Okay, I had an exciting event today.
For a while now I have been going to this used bookstore in the MG Road area (Bookworm) of Bangalore. I have good vibes about the owner he's a really straightforward and honest guy with good values. At the same time he seems to run a profitable and expanding business. I've had an itch to get involved more as I usually get when I see something cool (like bangalorewalks!). Today (actually yesterday), I went to this guy to sell off some old books that I have at home, I'm trying to prune my collection. I started talking with him and asked him how his business was doing and any issues and so on. He said that things were going well but he needs to publicise his business more and he is having trouble procuring good used books (history , philosophy , travel, stuff like that). I also told him that I was going to be kinda footloose in a little while. He then brought up that there are all these used bookstores in the US that sell good books really cheap and he feels that if these are bought and shipped to India by air or sea freight, he could still sell them at a profit. But he doesn't have any contacts or way to do this.
Obviously this set me thinking and I got all excited. Coz -- this is sooo cool. Atleast in theory. In a completely natural organic way I ran into a business opportunity (however small) that I'm naturally very interested in (books -- passionate about), and have some network that I could leverage to make it happen. Anyway -- there is a huge amount I could already write about this that is floating in my mind but I'll not do that, right now anyway. I am certainly going to experiment with a sample shipment and see what happens. I talked to Arvind in the US about it. Anyone reading this, I am *really* enthusiastic at this point about following this up and seeing where it goes. Any help would be verrrry welcome.