Dial-a-Book is a Delhi-based start-up founded by brothers Mayank and Tarang Dhingra. Tarang, 25, is a final-year student at the University of Delhi. Mayank, 27, is a software engineer who left a corporate job at Fidelity International in 2005 to work for a string of tech start-ups—from SlideShare, an online presentation hosting service, to MPower Mobile, which works with mobile payments. In 2008, before the Twitter bandwagon bulldozed its way across the country’s Internet landscape, he experimented with creating a Twitter-like service for India called Kwippy—which Mayank called a “conversational platform”. The site folded in mid-2009, and subsequent dabbling in ideas on what to do next led to Dial-a-Book.
Eureka moment
“We were trying to make ordering books as simple as ordering burgers or pizza,” says Mayank, of the initial idea. “Most of us are not very comfortable with e-commerce, and giving out our credit card information online.” His solution was to combine cash on delivery with fast, personalized service—delivering books ordered through the phone within 48 hours. He conducted a “brief, unscientific” survey on Twitter, where he has around 1,381 followers, to find out if there could be a market for this. “I found out that people who buy books value convenience, and not just price—and what could be more convenient than a simple phone call or SMS?”
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