Woodpie is your one stop destination for finding what to read next. Here you discover what everyone around you is reading. You find authentic book recommendations from people just like you, and no marketing noise. You can share your own recommendations too. And that's not all, you can also exchange books and read your next favorite book free.
Anuradha Bajpai and her husband Manoj Jindal had no clue that
their lives were about to be changed when they paid a regular visit to a
bookstore in Bengaluru. The title of a book caught the couple’s attention- ‘Why
men don’t listen and women can’t read maps’. “The title was so interesting. But
we were not sure if the book was good. Also, we had already read ‘Men are from
Mars and women are from Venus’. So we decided not to buy it,” Anuradha recalls.
By an amazing coincidence, the two technology professionals happened to see the
same book again at a neighbor’s house, a day after their bookstore visit. “They
told us it was a really good and funny read, and strongly recommended it to
us,” Anuradha says. At that point they realized how much a recommendation by a
friend can help you decide to read or buy a book. “We may not buy a book even
after reading hundreds of online reviews because you don’t know how many of
those reviews are genuine. But you will go for a book if your friend, who has
similar interests, recommends a book. This led us to launch a social networking
platform where friends could discuss and recommend books,” says Anuradha.
She was then working with Infosys and Manoj with McAfee. She
quit her job to start the venture, while Manoj continued to work at McAfee to
ensure they had some income coming in. In late 2010, they launched the venture
that they called Woodpie.
The journey was not easy. They were on a limited budget. Both
were backend coders, so they had to outsource the frontend design. But the
outsource design did not look good. There were bad reviews about the design
when they released a private version for friends in 2011 and a beta version for
invited authors and reviewers in 2012. So Anuradha took a brave decision- to
learn and do frontend coding herself. “I learned it when I was carrying our
baby,” she recalls. The couple also had to move to the US around that time
because Manoj had got a transfer to McAfee’s US office. “We thought it would be
good for Woodpie too as it’s a global concept,” she says. The platform Anuradha
designed turned out to be incredibly good for Woodpie. User numbers rose
dramatically. But it was still tough on Anuradha. “I used to wake up at 4am and
modify the platform based on users’ feedback. I had to run to our daughter
whenever she woke up. We couldn’t afford a maid and so I had to cook before
Manoj left for office at 8 am. It would have been funny to see me standing in
the kitchen, holding baby in one hand and coding with the other hand,” she
says. In 2014, Savie Karnel, a former journalist, joined Woodpie as a founding
member. She helped Anuradha and Manoj sharpen the idea and understand the
requirements of readers.
Today, Woodpie has over 10,000 users from 321 Indian cities, 35
US cities and other countries in Europe, South America, Africa, Asia and
Australia. The startup was recently selected for the accelerator programme of
Ingram, a US book publishing company. Woodpie was one among six selected and
the only startup from India. Ingram’s programme is one of the nine tech hubs in
Google’s entrepreneurship network in North America. The programme also includes
$30,000 in funding from Ingram Content Group Ventures.
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