KATHMANDU, Jan 22: When friends get together, they make plans where to hang out, where to travel and some even make plans to start a business together. Where many of them remain only plans, some ideas take shape and run smoothly with the strong foundation of friendship. One of these ideas include Laibary, which started on August 13 with the vision and effort of four friends — Binup Shrestha, Nikita Bajracharya, Prajwal Kunwar and Sudeep Sayami.

Laibary is an online platform from where you can buy, sell, and exchange books. Through Laibary, you can get an access to thousands of books neatly categorized under various headings of read in the website. Apart from that, you can also connect with other readers with an easy and free sign-up. Under your profile, you can browse for books you like, add them to your wish list and upload them for others to read. For those who want to sell their books, they have to fill up a form and upload the details. The website is both computer and mobile friendly.

“Laibary is the Nepali-fied version of library. Though the meaning is the same, we decided to keep it as a name because at some point of our lives all of us have pronounced the word ‘library’ as ‘lai’-‘bary’,” shared Sudeep. 

Laibary was materialized after a year-long discussion and multiple surveys conducted to understand the need of the people, including information on the books they liked, they wanted to read and ones they could not find. The team started collecting books according to the collected data and now have thousands of books in their storage at Kuleshwor. They also work with other local vendors to get the books they don’t have, and even import them from publishers in India when needed.

The co-founders have known each other for more than a decade and complement each other in business as well as in personal lives. After the business started taking form, they have noticed changes in themselves as well. They have now started reading and gifting books that they think one should read or one would like to read, according to Binup.

“Not one of us has been a voracious reader. We always knew that reading is good for us, but like many we had difficulties embedding it into a habit. When we looked back, we realized that one of the reasons we didn’t read much was the lack of books/bookshops/libraries around us. Even though we didn’t have the resource back then, with Laibary we want to encourage people to start reading. And with internet at our disposal, making that initiative became easier,” said Nikita. 

  In fact, all four of them were of view that internet and social networking sites in particular have played a dominant role to connect many young readers to Laibary. They believe internet has given them an extended area of work and working with book is less stressful in comparison to selling other products online. They are also gaining popularity among readers from Butwal, Biratnagar, Pokhara and Dharan among other cities since the last few months. 

At Laibary, they deliver the book(s) through KTM couriers for free, given that the purchase exceeds Rs 800, and if not with Rs 50 delivery charge. 

They have been marketing the brand name with several giveaways, bookmark coloring contests, mobile/laptop stickers and QR codes. They are also working with cafés around the city to put their books on shelves so that one can skim through them sipping coffee. Their consumer population mostly consists younger generation. But, they plan to slowly start diverting their target to corporate sectors and increase the sales. Also, they want to approach educational institutions and work with them to set up libraries. 

They are happy with the way Laibary is functioning right now. And as of now, they do not have plans to open a physical store either as they have been able to cut the cost.