Mumbai-based start-up BucketBolt established in 2011 is a unique online service that enables students to buy low-priced, used textbooks as well as earn money by selling old/unused books. Currently a team of 12, it was founded by four aspiring entrepreneurs during their final year of engineering.
Milestones
Within two years, it has sold 60,000 books and has served more than 10000 different customers. BucketBolt operates only in Maharashtra so far, but there are plans to expand to 4 other cities in next 24 months and 10 more cities in the next 24 months. The site shows New Books, Used Books and Sell Books sections. BucketBolt is the result of the huge gap that lies in current offerings by e-commerce players in India and the exact need of students.
The Concept
The start-up aims at making the entire process of searching, buying and selling new and used books easy, affordable and accessible to students with a few clicks. Students have to simply go to the site, head to any one of these sections depending upon their needs – New Books, Old Books and Sell Books – to buy or sell a book.
The site delivers books to your doorstep and also has a cash on delivery option. In case you are selling a book, you can schedule the date of pick up and mode of receiving the money too. BucketBolt offers a buyback policy and 50-60 percent of the money is returned after a year on the purchase price of the book. A single book can be usually reused at least four times. So, with recycling they create much more value out of the same book.
Starting from law, business management, CA, engineering, MBBS, nursing, BDS, overseas examination prep books to Mumbai University books, religious books, social sciences etc. all are bought and sold through the website. Currently there are more than 100,000 SKUs of academic textbooks on the website along with data on local university based publishers for any other textbooks that maybe needed. Accelerated at GSF in October last year, BucketBolt has received a seed round of funding.
Emerging Market Background Factors
Unlike developed countries, e-commerce is a relatively new industry in India and recently the buying and selling of product or service over internet has started picking up. Based on the market research, India is going to be the fastest growing e-commerce market in Asia-Pacific.
- The India e-commerce market stood at USD 16 Billion in 2013
- Till March 2014, there has seen 10 transactions worth $288 million (around Rs.1,785 crore)
- The number of internet users in India is 243 million in 2013.
Currently, shoppers in metropolitan India are driving e-commerce. And although spending per online buyer remains low, some 59% of online consumers in metropolitan India already make purchases online at least monthly.
Segmentation of the Market
Indian e-commerce market can be broadly categorized into travel and e-retailing. The e-retailing is expected to grow four times faster than online travel market. More online buyers are comfortable in buying books online as compared to booking tickets online.
Target market
Age – Teens, adults; Occupation – Students
Marketing Strategies
First Mover – Advantages and Disadvantages
Bucketbolt has a first mover advantage and disadvantage in Indian e-commerce market. They had to break the mind-set of the Indian consumer and set the new trend of purchasing books online, assure security of the payment etc.
Bucketbolt has adopted the customer first strategy by offering some of the best prices and a completely hassle-free user experience via seamless and convenient process, prompt and free door-to-door shipping, low prices, cash on delivery, replacement guarantee etc. In the initial days, they have used word of mouth and customer convenience and satisfaction as the brand building strategy and later exploited social media to build the brand.
Word of mouth
To attract students in the early days they started campaigns to appointing Student Brand Managers and build book banks in various colleges. These interns and brand managers helped spread the word around. Currently they have 100-plus brand managers across 25-plus colleges in the country and 8 book banks In Mumbai. Another 25 book banks will be opened this year across the country to help streamline their logistics and increase penetration within the colleges.
Below The Line (BTL) activities
Bucketbolt also sponsors many promotional activities, cultural festivals and events for students across colleges. On Facebook, they have two mascots Eyn and Styn to engage with their community on the site. Despite making negligible spends on paid marketing; the portal has seen good traction of more than 30,000 visitors on a monthly basis. The site on an average processes around 30-35 orders are each day and ships 120-150 books per day.
Social Media Campaigns
Bucketbolt has innovatively managed to use its strong online user-base by deploying social media as an active and the primary medium for branding. The brand took the feedback from the social media to tweak and fine-tune their strategies. The blogs, Facebook, twitter and other custom sites are used to create the buzz online. They integrated social media like Facebook and Twitter in the website so that even on the social media platform customers can connect with each other.
Search engine optimization (SEO) techniques
As Bucketbolt is trying to expand in other product categories e-commerce market, they are actively optimizing the search engine and bidding for online advertisement as per their strategy to extend the brand. On their website, they mention text like free e-book/ pdf format download which would always get Bucketbolt among the top results.
Building customer loyalty
Bucketbolt focuses on mass online marketing but uses customer history to give a more personalized experience. We have developed a system where a students who has bought books online from Bucketbolt can also sell the book online. While selling his bought books a student gets 2 options whether to get Cash back on returning the books OR to get the amount credited into his Bucketbolt account for future buying of books. Also students who has not bought books from Bucketbolt can sell the book to us and in return they get Bucketbolt credit worth the amount of their book sale.
Competitor Analysis
- Uread.com
- Infibeam.com
- Snapdeal.com
- Simplybooks.in
- Bookadda.com
- Dial-a-book
- Junglee
- Landmarkonthenet.com
- Infibeam.com
Their biggest competitors are offline brick & mortar stores who have been dealing in used books since ages. So their attempt is to give a better experience to students enabled through technology.
By Tarun Gupta
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