Kumar Mangalam Birla by Drimi Chaudhuri (Book Review: 3.5*/5) !!!

What I like about books from Jaico is that their focus is so passionate on the self-improvement that even if you are not liking any of their books still at the end of it you would find some motivation and inspiration through it. One of their best series is where they publish short biographies on India’s great personalities for us to know about them and learn from their experiences and lifestyle. The latest such book I ended up reading recently from Jaico is on the life of Mr. Kumar Mangalam Birla written by Drimi Chaudhuri. The book discusses 10 secrets of Success from the life of Mr. Birla such as Dreaming Big, Aiming High, Learning from the Past, Building and then Expanding, Evolving with the World, Building a World-class Team, Keeping our Cool, Being Humble, Keep Learning and Being Prepared to Succeed.

Drimi has very well discussed the life of Mr. Birla on how he takes on from his previous generation from Birla dynasty and rather than falling on his knees, brought more name to the empire and made it grow like never before. The values and principles that he followed in his life is discussed which makes evident a lot of things about what such personalities live by to ensure they succeed at the end of all. It is nicely discussed how he enabled so many verticals and succeeded in almost all of them. And even in those he could not perform as well as others, he either ended up them successfully by merging together with another entity or selling it off keeping the sanctity of the institution alive.

The book is divided in ten chapters where each of them talks about one of the secrets of Success that the author has extracted out of Birla’s life. The decision-making techniques and transformation by Kumar Mangalam Birla is nicely appreciated in the book- the one which impressed me is the way he allowed non-vegetarian food in the office campus which was a strict NO before him as the whole Birla family had been strictly pure vegetarian. The words by the previous generations as quoted in the book tells how relevant Birla’s style of working has been that despite making some big changes in the existing culture, the earlier generation still adored his workstyle.

Overall, the book is a nice short read. I give it 3.5* out of 5.

Thanks.

ABHILASH RUHELA