Fall

08
August
‘10

Business Plan, Boi Initiative

This document is a business plan submitted as an application for startup-

loan. The operation of the said business will be to build and manage an e-
library that contains 5,000 books and 10,000 academic papers by the end of
the first year of operation, as well as provide anti-plagiarism scanning
services for the higher educational institutions of Bangladesh. The said
services will be offered for free. The primary revenue sources of the
business will be advertisements, fees charged for the anti-plagiarism
scanning services and book retailing, which is a logical next step once a
collection of such a huge volume, has been gathered.
Executive Summary:

Boi Initiative is a company that aims to provide the students and curious minds of
Bangladesh with an e-library of international standard with 5,000 books and
10,000 academic papers, for free.

Along side the core operations of an e-library, the company also intends to, with
time, build a database to provide an anti-plagiarism scanning service, a data
sourcing facility, and a book retailer with distribution network through out the
nation.

While the company does set out with a rather altruistic mission, it will in a very
short time become a profitable enterprise as the e-library will cater to the youth of
the nation, and thereby allow the companies access to the most sought after
consumer segment, age group 19-25. Also, the Boi Initiative will ask explicit
permission from the universities to be allowed to gather anonymous data from the
students in exchange of the free of charge services, which can be sold at a good
price because of the tailored demographics. The scanning service will also fetch
substantial revenue, although the fixed amount cannot be predicted, as this will
depend on individual negotiations with universities. Once distribution deals are
stuck, the soft copies of the copyright expired books will provide a significant
competitive advantage when it comes to retailing of rare books.

However, the success of the enterprise relies on owing all the network hardware
and software as renting them will make the projects financially fragile as the
expenses will go up proportionally with the traffic volume, while owning the
infrastructure will mean there will be little increase as more people visit the site.

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1.1 Mission
It is the mission of Boi Initiative to provide the students and curious minds of
Bangladesh with an e-library of international standard with 5,000 books and
10,000 academic papers, for free.

1.2 Keys to success

The keys to long-term financial viability and eventual profitability of this venture
are as follows:

o Ownership of the complete physical infrastructure as this will lead to

economies of scale

o Ensuring a simplistic as well as a convenient UI for our users and a stable

environment

o Adapting to the needs resulting from the dynamic educational system of

Bangladesh

1.3 Objectives (For the first 3 years)

The Three-year goals for the Boi Initiative are the following:

o Generate a traffic of at least 1000 hourly visitors by the end of the third year

o Create partnerships with at least 3 top tire and 5 second tire private
universities and satisfy all their e-library related needs, for free

o Strike advertisement deals with at least one major player from each
consumer related business sector

o Never to sacrifice on quality and integrity of the project

2 Company Summary
Boi Initiative will be a limited company registered with DSE that provides e-library
services to students and individuals for free, as well as an anti-plagiarism scanning
mechanism for universities and companies for a fee.

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2.1 Ownership Structure and Corporate governance
It will be jointly held by Tabrez Haider, Shahriar Mohammad Shams and Meehan
Islam Kathan. By all means this is a joint venture among three (or more) friends
with all three (or more) having equal ownership positions in the company. This tie
of friendship, however, does not mean that there will be no conflicts arising with
time, and therefore it is important to have pre-defined rights to profits and
obligation towards liabilities resulting from the operations of Boi Initiative. At the
inception of the operations of this project, the owners will each vote on selecting
an advisory panel of 5. This advisory panel and the owners together will form a
board of directors of odd numbers, not exceeding 9, which will decide on the
strategic path of the company.

2.2 Start-up Summary

Start-up expenses and funding required are shown in the Appendix 1. This includes
expenses and the rest in cash needed to support operations until revenues reach
an acceptable level and includes the interest rate expenses during the term of the
loan. Our total estimation is that the business will require almost Tk. 4 lakhs in
startup overhead, Tk. 3.6 lakhs in utilities expenses over the first year and roughly
Tk. 4 lakhs as maintenance fees for the first year.

