Read these eight books if you are curious about how businesses are built ground-up in India
I like to read books. One kind of books I particularly like to read is about how businesses are built. Building a business is a fascinating enterprise. You need conviction to be driven by what you believe in, vision to see what others might not see, communication skills to get everyone on board, and rigorous discipline to realise it day after day. These books are good because they are stories of businesses built in India, by Indians. Each book subliminally makes you aware of the Indian, consumers, values and market dynamics.
The books mentioned below span multiple industries, from electrical goods to packaged good, financial services to civil aviation. You probably have been a customer of almost all of these businesses. These businesses are built step by step, as long term institutions, with hard work and strong basics. In these pages, you would find stories of sustained and measured efforts by a lot of people in building organisations with a strong on-ground presence.
Here’s a quick rundown of these books and brief summary for each.
Book: The making of Star India
Company: Star India
Industry: Entertainment
Every generation has a technology it takes for granted. For the kids born in 90s, it was satellite TV.
Yes, it is an amazing story.
On the face of it, the book traces the journey of ‘Star India’ from a transponding business owned by Chinese firm, to being bought by Rupert Murdoch and made into media conglomerate that was valued at $ 10–15 billion when it was acquired by Disney recently.
At the heart, this is a story of a bunch of people who worked real hard to create media business in India. The story follows 3 different CEOs of Star India, as they worked to grow the company, in their respective times. The story tracks various entities in ecosystem like content creators, production houses, bosses in China and New York, competing media houses, and Indian government. And how they collaborated, competed, struggled, lobbied and pushed the needle to redefine and reinvent how India consumed TV, and mass media. Vanita also has really good insights on collective psyche of India and how content from Star have gripped Indian audience time and time again, from KBC to Kahaani Ghar Ghar ki, to Satyamev Jayate. She breaks down the initiatives of Star like DTH, local content, hotstar, investment in IPL, Pro Kabadi League, and how they have fit into Star’s strategy over the years.
It is an important book to read because it gives you framework to think about media businesses and how they have evolved. Star India has made substantial contribution to Indian media. It has nurtured and bolstered the India media industry, with its investments in content, programming, infrastructure and technology in past two decades.
The book is a superb artefact of business journalism. The writing is crisp and analytical. At the same time, it is filled with anecdotes because the author’s career spanned decades tracking entertainment and media business.
Book: The Indigo Story
Company: Indigo Airlines
Industry: Civil Aviation
Indigo — That flight you take when you have to be on time. Indigo has come to dominate air-travel mindshare of flyers with impeccable neatness, unfailing clockwork, courteous staff, super-efficient operations and no-nonsense experience. Shelley Vishwajeet does a commendable job of writing the story of Indigo, starting from scratch in 2005 to their current 40% market share in domestic market.
Also, pretty cool insights on aviation business, how Indigo runs the show and manages to be operationally super-efficient, history of aviation sector in India (starting from 1911 btw), and evolution of LCCs phenomenon around the world.
You have to read the story of people who pulled off Indigo, one of the finest businesses built in India over past 15 years.
If you need a summary of the book in a presentation. You can find it here. I made it for one of friend’s meetup. Feel free to use it/share it.
Book: Bhujia Barons
Company: Haldiram
Industry: Packaged food
The book starts in dusty town of Bikaner in western Rajasthan, and tracks generations of Agarwal family, as they build the largest and most successful processed food corporations in India — Haldiram. In a lot of places in the book, the author explains how Marwari sensibilities and outlook as well as community beliefs were a big part of shaping the Haldiram story. For example, back in the days, people of Marwar hardly sent their children to school. Rather, they’d initiate them into Marwari padhai, a thorough education in counting, multiplication, logic, and profit and loss concepts. I was surprised to know that Marwari children learnt tables in decimal points, and could calculate 2.5 * 3.6 = 9 in a snap. Generations after generations, Agarwal family continued building and growing the business. Starting from Bikaner, they expanded and started operations in Nagpur and Kolkata, and then came to Delhi. In the journey, the business was split among brothers and currently 3 separate entities of Haldiram operate in India. There have been long-drawn legal battles between brothers on trademark claims and turf-wars. Haldiram is one of the most recognised food brands in India, and this is a story of where it came from, and where it’s headed.
