Book Review: The Test Of My Life

The Test of My Life by Yuvraj Singh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book offers a glimpse into the journey of a top class sportsman and the ordeals faced with injuries/illness. The authors provide an insight into the ambitions, highs and lows in the life of Yuvraj Singh. The problem with the book is there is way too much description of particular cricket matches which gets redundant at times for someone watched that matches.

What holds this book together is though the way Yuvraj describes his killer instinct to fight cancer, the details around chemo treatment, the importance of having friends and family in one's life stressing that work is not everything and one should have people around who would stand by then through thick and thin. The authors further go on to explain the processes and pains associated with chemotherapy. The heart here is in the right place. Yuvraj did a good job stressing the fact that cancer can be overcome and the way he fought through all of those and came back to play for India again shows that it is doable.

The other thing that Yuvraj stresses is his ignorance of the cancerous symptoms while playing for the much coveted World Cup 2011 showing his resolve to achieve his aims and put his life on the line for it. This on one hand stresses what it meant to Yuvraj to get the cup for India at the same time these chapters also introduce the what symptoms for cancer and that it is important to prioritise one's health against all his ambitions.

An extra star for the intent behind the book!

View all my reviews

Book Review: A century Is Not Enough

A Century Is Not Enough : My Roller-coaster Ride to Success by Sourav Ganguly
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A good read overall (4.5 maybe). Towards the last couple of chapters I sort of found it a bit boring but completed the book nonetheless. If you have followed Ganguly, you will find this a very Ganguly-esque book. You will actually visualise Ganguly saying these in an interview. Its that close.

The good parts of the book are the feelings Ganguly shares along the way, the feeling of being selected for the India team for the first time, the shy, vulnerable Ganguly with the feelings of anxiety, the feelings of inferiority sitting among the stalwarts, the apprehensions etc. From that point to the most confident ( and to an extent an arrogant) Ganguly, you can feel the journey. He puts a reason to why he would be overly aggressive or arrogant at times and I was convinced and found myself respecting him a tad bit more now. Though I did feel at times he had really become a bit too overconfident towards the end of his career and wanted to sit on his past laurels, I could learn so much from a completely different angle as to how the ups and downs in life should be handled, how to cope through situations when people want to pull you down etc.

I would recommend this to anyone who follows a bit of cricket, who knows the events in Ganguly's career and wants to pick up Ganguly's mind when he faced through those situations or anyone who is just looking for some motivation getting around some difficult times in life.

View all my reviews

Book Review: I Am Malala

I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For a 15 year old to have such insight, drive and the grit, it is astonishing to see Malala just going ahead with her business and not give up. Having faced such hardships right from the environment in Swat valley to being shot, Malala is a symbol of courage and I have garnered a lot respect for this nobel prize laureate.

Regarding the book, I started reading this book to gain some real insight in that part of the world and I am glad I started with this masterpiece. The book covers a bit of history of Pakistan to begin with. Then Malala goes on to talk of her childhood friends and family. Her grip on penning down what she feels of her parents and how they look at it is again commendable. Its quite inspiring to see Malala and her father fighting for the fundamental human right of girls education knowing there is a threat looming all the time. You see how both of them are not afraid come what may but when it comes to the other, they do get protective. Amidst all the life story, Malala presents an amazing account of a father-daughter relationship. Malala seems to have a lot of respect for her culture and religion at the same time she is not willing to be fooled by the impositions of gender inequality. Reading this book is a reminder of how much we take for granted things around us. I am sure I will appreciate my freedom a tad bit more now. I hope and wish her dream of getting back to Swat valley and the vision she carries of her motherland does come true. The world needs more Malalas. Looking forward to reading more about her life as she carries on the fight she has taken.