3. Services and Revenue Schemes:

While like any other business, the Bangla Boi will primarily endeavor to become a
profit making enterprise, we intend to differentiate our selves on the basis that our
success will not only enrich our coffers, but also work for the betterment of the
educational quality of the nation. We believe that the following anecdotal story
describes our bottom-line best: When Isaac Newton discovered gravity he was
asked, how did you achieve such a feat? He answered, “When I discovered gravity
I was standing on the shoulders of two giants.” Our goal is to make those two
giants available to the curious minds of the nation. While we do concede the two
giants made of 5,000 books and 10,000 academic papers will be substantially
smaller than the two on whose shoulders Newton standing on, we believe that our
goal of 5,000 books and 10,000 academic papers will provide the base upon which
a sustainable higher education system can be structured.

Our primary clients will be students of higher educational institutions of

Bangladesh. While it is true that most of the bigger universities of the nation have
their own library, and some even have small scale e-libraries, non still posses an e-
library with the volume that we intend to. And since our services will require no
monetary payment from the institution or the students, we see no reason for
existence of any competition provided we are able to satisfy all their needs and
even go beyond.

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While the business plan is a resultant of our intention to contribute to the society
we believe that this e-library can generate substantial revenue. While our primary
non-owner stakeholders will receive these services for free, since they are a
consumer segment that most consumer product businesses target more than any
other in their promotional campaigns, we see our e-library as being a platform for
these companies to interact with their customers. Also, in the process of building
the collection for the e-library we will have in our collection many books not widely
available in Bangladesh, and are not under copyright law, and therefore can be
printed and sold by any one. With an efficient printing system, which with today’s
technology is very inexpensive, gives us a huge competitive advantage in the
book-retailing business. Thereby, summing up the revenue sources:

o Advertisement revenue

o Revenue from data complied through surveys of the users and their
browsing habits.
o Retailing operation

4. Market and Competitive Analysis:

There are no commercial e-libraries tailored to the needs of Bangladesh, of with a
substantial collection of Bengali Books or even books focused on Bangladesh.
Therefore we find it impossible to do a market analysis that will have any
credibility. However, we present the following arguments, the same ones that drew
us to invest our time and energy on this project. While at least some of the
arguments are rather philosophical in nature, we find them to be logical. They are
as follows –

o An e-library is surely a more convenient option to a physical library, as the

books are better cataloged, can be used by many simultaneously, from the
comfort of their homes and surely will not have any late fees

o Many books that are hard to find, or are very expensive can be made
accessible through an e-library, which is often difficult through a physical
one

o If we are able to reach the number we are aiming for, which we believe to be
very possible, we should be able become a source that delivers books and
academic papers in all fields relevant to Bangladeshi higher education
system, and thereby establish a monopoly

o As number of Internet users increase, which is already at an attractive level,

we as a business grow as at least the same rate, and become a more
important advertising platform.

o With time, as we build out collection, we can surely build a premium content
area, which may be subscribed for a fee.

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 o We believe it to be of the essence that bangla books are digitized for the
sake of their preservation. Altruistic it may sound, but a company identified
with such a noble cause should become entitled to a good and widely
recognized image.

5. Strategy and Implementation Summary

Our firms business strategy is to ensure that we are able to provide access to a
satiable amount of books and academic papers to our primary customers, with a
“good feel” when reading online to ensure they return to the site on a daily basis.

5.1 Marketing Strategy:

Our sales strategy is based on the impending need that the universities face to
start giving their students access to books online. We do realize that a few
universities have already started the process, we see there existing an opening for
a specialized e-library provider as it offers an option to have the access initially for
free, thereby postponing their expenditure for a substantial amount of time and
also have access to more books as not only we intend to include books that we and
our working partner believe to he needed but also what the universities require,
providing they are available for free and make them available to the students of all
universities that subscribe to our services.

The due exploration of the matter has led us to believe that there exists an
opportunity for a three tire marketing scheme. The first is to reach out to students
and appeal to their individual ambition to differentiate themselves from their peers
academically, and accesses to a large amount of books and academic papers are
surely an advantageous factor in that quest. The second tire focuses on the
universities them selves. In today’s overly competitive market, it is of the essence
that each an every university differentiates them if they want to rise up in the
school ranking, and at least provide competitive amenities to their peers. A library,
and increasingly an e-library is with time becoming an amenity that must be
provided by all university. And since we intend to at least initially provide it for
free, we surely have a competitive edge. Also, our anti plagiarism scanning
services will allow universities to ensure the integrity of their students. The third
tire is the company. We believe that given the choice an ambitious company will
always hire a student with demonstrated ability to think originally. Our anti
plagiarism scanning services offers the companies to do just that. A graduate from
a school which subscribed to said service must have had to do his own work rather
than cheat their way out, while a graduate from a school that did not subscribe to
said services MAY have since there weren’t any mechanism to enforce the
originality of their work.

