Four professionals from the city have developed a mobile phone app that helps to download and read books in Dravidian languages. ‘Kai Books’ is said to be the country’s first app to download books in Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Tamil.
The app has over 3,700 titles on various subjects in all four languages. The books are available for both purchase and rental.
Darshan T, a resident of Banashankari, conceived the idea in 2014 to help his mother access Kannada books when they were living in Puducherry. He roped in Abhilash, Nawaz and Nishitha and developed the app in six months.
“The app offers classics in literature, old books on various subjects and books that are out of print and stock,” Darshan, an MS graduate in industrial operations from Dalhousie University, Canada, told Deccan Herald.
The ‘Kai Books’ app has 2,500 free books in four languages. It has 1,200 books, including 1,000 books in Kannada, for sale and rental.
A concession of 25% is given on purchase of a book against its paperback cost. The readers will get 75% concession on rental for a period of 20 days. The app can be downloaded using Google Playstore, he added.
Initial months were difficult for the team members. They found it difficult to convince the publishers to give the content. Many publishers did not even understand the concept. Some of them thught that the app would adversely affect paperback sales, recalled Darshan.
The team members decided to upload non-copyright content to test popularity of the app.
“We received positive response from readers for the free content. We again approached the publishers with the feedback on response from users. The publishers were convinced and sold the content,” he said, pointing out that the new platform is profitable for publishers.
DH News Service