Book: It happened in India
Company: Future group
Industry: Modern retail
Kishore Biyani has been given many names, Sam Waltman of India among one of them. He is credited with redefining the retailing business in India. This book is story of Kishore Biyani and how he built Future Group over years. The story starts with his college days as he used to organise dandiya party in his society complex. He talks about his journey trading clothes, and entering branded retail. Pantaloons was one of the first chains of branded ready-made apparel. Reading through the book, you’ll become familiar and appreciate the keen observations of KB about India. According to him, the concept of Indianness has to be understood if one wants to attract maximum number of customers. Well, in retrospect, the businesses he built did end up attracting a lot of customers. After Pantaloons, KB and his team worked on more retail formats, and started Big Bazar. ‘Sabse Sasta Din’ was the pre-cursor to ‘Big Billion Days’ of today. The breadth of knowledge is palpable in the book as he explains the consumer psyche, design thinking and consumption space in India. Central was launched as Future Group evolved and pioneered a shopping mall as shopping destination instead of just a store. Central puts all the different brands and categories, right there, in one big building. Reading through the book gives you lots of insight into how KB thought about building business, relationships and organisation. Although the book is almost 12 years old, it’s still fresh and relevant. Reading it would make you much more inquisitive and excited for your next shopping visit.
Book: I too had a dream
Company: Amul
Industry: Dairy
This is one of my favourite books. Dr. Verghese Kurien started working with a cooperative in Gujarat, and built what we know as Amul today. Amul is a cooperative dairy company, which essentially means that it is owned by a lot of milk-producers instead of one corporate entity. Before Amul, a milk producer would end up selling to a middlemen/trader who had the price-setting power. Since, processing and marketing milk required equipments which were out of bounds for a single milk producer. A simple idea is behind cooperatives. If farmers of a village pool their resources together and jointly start and own a milk processing factory, they can directly reach out to consumer and market their products. This simple (in retrospect) insight is what led to farmers jointly owning and starting milk processing centres in village after village. Finally, producers benefited from their produce instead being exploited by middlemen. It ushered in a unprecedented milk production (also known as India’s white revolution) which made India, world’s largest producer of milk and milk products. Amul started in Gujarat, but gradually expanded to lot of Indian states because of its success. Verghese Kurien also helped set up Mother Dairy in Delhi. Throughout the book, I kept thinking how the cooperative model would function in agricultural produce. Turns out, Safal (in Delhi NCR) is an attempt to do just that. Dr. Verghese’s efforts in dairy development led to founding of IRMA Anand (Institute of Rural Management Anand), with the value that key to effective rural development is professional management. Read this book if you want to understand how empowerment of producer to connect directly with consumer can usher in unprecedented prosperity. It probably would give you a lot of ideas around doing the same with more producers e.g. handicraft artisans, marginal farmers.
Book: Havells - The untold story of Qimat Rai Gupta
Company: Havells
Industry: Consumer electronics
Havells. Made in Delhi. The book starts with Qimat Rai Gupta trading electrical goods in Bhagirath Market opposite Red Fort. Steadily, he became distributor for cables and switchgear and started bringing in orders from customers. At some point, he bought the trade name Havells. With Havells brand name, he invested in factories and starts manufacturing in Delhi. The factories start with assembling switchgear and electrical meters. But with his ambition, QRG brings in the best technical talent from industry and setup his own manufacturing units. Before anyone else, he realised that electrical goods would go from trading as a commodity, to trading as a branded good. Before anyone else, he thought about launching premium range of fans, which became a huge success. Another learning from the book is about the strong relationships QRG built over his lifetime. Havells had a especially strong distributor base, who make sure the customers knew about the superior quality of Havells product. Havells was also one of the first electrical goods company to spend some serious budget on advertising and communicating directly with customers. Havells ads have one of the highest recall value (Remember this, this and this?). I love this book because it’s a instructional story of vertically integrating the value chain with sheer hard work and relationships building. Havells has a broad product portfolio today, with a strong manufacturing capability. It is a $3 billion empire spanning continents and product categories like consumer durables, switchgear, cables and wires, and lighting and fixtures. And it all started with a trading shop in a market opposite Red Fort. Read this book to see what went into it.
