Executive Summary

Bookshome.in is an online student marketplace that offers college students a platform for purchase, sale and trading of college course books. It also allows students to organize and participate in auctions, post and respond to classified advertisements, evaluate teachers, and purchase other essentials needed for college. Bookshome.in s target market includes 1.5 million students in India's 18000 colleges and universities who spend approx1100 crore annually.

1.1 company description1.

1.2 Mission - To provide a place where student easily find and sell their books without exploitation. 1.3 Vision To become a number one site in India in student college text book trade. 1.4 Bookshome.in s goal is to offer college students a cost effective and exceptional source for college related products, services and information. In order to achieve its mission and vision, bookshome.in abides by the following philosophies: Product is at the forefront of everything. Treat customers as your employers. Stay away from greed. Keep employees contented.

Bookshome.in will allow students to purchase, sell, and trade new and second-hand course books directly over the internet, without having to go to the campus bookstores. Through this method of selling books online, book sellers can obtain more money than any book store would be willing to pay for a used book, at the same time buyers will need to pay less than what a regular book store may charge. In addition, students can sell class notes, old test papers, laptops, dormitory accessories, pre-used CDs, coaching services and numerous other products and services via an online student marketplace. Additionally, bookshome.in will also offer classifieds, instructor assessment, blogs, and expert content. Bookshome.in aims to establish itself as a foremost online student-to-student marketplace by providing wide-ranging market-specific know-how with state of the art Internet technology to

generate profits while building a win-win platform for students. Bookshome.in will attain market authority by using extensive domain understanding, grass root marketing strategy, brilliant management lineup, and through strategic alliances, partnerships .

1.2 Market Potential

Book market in India is very fragmented one. According to a published study, Indian book market is a 3000 crore industry. College and school text book account almost half of it. Further used book market also has a big chunk in it. As mentioned previously, textbook market is monopolized one ,where players earn high margins while giving very little customer satisfaction services. Resale of books is extremely difficult as local merchants buy books at very low price and sell again on high margins. As student have no other alternative to find right book at right price, they have to depend on these retailers. So there is a need of transparent and genuine channel for cost efficient sale and purchase of books in the market which can be filled by bookshome.in

1.3 Opportunity Often college students in India face difficulties in finding their college textbooks. Textbooks market is monopolized by college, institution retailers. These retailers normally charge very high prices from student for new and old books. because of these students have to sell old books at a fraction of the actual purchase price of the book - as less as only 75% of the purchase prices. Bookstores earn 125% profits on re-sale of the same books, leaving the students at a huge loss. Online book store can offer students a convenient, economical way to buy textbooks and also makes re-selling books more profitable . As other avenues are very limited for students to buy books, There are presently no players that focus on college text book market dedicatedly. Big players in the book market focus on other segment of market.so bookshome.in will offer student the opportunity to find books at genuine price and students can sell their old books as well.

Start-up Requirements

Expenses ( Rs)

3. Product Summary
Bookshome.in will provide students a distinctive mix of products, services, and content unlike any other internet service provider. Bookshome.in will bring together people, products, services

and content for creation of an online student marketplace and retail website targeting 1.5 million students. Companys Unique Selling Proposition will be: Sale and purchase of all kind of college text book at a single place Links to leading online channels for comparison of price. Cost savings for student from heavy prices of monopolistic retailers.

Along with books student can sell important notes,research papers, can evaluate their teachers and sell student accessories like laptop etc. Classified related to student could be source of revenue as well.

3.1 Course Book Trading

Bookshome.in will offer students a platform for purchase, sale and trade of course books. It will allow students to post pictures of their books online, comment on the condition of the books, quote a price etc. Buyers will be able to search of books within their region or nationwide. A minor fee would be charged by the website for posting ads. Sample course book categories can include:

Finance & Accounting Business Management Computer Science Engineering Marketing Studies History & Culture Law Natural Science Political Science

3.2 Auctions
Bookshome.in will follow very closely the e-bay auction model to provide a book auction platform to student with features and functionalities like standard, reverse, multi item, dutch and blind auctions; flash buy and proxy bidding, at a minimal fee. Items that could be auctioned include:

