A Billion Dreams: Decoding Flipkart’s Growth Story by Varadharaju Janardhanan/M.H. Bala Subrahmanya (Book Review: 4.5*/5) !!!

 

14^th Book of 2024

Out of many transformations that my generation has experienced in front of them, the evolution of start-up ecosystem is one of them. And it all began with Flipkart in 2007 when E-commerce industry had just begun in India with lots of excitement and doubt among consumers. Author-duo Varadharaju Janardhanan and M. H. Bala Subrahmanya has tried to explore the whole arc of Flipkart’s development in their book named “A Billion Dreams”. This 150-pages short book also has the tagline called “Decoding Flipkart’s Growth Story”.

 

As the title of the book says, it does full justice to it by going deeper into how Flipkart managed to initiate their ecommerce startup in India where there wasn’t even access to Internet to many in the era of 2G internet. Indians, with the habit of touching and verifying products before purchasing, trusted the new website and accepted it with all the new promises the website was making. The book deeps down into the journey how Flipkart became one of the first unicorns of India in 2012 and with all its great strategies, became decacorn within 2 years itself in 2014.

 

One thing that I like about Rupa Publication is its initiative of telling such inspiring and informative stories through their short books which can be finished within a single sitting. Even being a fast read, the authors doesn’t compromise on the story and helps us understand every aspect of the business. They describe how Flipkart went through the investment spree and got big cheques from biggest investors of the world. Further, how they themselves opened a venture unit for investment in new startups themselves once they got established.

 

Similarly, it’s interesting to read one of the best strategies of Flipkart where they started acquiring businesses or getting into mergers and acquisitions to ensure that they benefit from the achievements of the other firms – either in terms of their talent pool or the logistics/network they must have created which Flipkart won’t have to create from scratch. Their Entrepreneurial culture mindset is regularly mentioned in the book which talks about how they groomed and motivated their employees in briefing new ideas which are out of the box. They either implemented the same in Flipkart or helped a group of employees create a new start-up.

 

One amazing fact about Flipkart remains that they created a work culture in such a manner that many of their employees created their own successful start-ups after leaving Flipkart and in many of these cases, Flipkart themselves turned out to be the initial investor to give them wings. This tells a lot about the leadership mindset the firm and its founders have rather than killing the dreams of their employees by adding clauses.

 

The book discusses very well on several challenges that the firm faced in the first few years and how the company found solution for each of them. It serves as a very big example for all the management folks as well as people interested in opening a start-up of their own. Authors have very intelligently added a section after every chapter called “Add To Kart” which mentions the key take-aways that we need to remember from the chapter. The book has a lot to learn from entrepreneurship aspect. I have never been an aspirant of starting something of my own but the growth story of Flipkart definitely motivated me to think something which I can own and nurture like them.

 

The only concern that I found with the book are few repetitive stories of their growth time and again which becomes boring. I feel that authors should have either gone from timeline perspective or strategy perspective and spoken about all the related events in a single space. But authors have been little confused in that sense and spoken about few elements every now and then which makes you skip few paragraphs.

 

Overall, this is a perfect book for younger children and start-up aspirants. I give this book 4.5 stars out of 5. Definitely recommended!

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WRITING BUDDHA

A Fly on the RBI Wall: An Insider’s View of the Central Bank by Alpana Killawala (Book Review: 4.5*/5) !!!

  

13^th Book of 2024

Whenever it’s about Indian institutions which are regularly in news and closely linked with people’s life and country’s progress, we, the public want to know about it’s internal process- such as DRDO, ISRO, BCCI etc. Hence, it has always been an amazing experience reading APJ Abdul Kalam’s autobiography as we get an insight upon how the intelligent brains work towards creating a missile and achieving their goal through its launch. One such institution is RBI. All of us wish to know how it functions and what actually happens behind the door. Alpana Killawala’s book “A Fly on the RBI Wall” is a wonderful book in that context as authoress has worked as an RBI official on the designation of DGM and gives us her honest observations of her experience with the country’s central bank.

 

I have myself been involved with RBI and its officials while working on their software products hence while reading, I was able to relate and empathize with many scenarios that Alpana has mentioned in the book. This 223-pages memoir is a perfect page-turner as authoress has been able to narrate her work experience in a manner where you get to learn about her milestone but most importantly, you get to know about RBI’s gradual change in its mindset as well. She worked with Communications department and therefore, she mostly tells the story from that lens. Still, the fact about how RBI functions and the challenges she faced remains the same with every individual involved with the institution working in any department.

 

I am glad the way she has bifurcated her book in order to make it an exciting read for us by timelining chapters not based on her timelines but as per the Governor’s tenure. This gave her a wonderful platform for expressing how each Governor helped RBI in their own manner and how they were different from each other. Her book mentions the tenure of the following Governors- S. Venkitaramanan, C. Rangarajan, Bimal Jalan, Y. V. Reddy, Duvvuri Subbarao and Raghuram Rajan. Alpana has this wonderful way of expressing her views where she speaks about each of these Governors in a manner where she is able to tell their good and bad points without making it feel biased or demeaning. She has done it with such elegance that no one can ever raise finger on this book with respect to insulting the Central Bank or their highly respected Governors or any officials.

 

As the title of the book goes, authoress concentrates upon how she has been just a small fly in this big world of RBI where one can’t think of doing anything enough prominent to change the way RBI functions – but yet, she was able to change multiple things on her individual level by insisting upon the change. When she joined RBI, she tells how difficult times it was because of Harshad Mehta scam and the market fall that happened just after. Her frustration with the rigid style of working made her resign but she understood soon that she can’t expect things to change instantly but if persisted, can happen in few years down the line. This is what her objective as a Central Bank employee became and she conquered many of her wills by opining her thoughts in front of Governor.

 

Her sense of humor is incredible which is evident in the way she has explained many scenarios where just a sentence makes us giggle. Few silly comments or functions at RBI also makes us think how such traditional institution takes it own time in matching up with the modern way of working. A person working in a department could change so much to bring contrast in how RBI drafted circulars, amendments, press releases to how RBI governors wrote and spoke speeches to how they interacted with media and what they did beyond their working hours is enough inspiring for all the working professionals who believe that they can’t do much in the job world.

 

In the end, author also throws light upon how Rajan’s comments would irritate government and their sour relationship impacted RBI. She also brings up the topic of demonetization and explains how RBI did its job effectively despite it not being the decision-maker. Alpana also speaks up on the current Governor- Shaktikanta Das regarding how he has balanced things well in terms of communicating as a Governor and has been non-controversial till now unlike previous Governors.

 

Definitely, while reading you can sense Alpana’s inclination towards few governors but that’s understandable because you always like the Boss who gives you wings. You tend to ignore their mistakes because of professional benefits that you get. Lastly, author speaks about both- good things about RBI and what it needs to improve as an organization which stings every employee and citizens. Overall, reading this book has been an amazing experience. It teaches a lot. I give this book 4.5 stars out of 5.

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WRITING BUDDHA