Stay Hungry Stay Foolish - Rashmi Bansal

This post is late by two weeks. However, here it goes. Rashmi Bansal is more famous as the IIM -A graduate who founded JAM magazine. The book was commissioned by Center for Innovation Incubation and Entreprenership (CIIE) @ IIM-A and supported by the Wadhwani Foundation known for the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN).

"Stay Hungry Stay Foolish" is the famous concluding line of Steve Jobs's commencement speech at Stanford in 2005. The book profiles 25 IIM-A grads who took the entreprenerial path. The book has been intelligently divided into three sections based on the kind of entreprenerial ventures undertaken by the people featured or the phase in their life when they took the plunge.

I like Rashmi's disarming and original writing style where she tries her best to bring out the feelings these people had. She uses Hindi phrases effectively to achieve this. While reading the book I realized that these people faced similar predicaments and apprehensions when they wanted to quit their comfort zones and reach out for their larger calling. In that respect, at the end of each entrepreneurs story is a section of advice from the horse's mouth.

Some of the recurring points that I noticed were

• Do not quit. Some of the most successful ventures came after near hopelessness.
• Trust and understanding between the founding team members. Here, many also stress that without hurting the notion of equality, one person has to lead the team.
• Experience on the ground is important. You can sit in the classroom and try and prepare yourself for D day. But nothing prepares you for your brush with reality better than reality itself.
• You do not necessarily have to start big. You have to make a plunge at some point of time.

In the book you will find people behind some of the most enterprising companies like Sanjeev Bikchandani of naukri.com, Narendra Murkumbi of Renuka Sugars, Vijay Mahajan of Basix, Venkat Krishnan of Give India and many many more. At the end of the book you will feel happy and proud knowing more about these people.

I am also happy to see that many of these organizations work in the field of education, financial inclusion.

How to change the world by David Bornstein

Finished reading the book How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas by David Bornstein a couple of days back. The book was given to me by CSIM(Center for Social Initiative and Management) as part of joining kit for the SEOP (Social Entrepreneurship Outlook Program) course. I was wary of the book because of its title which sounded on the lines of "How to get rich" and "How to make friends". So I was out of town for a couple of days and decided to start reading it. It is a book worth reading and, no, it not exactly on the lines of the "get rich" type of books.David delves into the experiences of Bill Drayton, Ashoka (the organization he founded) and Ashoka fellows to explore the field of social entrepreneurship. What I like about the book is that the it realises that there is no magic potion for an entrepreneur or more specifically a social entrepreneur. Keeping this in mind, the author travels across countries and meets social entrepreneurs working in diverse fields, under diverse conditions - type of government being just one of them. Stories of these Ashoka fellows is interspersed with chapters where the author tries to find a thread connecting social entrepreneurs and make for an interesting read. I would recommend the book for even those who are just plainly interested in reading a good book.The parts that I particularly like - Bill Drayton's life and his meticuloous approach to selecting fellows, James Grant and his tenacity, Fabio Rosa and his willingness to

"...make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breath a word about your loss;...."

Readers who may not have heard about Jeroo Billimoria, Joe Madiath, Gloria de Souza will really like their stories and appreciate their contribution to Indian society. Coming to wanna-be social entrepreneurs, again, the book does not claim to be a Do it yourself guide to Social Entrepreneurship but the patterns it discovers in organizations and individuals working in the social development sector are compelling. I would have liked to see more stories on projects/ideas that could not take off. It really helps put things in perspective instead of painting a hunky dory picture of light at the end of the tunnel. At the same time I feel there are occassions where committed individuals have not let failures affect them and hence we do not see Fabio Rosa's efforts go in vain (because of the government of the day).

Do read it.

Nine on nine by Nandita C Puri

I finished reading this book  in a day. No no, its not too big a feat. I wanted to redeem the points that I had earned on my Citibank Account and this book was one of options. I ordered it and the book has been sitting pretty in my cupboard for quite sometime. The fact that the writer was the wife of actor Om Puri made me even more skeptical - you know these books written by the not so famous spouses of the supposedly famous ones.

But a day of boredom made me pick the book up and I have not regretted. A good read in my opinion. The book is a collection of nine short stories and one lazy day is enough to finish reading it.

All the stories are centered around women - particularly urban women. Thankfully, I feel, there has not been needless male bashing. Stories have been set up in various 

backgrounds - here I see a bend towards stories set in a Bengali backdrop.

A few features of Puri's stories. Some of them have this suspense or climax factor to deliver the punch of the story. The first story titled "Arranged Marriage" is based in a Marathi household. It is definitely among the best of the nine. Another feature of her stories is the way she peppers the stories with vernacular words to give a feeling of belonging and realism. It works at times. At times it is overused.

There is another good story "Pages from Indulata Debi's diary". The female protagonist feels about her relationship with her estranged husband thus 

Marriage had not been a rosy experience for her but she was determined to save it at all costs. 'It is better to deal with one wolf than to be left at the  mercy of a whole pack'

Puri is also not very keen on giving every story a definite ending leave aside a happy one. I like this style because in real life too, each story does not really have an ENDING as such. Overall a good buy and a steal if you have enough points in your Citibank Account