challenge for the Indian market remains the lack of familiarity with online payment gateways. It is for this reason that bookganga.com allows orders to be placed on phone and purchase payments can be made online as well as by a DD or a cheque.