Check out Crosswords, an up market retail bookstore and common hang out spot for Bombay bookworms. I stopped in one Saturday and ended up spending almost half a day checking out the plethora of books, CDs, DVDs, let alone an entire education section.
The resources dedicated to education were massive, from the rows and rows of student guides, exam/college preparation books, and vocational training books to the e-learning section, ranging from online preschool games to exam/college preparation CDs in over 10 different brands and hundreds of subject levels.
My next thought: Where are the Crossword-like bookshops in small towns across India?
During our Rajasthan trip we recognized that very few schools were lucky to have these types of resources, let alone at the local bookstores. As we focus on both school management and e-learning we are thinking innovatively about how to distribute these products to small towns. While the channels are easy to find in urban areas, we are exploring and open to new ideas on how to distribute quality educational resources to small towns and rural areas.
Imagine when a 10th grader wants to buy extra study material on his biology paper. What if he could walk to his local grocery shop that he regularly visits to buy rice, soap and potatoes for his mother every other day and pick up a biology CD?
by Erica Dhawan
Tags: Bombay, Crosswords