Book: Bandhan — The making of a bank
Company: Bandhan Bank
Industry: Financial services
The book talks about making of Bandhan as a bank, ground up. It is also story of Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, from his early days of starting Bandhan as a micro-lending organisation to people excluded from formal financial sector. Bandhan went from being a not-for-profit organisation to NBFC and continued to build processes that ensured a high repayment rate. Essentially, Bandhan created the machine to lend out the money to the marginalised and figure out responsible borrowers. And then once they were proven, they could borrow from banks and on-lend it to people who need capital. With scale, they could reduce their spread and help the poor even more. Even when the microfinance sector went through its ups and downs, Bandhan, with strong basics and tight control kept the ship afloat and made strides in scaling the business. Its a story of a business that was built bit by bit everyday, with hard work and discipline. In 2015, Bandhan got a universal banking license. This book takes you along a ride where you meet the people on ground, who operated the branches, set up the operations, tracked loan books, digitalised the processes and kept increasing the book size as they became a full-fledged bank serving more than 1.83 crore customers pan India across 4229 banking outlets.
Book : Saying no to Jugaad — The making of BigBasket
Company: BigBasket
Industry: Grocery retail
Summary: BigBasket has been one of those companies who have become absolutely essential to their customers. BigBasket is loved by now a lot of people. One of my friend likes to joke, “BigBasket ne bohot shaadiya bachayi hai.” (BigBasket has saved a lot of marriages.). They deliver grocery to you early in the morning. And they do this one thing so well, that I have stopped my weekly/ad-hoc trips to grocery market. And I am slowly ordering more and more items from BigBasket instead of other sources. And for busy couples short on time to go for grocery purchase, this is a blessing. So, I have been curious about BigBasket for some time.
And then this book released two weeks back. I had to read it to understand the people, processes, values and ideas that have shaped and made BigBasket. The book is a delight to read. Each chapter takes one of the dimensions of BigBasket as an organisation, and then talks about details. One thing that stood out throughout the book was the no-nonsense/grounded way of looking at the world. Founders and team members, as they are quoted through the book, reflect a perspective that has been honed by keeping at their work without getting swayed by fads and hype-cycles. They are very clear that BigBasket is a retail company with customer experience at its centre. This is important. It helps them look at everything else as an enabler to this core goal. They don’t spend a lot of time defining whether they are a mobile-first, or AI-first, or tech-first company. Tech is an enabler to optimise supply chain. Tech is an enabler to resolve customer complaints fast. Mobile app is a channel, just like website where customers discover and interact with BigBasket. Rather, they have spent time and effort in building out their inventory control, supply chain, logistics, supplier/farmers tie-ups, buying and merchandising, customer experience. Apart from that, the book goes into organisation building. You need to be process-obsessed and institutionalise quality control in your processes. You need create comprehensive training regime to train everyone from frontline staff to executive team. To add capabilities, you can either build in-house or buy or license from a technology partner. There are chapters on each of the topic, which are enjoyable and enlightening.
The authors have done a commendable work of telling a well-balanced and well-rounded story of BigBasket, as it went from a company present in Bangalore to a company serving 1 crore users and clocking revenues of $500 million a year. Read this book if you want to peek into BigBasket world and get a sense of how they do what they do. The authors make clear that they are under no impression that they’d disclose some IP of BigBasket by writing about how it works. It actually makes sense, and that’s what makes this book even more special. It doesn’t shy away from telling real stories about how a group of people are revolutionising the way we order grocery.
Would highly recommend these books if you want to get the front seat to experience how these businesses were built in India. Here’s a link to check out my reading list on Goodreads.
