This duo delivers books to your doorstep along with reducing the carbon footprint
Books are a uniquely portable magic. The joy of reading and owning books is a feeling like no other. Buying books can be a pricey affair. A lending library is the best option, but many a time a library may not stock books of different genres and these libraries are not always accessible to all. That’s where the idea behind ‘The Booktique Goa’ was born.
The brainchild of Elijah D’Souza who roped in his friend Emmanuel Souza, with the idea of a mobile library, The Booktique Goa (based in Anjuna) involved setting up a website with a list of books, and after people selecting their books, hand delivering it personally to them.
Elijah, a student of Bachelors in Agriculture at Don Bosco College, Quepem and Emmanuel, a student of Mechanical Engineering at Goa College of Engineering, are both final year students and have found the time to spread the joy of reading amongst book lovers.
Elijah narrates on how they began. “Basically I had lots of books. I would buy books online, read them once and then never ever read them again. So I thought of opening a little library or a reading lounge and it was always on my mind about starting a library. We started in December 2018 and I had discussed this with Emmanuel a number of times. One day, we sat down and spoke about it and initially we only thought of delivering the books.”
Emmanuel adds, “At first we thought of dropping the books at a pre-decided location say at some store in the village or a small café in a city. We had decided of hand delivering and then letting the person drop it off and us collecting the books from there. But then that would still become inconvenient for the customer”
But thanks to Elijah who is an endurance cyclist, they were able to come up with the bright idea of delivering the books themselves. Elijah says,” I have cycled 600 kilometres in 39 hours, 45 minutes which is my personal record. We are in college, we have the time, plus it’s a fitness motivation.”
Emmanuel also adds that it was the idea of bringing books back in vogue that inspired them to start. “Everyone is on their phones these days and it’s refreshing to see someone reading a book.” He says that there are many people who still love the experience of holding a book in their hand, opening the book, turning the pages and finally completing the book.
Elijah then talks about their pricing policy. “We had a plan in place, so we thought why not make it super affordable? We first started with Rs 20/- a week and then we increased the price. The first and second week it is Rs 30/- and then the third week it is Rs 40/-. Plus we have a deposit of Rs 100/- which is refundable when the customer returns the book.”
Elijah says that they literally re-engineered the whole thing. “There’s no brick and mortar store, we have free pickups and delivery and that fascinated everyone.” At first they had a few customers and then as word spread by mouth, they began getting more customers every single day. Emmanuel adds, “There are a lot of people coming to know about us and its moving at a very fast pace.”
They stress on the fact that they are eco-friendly what with wrapping the books in old newspapers and delivering the books on cycle also helps reduce the carbon footprint. As of now, they deliver only in North Goa. Emmanuel and Elijah both live in the north and it becomes difficult to deliver in the south given the distance. “We first thought of having a delivery person in the south but then the cost factor rises,” says Emmanuel.
Plus, they had thought about collaborating with someone in the south many times over, but it was just not feasible. Elijah also mentions that they would prefer to stick to the same model. “We would need an endurance cyclist. There are about 30 endurance cyclists in Goa and almost all of them are working. So that bit would be difficult. Emmanuel is very confident that Elijah can cycle to the south to deliver and pick up the books. But then it wouldn’t be possible to travel to the south on a regular basis and the books would remain with the customer for a longer duration of time which would deprive other customers who want to read the same books.
Elijah then elaborates on their website which has a list of books available with them. “Previously we had a PDF page with a list of books and customers had to go through the whole list which was very tedious and time consuming. Couple of months back we created a website and a licensed app. Now it’s so much easier and its user friendly, too. Customers can just log-in and books are categorized on the basis of their authors, titles, genres along with a short description of the books.” This has made the process so much easier, according to both, Emmanuel and Elijah and the customers, as well. Emmanuel mentions that it’s much easier to know when another customer has borrowed a book. “At first, if one customer wanted the same book which another customer had, that customer would be put on the wait list. Now with the app, if someone has borrowed a book, it doesn’t show on the app at all. It helps keep a track of the books taken, for how long they are with a customer and when they are due to be returned”. The only constraints they face is during the monsoons, when they had to schedule their pick up and deliveries during short, dry spells. Elijah says, “It wasn’t as systematic and timely as it is during the other months of the year, but we somehow managed.”
Most of the books they have are second hand books, books donated by people and some from their collection.
Regarding their future plans, they say they plan to have a brick-and-mortar store someday. “It’s all about spreading the joy of reading and the seeing our customers satisfied after reading a great book,” they say with a smile
