I started Information Madness about 8-9 months back when I actually started following the latest Indian internet trend. So far I have noticed that the startups are giving products which are clones of "Whats hot in the market". Whether its DesiMartini.com, MeraSnap.com or AskLaila.com.
Today I came across FlipKart.com, a new Indian startup for buying books online in India. Well again the concept is not new but I haven't seen any startup in this niche for the last couple of years until I searched today about the online book store in India. I was surprsied that as always, we have plenty of websites that provides online book buying in India.
Recently I wrote about Yulop.com - Bangaluru, a startup based off of Bangaluru which also provides online book store but thats only for Kannada books. There is Rediff Books store, Sify shopping for books, NBCIndia.com, BalajiBooks.com, firstandsecond.com etc etc etc. And the funny thing is all these online book stores claims that they are the biggest/number one online book stores for India.
What makes FlipKart.com different from others is the easy to use interface and they have put it on steroids by offering low prices, free shipping and an intuitive interface to help you search for all your favorite books and buy book online. The books categories are Tags based. You can search for books by author, book name or ISBN. The site is pretty simple to use.
On the side note, I was talking to one of my friend who works in Amazon.com and we touched the topic of Amazon's foray into India. I believe that Amazon.com which already has its online presence in India by Amazon.co.in, soon will start its e-commerce operations in India and that would give these startups a stiff competition. On the contrary, companies like Amazon might buy well established startups. So we will see what happens.
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2009-10-01 00:24:38 | Vikas - About Amazon's plansAmazon does not have an India-dedicated site, it just ships items here, which might cost a lot due to heavy shipping charges. Further, it might not be able to setup shop pretty soon as well because of the restricting FDI laws and the protection that the publishing industry receives under small-scale industry.
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2009-10-02 14:06:34 | Information Madness - true@Vikas, I agree with you on that.. but I think Amazon should jump right into the indian market now.. don't you think it is a high time to have some international player in this niche?
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2009-02-26 15:36:06 | Rahul Singh - Vanishbooks.comI recently came across www.vanishbooks.com, an online bookstore which as far as i know is the only online bookstore in India to offer discounts and free shipping. Their services are excellent, I have already bought a dozens of books from them.
The best thing I liked was that they accepted Debit card which I feel others dont accept. I feel the answer for amazon.com of india is on the way. GREAT GOING GUYS !!!!!
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