About Us

Who are we?

We are book-lovers like you.

We love the smell of printer’s ink on cellulose.

We hate it when someone dog-ears our favourite copy of ‘Catcher in the Rye’.

And woe betide any soul who dares to cast a doubt on the credentials of our favorite author or book.

What are we offering you?

An online library service that delivers books right at your doorstep so that all the effort you need is a few mouse clicks and the walk to the door when the delivery guy comes-a-ringing.

A collection of thousands of books in genres like mystery, romance, self-help, hobbies, sports, comics, non-fiction, science-fiction, war etc. We also have an extensive young reader’s section for your little and not-so-little ones. Chances are, if it’s worth reading (to you), we probably have it. And if we don’t, we’ll get it for you.

A rendezvous with fellow book-lovers to share, feed, nurture and indulge that book-love. Discuss, review, comment, argue and savagely defend your favourite books on our blog and our website.

And soon to come, as soon as we get the walls painted and the bookshelves expanded, an online book store, a sibling to our library service!

Don’t believe us, do you? Why don’t you log in to www.indiareads.com and see for yourself. Registration is absolutely free. Browse through our collection and judge for yourself if we are worth the hype (that we are attempting to create).

Why did we start this blog?

A few minutes after we launched this blog, a friend asked me, why did you start the blog?

The Answer: For me, for you, for every book lover!

We, at INDIAreads, love books. If you are here and reading this, then you probably love them too. We needed a place to explore this common passion; a place to exchange ideas and reviews; a place to share with you the latest in the world of books and to seek to your opinion; a place to defend our favourite character to hear about yours.

The world of books is an amazing one. There is so much food for thought and so much output….there is no way that we can fit everything into a discussion forum or a few book reviews. So we decided to have a Book-a-holics Blog. This BLOG is intended for all book lovers…you don’t have to join the INDIAreads library or register at the ite to express your views here. (Of course we would love it if you did!) And your views, reviews and recommendations will guide the INDIAreads catalogue. While purchasing books (which we do on a weekly and at times, daily basis), our librarians will always keep your comments in mind. They will immediately know which books to stay away from…And they will make sure that no gem is missing from our collection.

Why did we start INDIAreads?

I guess I could simply say because we, ie the entire INDIAreads team, loves books. We grew up on books – experiencing the thrill of solving a mystery with Nancy Drew; enjoying the taste of simple bread and butter with Peter, George, Dick, Anne and Timothy; getting lost in the magic faraway tree; falling in love with Rhett Butler; sharing laughs over Jeeves’ antics; viewing India through the eyes of Amitav Ghosh; standing by Howard Roark; getting inspired by Siddhartha. Call us bookworms, if you will, and we won’t flinch. But there is much more to the story.

As part of our jobs, some of us spent the last five years touring the country. We visited the different nooks and crannies – the must visit places on every tourists’ itinerary and the forgotten habitations that even policy makers fail to reach. In Kargil, we saw little kids who walked for 3 hours every day, in intense cold weather to get to their school. In Jalpaiguri, they walked for 2 hours through riverbeds to attend classes and in Vijaynagar, a small hamlet without any road connectivity, hidden in the valleys of Arunachal Pradesh, they walked for five days through dense forests and undulating terrain to sit for their board examinations. Everywhere we went the youth, the children and the professionals wanted to learn, to grow and yet they did not have access to the one thing that could help them- books. They could not relax with the latest Dan Brown or get tips from Malcolm Gladwell – sometimes the books were too expensive and at other times, they were just not there. That is where the thought started. We wanted to make books accessible for all. We knew we could not reach the hill villages of Kashmir, the river islands of West Bengal, the forest fringe villages of Andhra Pradesh and the valleys of Arunachal right away, but we wanted to make a beginning.

And then there were the practical difficulties that most of our friends and colleagues experienced. Actually, we experienced them as well. Sitting in Delhi, with its host of bookstores and libraries, we were still unable to read. Where was the space to keep storing books, not to mention the money to keep buying? Time is limited- which books need to be read first? And libraries and bookstores – they were open only during office hours. Somewhere along the road, the pressures of time, travel and traffic had gotten to us and distanced us from the one thing that brought us joy – books. So we decided to do something about it, for ourselves and for everyone who wants to read. And thus INDIAreads was born with the singular aim of making knowledge accessible. It is not just another business venture, it is our dream. And this is our story.

Here is our journey told in the language we love best – BOOKS!

book cover