Course books Class Notes Old Test papers

Used CDs & DVDs Computer Accessories Games Dorm Furnishing

3.3 Classifieds
Students will be allowed to post classified advertisements under various pre-defined categories at minimal charge (based on the duration for which the ad is posted). Students will be able to upload image, post Web links etc. Sample classified categories may include:

Course books Class Notes Tutoring Services Room Vacancies For Rent For Sale

3.4 Retail
Bookshome.in will sell following products with margins ranging from 10% to 50%:

Textbooks CDs & DVDs Computer Equipment Electronics Games Dorm Furnishings

3.5 Teacher Evaluations

As a value added service bookshome.in will allow students to evaluate and post reviews about teachers. This will encourage students to visit the website before each semester. Revenue for this page will be generated through the banner ads placed at top of the page.

3.6 Bloggers
Students will be encouraged to blog on popular topics. This service will be offered as a value added service to build a strong community and a loyal following for the website. Blog topics will include:

College Sports

Politics Entertainment Technology News

3.7 Future Products

As part of the future growth strategy, new offerings will be continuously explored: Brick & Mortar Locations Bookshome.in will explore opening retail outlets close to college campuses to complement its online stores. Employment Opportunities Bookshome.in will allow organizations to post local and national job postings on payment of minor fees. Apartment Finder Bookshome.in will offer apartment finder services for making it easy for students search for apartments. A fee will be charged for postings. Club & Organization Finder Bookshome.in will allow students to search for local and national club and organizations through the website. Targeted Content Bookshome.in will offer content on topics such as :

News Wine & Dine Weather What's Happening Sourcing Mainly bookshome.in will depend on university students for providing the course books, auction material, classified advertisements and teacher evaluations that will be posted on the website. Hence the marketing model of the website is vastly dependent on generating huge traffic, converting the traffic into loyal followers and customers, which in turn will generate a standing inventory for the website. To fulfill the retail requirements of its customers, bookshome.in will establish key relationships with local/regional retailers who will ship the retail requirements directly to the customers home. This will help bookshome.in to minimize its inventory costs. Student content specialists will be hired to generate interesting content for the blogs and other pages of the website. Hiring students will not only ensure that the content creation costs are kept to the minimum but also make sure that the topics generated are of interest to the student community. Critical relationships will be established with 3rd party vendors for content and other value added services. This model will ensure that bookshome.in will be able to offer an extended range of products and services while still focusing on its core business

elements- trading course books, hosting auctions, posting classifieds and facilitating teacher evaluations.

5.Target customer& Marketing Strategy

Bookshome.in will target 1.5 million college students in India as its customers. The chief aim behind its marketing program is to build brand equity and establish valuable business relationships. Both these factors are essential for any online retail business. The online student store will focus on increasing student traffic and usage of the website by adopting extensive promotion strategies. This in turn will help in maintaining an inventory of the products and services offered by the website. Once the company secures additional funding, it will start implementing advertising and promotional plans. The message and "brand" bookshome.in aims to establish with its target market is everything a student needs is just a click away". It will deploy a variety of marketing tools and programs to establish is brand image and customer base. , As most of the college student use internet, strategy to come top of the important search engine can be a excellent option. Affilation to important socialnetworking websites.

5.1 Strategic Alliances

Bookshome.in will establish strategic alliances and business relationships with major brick and mortar bookstores and merchandise manufacturers and resellers, content specialists, local businesses etc.

5.2 Promotion Strategy

Bookshome.in s major advertising and promotional aims and objectives include:

Customer acquisition and sales generation Acquiring a market leadership position Increasing brand equity and building a loyal customer base for the retailer Collecting market research and creating immediate and continuing marketing plans

Bookshome.in will attract customers through a ready mix of traditional and online advertising and marketing strategies to create a marketing campaign that reaches the grassroots. A major part of bookshome.in s customer acquisition program will be focused towards promoting themselves directly at local university campuses. Campus representatives Bookshome.in will hire student representatives at all college campuses who will be responsible for distribution of marketing material, acquiring target market lists, facilitating on campus marketing programs. Representatives will receive 1% of the sales generated from their respective college.

