One-stop Shop for Your Academic Needs An increasing majority of schools, colleges, institutes and various educational institutions have begun adopting online educational content in the form of e-bookstores and e-libraries for their students. Certainly, e-books have come a long way. In that context, we can’t ignore STUDYeBUDDY (SeB) promoted by Nizam Ahmed, who claims it is the first and largest e-book platform in India for academic books. “We have signed a deal with 50 publishers for 7,000 e-books. We plan to tie up with 40 more publishers and upload 20,000 more. By the end of March, SeB will have 100 publishers and 50,000 educational ebooks. This will make us the largest Indian educational e-bookstore.” “We provide text, references, supplementary reading and books that make good reading, to schools, colleges, universities and corporates. We also have demand-driven customised class-wise digital library packages for institutes and retail users who make online purchases,” says Ahmed. The segments SeB concentrates on include K-12 (International Baccalaureate, Indian Certificate of Secondary Education, Central Board of Secondary Education and International General Certificate of Secondary Education boards) and medical, engineering, management test material. SeB, launched in January, offers a 30-50 per cent discount on access to the institutional digital library. SeB’s USP Keeping in mind the internet bandwidth problem in India, SeB has been designed in such a way that “once you download the books using the apps, you needn’t connect to the net to access them.” Other advantages include easy payment, storage options and simple downloadable apps. The content can be viewed in ePub format and is accessible on various platforms including smartphones, tablets and other internet-enabled devices. “Because of our links with DiTech, our parent company, we have proximity to top publishers and promoters who come with a decade of experience in the industry and our sales force boasts of veterans from the publishing world for institutional sales, our strength lies in creating customised packages as per each institute’s requirements. We have a tested platform with strong Digital Rights Management control, support for retail and B2B and, lastly, our focus is only on educational e-books,” says Ahmed. The 43-year-old, who holds an MBA in marketing, says working with international publishers for more than 15 years and participating in international book exhibitions gave shape to SeB. The gap between demand and supply and the availability of very few e-books in the Indian market spurred him to work harder. What next “By the end of the year, we hope to have content from the world’s top 30 publishers and a collection of one lakh e-books. The Indian marketplace is unique; consumer behaviour and consumption habits differ within states, territories and cities. We intend to capitalise on the untapped potential in the educational e-bookstore space,” he says. SeB aspires to branch out to other South Asian countries too. For details on SeB products, visit studyebuddy.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 05:28:21 +0000
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