Pustak is a new, online Indian bookstore, which claims to have about 12 million listings in its catalog. While this market does not have any one dominant player yet, Pustak does seem to have a few points that work in its favor.
For starters, they claim to have the largest database of titles. Secondly, they also provide free shipping from US to India for books that might have to be sourced from the US. Finally, Pustak has a strong management team. The founder, Anand Rao, was in charge of Amazon’s India strategy. Bharat Vijay, one of the company advisors, was the founding MD of Yahoo India and Amazon India.
One of the sites biggest negatives is that the site lacks a good design – UI, and appears pretty amateurish. Another nag is that the site doesnt seem to provide any expedited shipping feature, even for an extra cost. So, say if you’re eager to get your hands on Nandan Nilekani’s latest book, you still have to wait for 4-6 weeks of delivery time – which may not be acceptable to hard core book lovers.
If you have tried out Pustak, do leave a comment and share with us your experiences. FlipKart is another player in this field.
I tried out the site and it just doesn’t work. Try adding a book to shopping cart or try clicking on book titles after a search. Results in error. If this is an official launch it is a very poor one.
The price of latest book ‘Imaging India’ by Nandan Nilekani is also too high, almost double the price I purchased from NBCIndia.com. May be it is US version, and it takes 4-6 weeks to ship from US/ other foriegn country. The India edition just costs you Rs 699. And about pustak.com, yes UI is very bad, unless you know the name of the book/ ISBN number you cannot purchase the book.
any online websie that will take 4-6 wks to deliver will not be very popular. Also in india, we buy stuff cheap on the roadside, there is no craving to get that hardcover asap.
Hi Everyone,
We’re working on a couple of things that will definitely make us more competitive:
a) We’re adding Indian Edition tiltes to our database soon.
b) We’ll be lowering our delivery times, drastically.
That being said, Pustak is the best source of imported books in India. We offer the same rates that are mentioned on international websites, but the biggest differentiator is that we don’t charge the $10 to $15 international shipping costs in India. That translates into huge savings for our customers.
Sincerely,
Rahul
I am the author of Knowledge is power which was released on the 8th of December 2009.
For further information please log on to my website:www.knowledgequizbook.com.
Fifty cents from every copy sold goes to Variety the children’s charity.
My very own quotation:Exercise your brain and make dementia your foe not your friend.
I hope you would be willing to allow me, a new author to have my book sold on your online bookstore. I am enrolled with the book returnability programme with Ingram.
Thank you and looking forward to your reply.
Dear Sir,
I have to purchase some books, please check their availability to u, and send me a quotation(including courier charges) along with ur account number of some Indian bank, the books are:-
1. “Elements of Data Compression”
by Adam Drozdek.
2. “Multimedia Communications: Protocols and Application”
by Franklin F. Kuo.
3. “Audio Signal Processing For next generation Multimedia Communication system” of Springer publication.
4. “Programming 16-Bit PIC Microcontrollers in C: learning to fly PIC 24”
by LUCIO Di Jasio.
5. “Programming 32-Bit Microcontroller in C: Exploring the PIC 32”
by LUCIO Di Jasio.
6. “Intelligent Sensor Design Using the Microchip ds PIC”
by Creed Huddleston.
7. “Linux Appliance Design: A hands-on Guide to building Linux Appliances”
by Bob Smith.
8. “Embedded Linux system Design and Development”
by P.Raghavan.
9. “Building Embedded Linux System”
by Karim Yaghmour.
10. “Advanced PIC Micro-controller Projects in C: From USB to RTOS with PIC 18F Series”
Thanking u & Eagerly waiting for ur reply,
Bhogesh kumar
Mob no: 9771990411.
From: Dhanbad, jharkhand.
Hey man ! I am a fan of Indian books for more than 2 years now and I was looking for a website that provides cheap rates of latest titles by Indian authors. Well I tried out this site and it’s a complete fail. It also have other website problem’s like if try adding a book to shopping cart on book titles after your search. It shows error as a result.
My very own quotation:Exercise your brain and make dementia your foe not your friend.
I hope you would be willing to allow me, a new author to have my book sold on your online bookstore. I am enrolled with the book returnability programme with Ingram.
Thank you and looking forward to your reply.