#44 Blinkit Book Store: What Does a 10-minute Delivery Timeline Mean for Local Bookstores?
Blinkit is now delivering books to our doorstep within 10 minutes. Is it just another Amazon, or could it be an opportunity to revive local bookstores?
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In June 2023, Blinkit launched the ‘Blinkit Book Store’ with a promise of delivering books to our doorstep within 10 minutes. While they rolled this service out in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore, their aim is to make this available in all the major cities across India. How does this change the book-buying process for Indian readers? And should local bookstores see this as an opportunity or a threat?
Blinkit (formerly known as Grofers) is a quick-commerce platform that delivers everything from groceries to Covid-testing kits. When Blinkit was acquired by Zomato in 2022, they reduced the timeline of 30-minute deliveries to ‘under 10 minutes’, perhaps inspired by Maggi’s 2-minute noodles and Domino’s 30-minute deliveries. This was also the year that they started delivering printouts, saving people the hassle of going to libraries or cyber cafes, or sneakily using their office printers.
But it was only in 2023 that they delved into the book industry.
In her announcement on LinkedIn, Surobhi Das of Blinkit mentioned the work that went behind this launch: “Conversations with publishing houses, authors and distributors to understand the industry, looking through lists of books and authors to figure out what assortment to keep/not to keep, understanding consumer journey when deciding to buy a book — this, and a lot more!”
The interface is quite similar to Amazon, with curated lists based on categories (fiction, nonfiction, self-help, children’s books) and prices (under 150, under 250 and above 250). And though at first glance the collection seems predominantly non-Indian – with your usual James Clear, Colleen Hoover, and Michelle Obama books in sight, it has quite a collection of popular Indian books – Ruskin Bond, Durjoy Dutta, Ankur Warikoo, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.
How book sales and distribution work in India
Book distribution in India is a long and complicated process, carried out through a network of publishers, distributors and booksellers. Publishing giants like HarperCollins and Penguin Random House have their own distribution networks and enter into distribution partnerships with smaller publishers.
The collection of books available also differs from bookstore to bookstore. The bigger chain bookstores like Crossword, Bahrisons, or Kunzum stock the most popular and bestselling books along with the indie favourites. Whereas smaller independent bookstores like Dogears, Kitabkhana and Trilogy are known for their curated and discerning lists.
Amazon, of course, has the largest collection of books available, including self-published ones. And it has the ability to reach and distribute books in smaller towns and villages which might not have their own brick-and-mortar stores.
So, how does BlinkIt change the game?
Disha Naik, Senior Marketing and Partnerships Manager at Penguin Random House India shares her opinion:
“It's like Amazon Prime on steroids. Blinkit's spoiling us; you could wake up feeling like Jane Austen and have her book in hand before your coffee cools. This level of convenience is unheard of, even in comparison to developed countries like the USA or UK. Bookstores need to offer unique, hard-to-find items like box sets, limited edition classics, and rare comics to compete.”
It’s clear that Blinkit has revolutionised a delivery system which usually lasts a few days or weeks, unless readers are willing to walk into a store and buy a book. Sometimes, readers also have to place an order for a book at their local independent store and come back after a few days to pick it up.
Perhaps the general consensus is that if you have the patience to read a book, you clearly have the patience to wait for it to arrive. Until now.
While many are critiquing how the luxury of speedy deliveries highlights our growing impatience as customers (Do we really need a book delivered within 10 minutes?), others are celebrating this as an opportunity for local bookstores to partner with BlinkIt and be able to reach a larger number of readers within their geographical radius. And many bookstores are looking forward to this opportunity.
However, it’s clear that such a partnership will not focus on curation – which is the soul of independent bookstores – but on stock and the availability of popular titles. Whether this will influence, and ultimately determine which books are bought by local bookstores, remains to be seen.
And since the Blinkit Bookstore is currently only available in 4-6 cities, it does not impact Amazon’s dominance in distributing books to the interiors of India.
Ultimately, the BlinkIt Bookstore marks the entry of another corporate giant into the publishing industry, a trend we discussed in our previous newsletter about TikTok (ByteDance).
Bound’s founder, Tara Khandelwal, says:
“The fact that Blinkit is investing in books is a huge validation for the publishing industry. It shows that people in India are reading books, especially physical books.”
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