This book is one IIMA jamboree all the way, so much so that I twitched myself into a bollywood like Govinda‘esque OUIMAA expression in wonderment. The template of this book and its inspiration I suspect, seems to have been ‘ideashopped’ on the book 'Innovators' - the essential guide to Business thinkers, achievers and entereneurs by William Davis.
Unlike ‘Innovators’ which has no specific lien to any institution but an assorted stories of people who excelled on the American Business landscape, this book sticks to singing paeans to those IIMA grads who took entrepreneurial journeys in various fields in India.
The author Rashmi Bansal’s protagonists are interesting characters with a story to tell. But in a few pages, each story winds up through a large panorama of entrepreneurial journey told mostly in a breezy casual way.
It could have been a Business case study compilation for wannabe entrepreneurs. Which was ideally expected from Rashmi Bansal - a business graduate of that school writing on the topic of business enterprise. But it ends up being a handful of tid-bid stories to kindle your entrepreneurial spirit, if you happened to harbor one.
Interesting in parts, the book possibly ends up giving the impression that those coming out of IIMA are born leaders, innovators & successful entrepreneurs leading the entrepreneurial torch light march in India. A bit like what Hollywood likes us to believe about American patriotism, valor and its bravado and its swashbuckling Presidents who can fight Aliens or thwart Hijackers in its movies.
I liked this bit of nugget from Shantanu Prakash whose story is undoubtedly one of the interesting highlights of the book “The trick is to identify the DNA in a person, where he or she wants to do something different, and wants to be differently incentivized”.
Reality check: Just wanted to check out the credibility of author’s well intended end note on start up resources. Wrote to one of the entrepreneurs featured in the book for help/advice/suggestion. Yet to get a response even though its over a month!.
