Find the Best Deal for Books with KBookSearch

Tuesday October 16, 2012 , 3 min Read

The ecommerce saga had received a considerable boost with the selling of books online. Books were actually one of the many products that were sold online. From visiting the local Crossword or Landmark book store, people started frequenting the likes of Flipkart, IndiaPlaza, Infibeam, etc. A price war rose. These book stores started offering books at comparatively lower prices than the others. Opening multiple tabs and then comparing the prices across e-shops was eliminated by early entrants into the field of “online book price comparing”. KBookSearch is one such player in this space.

KBookSearch aggregates the prices from across 11 bookstores across India, reviews from GoodReads and other information about famous books and authors much like Google's Knowledge Panel.

“One among us (Kartik) is an avid reader (apart from being an astounding programmer), one weekend before deciding to buy the next book on the to-read list form Flipkart, Kartik wondered if there are other bookstores and are they cheaper. Since he was going to be buying a whole lot of books, he quickly wrote a program that would get the prices of a particular ISBN from a few book stores. This, in short was the beginning of KBookSearch,” says Himanshu Govil, Marketing, KBookSearch, sharing their entrepreneurial journey and the genesis of the idea.

The core team includes Kaipa Kartik, the programmer who likes to get things done and dusted with before anyone else can figure stuff out. Kartik handles most of the development on the website, Himanshu Govil, the Marketing brain behind KBookSearch. From negotiating deals with bookstores to marketing Himanshu does it all, and Afroz Mohiuddin, the all rounder. Afroz manages the mobile app of KBookSearch, and handles the content on the social properties, acts as a spokesman and does product management.

The core team was formed as a logical extension of the days of the members at IIT Kanpur, where the three of them did almost all the courses projects/exams together. Himanshu and Kaipa even did their Masters Thesis (something that is almost always individual) together! All three have different skill-sets and complement each other.

KBookSearch gets about a 1000 page hits daily. They have managed to achieve the break-even with respect to KBookSearch. They generate revenue only by referral links, i.e. when someone uses their site and actually buys a book from the book store. They have avoided falling into the online ads trap as they believe in keeping the user interface very neat and to the point.

As they want to project KBookSearch as a complete product, they have even included a blog, where they keep posting interesting snippets on social properties and an android app that comes very handy while you’re in a bookstore and want to check the price of the same book online.

On a concluding note, Kartik adds, “The major challenge ahead of us is marketing our product, in terms of introducing the product to the public since we are really convinced that they will love it and it will really save them money.”

Check out KBookSearch for comparing book prices! Other player in the same field includes ThisYaThat.( LowPrice - mobile app)

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