This startup wants to revive reading habits in Pakistan

It was during his university days that Talha Bin Shuja witnessed firsthand the precipitous decline in reading habits amongst Pakistani youth. While his peers studied hard, they had little interest in exploring areas beyond their course requirements. There was no curiosity in literature, history, or current affairs. Furthermore, the mandatory course books were also expensive, leaving cash-strapped students with little disposable income to spend elsewhere.

As he identified a problem to be solved, Shuja partnered with his friends at school to open Bookworm, an ecommerce store concentrating on books and magazines. Titles on the site were significantly cheaper than those found in larger retailers, and he hoped that this difference in price would help his startup gain traction and slow the decline in reading habits.

However, after a few months of operations, his team realized that a simple online book store was not a sustainable model. After rigorous planning, they accepted that a more technologically-advanced solution was required, and pivoted towards incorporating a book-sharing model into their startup.

The sharing model, which Shuja describes as a “tree swap system”, is a fairly unique idea. Whenever users share a book with someone else on the portal, they are rewarded with a “Bookworm coin”, which enables them to request a book from another user. The coin is then transferred, and the cycle continues.

Shuja believes this is the first time such a concept has been introduced in Pakistan and plans on several iterations in order to implement a monetization strategy. While swaps will always be free, users will be able to purchase a Bookworm coin if they do not want to give up one of their books in return. In the future, the coins will also be redeemable at retailers and other outlets.

While the startup aims to facilitate all voracious readers, their primary market for the tree swap system for now is university students. Shuja explains that as there is repetition of courses across universities, it is cheaper for students to borrow rather than purchase outright.

The eventual aim of Bookworm is to have far-reaching social impact by assisting small, independent retailers with attracting a higher client base. Shuja takes the example of Urdu Bazaar, which is a large book market located in the heart of Karachi that consists of hundreds of small shops selling a considerable amount of titles. Books available in this market are generally much cheaper than similar titles found in the larger chain stores, but their limited geographical reach and lack of online expansion has resulted in a declining customer base, forcing many to shut shop. Shuja hopes that as traffic to his portal grows, there will be greater interest in purchasing books outright, which is where the independent retailers step in.

All the titles currently listed on Bookworm’s site are sourced from Urdu Bazaar itself. Shuja and his team regularly visit the market to get updates on new stock, pricing information, and trending items. Bookworm is also trying to expand into the East Asian market, where they believe a reading culture is embedded into the cultural ethos of society, and they can tap into the vast prevalence of “book clubs” to gain scale.