As third-generation Punjabi's brother was not keen on joining the business, and his father needed help, the 43-year-old visited the shop regularly when he was in college. After he did his bachelor's in commerce, he took over the business and has been manning the shop since then.

While they started out as a supplier for reference books to Engineering and IT subjects for colleges, the demand for them has dropped over the years because of easy access to information on the internet, rising prices of books, and frequently changing syllabus.

Seeing this shift, Punjabi started keeping bestsellers including the likes of Chetan Bhagat in 2010. When people came to take the reference books, they used to also end up buying these books and slowly the demand for them also grew. Today, the bookshop has between 10,000 to 12,000 books.

After the Covid-19 pandemic, Punjabi has seen a huge demand for books in regional languages like Hindi and Marathi. Many of the readers in Vashi are coming to ask for books by Pu La Deshpande and other authors, which he says has been the best part because it is encouraging to see the shift. Apart from regional literature, he has also seen a demand for religious books like Ramayana and Mahabharata not only for adults but children, for whom he has pictorial versions.