Essential hygiene

Zodhita Health & Hygiene has unveiled Zuska Foot Soul, a range of deodorant plus antiperspirant foot sprays in the Indian market. Targeted at both men and women in the age group of 18-30 years, the spray claims to help destroy foot odour instantly. Its formulation of essential oils of peppermint, bergamot and lavender provides for all-day protection. Available in 150 ml packs, the product is priced Rs 250.

uRead: Online marketing

For browsers only

There is a new player in the online book-selling space, but e-books are the future..

Booklovers or rather, buyers, have a new destination online to check out. uRead.com is a two-month-old Web site that has “only books” as its USP, not to mention an assurance of offering the biggest discounts in the online book selling business.

says most other sites that sell books, such as Amazon.com, rediff and indiaplaza are “diluted in a couple of respects” — in that they sell products other than books, such as music, DVDs and apparel. uRead.com is focused on the reader, and early next year, will get into e-books too, followed by magazines and newspapers.

It has a database of over six million books at present.

the market for books in India is estimated at Rs 2,000 crore (organised and unorganised) and growing at 25 per cent annually. The market for book purchase online is only Rs 50-60 crore, but growing at 50-60 per cent. In the US, the book market is put at $31 billion, and online purchase accounts for $8 billion. Flipkart, a Bangalore-based portal for online purchase of books, movies, music and mobiles, which uRead considers his only competition, has been reported to be eyeing a revenue of Rs 100 crore for 2010-11. There is another estimate which puts the growth rate of the online books market at 100 per cent.