Reach Book Bank
Reach Book Bank is an online book bank in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. The book bank lends educational text books to college students for a fee.
History
A book bank is an organisation that works like a library except that it deals with educational text books and lends them to students for a semester. Though many colleges in Chennai have libraries in their campuses, they are usually not stocked with enough books to cater to all the students enrolled. There are many small book banks in Chennai, but several have recently gone out of business. MV Book bank, Reach Book Bank and REC Book Bank are currently the largest such businesses in the city in terms of the number of books available and the number of students served.
Reach Book Bank was founded by Ms. Shweta S., herself an engineering graduate, to offer engineering text books to students in Chennai. Reach Book Bank introduced online and telephone ordering, which was non-existent prior to this. Reach Book Bank offers home delivery of the requested text books and reference material.
Operations
Reach Book Bank claims to have cut its costs significantly by stocking its books outside the city to reduce its rental and operational costs. In an interview, Ms. Shweta has acknowledged that she rents a warehouse on the outskirts of the city and uses the hub-and-spoke model to run her book bank efficiently.