FriendsofBooks – Rent Books
FriendsofBooks is a Delhi based startup that enables users to rent books from the site.
The portal, currently available in NCR region lets you rent books (one can keep books for as long as one wants to) and in some cases, buy them as well (10% discount on retail price).
Before you say, this is an inspiration from Librarywalla, point to be noted is that Librarywala is not present in Delhi – so a perfect market to start with.
Unlike Librarywala, FriendsofBooks doesn’t charge any registration fee (Rs. 499/ in case of Librarywala), though refundable deposit is Rs. 750/ (while Rs. 499/ for Librarywala).
If you are from NCR region, do give FriendsofBooks a dekho.
But “Book Me A Book” (http://www.bookmeabook.com/) is based in Delhi ( and now has competition it seems
). But I like the fact that you can also buy the books, something which I think is a business opportunity Librarywala are missing but then, they know their business better 
Abhaya
But how much of the buying/selling books is sustainable (I mean, why compete in 2 diff mkts)?
I don’t mean that they should become a bookseller per say. But for a rental library, it makes sense to let its readers buy the books (essentially keep forever by paying the amount which can actually be adjusted against the deposit or included in the next month subscription) which they rented and liked. In fact I think more and more physical libraries should start doing that in some form or other.
Abhaya
buying the books off a library is a good idea.. but the problem is, how much is retail online by small fry like friendsof books sustainable? i mean why jump into online retail when there are so many big fish like amazon and flipkart doing the same thing? also, i dont think thye maintain a great actual physical inventory, since a lot of the books they have on their site for selling are not books they have in their online library. very strange!
It has competition in bookmeabook.com, which has been functional for more than 2 years now, in the library segment…is it wise to go into a realm where the competition is even greater! that way bookmeabook seems to be sticking to a safer wicket and just doing its core job of giving out books on rent, where definitely the engagement with the customer is a more constant one compared to retail. definitely a harder task to live up to.
Well there is also http://www.indiareads.com. They too have a library and bookstore and operate in all the major cities and towns in the country. Seems like the competition is hotting up. I liked their collection
Is it legal to rent books??