After issuing new monthly and semi-annual plans for its 4G Hotspot service, Bharti Airtel has now launched the Airtel Books digital books service for mobile users in India.
Airtel Books will be available for a subscription price of Rs 199 for a period of 12 months and Rs 129 for six months. Users will also be able to pay for individual books with offers on select bestsellers and titles.
Airtel Books will offer a total of 70,000 titles from leading international and Indian authors. The service will be available to both Airtel and non-Airtel users on iOS and Android devices and will include books from business, history, politics, fitness, spirituality, romance and crime genres.
The latest development comes as a result of a strategic partnership with Juggernaut Books. Airtel Books will be available for users for free during the complimentary 30-day trial. During this time, users will be able to access ‘Free’ titles while Airtel SIM owners will be able to avail 5 ‘Paid’ titles from the 5,000 e-books under the Readers Club collection. Currently, the service offers English and Hindi offerings but Airtel is expected to adapt regional languages too as it did with its Wynk music service.
Speaking about the latest launch,Bharti AirtelContent & Apps CEO,Sameer Batra said “Airtel Books is another major milestone in our journey towards building a world-class digital content portfolio. E-books is a fast growing segment along with music and video, thanks to large screen smartphones becoming the cornerstone of digital lifestyle. We are delighted to roll out this initiative and take it to the smartphone users across India through our deep distribution reach. As we have demonstrated with Wynk Music and Airtel TV, our aim is to use deep customer science to curate great reading content for our users and add to their smartphone experience on our best-in-class network”.
Juggernaut Books,Co-Founder, Chiki Sarkar also commented saying “Reaching the growing smartphone users in the country and getting them phone friendly books at low prices has been the reason Juggernaut was set up. Our association with Airtel has helped really make this vision come alive”.
Airtel Books will be available starting today on both iOS and Android phones through the App Store and Google Play.