Network18 owned HomeShop18 has launched its online book store, offering books across several categories including educational, business, fiction, non-fiction, humor, and entrepreneurship among others. It claims to offer 10 million book titles across 100 categories. It also intends to add more categories to its catalogue in the future. The move was expected following HomeShop18’s acquisition of On-Graph’s online books retailer CoinJoos. Nitin Gupta, co-founder of On-Graph Technologies, had joined Homeshop18 as the head of the books category.
At the time of writing this post, the site is offering a discount in the range of 23%-50% on all of its books. Users can browse books by authors in addition to browsing by categories and by the ‘most popular’ section. Books can be purchased via online payment, cheque, demand draft, gift cards and cash on delivery.
Anupam adds: HomeShop18 has also introduced an Active Books service on DTH operator, Dish TV. The service offers a catalogue of discounted books and best sellers, which can be browsed on the TV. Books can be ordered over the phone. Although, the company’s teleshopping channel is also live, this is an interesting channel to reach out to users, owing to its interactive approach.
Apart from Flipkart, HomeShop 18 will compete with InfiBeam in the online books space. Also, it would be interesting to see how the business shapes up specially when Amazon launches its independent India operations.
Other product offerings from HomeShop 18 include electronic items such as camera, DVD players, iPod, computers and others along with jewelry, apparels, home decor products, kitchen appliances and toys. The company recorded revenues of Rs. 21.3 crore for the quarter ending December 2011, a growth of 28% over the corresponding quarter last year on a proforma basis. Orders executed during the quarter grew by over 25% over the last quarter and 101% Year on Year.
