DARE - Because Entrepreneurs Do

Suman Chennamaneni Co-Founder of Mambo Library

“I had to use myself into something useful” says the entrepreneur, Suman Chennamaneni, Co-Founder of Mambo Library. A Law graduate entrepreneur, whose first venture SMSResume acquired by a reputed job portal of India. His session at DARE Entrepreneur Week spreaded the joy of entrepreneurship. The session was moderated by the Senior Editor of DARE, Prashanth Hebbar.

Starting the session, Chennamaneni says just after his graduation he was sure of the fact that one day he would fabricate something of his own. His belonging to a business family also fueled his dream to try entrepreneurship. As a co-founder when setting up the stepping stone of Mambo Library, he had set budget on different elements like transportation, marketing etc. They had given due importance to computer education as well but the missing link was the library. But then Investors were not ready to put cash for library. Chennamaneni says, “The investors were not interested in putting cash for library. That's when I saw the shortage. I realised- ok the management team is not interested in setting up of books because that's not a selling point for them. When I went to the market and had seen 30 odd schools, none of them had libraries-that was a breaking point for me”. He further adds, “Even when I was doing my schooling, I did not have access to library, it’s happened when I came to Hyderabad to pursue higher studies after my tenth standard.” Chennamaneni says he was surprised to see the same situation existing after ten years.

He observed there was and is a good number of parents who are capable of paying good amount of money to get good services. But still these set of students were deprived of basic infrastructure like library. That's when he thought of Mambo Library. He says, “I have come up with this idea of setting up a common library for the whole town that can be shared with all these 30 odd schools and putting up a nominal fee for the same. That's how it all started.”

Learned the speaker, the session's moderator was intrigued and asked, if he has had any business plan  or any idea thinking this can become an entrepreneurship opportunity?

And the very prompt Chennamaneni says, “I was always interested in setting up of my own thing, I knew it. Even when I went for internship in Green Mango, I clearly told then, six months I will be moving out, I have told them that I am interested in entrepreneurship. They made me understand how it works. That was a great experience working with Green Mango. So the basic idea was to set up a library, gradually one thing led to other and we came up with our “Wisdom Box” concept. Wisdom box was never in the picture in the starting phase.”

The business model
Mambo Library started life to cater to the need of the bunch of people who are capable of paying money for good services. About the Wisdom Box, Chennamaneni says, “Wisdom box is an add on.  We have the infrastructure; we have the books those are sitting idle in the library. So we thought why not using this resource-so that's how Wisdom Box started. It’s a non-profit model and as we have both profit and no-profit models in our kitty, we call our business a hybrid business model.”

Wisdom Box distributes books in every fortnight to government schools and to rural private schools with the help of the teachers. The teachers collect books from Mambo Library and take these to their respective schools, free of cost. However Chennamaneni recalls, all was not smooth initially. These teachers unless are self motivators, were not very willing to take the pain of taking this responsibility. However gradually Mambo Library founders succeeded in roping in the owners of few private schools and few government schools teachers. They convinced their respective teachers to take these books to schools.      

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