View all my reviews

Book Review: I Too Had a Dream

I Too Had a Dream by Verghese Kurien
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

With autobiographies I sometimes don't understand how deeply you trust what you read, how you verify the facts and what alterate sources to trust. Thence I am generally not a big fan of reading autobiographies even though I love biographies. Nevertheless I am happy I picked up this book for this is an honest account on Mr Verghese Kurien. You can feel the empathy for customers in his words. You can see his intent and passion for cooperatives.

The book begins with early life of Mr Kurien and how through an accidental turn of events Mr Kurien was forced into diary engineering and then working in Kiara, how Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Tribhuvandas affect his life and vision and how he fought through all the politics and bureaucracies to make one of the biggest cooperatives in India. His constant emphasis on cooperative vs corporate is a food for thought. Though he blatantly criticises corporate and sometimes you tend to disagree with him this book presents a good view of the two worlds- cooperative and corporate Further, the obsession of author for the delicate balance between the benefits of both producers (farmers) and consumers of milk (or other agricultural products) is very compelling and provides for an engaging lession on marketing.

Amul and Dhara as brands stand as tall success to prove the success he achieved. The real success of Mr Kurien is way above these though. This book thus classifies as a must read for the impeccable writing plus insights on cooperative strategy and marketing.

View all my reviews

Book Review: The Accidental Prime Minister : The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh

The Accidental Prime Minister : The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh by Sanjaya Baru
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The review for this book can be divided in two parts. One, the authors presentation which deserves full marks. The author seems in complete freedom to express his views. The biggest worry for a book of this kind is that the author could be curbed by the high profile officials, which doesn't seem to be the case here. The books gives a balanced view on the two terms served by Dr Manmohan Singh. This is a must read for someone who has the slightest interest in Indian politics. For others too it contains a good account on the leadership, politics in general, the importance of image building etc.

Moving to the second part of review, if you have ever criticized Manmohan, you must read this book. The author allows the reader to form his own opinion quoting instances from his experience. And in my view Manmohan is an idol. Yes, he did loose out on his image in his second term quite miserably and deserves some flak for that too. But he deserves an immense respect for his integrity, patriotism, selflessness and for just being who he really was. As you read the book you feel for him. You wish he had some more power, you wish he had established his authority a bit more and lastly you wish he was on the right side. To end with I wouldn't call Dr. Singh the accidental prime minister but a great intellect just fallen in the wrong place at the wrong time. India will do well to home more people like him in politics.

View all my reviews

Book Review: Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The book is good in patches. To start with, the book did not interest me. I somehow continued and then started finding portions which were really engaging. You see the occasional brilliance of Peter Thiel as a really experienced entrepreneur. He comes across with some really valuable insights. Unfortunately, he wavers easily too. I kept trying to guess who the target audience of this book is. Perhaps the author tries to put in something for everyone which obviously backfires. Because this book is not very engaging I wouldn't recommend it to someone who is not very enthusiastic about the topic but I really look forward to reading a masterpiece from Peter Thiel. And I wish the next book from him is better directed to a specific audience in mind.

View all my reviews

Book Review: Direct From Dell

Direct From Dell: Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry by Michael Dell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an excellent book and I would recommend this to everyone who is starting a B2C company or holds (or aims to hold) a managing positions in such a space.

Michael Dell opens up about his life, how he started dell, what the differentiator for Dell as a company is and his obsession for the customer satisfaction. The book is divided into two parts: the first talks about dell as a younger company and the second focuses on managing the big organizers so you get both the perspectives. The examples quoted in the book, in the form of the experiences of Dell as a company shows how important a differentiating factor for a growing company is and why Dell prides itself on the support and customer feedback loop. The author talks at length about information versus inventory and highlights how important it is to hold as minimum inventory as possible. Alternatively focus on information flow. There is tons to learn from this book.

I am going to place this book in my "read again" section.

The reason I dropped a star (4/5) is that towards the end it fails to bind the reader. I got bored coming across customer obsession too many times and dropped the book just before it ended.

