DK Agencies Interview

Canton Public Library వారిని “మీకు పుస్తకాలు ఎక్కడ నుండి వస్తాయి?” అనడిగితే డి.కె.ఏజెన్సీ వారి లంకె ఇచ్చారు. తెరచి చూస్తే ఓ అద్భుత పుస్తక ప్రపంచం కళ్ళ ముందు సాక్షాత్కరించింది. వివిధ సబ్జెక్టులలో వీరి కలక్షెను చూస్తే “ఔరా!” అనిపించింది. అరుదైన పుస్తకాలు దొరికే మహదావకాశంలా తోచింది. “ఎవరు మీరు?“, “మీ కథేంటి?” అన్న ప్రశ్నలకు జవాబులు సైటులోనే దొరికేసాయి. ఇహ ఆగటం జరగదు కదా, “హలో.. మేము పుస్తకం.నెట్, మీ గురించి మా పాఠకులకి తెలిజేయాలనుకుంటున్నాం, కొన్ని ప్రశ్నలూ – వాటికి జవాబులు ఇవ్వండీ” అనగానే DK Agencies తరఫున రమేశ్ కె. మిట్టల్ గారు తమ అమూల్యమైన సమయం వెచ్చించి ఈ మేల్ ఇంటర్వ్యూ కి సహకరించారు. వారికి మా మనఃపూర్వక ధన్యవాదాలు!

లైబ్రరీలకీ లేదా పెద్ద సంఖ్యలో పుస్తకాలు కొనేవారికీ ఈ సైటు ఉపయోగపడుతుందేమో అనిపించింది. కానీ పందొమ్మిదో ప్రశ్నకి సమాధానం మనలాంటి పుస్తక ప్రియులకి మాత్రం పండగే పండగ! ఏమంటారు?

DK Agencies:

1. From the site, we see that you began operations in 1968. Firstly, let me ask you – how did the founders get this idea to act as distributing agencies for overseas clientele? Was there a market for Indian books from libraries and other institutions worldwide, even 40 days back?

My father, Late Shri Khazan Chand Mittal (1913-1986) started it at a time when Indian publishing industry was picking up. We began as a supplier of back-volumes of research journals to booksellers abroad and found that libraries outside India were desperately looking for literature published in India.  So, we immediately switched over to library supplies of not only
periodicals but books as well.  There was indeed a market for Indian books abroad but with India growing to be a country as it is today, the market grew-up tremendously.

2. When did you start shipping Indian books, in Indian languages? I guess it began with Indian English books rite?

We began with English language books in 1969 and started getting requests for Sanskrit too in mid 1970’s  itself, followed by a few select Hindi books and a good amount of Tibetan language literature published in India.  We had some one-off orders for other Indian languages in early and mid 1990s but real working started in 1999 when we first began to ourselves promote Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu languages.  And immediately in 2000/2001 we got into Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Oriya, Assamese etc.

3. Who was your first client? 🙂 How did you actually become the giant that you are now? Can you explain the journey in a few words?

Our very first client was a periodical dealer in the USA, who is defunct now.  We are still a very small operation.  It has been DK’s policy to keep an eye at the customer requirements and to tune its services suitably.  We are a one stop solution to provide to libraries books and periodicals appearing from this part of the world in any language together with their relevant library management requirements.

4. From your website, its obvious that you cater to a wide category of books – science, history, literature, textbooks etc etc. How do you manage such a diverse database?

We almost cover 98% of all that is published in India in English in terms of scholarly publications; excluding of course, those restricted for export by the publishers.  And  to achieve
that level in a country like India with no comprehensive national database being available, is a herculean task.  We have a selection section in-house which scans a variety of resources all through the year to track down each newly published item besides, of course, our 40 years long relationship with majority of publishers across the country.  DK now possess the largest database of Indian books, which is maintained using the technical aspects of librarianship that allows us to reach any level of subject classifications.

5. How do you procure books for all these categories? Do you have like – area experts, who tell you about “must be” books in a particular area of study? or, do you have tie-ups with all sorts of publishers? (An overview is provided in your Bibliographic Media section, but would like to hear in your words)

We procure these books from numerous publishers across the Indian subcontinent.  With a database of over 50,000 publishers, which continues to grow every minute, we can reach out to any one of them through mail, email (very few) and place our requests for the desired books.  Yes, there are some dedicated book suppliers at certain places who help us a lot in our efforts.

