2. The Idea Hypothesis
Many developing countries do not We wanted to validate if:
have good public library
infrastructure. Access to technical 1) Users really do find it difficult to
books is hard. find the technical books they want
to read
Chances are high that someone else
in your city has the book you want 2) Users who have books are willing
to read. What if you could search all to lend them
the people in your city, find out who
has the book, and borrow it directly 3) Users do not mind travelling to
from them. collect the books from other people
in the city
Lenders receive some payment
whenever they lend a book. 4) How much users are willing to
Borrowers pay a subscription pay for the service
amount in order to borrow, and our
site makes money on the difference.
3. Survey Results
We surveyed 60 people in the target market from our city. We found that
1) 73% read 5-8 technical books a year
2) 85% of people surveyed would be willing to lend their books (we did not expect
this to be so high!)
3) Poeple are not willing to travel to pick up the book (we did not expect this,
because people do travel long distances to reach a library)
4) They are willing to pay about Rs.500 – Rs.2000 / year ($10-$40/year) to
borrow books. Lenders expect to be paid Rs.50 ($1) everytime they lend a book.
To learn more about why users are not willing to travel, we added a question
asking them why they would not travel
We learnt that most people would be willing to travel short distances to pick up
books
4. Business Model Changes
The original business model had envisioned users picking up books directly from
the lenders. This allowed our platform to be a purely online marketplace and it
would reduce costs as we didnt have to deal with transportation and logistics.
The survey invalidated this assumption, as most users would not be willing to
travel a long distance to pick up books.
Based on the survey results, we decided that we needed to have drop off points at
various neighbourhoods, where users can drop off and pick up books. It will be our
job to transfer books between drop off points based on the location of the lenders
and borrowers.
This change increased the cost structure in the form of maintaining drop off points
and transporting between drop points. This, in turn, increased the subscription
price that we would need to charge borrowers in order for the venture to be
economically viable.
