JustBooks Banashankari by Mukund B

Note: This is a series on independent bookstores especially those who stood strong during the pandemic. 

JustBooks is a rental library, operating in more than four cities. However, this write up will be aimed at the Banashankari, Bengaluru branch of JustBooks.

JustBooks was founded at the NSRCEL incubator at IIM Bangalore and was formerly known as Strata Retail and Technology Services Pvt. Ltd. In the year 2017, JustBooks was taken over by Cocreate Ventures. JustBooks has over 25000 subscribers and still counting.

The unique aspect of JustBooks is that majority of their members are children. This has proven to be a boon for them amidst this steady rise of e- books. What JustBooks believes is that children prefer reading from the physical copies rather than e-books and most of the parents encourage their children to read from the physical copies rather than e-books. Generally vacations tend to be pretty busy for this rental library, owing to the fact that majority of their members are children.

Effect Of Corona Virus

The Corona Virus couldn't stop JustBooks from renting books to members as they were delivering sanitized books to their members. This made sure that that their members did not miss reading books during the pandemic. At the same time they've taken some great safety measures such as, sanitising all books and vaccinating all their delivery executives.

As children constitute a majority of the members renting books from JustBooks, it is understandable that fiction is the most popular genre of books rented here. Other genres such as 'toddler's' , 'teen & pre teen' and 'regional' are always in demand.

This rental library has been around for quite a while now and has been received very well by it's members. Here is what one of the members of JustBooks has to say:

"JustBooks has a collection of all genres. The front office staff are the best and they assist us to get the required books. They also conduct many story reading sessions of all languages online at our convenience. During the pandemic we were getting the sanitized books home delivered."


JustBooks Address: 633, 19th Main Rd, Siddanna Layout, Banashankari Stage II, Banashankari, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560070

Timings: 10 am to 9 pm

They are closed on Mondays.

Bionote:

Bio: Mukund is a first year B.Tech student at NIT Warangal. His hobbies include writing blogs, listening to songs, playing sports, and watching railway/aviation related videos on You-tube.  His aspiration is to work in the aviation industry as a lead engineer. He lives in Hyderabad.