SiliconIndia Startup City -

A few weeks back I had been to Chennai for a shot visit. During that time I went to one of my favorite hub, Landmark – the famous bookstore. I felt the same thrill that I had felt when I had stepped into it for the first time in 2002, quite a nostalgic experience. I wonder how many outside Chennai know that this famous brand of books house that had its humble beginnings in the basement of an office building, is the result of a dream that Hemu Ramaiah had envisioned 21 years back.

When Hemu started the bookstore Landmark in Chennai in 1987 with an investment of Rs 12 lakh and 18 employees, there was only one Higginbothams in the city and Crosswords and Odyssey were still not a part of the Indian picture. Now, 21 years later, Landmark has become a landmark as far as bookstores are concerned and has revolutionized the book buying and reading experience in India. With 18 stores all over India and a brand worth more than Rs 240 crore, Landmark is a shining example of stellar entrepreneurship.

Hemu had set up small bookstores of around 250-300 sq ft for a hotel chain and used to buy books for the shops but every time she looked at the catalogues, she found that what was available in India was not even a fraction of what was being published. Some executive from the hotel’s management team at Mumbai used to decide what books to import and he was doing that without any idea of what the readers here wanted. There was a complete disconnect between the person who was choosing the books and the person who was buying the books. Also in those days, bookstores were synonymous to stores selling textbooks for schools and colleges and only few sold the one odd fictions. Hemu saw that there was a huge market for other kind of books, which till then had never come to India. Hence, with an initial investment from Hemu’s brother, Landmark was born as a general bookshop.

Since she could not afford a showroom on Mount Road (in the heart of the city), Hemu took a basement in an office building on Nungambakkam High Road. In those days, the whole of Nungambakkam High Road used to get about four to five cars in the evening! There was no retailer on that road and everyone said that it was a big risk. In one of her talks Hemu had said, "I must tell you if it were any other product, I wouldn't have chosen a place like that. Because it was a bookstore, I knew a book lover would find it anyway."

Landmark became a landmark on the Nungambakkam High Road. But she soon realized that since India shopped in families, a pure bookshop model would not work had to develop it into a multi-product store. There was no other bookstore that had the same format and it worked! Soon it expanded to music, gaming, CD ROMs, toys and others. Later as the store began to grow, Hemu decided to move to Spencers (one of the first malls in Chennai) that had newly opened up.

As time went, the brand began to grow and there was need to grow to all the big cities in India but the company faced a financial crunch for as it did not have enough money to scale up to such a high level. Hemu, thereby, decided to sell instead of going and approaching venture capitalists or PE funds. It took almost two years to meet the people and finally it was decided to rope in Tata's Trent as strategic investor because they ran Westside and some hypermarkets. Now there are over about 18 Landmark stores in the major cities across India.