Zambeel E Kutub

Online book store

GOAL

Due to a lack of awareness of the merits of book reading and the high costs of books, book reading, and literacy culture is dying in Pakistan among the youth. The majority of citizens of Pakistani are from the lower middle economic class so buying a book and reading it is not less than a luxury for them. Many bookstores are already operating in Karachi but they are far more out of reach for ordinary citizens or students due to high prices. We aim to bridge the gap between low-income readers and quality learning. Therefore, we all combined our thoughts and came up with the idea of a Non-Profitable Online Book store. This online store is our first step towards reviving the cultural heritage of books and literary culture. This book store does not aim to earn profit but to serve as a means for building a bridge between our readers and also its an effort to engage the youth in some productive activity.

Risks associated with our project is that reviving an interest always comes with many challenges. Like our initial challenges would be to rejuvenate the spirit and love for reading in the hearts of economy beaten citizens. Another risk would be that our campaign or concept of an economic online book store may not get much recognition. Similarly, if our venture is not sustainable enough to penetrate the said segments then its existence may become a question mark! We aim to tackle these risks through persistent and effective awareness campaigns and by providing many reading suggestions and services.

As J. K. Rowling said: “If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.”

ACTION PLAN

Our plan was simply to make an online platform and sell the books. Simple right? But things don’t go you planned them. We had to think about where could capture more people, from where we buy books and sell them, how we can deliver the books and many other questions arise. So we made a flow and to work accordingly. And brainstormed the ideas from where can reach more people and to that end, we have chosen Facebook as our main platform to capture the market and then we need a name. A name that represents our idea, the name which has a story, and shows passion. So we have come up with the name “Zambeel E Kutub”.

Zambeel e Kutub implies a legendary sack that could accommodate and produce anything of the World. The sack is called Zambeel in Arabic and was owned by the Arabian fictional hero Umro Ayar. Similarly, our book store is the legendary zanbeel of all the books. Therefore, like Umro Ayar zanbeel, our bookstore has a magical collection of all amazing books.

TIMELINE

After the name, we went back to the flow chart and discussed that for now Facebook page and would be more efficient and after a week or 2 will move to the website. After creating the Facebook page we discussed books list: what kind of books are trending and deliver quality knowledge to the people. We now needed to work on a detailed marketing plan and searching for the listed books and their prices since we have to add descriptions to our page and website.

TASK DIVISION

We being a team of 5 divided the tasks as to the ease. Hassaan is assigned as graphic designing for page and marketing posts, Farwa is assigned to list down the books, sorting them, and maintain pages with Hajra, Hajra also has to make a website with Israr. Israr and I are also assigned to go to the market for searching the prices of the listed books and buy them and deliver them. And for the marketing plan, we all are working on it.

CHALLENGES

Now the challenges we are facing are the lack of information on teamwork, marketing plans, and going to the market.

1. Since we all had a different perspective on looking into things and everyone is busy in their university/job work and having the situation like Covid where we can not meet in person and solve the problems face to face, it became difficult to understand one’s problem through WhatsApp or Zoom.
2. Having no idea about the marketing plans because none of us did it, and never learned it.
3. And the market where we have to search is opened only on Sundays from 7:30 am to 10:30 am, so it becomes difficult to go there in time and miss Sunday’s session or attend them late and in the past 3 weeks we had face problems that made them difficult for us to go there.

OVERCOMING THE CHALLENGES

1. Having 2–3 meetings on zoom in a week creates a bond between us where we now can share our thoughts easily and work on them.
2. We have divided the research on marketing individually and everyone has to share them on Zoom-meeting on weekly basis within the group and make small tasks, each member has to work those small tasks and this helping us learn about marketing quickly and getting rid of this problem.
3. Going to market early on Sunday is not easy but now we have scheduled everything and now are ready to go there.

FUTURE PLANS

In near future we have planned to go to market, complete the website and work on those marketing plans efficiently.

Facebook page link: https://www.facebook.com/Zambeel-E-Kuteb-106647638047604/

Members:

1. Israr Ali
2. Hajra Batool
3. Syed Farwa
4. Hassaan Khalil
5. Muhammad Humayun (Leader)