HYDERABAD: While schools were shut for the longest time due to the pandemic, there was this growing need and worry about how to keep the kids engaged. Well, there were e-education platforms, streaming platforms, games, and interactive apps, but we know what too much screen time can do to children.
To bring back the joy of reading and love for books, city-based bookseller Mohammed Riyaz started Dream Info, a bookstore on wheels by is helping many regain their interest in reading. “I got the idea to open a mobile book van in early 2019. It was a dream which made its way into reality after Covid-19 snowballed into a pandemic in 2020,” says Riyaz, who has been a book retailer for over two decades now.
While inculcating the habit of reading in today’s youth may be one of the reasons why Riyaz started this book van, he was forced to shut his shop, Dream Info World Bookstore at Madinaguda, due to poor sales. “But I refused to quit the business. I am a reader myself and I want others to read too, particularly children, who are still not going to school regularly and are distracted by various entertainment platforms on the Internet,” he says.
Dream Info has two vans, packed with over 1,500 titles in all the genres such as fairy tales, fables, folktales, picture books, game books, puzzles, fantasy, fiction, non-fiction, encyclopedias and even horror.
“Our vans move around in residential areas,” says Riyaz, adding that each van can fit up to 700 books. The price ranges from Rs 30 to Rs 3,000.