View all my reviews

Unpluggd Conference: Startup Launch and Demo session

In the last post we went through the overall impressions from the conference. Here is a summary of the first session of the day Startup Launch and Demo. Unpluggd invites applications for this slot allowing people to convey their startup ideas. Tons of applications follow and they choose the best of them to allow showcasing their products on the big stage. Lets go through the list and have a quick introduction to them.

1. Oyelife: aims to tap into the weekend leisure market. Their vision can be best portrayed by one of the slides that put up saying - "We think when people have time at hand in a weekend and don't know what to do they will turn to one of these three apps: zomato (for food discovery), bookmyshow (to book tickets for movies/plays/sports etc) and Oyelife."
   
   Bold statement and a courageous dream to pursue. Their content is curated and contains all the activities you can think of apart from the other two domains mentioned. I wish them well because I really hate hitting a dozen of apps. I will keep a close eye on Oyelife to allow me some less trouble on weekends to choose a way to have fun!
   
   Tapping into a bit of history, Oyelife comes from the same team that established Must See India which offers holiday packages. They claim to provide holiday packages with their own content (not user generated) like Housing does in the real estate ecosystem. They also claim to allow people to customize the holiday packages and provide 24*7 support. I am not very excited about this though I like the bold move in Oyelife.
2. Magictiger: is the one stop shop to getting everything online on your fingertips. At present they offer a phone number and you can contact them on whatsapp chat. They claim to cover anything you could ask them to get for you without any extra charge. Look at this screenshot from their website for an example:
   
   
   
   
   
   How cool is that? From booking a movie ticket to hotel, from ordering a food item to groceries they simply cover everything. Too good to be true and more technically too difficult to scale. Of course they were asked how they were going to be able to manage with one whatsapp number. And they said they have somehow been able to multiplex it and there are actually 20 odd people responding. There was a guy in the audience who actually ordered a nimbooz and got it delivered. Well this feels like a dream. Get lazy and have fun as it lasts and I really do wish it lasts longer!
3. MobiComKit: is a plug and play support for messaging. A lot of applications, though they can do really better with a communication interface embedded in them, end up either not having it to begin with or use a third party tool (like ola pays for the messages instead of embedding it in their app). If you don't have a way for people to come and spend some time on your website and talk about you, I think you are losing customers in the process. Its one thing to bring someone to your website and its a big deal to keep them there. And there is no better way to promote than a human interaction. If you use a third party tool, you lose data which I believe is the most important tool in your basket for people love personalization in today's age. Blame it on facebook or google, people have come to get used to being treated based on their behavior.
   
   MobiComKit adds an in-app messaging feature to your apps without the need to invest time on it without caring about the implementation or the infrastructure. Plug it, play it and engage your customers on your website.
4. Banihal is yet another attempt at match-making. Not again sigh! That was my initial reaction until I cam across Mr cheerful and confident founder. This guy had the best presentation skills. And he tried his best to convince that this is not just another match-making website. They are here to rule the industry. They have an impressive team and they already have a seed funding in too!
   
   Aaaaaand the investor is none other than David Cheriton himself. Here are the two gentleman:
   
   
   
