Doglapan by Ashneer Grover (Book Review: 4.25*/5) !!!

  

36^th Book of 2022

Well, at one point of time, when December begun, I had posted that I would not be meeting my Yearly goal of reading 36 books but here I am, right on 31^st December, sharing the review of the 36^th book. I have just completed reading Ashneer Grover’s very first book named “Doglapan” which got released just few days back. It is always a delight to be one of the first readers of a book that is about to get extremely popular.

 

This 256-pages autobiography by Ashneer is special because of his personality of calling spade a spade without worrying about what you’ll perceive of him. The founder of my 1^st company would always say “We are not here to win an election. Whenever there’s anything wrong, go ahead and tell it on the person’s face”. Ashneer has been just the same through his Shark Tank experience which made him popular and the book is also written in the similar fashion which makes you understand from where does this confidence reflect in his personality.

 

You must have watched Bollywood movies where they show the protagonist being handcuffed or defamed in public in the very 1^st scene and then immediately navigate to the flashback which leads to this prologue section how the character ended up being in such state. In the similar fashion, the prologue speaks about a segment of the whole Bharatpe saga which happened early this year and immediately, Ashneer takes us to his childhood where he describes his background and with utmost respect, speaks about his parents, grandparents and every member of his family.

 

He gives insights on how he ended up being so studious that he is part of two topmost institute of our country. He is proud and delighted about everything he has achieved in life and that reflects every time he talks about his achievement – either it’s about academics, personal life, corporate life or start-up success. He doesn’t try to sound modest because he knows how much effort he has put in to achieve success in each of these sectors. He is a typical family person and the part on how he started missing his grandparents when they started staying separately to give him space for studying and how after reuniting with them in a new home, he started feeling happy again made me emotional.

 

The whole section of him joining MBA just because that was last chance for him to find a good partner and how he even got successful in it tells a lot about his conviction behind achieving anything. Haha! How he had to actually win trust of his in-laws makes you remember the whole “2 States” segment of the protagonist with his in-laws. The way he speaks about each of his corporate experience and what he learnt from them is quite beneficial for every corporate or start-up employee. He emphasizes on the fact that anything you do or learn while working never goes waste and comes out in rescuing you later in your career or life for sure. He also speaks about creating and maintaining relationship in the same space which is a great take-away from this autobiography.

 

The 2^nd half of the book is more about how he moved into the start-up world. Everything right from the 1^st page till the last is written as if you are reading a fiction novel. Ashneer always insists on speaking Hindi as it clears things better than English, even in this book, he has not shied away from writing few sentences in Hindi. The whole start-up section is about learning from his experiences and knowing how to keep your product customer-centric and move ahead with pitching for multiple rounds to raise funds. Though, here, I felt that too many figures and technical terms made it hard to understand few events but overall, it was great to know how a single person can create a product which can earn such kind of money for an organization. Unbelievable!

 

The last segment of the book, as I said initially, takes us to the same prologue scenario where the whole Bharatpe saga happened due to which he ended up resigning from his own company. This is interesting to read as I knew that the whole book has just been written by Ashneer to share this story and reveal for once whatever he wanted to say about people who ditched him. Unfortunately, the whole thing sounds like a rant while reading than an honest account as Ashneer only speaks from his point of view and never talks about what must have gone wrong from his end for all his team members to go against him – that too when he got famous as public figure and they knew that eventually, it is only going to make him more famous than them. Anyway, Ashneer doesn’t try sugarcoating anything and directly calls out name without thinking of repercussions of saying such harsh things about people sitting at powerful positions.

 

He makes us understand things like GST complications, how investors start bossing startup founders, how wrong hiring can screw you badly etc. The last chapter speaks about 5 things success and failure- both taught him which is a nice ending to the book. There’s obviously a chapter before this on his Shark Tank experience and it is all goody goody stuff about how it went for him.

 

Overall, the book is interesting and shouldn’t take more than one sitting or 5-6 hours to finish the same. I give this book 4.25 stars out of 5. I received whatever I expected from it.

PURCHASE THE BOOK HERE

 

Thanks!

 

WRITING BUDDHA