6. Do you get requests from your clients regarding books you don’t have? What do you do in such cases?

We do get orders/enquiries for books which do not find place in our database.  Tracking down such books is never a problem for us with the help of our database besides years of experience at our back.

7. Your site has extremely informative stuff in terms of library management 🙂 No wonder you have a wide clientele base!
(This is not a question, but a comment)

Yes, we do have a wide clientele base, particularly of libraries of varied variety all across the globe.

8. Are there more such agencies as yours? I mean, do you have competitors?

Yes, it is a world full of competitors and, as you know, competition brings forward everyone of us.  There are many agencies like ours but the major difference is that we are the only one from this sub continent supporting the entire procedures and information with the technical aspect of librarianship.

9. Are there such agencies in other countries too? When we were communicating with canton, we came to know that there are a lot of non-indian languages too in their collection. Are all the suppliers this sophisticated and this established as you are?

There are some such agencies in different countries, particularly in Europe and North America who provide such services.

10. Do you get requests from clients like – “I want a collection on history of so and so place” or “I want all works of so and so author” etc?

It is almost everyday we get such technical request referring to a very minute topic or author or a place.  And those are dealt with easily by DK given the kind of approach available through our system.

11. Whats the general trend in book orders? Which genre of books are most sought after?

Highly researched works in English from reputed publishers and authors are the ones most sought after.  And literary works from well-established authors in the case of languages sell a lot.

12. Apart from Indian English books, which language books have the most sales?

Apart from English, books in Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Panjabi, Gujarati, Tamil and Bengali sell a lot.

13. Since we are a Telugu site, can you give us an overview of your Telugu collection and people’s response?

We have a wide variety of Telugu language books of particular interest to individuals.

14. Obviously, since you deal with so many languages, you must be having language experts too right?

Yes, it is important for us to have language experts in order to handle the books in various languages and create their catalogue records.

15. Do you operate only through your Delhi office or have any contacts with the states of the languages to which you cater?

We have our base in Delhi only.  We, of course, have good contacts with counterparts across the country for supporting our venture.

16. You are in to different forms of knowledge management – Books, CDs etc. Are you also involved with/planning to Digitize any works of literature?

We are basically into buying and selling of products and not really publisher ourselves.  So, we do not get into any area where copyright (intellectual property rights) is involved.
We are not, therefore contemplating to digitize  any literature ourselves.

17. If some publisher who sees our interview wants to approach you, regarding their books, can they? if so how?

Yes, publishers are most welcome to reach us at <pubrel@dkagencies.com>.  We welcome publishers at DK.

18. Do you have a specific customer base in mind? Or, its just like your site can as well be benificial to any kind of users – a student or a researcher in some area or a literature fan or an individual with scholarly pursuits? : In short, How would you introduce your company to an ordinary book lover?

DK is an organization that takes care of the book requirements of individuals as well as large scale libraries.  You only have to visit the DK website to find what you are looking for.

19. Can individuals order books in single entity? Or is that you entertain customers of bulk orders only?

We serve all sorts of international clients,  be it individuals buying a particular single book or a library interested/involved in creating a huge South Asia collection.  We treat all our customers equally.

20. The contact address in the site is that of Delhi. Is there any store at that address, for people to shop for? Or is this exclusive online store?

Our contact address in Delhi has a huge storage of books in English and all other languages.  Normally we prefer selling online but if someone wants to shop personally, he/she can come after setting up an appointment.  We are not in the real sense accustomed to handle counter sales.

21. Can you give us some contacts of your regular customers? – If possible?

Confidential.

22. Details of any annual exhibitions or fairs conducted by you?

Customers do not generally conduct any exhibitions.  It is the book trade community and such institutions who organize fairs & exhibitions.  We do participate in a few of them.

23. What are the benefits to your customers? 🙂

By reaching DK, customers have the largest choice of literature besides, of course, the technical support of catalogue records (keeping all international standards of library science in mind) in romanized transliteration format.  We do select and supply books to libraries on our own keeping their selection parameters in mind. So, they save on time, manpower and money all along.

ప్రశ్నలూ – సమాధానాలూ చదివేశారా? ఆ సైటులో కాసేపు విహరించి రండి మరి! 🙂