Kobo launches e-Readers priced at Rs 7,999; wants India to read

Kobo, formed by Toronto and Tokyo based company Rakuten has been in the digital reading business for the past four years and since then the company has spread across 190 countries with over four million book titles to its name. And after extensively studying the Indian reading culture, the brand has made its way to the market with the e-Reader devices and reading-centric tablets.

For any brand these days, it is hard to overlook India as a major viable market and considering market forecast of digital reader market pegged to be at $10.6 billion by 2015, their interest in the hugely populated country is obvious. Kobo has introduced 3 e-Readers and one Android powered tablet, purely meant for reading. These are Kobo Touch, Kobo Glo, Kobo Arc and Kobo Aura HD priced between Rs 7,999 and Rs 13,999. As part of its introductory offer, the Kobo Touch and Arc are available for Rs 6,999 (original 7,999) and Rs 9,999 (original 10,999) respectively till 3rd November.

Kobo operates in a market where one cannot find many brands and most notable competitor for them is Amazon. Asked about the USP of Kobo products, Haja Sheriff, country manager, Kobo India said, till date we have adjusted to the interest of varied markets and we will be doing the same in India as well. Over the course of time, one would find plethora of e-book titles on our book store available across different local languages.

Prior to entering the market, Kobo conducted a survey via Ipsos, which illustrated the opinion of users in top five cities in the country. According to the survey, over 93% people knew what an e-reader is and 39% consumers found reading on an e-reader easy and convenient. In terms of connectivity on the devices, Kobo has introduced Wi-Fi only products as of now, with 3G enabled devices expected in the near future.

The devices are available on stores at Croma, Crossword and WHSmith across the country.