   
   The guy who saw the potential in Google in-spite of many other search engines existing at that time and wrote the first cheque for them. Of course there were parallels drawn with this. Banihal claims to do it better and rule the space it is in. They are going to use neurology and all the research behind human decision making to make sure marriage is NOT just a decision. As Warren Buffett says- this is the most important investment one does in life. Banihal's vision is to give people 5 recommendations and they want to ensure the person does get married to one of them. Like Google, don't scroll to the second page of search results :) As much as I was uninspired by the space in which they are operating I really wish they do succeed for they have a good team, a visionary mentor and a confidence to rule the space- pretty much all ingredients to make a good business.
5. Chaska: to me came across a wannabe cool company. Because the name is catchy I was really looking forward to this. My immediate thought was it would be about food, but I  was wrong. Its a way to discover, re-mix and share videos. From the presenter to concept to problem to solution, I tried my best but I was never inspired. Because they are a startup I wish them well too but I would be surprised to see this make it big. I wish though that I am proved wrong.
6. uninstall.io: I like the concept though not a lot of other people shared my views. I have never thought so much about the % uninstalls against number of installs. I have never thought of analyzing this. Perhaps because I have never made an app myself? Maybe but to me this came up as something I would love to use as a startup. I would love to know why someone uninstalled my app, why someone finds my app crappy and how I can resurrect the situation. Go ahead and make it big guys. I do have faith in your ideas.
7. TrueSemantic: are in the space of customer support. Their vision is to improve the customer support and I wish they really do it in India for customer support most of the times in my part of the world is crappy. They came up with a statistic saying 80% companies think they have a really good and superior customer support while there are only 8% users who agree. Though I am no believer in a survey without knowing the source I would like to believe they are right. I would really expect a good survey to show that disparity. They have a really good website so I need not put much here. Just spend a couple of minutes on their well organized website and you will know what it is all about.
8. Twist: is an improved android gaming experience on the TV screen. If you have read my last post you would know I was excited about this. Now I am no gaming enthusiast for I have always loved outdoor games more but I think this is something gaming ninjas should surely try. Go give it a try! By the way, I am a big believer in a good domain name and I wish their website was just twist.com instead of the http://www.gettwist.tv/. But it depends on how deep your pocket is.
9. Audoce is one product I really want to lay my hands on as soon as possible. Imagine not having to carry keys everyday, forget a bunch of them. Imagine not having to come back early from office because your roommate lost the keys and imagine having it as a software with much more functionality than a conventional key and lock system. Your smartphone can tell you who entered the house and at what time, how long they stayed- this is just plain logging. Now imagine some intelligence (AI) built into it. Okay lets stop dreaming and support them to come up with a system that can help us trust this software for software is definitely more prone to being hacked than the physical keys. Go ahead guys and make a kickass product. There is a bigass market waiting for you to do well.
10. Drip is something that the NextBigWhat team itself has come up with. It offers short curated news stories and aims at people who just have 5 minutes waiting for their bus to show up to quickly browse through the news. This is an obvious market in the news publishing industry for there are so many news channels providing the same news over and over. Then there are aggerators like google news too. I am a bit confused about this project at the moment but given their contacts I would like to believe it is easier for them to do a good job. All the best to the NextBigWhat team and kudos for the great work on the conference side! 

I will keep a close eye on this list and I would love to know your views on these wonderful ideas.

Book Review: Young Turks

Young Turks: Inspiring Stories of Tech Entrepreneurs by Shereen Bhan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The unique selling proposition (USP) of this book is that you get introduced to the founders of flipkart, snapdeal, justdial, druva and more. The book is for someone who knows nothing about these guys. Having read about entrepreneurs before I didn't get a lot of new information.

Secondly, you can see through the book that this is a journalist asking questions. The books doesn't give a detailed account of the founders, nor is it inspiring enough. Shereen Bhan seems to have a predefined set of questions she asks everyone. This starts to get boring beyond a certain point. The stories are not personalized enough. I have read some of Rashmi Bansal books and she does that quite well. In the current book, the stories are quite short and I found the author moving to questionnaires too quickly for me.

Having said that this is a good starting point for reading books on this topic. Go for it if you do not know a lot about these founders already. If you have read a fair bit on this topic, skip this.

View all my reviews

Book Review: How I Braved Anu Aunty & Co-Founded A Million Dollar Company

How I Braved Anu Aunty & Co-Founded A Million Dollar Company by Varun Agarwal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The story of Varun Agarwal is quite inspiring. The best part of this book is that you can relate to the central idea. We have all had an Anu Aunty in our lives and though you can see that the story is tweaked at times to make the presentation good, this is something that the author openly accepts in the book. Fare enough, the presentation needs to bind the readers.

