Reading habits never die. It's just that people do not get to see any books,"says Sunder Nookala. "They only come across them in airports or on pavements."That realisation made Nookala and his friends Krishnan Madhabushi, Prashant John and Mithesh Damania launch a corporate library service. The four IIM-Ahmedabad alumni decided to launch a company that would help readers get their hands on any book under the sun.

They called the company Kwench, an allusion to meeting the thirst for reading. All a reader needed to do was ask and Kwench would deliver the book he wanted. The idea was simple: if the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed will go to the mountain. Nookala became the CEO of this on-demand library.

Starting with just Rs. 36 lakh pooled in by friends and family, the four friends got the ball rolling. They decided to launch operations in Mumbai first and bought 3,500 books, which were stored in a rented warehouse. Simultaneously, they started making cold calls to rope in corporate clients.

The Rs. 36 lakh ran low, but Kwench found a saviour in the Indian Angel Network. "Kwench built a unique delivery platform combining technology and logistics to bring books and other learning aids to Indian corporates. We liked the business model since it has the potential for geographic scalability,"says Shankar Maruwada of Indian Angel Network, which invested an undisclosed amount in the start-up in March 2009. He is one of the two people from the VC fund on the Kwench board.

It took a while for Kwench to get going. The fact is, many working folks&mdashKwench's target audience&mdashsimply do not have the time to read books as much of their day gets taken up by work. And, in Mumbai, there is, of course, the interminably long commute between home, the office and back. The little time left over, if any, is spent with the family, watching TV, or finishing more work on the Internet.


But, says Nookala, 34, many actually make the time to dive between the covers of a book. "There are crazy Tintin fans among CEOs and CFOs". And that discovery has helped Kwench make a business out of reading. Since its launch in June 2008, it has inked deals with 32 corporate clients, including Yes Bank, Vodafone, Tata AIG, Ogilvy and Wipro for library services. Employees of these companies log on to Kwench's website and order books online. Within 24 hours, Kwench's delivery boys, dressed in smart blue uniforms, deliver them&mdashat the employee's desk or at his home.
Today, apart from Mumbai, the on-demand library offers services in Pune and Delhi-NCR, as well. And it has 11,000 titles to choose from.

These books cover 40 categories ranging from healthcare and ayurvedic remedies to self-help books, literature, management and philosophy.

PROFESSIONAL SHOW

It helped that all four in the group have tons of professional experience behind them, having worked in global companies in the areas of finance, consulting, supply chain and marketing. So, while the enterprise resulted from gut-feel, it took shape from a fairly measured view of the world. Still, to validate their idea, the four friends decided to have some reality checks before setting sail. With the help of their batchmates at IIM-A, they conducted a survey on the reading habits of employees. The results were encouraging.
The team met CEOs, CFOs and HR heads of different companies they knew, and discussed their plans with them. The business model obviously has something for the corporates. Apart from building the knowledge base of their employees, it offered them another way to show they cared.

Why Kwench? Though many big corporate houses have their own libraries, Nookala says they are "not well-maintained". Outsourcing their academic and library requirements to Kwench make sense as it saves them the operational hassle. "For us, it was an opportunity to help our teams widen their horizons,"says Gautam Bhushan, Head of Learning and Development, WNS.

Nookala fondly remembers the day Tata AIG became a client. "It was fantastic. We had 550 orders the very first day."As Tata AIG's Learning Head, (he is now with PricewaterhouseCoopers), Shom Suvro Chatterjee was involved with roping in Kwench. "We were keen to foster the habit of reading among employees,"he recalls.
But getting big clients was not easy. In the months following its launch, Kwench managed to rope in just two clients, Yes Bank and WNS. Worse was to follow as the world slid into a recession.

"Those were the worst days,"says Nookala, shaking his head at the memory. "We had left our jobs and were stuck at home. Every day we were making desperate calls. It lasted till February. From then on, orders started trickling in."
Once they had some big names in the bag, it was a little easier to convince others. But figuring out what people wanted to read, keeping stocks updated and maintaining an efficient supply-chain was difficult. Most of the distributors in the country still follow primitive methods. Nookala is hopeful that things will improve once they move on to a better technology platform.

Kwench's proprietary software runs inventory modules and makes intelligent recommendations based on the reading habits of people. The tough days during the recession were used to put in place such technological infrastructure, says Nookala. The company hosts a meeting with users on a quarterly basis for recommendations and suggestions. And though Kwench essentially positions itself as a library, people can also buy and gift books through its website. For borrowers, an attractive feature is the 'no late fee' policy.

It has also tied up with the Harvard Business Review School of Publishing and Amar Chitra Katha Group for the distribution of audio books. There are no half measures for the Kwench promoters. "We want to be India's Amazon,"says Nookala. 

-Outlook Business