I wanted to do a book review of Rashmi Bansal’s book for a long time. A few kids of the 2007, 08 batches of her own college ‘IIM A’ had not read the book…and they were not keen to.

The book is a fantastic hit at knowing that the author who is remembered is the ‘best selling’ and it need not be the ‘best writing’. Also the book is funded a little by all of us too – the Central Government (oops, hurts paying taxes does it not), the Gujarat government, IIM A,…and priced exactly like a child’s meal in a udipi of Mumbai.

Her language is Hinglish – and not sure why. She has tried some gender balancing…but not tried too hard perhaps. The book was simple to create, I guess. Decide on 30 people tell them about the project and ask for their CVs. I read the book – surprisingly I knew 4-5 of them – so wanted to see what she said. Realized that there was nothing new, controversial, …for example none of them said ‘to fund my working capital, I cheated on provident fund and tax deducted at source’. They all said the same things, bought 5000 copies of the book (25*5000 is not a bad number dude)..and went about their business. Like Nehru tells Indira : “nice to read about History, but even better to create it”. All these entrepreneurs are capable of writing – perhaps better…or should I say far better?

Completely from a business point of view, a brilliant idea. Should you read it? Your call. However if you put the names of R Subramaniam, Nirmal Jain, Deepta Rangarajan, Harsha Bhogle, Sanjiv Bhikchandani, Rashesh Shah, ..surely other kids in other colleges will buy? and pricing it at Rs. 125 is again brilliant. Fantastic publicity for the author..and if you do not own 5-6 channels, and have a limited marketing budget…a good first book idea.

The companies run by these people are Subhiksha, Indiainfoline, Myiris.com, Naukri.com, Edelweiss,…surely all are famous companies.

I am sure this book review as not very useful…so here is a useful review read it:

http://www.vccircle.com/500/news/book-review-stay-hungry-stay-foolish