BLR Echoes: This is Atta Galatta's Secret Sauce to Success | ft. Subodh Sankar
As we bid goodbye to October, join us in conversation with Atta Galatta's Subodh Sankar on the good ol' Bengaluru charm and patronage that has given life to his community-centred bookstore.
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This month, we were in conversation with Subodh Shankar; the co-founder of an independently owned bookstore; Atta Galatta. A vibrant hub for community-centric events, Atta Galatta has wormed its way into the hearts of Bengaluru’s residents who frequent this spot like no other. Stay tuned until the end for an exclusive excerpt from our conversation with Subodh on how Atta Galatta’s thriving community is unperturbed by the arrival of online retailers in the market.
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Anchored by UnboxingBLR, and presented by Westside, ‘Hubba in Your Park’ (HYP) is a run up to BLR Hubba, a city wide festival anchored by UnboxingBLR which takes place between Dec 1 - 15🎪
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"Atta Galatta's secret sauce was that very quickly a community adopted us, and that just kept us going…" | Ft. Subodh Sankar
Subodh Sankar is the co-founder of Atta Galatta - an independent bookstore based in Indiranagar, Bengaluru. Since its launch in 2012, the bookstore has been a hub of activity in the city, more famously associated with Bangalore Literature Festival and the Under-25 Literature Festival as the official bookstore partner for these events. In this interview, Subodh shares how the bookstore has managed to stay alive despite competition with online retailers, and the unique spirit of the city that contributes to its vibrant event space throughout the year. Read an excerpt of his conversation with our copywriter below:
Winnie: Thanks for setting aside the time so early in the morning for this chat, Subodh. As an avid reader, and someone who too dreams of having a bookstore of her own one day - I want to know the story behind Atta Galatta. Tell me about the aha moment when you knew you wanted to set up a bookstore. Did you already know how you wanted things to function in the bookstore? Was it a thought experiment that just took off?
Subodh: I don't believe in aha moments. Thoughts, dreams, and hard work sort of converge at some point in time, and things happen, so technically, there is no aha moment. Aha moments come and go. They don’t translate into anything.
Atta Galatta happened because it was always a dream of my wife, Lakshmi, to own a bookstore, and the circumstances in our life in 2012 had come together for us to take the plunge.
Before we started Atta Galatta, of course, we were hoping that it would succeed. No entrepreneur starts out planning for failure. I’d say AG was more than a thought experiment in that sense. The thought experiment, so to say, was HOW Atta Galatta was going to exist in the city.
At the time, physical bookstores were shutting down across the country. Flipkart and Amazon were starting to ship books en masse, in volumes. Kindle was starting to make waves in India. The thought experiment was that we could no longer run a physical world bookstore if our business was just going to be about putting books on a shelf and hoping people would turn up. Up until that point in time, if you wanted a book, you had to go to a bookstore to get to the book. But in 2012, the ecosystem was set up for the book to come to you, whether in its physical or in its digital form.
We were thinking of how we could promote Atta Galatta as a platform for artistic and literary interactions. As a platform, our vision was different. Platforms allow artists and audiences to find each other, and they set the tone for your space - whether it's cinema, storytelling, workshops or any sort of artistic endeavour. As a platform, the space supported interactions around that artistic venture.
The bet was that if there would be people stopping by for an event at Atta Galatta , there was a reasonable chance they were also interested in books.
We started off by encouraging people to come to the space - be it for the books, the coffee, the literary interactions or just for hanging out with a friend. Our aim was to bring people to the bookstore to just be; and if they were there, and surrounded by books, at some point in time, they’d buy the books. That was the thought experiment.
Winnie: Is that how you also started thinking of the bakery that’s upstairs?
Subodh: We've always wanted nourishment to be available for people when they step into our space. When you do these things, having a cup of coffee or something to munch on always adds some sort of delight.
Winnie: Do you think that Bengaluru is a very unique city in the sense that a pitch for artistic and literary events, year round, could be made sustainably here? People are very forthcoming here, right?
Intrigued? There’s more to read here…
Liked this edition? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, and we’ll see you next month 🫶🏼
Warmly,
Team UnboxingBLR