Relationships with key opinion leaders and administrative assistants Bookshome.in will target at developing relationships with firstly, the school administrator and the administrative assistant on campus, both of who have in-depth knowledge of student community and can act as key opinion makers and information for students on campus. Direct mail flyers Through the campus representatives, bookshome.in will distribute flyers to student lockers and mail slots before each semester ends as a reminder of its services before the beginning of the subsequent session. These flyers will be printed at a centrally located place and will be mailed to each school location to ensure consistency and volume discounts.
OPERATIONS Technology and Infrastructure Model The website will be designed keeping in focus the requirements of college student. Bookshome.in will be built using Microsoft technologies which will offer flexibility and scalability to accommodate more products and service offerings as the company plans to expand in future. Bookshome.in will, to begin with, deploy external web-hosting vendor to reduce the initial start-up expense. But within a couple of years, bookshome.in will shift to in-house hosting for better support and maintenance. The book exchange, auction, classified, and user administration software will be purchased from Xcent Software, Inc and it will be customized to meet bookshome.in 's present and future business needs. Infrastructure Model

Initially bookshome.in will host the site on external web hosting vendor/sites using Znetindia.com. Availability of the domain name has been checked and it is available. The basic web server client model for such an arrangement is as below.

Internet

Bookshome.in will take the services from Webrosoft Solutions Pvt Ltd, Ludhiana for building the site and administration. The same organization will be hired for routine changes/updates for bookshome.in. In addition to Web hosting and maintenance, Webrosoft will also provide site monitoring and statistical performance metrics that include uptime, page views, unique users, banner impressions, search keywords stats and link stats from other sites. Company will make a simple web site designed to welcome customers to our online store and provide basic information about bookhomes merchandise and the ordering and fulfillment process.company will

design, develop and maintain a fully functional dynamic web site , capable of managing the transaction process from initial customer contact through order processing; design and develop or purchase some tutorial aids (e.g. Accounting: double entry bookkeeping tutorial, marketable securities exercise, pooling vs. purchase quiz etc.);

, 1. make multimedia learning tools available for demo and sale. This web site will form the core of bookhomes business and will provide many of the cost advantages necessary to compete with traditional and Internet booksellers. Bookhomes will match other online book retailers and provide value added enhancements customized according to customer requirementsand leveraging customer relationships to differentiate the service and create switching costs for users. A database will store bookhomes product catalog and track customer and order data. Customers will be able to follow a logical progression, which begins when they select their product. The customer can review prices, abstracts of the books, and book reviews before deciding whether to add the book to their shopping cart . At checkout, the buyer will be asked for a customer ID number or, in the case of a first transaction, the customer will be asked to provide their billing and credit card information and a unique ID number will be issued to them. The site will note each book ordered and at checkout, display the list of books ordered and provide an order total. Once the customer enters a valid credit card and hits "deliever", the customer will receive a confirmation, and the order will be electronically sent to supply channel partners for processing. Security All transactions from the moment when a customer enters data about themselves will be conducted via a secure link from client browser to bookhomes server in order to safeguard valuable customer data and credit card information. Orders will automatically transmitted to suppliers for fulfillment via encrypted email. All of the technologies upon which the new web site is builtupon are mature and are currently being employed by dozens of other businesses from small start-up companies to Fortune 500 companies. Fulfillment logistics partner will receive an encrypted email each time a customer makes an order. Supplier employees will read it and process the order by picking the product, packing, and shipping it directly to the customer. The bookhomes web site, in conjunction with a partnering financial institution will be responsible for processing the credit card transaction. If somehow a bad credit card is received, the customer will be called and asked to supply another credit card.

SUPPLYCHAIN Supply and Value Chain It is the most critical part of company.to succed in market the whole process from taking order request to delievery hae to be efficient,reliable,accurate and a well experienced one The company will outsource its distribution to reputed courier company, logistics provider (only for books and material traded by company directly). These distributor channel will handle the distribution of all bookhomes.in products. These Logistics chhanel provides an in-place nationwide network of public warehousing and distribution centers for companies with a need for a high performance, yet flexible distribution infrastructure.

