Bharti Airtel aka Airtel, India’s global telecommunications house that has once dominated the roost is no longer the country’s famous telecom network. Airtel position is nowhere seen in the top chart in the telecom industry. According to the latest survey, Vodafone-Idea and Reliance Jio continued to be top in the market.
Seems like to compensate the loss, Airtel launched the e-stories by entering into the digital content. Thus, rolling out “Airtel Books”. This is the latest to join Airtel TV.
Airtel e-Books
Airtel Books is an independent application on both Android and iOS launched in April 2019. Within a month of the launch, nearly 100,000+ installs have been taped on Google Play Store.
The company offers 70,000 ebooks of both national and international titles available in Hindi and English. Airtel Books are backed by Juggernaut Books, a Delhi-based publishing startup which was funded by Airtel in 2017.
Join the digital readers’ club to hear more stories
Airtel books lend you to read thousands of books anywhere and anytime. A user can download books for free and read them offline as well.
The digital bookstore consists of bestselling classic Indian and international authors. A reader can create a bookshelf by racking favorite stories and pleasure to share with others.
A delightment in reading books
A reader is free to explore genres like thriller, crime, mystery, horror, romance, erotica and more. Its ebooks are of all lengths like from short stories to novels, fiction and nonfiction, and more to cater to all levels of readers.
Airtel Books app includes the most popular Indian authors like Twinkle Khanna, Arvind Adiga, William Dalrymple, Ravi Subramanian, Arundhati Roy, and more. And favorite classics like The Great Gatsby, Pride, and Prejudice, etc. are avail for free.
Airtel Books subscription plans
Undoubtedly, offers a 30-day free trial to Airtel subscribers with one-time individual access to any five ‘Paid’ titles from the subscription-driven component of the app called the Readers Club that can house a collection of 5000 ebooks.
Subscription plans include a first month free + 12 months for Rs 199 and half-year for Rs 129( with a first month free + 6 months).
The ebooks app also has curated pages on famous authors and topics like the General Elections and the IPL which also can be downloaded for offline reading.
A few screenshots on how the app works
1. An account is to create where an OTP is sent to your mobile number after it is installed, as usual.
2. The homepage offers with the carousel that consists of trending titles, new launches and more.
And, of course, you can skip curations and scroll down to your favorite titles and authors.
3. Genres can be enabled from the Categories tab on the menu bar.
4. A reader can access Hindi books by changing ‘Language Preference’ on the dropdown menu.
5. Searches can be filtered according to the prices, relevance, and a number of pages.
6. After going all the above process, the Readers Club with unlimited access where one can invite to book launches, author meetings, workshops and more.
7. A user can choose any of the two subscription plans available as of now via mobile wallets like PhonePe, Paytm, etc. and debit/credit cards.
Whizsky Review
Good initiative, but need to tweak a bit more.
As per the overall look at the application, I would rate 3 out of 5.
The application by Airtel is a good start to couple users to the company. But whereas, ebook applications like Google Play Books, Amazon Kindle are already offering millions of titles, while Airtel Books are with something 70,000 catalogs. Still is appreciable for being such a sport and competing with the biggies.
Can see users are continually complaining about the issues in subscription of Readers Club ain’t working correctly, and free titles cannot be accessed.
Feels like the issue to be fixed rightly by the company, as there might be a chance that top players Jio or Vodafone-Idea expand the wings in no time into the digital content as it is leading in the market. Eventually, we are aware of how Jio is taking the world with its services and no wonder chances to enter into the content zone.
