The e-store, www.firstandsecond.com, mainly targets India’s 73 lakh students and professionals in the 18-30 age group, which constitutes over 70 per cent of the country’s book market.

The e-store is a one-stop shop for subjects ranging from medicine, engineering, architecture, law and agriculture, to business, management, mathematics, science and computers. Competitive prices, efficient and innovative payment systems, fast delivery at customers’ doorsteps and a host of value added e-mail services are all expected to spur buying through Firstandsecond.com.

Almost every title is priced at least 20 per cent less than its listed price, with discounts of up to 40 percent being offered for specially featured books. On sale are worldwide titles from the UK, US and India.

"The combination of attractive prices, the vast selection and ease of availability will entice a wide range of consumers in India and South Asia to buy books online" said G B S Bindra, Managing Director, Firstandsecond.com.  "Books will be sold on the Web with a distribution network in 26 cities to begin with, to be extended later to 126 locations in India" added Bindra.

By selling directly on the Web this India-focused e-store cuts through the myriad channels between distributor and retailer, observed Bindra.  He explained, “We are targeting a niche segment, offering consumers a virtually unlimited online shelf space and can thus stake the claim to be the initiators of e-Commerce in India.” 

The Indian market size for academic and professional books is estimated at a whopping 11 million per year. Every year 13 lakh new students take up academic/professional studies, offering a captive market.

Customers can find each of the million titles at Firstandsecond.com by using the efficient search engines and retrieval interface on the site. A unique 13 subject browsing facility empowers customers to view books by subject categories.

Distinguishing features that set the e-store apart from other book e-tailers are options like do-it-yourself book reviews, global discussions on books among surfers and information on what kind of books other people, including celebrities, are reading worldwide and why. Features like these could give customers a better book buying experience than at a regular bookstore.

Value-added e-mail services include eNotices, which allows customers to sign up for new releases by their favourite authors. Another e-mail service enables customers to submit a list of the books they intend to buy in future.

Once a customer makes a purchase at Firstandsecond.com, a personal account is created and maintained for him. He can access this anytime and view his orders and items bought by him.

All these features are complemented with a compelling content that includes interviews, news, events, author profiles, book reviews, topped by many interesting facts about authors and books.

Firstandsecond.com is promoted by First & Second e.com (P) Ltd. eFirst is a privately held e-commerce company headquartered out of New Delhi .

The company is aggressively pursuing extensive promotional relationships with important aggregators of Internet traffic emanating out of India and South Asia. Tie-ups have been clinched with several hundred book publishers.