Secondly, as a Bangalorean there are tons of places you can relate to and its fun to come across those references. All in all, the book makes some really good points keeping the mood light, cracking jokes along the way. This is one book that got me interested in reading books once again. I would recommend this book to anyone who is in the struggling phase, anyone who has lived in Bangalore and anyone who just wants to read a book for fun. Go for it, its worth a read!

View all my reviews

Book Review: Life is What You Make It

Life is What You Make It by Preeti Shenoy
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A good measure of whether you like a book or not, to me, is the feeling you carry soon after finishing the book. And with this book it was NOT a positive feeling for me. The book seems to over-dramatize certain instances.

I read this book between two masterpieces by George Orwell-
Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Perhaps that influenced my opinion on this book too and I can't help compare these books. The current book stands nowhere if you compare with those standards. You can clearly see the difference between the two authors. While on one hand George Orwell paints some beautiful pictures and maintains the tempo throughout the book, Preeti Shenoy fails miserably there in my opinion. There are parts in this book where you just don't feel like continuing. I would't recommend reading this book. There are tons of options out there and though I haven't read a lot of books myself I am sure there are plenty of better books read than this. This book can kill your interest in reading and I almost fell in that trap.

View all my reviews

Book Review: The Start-up of You

The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career by Reid Hoffman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I will divide my review for this book into two parts. One to project what the author conveys and two- to show how this book is different from others.

In our part of the world, we are starting to move from the get a job mentality to start a company and thankfully so. The way we look at the entrepreneurs and people employed by the bigger organizations is completely different. Obviously, not everyone can start a company. Then does it mean that the entrepreneur mentality should be borne by only those few people starting a company? This is where this book fits in.

The author goes on to essay that there is no clear line of distinction between the two sides. The author suggests that entrepreneurship is something pretty central to whatever one does. The author shows how the concepts of entrepreneurship apply to regular jobs.

Moving to the second point of how this book is different- the first thing that I try to find when I come across a book is if it will impact my thinking in some way. Frankly, not many do that. This book, if you follow the exercises definitely does that. Go ahead, read the chapters one by one and follow the exercises. You will see the point behind linkedin and other social networks. You will know how to use first, second and other degrees of connection. Your network will grow and you will learn to use your network in the right way and much more. A must read for everyone!

View all my reviews

Book Review: Connect The Dots

Connect The Dots by Rashmi Bansal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had been reading a lot on entrepreneurs when I was recommended this book. But before this book, it had only been about massively successful founders like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Bill gates etc. Reading only about them gets you into thinking big but at the same time you feel a bit intimidated by these personalities. You keep asking yourself if they were born geniuses, if you too could do something etc.

Reading this book opened my horizons. The book covers some lesser known entrepreneurs and goes on to show that its not only limited to software, its not only limited to silicon valley but entrepreneurship is all about seeing things around you and starting whatever you feel for. Its more basic than choosing a field you want to be in and finding a problem there. Its more about finding an opportunity in any field, any scale and any place.

All in all a great piece encompassing a lot of variety. Indeed like the title says it did connect some dots for me. If you are dreaming and not able to find the one thing you would want to do, go for this book. If nothing else it will at least broaden your range so the problem is a touch simpler.

View all my reviews

Book Review: Screw It, Let's Do It

Screw It, Let's Do It: Lessons In Life by Richard Branson


Richard Branson opens up about his life quoting instances to make the points listed in the contents. A short one and a good read especially if you are into reading about entrepreneurs. Richard's story has tons of things that one can learn from.

I read this book after the other one - Losing my virginity and it felt like this is just a shorter version of that book.

If you want to read more into the instances he quotes in Screw it lets do it I would recommend reading the other book. On the other hand, for the same reason I wouldn't recommend reading Screw it lets do it if you have already read the other book.

View all my reviews