Bookchor.com was conceptualised in 2015 from a very genuine thought –– to get every nook and corner of the country to start reading. “We wanted to inculcate a love for reading habits among Indians. There were two deterrents –– books were expensive and rare books were so hard to find. We wanted to put an end to that,” said co-founder of Bookchor.com, Vidyut Sharma. Based out of Haryana, they sell pre-loved books online pan-India, making them available at the click of a button. Think old, rare books in impeccable condition but pre-loved by a previous reader who must have shared the same feelings you would experience while reading it.
From April 27 to May 1, Bookchor.com took over Ice Skating Rink beside Modern High School for Girls to hold a Lock the Box event for Kolkata’s enthusiastic reading crowd. Their Lock the Box event debuted in Delhi in 2017 in Rajourie Garden. Taking a cue from the concept of selling books by the kilos, which is prevalent in some cities in India, Sharma thought of creating three differently sized boxes. One could fill a box with as many books as they could fit and take the box home for a fixed price.
The event was a resounding success in terms of footfalls and sales but Bookchor.com still had much to learn from the event. Their next event happened in Pune and it was a success in terms of readers as well as the seller who made profits from the sales. Since then, there has been no looking back. “We have done over 38 events and even covered Tier-II cities like Bhopal, Indore, Nagpur and Surat, other than cities like Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkataof course. We love coming back to Kolkata because in the class of readers, Kolkata is like the class monitor! The readership here is unbeatable. Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore are our favourite cities of readers, to be honest,” said Sharma.
Their Kolkata event also had Akshat Gupta, author of The Hidden Hindu, signing books and interacting with buyers. However, buyers don’t have to wait for the next Lock the Box event in the city to grab some of their favourite titles. Sharma tells us that Lock the Box concept has now been introduced online on their website as well. Fill your box, place your order and your set of pre-loved books will arrive at your doorstep. There are strict rules in place when it comes to the books curated on the website –– no pirated copies, no workbooks and no school-specific textbooks are sold. They came to Kolkata with a repository of over 100,000 books and are going back with very few in hand.
Post-pandemic, a new problem was identified by the Bookchor team –– people do not have a place to sell their pre-loved books. So to be able to give readers a scope to sell theirs, Bookchor has now come up with an app. Only available on PlayStore as of now, Dump is the app that allows anybody to sell their old books to make space for new ones of course. And again, the team will have the books picked up from your doorstep. Bookchor.com is all set to go to Chennai on May 6 and then Hyderabad soon after. We sure can’t wait for them to come back to Kolkata, but till then, there is always online retail therapy.