These Logistics chhanel offers the following benefits tobookhomes.in:

Nationwide facilities with networked communications capabilities. Standardized operating procedures in all locations.

Bookhomes.in plans to begin operations with some strategic warehouse(shareware housing) in order to keep inventory levels low as management gains more industry knowledge and increases its competencies in inventory management. Shared warehousing is also cost-effective, as company will pay only for the space and services it needs. Additionally, a comprehensive line-up of value-added services will allow us to outsource as much of our logistics operation as necessary. Shared warehousing is especially attractive to bookshome.in due to the ability to distribute goods from multiple locations as our market penetration and sales increase, as well as offer services to deal with our changing distribution needs. Logistic chhanel partner will receive, inventory, pick, pack, and ship all bookhomes products. This outsourcing will allow bookshome management to concentrate on our core competency and rest assured that the distribution of our products is in good hands.

The product orders will be electronically transferred to the appropriate publisher. Individual customer orders will be placed through the bookshome web site.. processed by the company database, and then electronically transferred to Logistics, where the order will be filled and delivered directly to the customer. Costs for logistics value added services are based on the volume of product that will be processed, as well as the type of services we utilize and the inventory levels that are stored. Initially, we will need only basic handling and packaging services. bookhomes will maintain its delievery targets by in consist touch with carriers and suppliers. In case of any link provided by the company for products,sellers will have to supply their inventories directly. but they are bound to deliever their products within time limit decided by the company.they must have their inventories ready always to deliever the products. Any kind of drip shipping is not allowed for sellers

Company will target 2 to 5 working days for delivery of material.

An efficient and a well integrated supply chain will add to the value to the company by providing speedy and accurate delivery . Revenue Model Bookshome.in will charge 10% of trading price of every book which is being traded on website.

There will be a flat discounted monthly rate for those who list over a specific number per month. A onetime application process fees to become the member on company (for sale and purchase) Advertising and banner ads will be used to generate revenue from content and other pages offering value added services COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS COMPETITION in early part , bookbank will experience significant competition from college bookstores. While these stores are geographically diverse and fragmented, they do possess many attractive characteristics. First, they have an on-campus access to the students they serve and typically have access to student information provided by college . Secondly, they have a physical presence on or near campus. Third, they offer a variety of products in addition to textbooks (supplies, computer software and equipment, magazines). While bookbank management recognizes these characteristics we believe that we can provide an attractive alternative for students (discussed in Products and Services section). Bookhome.in will also face competition from various on-line textbook providers. While these competitors focus mostly on non textbook segment sales and do not offer additional educational products that add value for students and faculty. After significant market research, management has discovered competitors that operate online textbook stores. Competitor Analysis Competitor Analysis Geogra phic Covera ge

Competit or

Products/Ser vice

Star ted

Strengt hs - Brand equity Capital raising - Portal agreem ents Primary ecomm erce provide r

Weakne sses

Amazon. com

United States and Europe

- Not educati on focused Limited textboo k selectio n

Books, Video, Music

199 7

Alibris.co

Mainly

Rare

Focuse

Not

ouside india

books,college books etc

199 8

niche market Strong in hard to find books

focused on class text book Cater outside india custom er mostly Unappe aling web design Limited schools Inefficie nt search capabili ty - no focus on text book

Bigwords .com

Outsid e india

College textbooks

199 8

Incenti ve progra ms - Book buybac k

Flipcart.c om

In india

Books

199 9

Progres sive player

Thare are other players like ebay,barnes&noble,half.com and rediffbooks,but all these cater book market outside india or donot focus on college text book section HOW THE COMPANY IS UNIQUE Being the first entrant in this segment will give a valuable edge to the company. Providing value to each buyer and seller in term of price Delivering best customer services Aggressive marketing strategies Ensuring a dedicated supply chain to focus on right tome delivery.

Financial analysis

Based on opportunities and requirements for bookshome.in , below mentioned financial projections have been determined: Generate profits by 7th month of operation. Bookshome.in will require preliminary seed capital and also continuous investment for some time. The initial seed investment will be used to acquire market and customers, set up software and develop website.

