The decade leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic witnessed the rise of platform business models as they drove stock market gains and extended their influence across economic and political activity.
The pandemic has accelerated these platforms further. Apple, Google, Alibaba and Amazon have made strong inroads into the health-care industry. When most supply chains were reeling under the effects of the pandemic, Amazon continued unabated and even took on governmental functions. The market dominance of Apple and Google was perhaps most starkly observable in their ability to create a global contact tracing infrastructure. And even as the US-China trade war heats up, Alibaba’s Electronic World Trade Platform continues to work with countries across Africa, Europe and Asia to create a new infrastructure for global trade.
Platform Scale: For a Post-Pandemic World explains the inner workings of platform business models and their ability to scale rapidly. The ideas in this updated edition illustrate the importance of platform business models, the forces that power their rapid scale and the factors that will cement their dominance in a post-pandemic world. The book serves as a maker’s manual, helping executives design and build platforms, and provides a lens to analyse the shifts currently underway and their implications for future platform-scale businesses.
Why did pirates covet maps more than gold?
Does Mars sometimes slip into reverse gear?
Can trees reveal secrets of the past?
There are millions of facts that we know about the world-that the earth is round, that birds migrate and that dinosaurs once roamed the planet.
But how do we know what we know?
Regaling us with tales of remarkable men and women who didn’t rest until they got the answers they sought, Shruthi Rao chronicles the stories behind the discoveries and inventions we take for granted today. This book, in fifty marvellous accounts, tells us of the sense of mystery and wonder that propel scientists to find solutions to the puzzling problems of the world around us.
Offering a unique expression of thought reflecting feeling more than meaning, Grains of Stardust is a synesthetic stream of consciousness that does not distinguish between journey and destination, but meanders unchecked upon the river of human emotion.
‘Read my poetry out loud
Breathe it in
and taste the letters pour out.
A delicious sound.
Do you hear the colours take form?
Feel the pages move you
as you float in space
make some space
Open your mind
and get inside
and see all that
shimmering
marmalade liquid.
Grains of stardust‘
‘A novel of ideas’–Jerry Pinto
A child grows with mother’s love
Also with its reverse.
The sun nurtures trees and flowers
The moon is equal nurse.
Thus do things grow and thrive
In this our universe.
The evening prayers in the ashram are over. Cowbells tinkle sweetly in the distance. The residents of the ashram sit in a circle, their eyes fixed on Shyam, who has promised them a story as sweet as lemon syrup. And so Shyam begins.
While on some evenings he tells them of his boyhood days, surrounded by the abundant beauty of the Konkan, on others he recalls growing up poor, embarrassed by the state of his family’s affairs. But at the heart of each story is his Aai-her words and lessons. He reminisces of the day his mother showed him the importance of honesty and the time she went hungry just so her children could eat a full meal.
Narrated over the course of forty-two nights, Shyamchi Aai is a poignant story of Shyam and Aai, a mother with an unbreakable spirit. This evergreen classic, now translated by the incomparable Shanta Gokhale, is an account of a life of poverty, hard work, sacrifice and love.
A delicious adventure set in Darjeeling about a young witch’s attempts at living a human life
For readers of Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton and David Walliams
To every witch, wizard and glum,
I’m Tootoolu Toop, a ten-year-old, fully trained witch of the Oonoodiwaga tribe from the Darjeeling mountains. Like every other ordinary human who wants to live a life of magic, us witches and wizards want to experience the non-magical world too (I do for sure). For me, the ‘ordinary’ world is nothing short of an adventure. So I have left my tribe to live life as a glum.
This is my story.
Tootoolu is on the run. From her mundane life of stirring grasshopper’s legs into potions and her underground home where her tribe has been in hiding for 569 years. Will Tootoolu find what she’s looking for-best friends, books and a chance to be who she truly is?
A book about consent and choosing responsibly
‘You are bound by rules,
but not I. I am free to choose.’
Long ago, the poet-sage Valmiki composed the Ramayana. It is the tale of Ram, the sun-prince of Ayodhya, who is obliged to follow family rules and so makes no choices. And of Ravana, king of Lanka, who does not respect anybody’s rules or other people’s choices.
Over the centuries, hundreds have retold the tale in different languages, adding new twists and turns. But few have noticed that the tale always depends on the five choices made by Sita. What were Sita’s five choices?
India’s favourite mythologist brings to you this charmingly illustrated retelling of the Ramayana that is sure to empower and entertain a new generation of readers.
History is often narrated as sagas of kings and queens, legends of battles and wars, or chronicles of art and architecture. But history is more than that. It is the story of ordinary people; their food and language, their thoughts and beliefs, their livelihood and culture. Tales of sweepers and sculptors, robbers and merchants, sailors and saint-why, even pirates!
In this book, Mallika Ravikumar pens eight historical stories that help you look upon the past, as less of a dry-as-bone set of facts, and more of a dynamic shift that shapes our present. Told through the lens of class and conflict, symbols and language, creativity and enterprise and power and perspective, these stories help younger readers see why history is relevant and meaningful.
Artist, musician, man of science, Upendrakishore Roychoudhury was a man of many parts. But it is for his writing for children that he is best remembered.
This book is a selection of the best of his stories and the most fascinating of his characters: Goopy and Bagha, dedicated but unsuccessful musicians who are cast out of their homes because their music drives their families and neighbours crazy; Tuntuni, the little bird; the clever fox; Majantali Sarkar, the cat; the intrepid Granny Hunchback; and many others.
Swagata Deb’s vibrant translation brings Upendrakishore’s unique magic to a wider audience.
A spectacular selection of the best of stories by Upendrakishore Roychoudhuri, and the most fascinating of his characters. Meet Goopy and Bagha, dedicated but unsuccessful musicians who are cast out of their homes because their music drives their families and neighbours crazy; Tuntuni, the little bird; the clever fox; Majantali Sarkar, the cat; the intrepid Granny Hunchback; and many others. Swagata Deb’s vibrant translation brings Upendrakishore’s unique magic to a wider audience, giving a new lease of life to these evergreen tales.
Dadi forgets everything, including Chumki’s name. When elephants escape from a nearby reserve, can it be a blessing in disguise and help Dadi remember?
