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Jaipur BookMark and Dailyhunt prove perfect partners for evolving industry

By FnF Correspondent | PUBLISHED: 23, Jan 2016, 13:37 pm IST | UPDATED: 23, Jan 2016, 13:39 pm IST

Jaipur BookMark and Dailyhunt prove perfect partners for evolving industry Jaipur: Jaipur BookMark at Jaipur Literature Festival, 2016 is a one of a kind endeavour in not just the nature of the event but also the plethora of topics relating to modern day reading, writing and publishing issues in the world.

In what is easily the largest congregation of the biggest names in publishing and writing industries across the world, JBM at JLF saw profound debate on the issues as local as the taste and challenges of the Indian Reader and also as global as the scope and future of publishing.

The second and final day of the event saw a host of big names address the forum, including best-selling author Ravinder Singh, Minakshi Thakur from HarperCollins Publishers India, Sunil Anil Mehta from Mehta Publishing House, Aditi Maheshwari from Ani Prakashan, American poet and director of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prizes Michael Kelleher, director of Rachna Books Raman Shresta, senior adviser at Norwegian Literature Abroad Oliver Moystad and MD of Niyogi Books Bikash Niyogi, founder and CEO of Siyahi Mita Kapur, editor and publishing-industry journalist Vinutha Mallya, and founder of the Asia Literary Agency Kelly Falconer.

One of the major agendas of the meet was ‘translation’ and a one-of-its kind, translation rights booklet was released in the light of the same. The discussions held on the topic comprehensively threw light on how to promote translation among the readers and evolve good translators.

Publishers and e-book providers claim that the proliferation of smartphones in India will increase the reach of ebooks, providing people with cost-effective options, revolutionising elearning and distance learning programmes proving Dailyhunt the natural sponsor and partner of Jaipur BookMark.

Daily Hunt is currently the largest distributor of Indian language e-books (including comics), with 70,000 titles in ten Indian languages, including Bhojpuri. Their market is spread across 1,000 Indian cities, with 90% of their readers buying Indian language ebooks (the rest buy English). This statistic is important because the problem until Daily Hunt stepped in was that much of the digital content was not available to native language speakers.

Readers of Indian language e-books are widely spread over Tier-2 and Tier 3 towns and villages where it is not easy to access bookstores. Literacy is on the rise making the provision of e-books even more essential to rural readers.

Vishal Anand, Chief Product Officer, Dailyhunt said “With the increase in the penetration of smartphones and consumption patterns on them, there has been a significant increase in the latent demand for regional content of short and light reads. We are working towards developing a flexible platform wherein readers have the comfort of reading in a language of their choice, all in the palm of their hands. In a country where 90% of the literate people prefer to read in their native language, Dailyhunt’s focus on Indian language services is not just well placed, but also well timed.

“India Mobile internet userbase stands at more than 300 Million and is growing at a phenomenal rate.  "We believe that  the next 400 million mobile internet users will be local language users.  They won’t consume the Internet if it doesn’t talk to them [in their language],” says Virendra Gupta, CEO, Dailyhunt. With medium of content consumption shifting, the way content is produced and presented also has to start changing for mobile.  Esingles and pay per chapter options , first of its kind in India were brought on to the store to increase reader engagement and to remove entry barrier, he added.

“With the abysmally low penetration of Creditcards/Debitcard & Netbanking being a significant deterrent to online transactions, Dailyhunt is uniquely positioned to circumvent that problem by enabling payment through Mobile bill through their payment platform, iPayy. iPayy, allows the users to buy the book and pay through postpaid mobile bill or prepaid talkative.

“Dailyhunt has clocked more than 110 million app installs to date. The ebook store hosts more than 120,000 ebooks in 10 Indian languages along with English and has seen more than 30 Million ebook downloads and they are partnered with more than 1500 Authors and publishers across India and overseas.

“Additionally, Dailyhunt is the only platform to introduce Pay-Per-Chapter or serialization of novels in India and will continue to innovate to ensure adoption on smartphones.

“Dailyhunt is proud to be a part of Jaipur BookMark 2016 a platform benefitting all in the industry.”

Author Nilanjana Roy said, "Tucked away from the main JLF, the JBM is both a small haven of peace and a wonderful platform for publishers, booksellers and scholars to discuss everything from language diversity to digital publishing trends. The world's largest free literary festival needed this hub for the people who translate, edit and produce the books we're celebrating at Diggi Palace."

Neeta Gupta, publisher and co-organiser of Jaipur BookMark said, "Our mandate at Jaipur Bookmark is to provide a space for the business of books and publishing!"
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