Setup cost bookhomes.in Various components of costs in bookshome.in are as follows 2 number of computers: 70000/- Rs

Domain name cost: 149/- Rs One time Website development charges to Webrosoft Pvt Ltd: 40000/-Rs Server hosting cost per yesr: 799/-Rs Information system out source service per month: 5000/-Rs(60000 yearly) Misllanious expense for firs year (marketing, office work etc) 40000/-Rs Total one year cost : 210948/-Rs BREAKEVEN FOR THE COMPANY Expected trading transactions and revenue per month as per the following table, break even is expected in 7th Month.

 Month 1 Month2 Month3 Month4 Month5 Month6 Month7 Month8 Month9 Month10 Month11 Month12

Transactions 175000 210000 255000 320000 410000 502000 600000 711000 815000 835000 900000 934000

Revenue@10% 17500 38500 64000 96000 137000 187200 247200 318300 399800 483300 573300 666700

As company will charge 10%of selling or buying volume and a one time application process fees of rs100/- per customer ,it is expexted to breakeven in even earlier that its 7th month of its operation after meeting its operation cost and initial set up cost.


Turnover, Cost and Revenue graphs for bookshome.in
1000000 900000 800000 700000 600000 500000 400000 300000 200000 100000 0
1 on th 2 on th 3 on th 4 on th 5 on th 6 on th 7 on th 8 on th 9 on th 10 on th 11 M on t on th 12 h

Transactions Revenue@10%

Rs

Months

SALES PROJECTION FOR NEXT THREE YEARS Online book market is expected to grow 15% to 20% yearly. So taking 15% growth rate the expected turn over for three years is as

Sales

9000000 8000000 7000000 6000000 5000000 4000000 3000000 2000000 1000000 Sales

0 YEAR 1 YEAR2 YEAR 3

YEAR 1 YEAR2 YEAR 3

6677000/7650000/8800000/-

Customer relationship Bookhomes.in will provide a toll free customer service number in business hours, to assist customers with web site usage and order tracking, and provide answer questions regarding our products. A full-time general administrator will be hired to watch the day-to-day operations of bookshome.in. This individual will be responsible for direct customer relationship via email and telephone, data management, document acquisition and verification, customer service, and any other duties as assigned.

10. Sustainability in the Long Run

The college text book market in India has unlimited potential, as India is a young country .in future The company will consolidate the complete booklists from universities and colleges on its customized web site. As a result, students will be able to search easily for their textbooks by concentration, course number or name, or professor and purchase their books without ever setting foot in their college bookstore. Bundled textbook packages will also be available for core curriculum programs, such as the first year of law or medical school. In addition, course syllabi will be posted next to each course listing for both student and faculty reviewIf bookhome.if company is able to provide value to customers; it is bound to have a long economic life. But as competition is bound to come, the company has to focus on other aspect of college market like career building, expert coaching facility, student counseling etc.

Internet
9. M
The accompanying table lists important milestones with dates and managers in charge. The milestone schedule also indicates our initial beta launch of the website at Georgia State University.

Milestones

Milestone

Start Date

End Date

Budget

Manager

Department

Business Concept & Planning

6/1/2003

7/15/2003

$0

GLO, KM, AP

Management

Beta Site Development

7/1/2003

10/1/2003

$0

GLO, KM

Web

Beta Site Launch

10/1/2003

10/2/2003

$0

GLO

Web

Beta Site Promotional Campaign

10/1/2003

2/15/2004

$0

GLO, KM, AP

Marketing

Beta Site Analysis

10/15/2003

2/28/2004

$0

GLO, KM, AP

Web & Marketing

Secure Funding for Phase 1 Launch 7/1/2004

7/30/2004

$0

GLO

Management

Phase 1 - Site Development

2/1/2004

8/15/2004

$0

GLO, KM

Web

Phase 1 - Launch

8/15/2004

8/17/2004

$0

GLO

Web

Phase 1 - Promotional Campaign

8/15/2004

10/1/2004

$0

GLO, KM, AP

Marketing

Secure Funding for Phase 2

10/1/2004

10/30/2004

$0

GLO

Management

Totals

$0