1 Month of rentnread.in, TRHs who set me up, experiences and Lessons learned

Hello RHs, hope you all had as awesome week as i had. This is my second post on the portal. This time I am gonna talk about my journey of a month and lessons i learned. Last time when I posted “Things to keep in mind for a book rental start up?” (read EARLIER POST here) i got some really helpful replies.

Those who don’t know why I thought of rentnread.in its something like this. When I was told to apply for MBA, I looked for study material online which along with coaching class costed me a BOMB plus some friends asked me if I could fetch them some books which they couldn’t find (as I had been roaming to different parts of India.). I did some research, and boom, I got started. Soon I realised that textbooks work only in semester so I introduced renting literature books. I don’t think any online portal does that, If any let me know.

Learnings:

• Essential Details – Whenever people check a site, essential details should be made available on the screen. I launched the site. There was a line which said REGISTER NOW. Darshan asked REGISTER HOW.  That made me design Entry Strategy.

• Entry Strategy – I had fb, I had mail IDs of people but how do I get people to register? As the site is not Live yet, how do they make payment and how do they fill in their details?  So I decided the approach which we had taken when I was working for events with Channel V. I appointed Campus Ambassadors in two colleges to check how does it work and hey, it got me some positive response.

• Customer is NOT always RIGHT –  Just like any other start up, I first gave focus on customer satisfaction. We first delivered books and then took the MRP as security of the book. Our  client in Mumbai confirmed an order which was costing a big sum. We sent confirmation mails along with prices. The customer agreed to pay and we went ahead with our customer service idea. Upon delivery customer refused to take a book saying as it was highly priced, she wanted to cancel the order. We denied and sent her the confirmation mail sent by her and finally the customer agreed to pay. We immediately changed the policy also  order and cancellation policies then were changed. If we had to agree to the customer, it might have had a positive effect on customer but a -ve on company for Long run.(Check Classic Flipkart example here)

• Exit Strategy is criminal – Earlier I had decided to stock the books, This meant investment, which meant a VC to invest and so make presentations for them. When I saw presentations of other people online ,I saw people talking of EXIT strategy more often than entry so I had included that as well in my list only to realize you don’t make exit strategy until you are well known and until you really decide to exit.

Challenges – Like all business, mine also faced a few challenges. Three major were 

1. Seniors – In textbook sector, seniors sell their books to junior at half rates( sometimes 75-80% rates). Till I don’t beat their prices, I don’t stand a chance to be there.
2. Distributors –  As books are costly, we have decided to adapt a zero inventory model.Procure as per demand and supply. I have mailed some distributors and waiting for their response. If I get a source then I will be easily be able to outsell the seniors.
3. Delivery and reverse Transit –  There won’t be an issue with textbooks as I have to deliver that to colleges just once a semester but novels are gonna be a tough job. Not a single logistics company provides reverse transit of the goods.

Next in the list

• Adding a Co-founder, content writer to my team. (If any RH is interested do let me know.)
• Tie-up with more college clubs, distributors. 

If I’m missing something , please let me know.

 And now there are 5 people I need to THANK particularly . Alok, Asha, Sarvesh, Saurabh, and Wikirodinhood- Darshan bhai. I will tell why in the course of this post.

• I needed some EXPERT advise. Was following ALOK on twitter and ended up here. So I need to thank Captain Alok for starting therodinhoods.wpengine.com
• Asha, the nurturer of rodinhoods.com, who instantly connected and helped me post in ASK. Also I had a great brainstorming session with Asha on Saturday. Thanks so much.
• Darshan Bhambiru the wikiRodinhood told me the flaws about my site. Sirji, site is now under redevelopment. All your points are being sent to developers and they are working on it.
• While I was working i realized i needed privacy policy and also someone who would examine the membership plans an end user, so Mr. reader by choice and Lawyer by Profession Sarvesh R did that. He also guided me regarding the company set-up and sole proprietorship.  
• Saurabh Patil – Based in the US of A, Saurabh called me up and discussed the idea , pros and cons for about an hour and offered  me any help I needed. 

Those who don’t know my background I m a hardcore Gujju settled in Goa. I m a Bachelor in comp apps but I love doing events. Infact I  still love to do events in my spare time from rentnread. I have worked with channel V in events and I also worked in chain of hotels as a reservation manager before i started rentnread.in

Kindly drop in your suggestions and Ideas. You can reach me on parixit@rentnread.in

With Best Regards ,Parixit Thakkar, Founder , rentnread.in

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