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Once fully operational, we intend to reach out to the entire top tire and second tire
universities, and once any school subscribes to our services, we will visit every
class and provide the students with a demonstration of the capabilities of our
library.

On the other end, the revenue end, we propose the advertiser a unique proposition
– the most sought after consumer segment. Also, with small and quick surveys we
will be able to group the users of the site based on preferences and then tailor
massages of our advertizing partner accordingly. Also with time we will be able to
create an individual environment, a different UI for each of our users as our
information base enriches, allow our advertising partner a very unique opportunity
to always be in front of their best potential customers.

6. Financial Summary:
The weakest link in our business plan. As we will be the pioneers of this market in
Bangladesh, we will have to set our own revenue terms, as long as it is agreeable
to our counter parties. While we have a clear idea about our start up cost, we can
only provide projected number based on unsubstantiated assumptions and current
rates charged by site that do not have a similar business or attract similar
clientele. For our model, assume that by the 7th month of operation we will have
the five companies we aim to work with. By then we expect to receive Tk.
8,000/per month for the top of the page banner, Tk.6000/per month for the two
side banners of every page when a visitor starts a book. Also, we will have 5 slots
on the home page margins of the site, and on the margins of every index page. We
believe the home page ads will bring about Tk.8000 per slot per month, and the
index page Tk.4000 per slot per month. We also intend to offer discounts to
companies who buy slots in all three categories. Both data revenue and retail
revenue is expected take a year to start flowing in, and for this it is much difficult
to form any expectations of them.

However, we do not expect to be able to charge the aforementioned fees for

advertisements. We, thereby adjust our expectation by only incrementally
increasing our fees. In the first 3 months of full operation, we expect to charge a
meager 20% of the fees we expect to charge from the beginning of the third
quarter in operation. In the second quarter, we expect to charge 50% of our base
revenue, the 7th month fees. This gives us the following revenue model:

First 2nd 3rd 4th

Quarter Quarter Quarter Quarter
Revenue from the "book pages": 12000 30000 60,000 60,000
Revenue from the Home page : 24000 60000 120,000 120,000
Revenue from the index pages: 12000 30000 60,000 60,000
Total Quarterly Revenue 48000 120000 240,000 240,000
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Total Annual Revenue 648000
Quarterly Operating Expenses 31000 31000 50500 50500
Total Annual Operating Expenses 163000

As the graph above shows, we expect to make operating profit from the very first
full month in which we release the site completely. Also, by the end of the first full
operating year, we expect to be able to fund our own expansion, while ensuring
that we are on due course of repaying the loan.

7. The Key personnel

The Key Personnel of the project are as follows:

Tabrez Haider – The initiator of the project and an author of this plan. Holds a
BBA from CUNY Baruch, currently with the PAU of Bangladesh as an interning
researcher. Has hold positions in multiple US companies, including Bank of New
York Mellon, worlds largest custody bank.

Meehan Islam Kathan – An active member of the project. Currently studying at

Institute of Business Administration, Jahangirnagar University, on 7th semester, 4th
year. Has been working on a part time basis under IPAC (Integrated Protected Area
Co-Management), a contractor of USAID.

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Appendix 1

Startup Overhead

Expense Items Cost in BDT(Taka)

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 BTTB Line Charge per
17,500
month

Company Registration 30,000

Server 61,500

Online IPS 100,000

2 Backup Hard Drives (500

8,000 (2 X 4,000)
GB)

4 Monitors (LCD/LED, 19
38,000 (4 X 19,500)
inches)

Other Computer
5,000
Accessories

Hardware Installment 35,000

Software Installment 55,000

Electricity Overhead 15,000

Electricity wire charge 5,000

Air Conditioning Unit 25,000

2 Venting fans 5,000 (2 X 2,500)

Total Cost 400,000

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