Getting Dressed and Parking Cars captures the minute-to-minute, event-by-event, nail-biting business adventure of Alok Kejriwal’s fourth entrepreneurial venture—Games2win. The Walt Disney Company acquired
Alok’s previous company.
Games2win has been creating car parking and dress-up games online with the aim of becoming India’s most successful casual gaming start-up in the global market.
Each chapter in this book captures Alok’s real-life experience of building, scaling and routinely failing in his
venture. The book throbs with adrenaline as Alok thrills readers with stories of his website traffic vanishing in thin air, his games getting stolen, his arrest and his partner’s amazing creation of ‘invisible’ ads.
Getting Dressed and Parking Cars is not a book glorifying a successful start-up but a journey of business
adventures that celebrates the spirit of ‘starting something’. Think of it as a playbook for professionals
and entrepreneurs to create something new . . .
Where is India going today? Is it surging forward, having just overtaken the United Kingdom to become the fifth-largest economy in the world? Or is it flailing, unable to provide jobs for the millions joining the labour force? What should India do to secure a better future?
India is at a crossroads today. Its growth rate, while respectable relative to other large countries, is too low for the jobs our youth need. Intense competition in low-skilled manufacturing, increasing protectionism globally and growing automation make the situation still more difficult. Divisive majoritarianism does not help. India
broke away from the standard development path—from agriculture to low-skilled manufacturing, then high-skilled manufacturing and, finally, services—a long time back by leapfrogging the intermediate steps. Rather than attempting to revert to development paths that may not be feasible any more, we must embark on a truly Indian path.
In this book, the authors explain how we can accelerate economic development by investing in our people’s human capital, expanding opportunities in high-skilled services and manufacturing centred on innovative new products, and making India a ferment of ideas and creativity. India’s democratic traditions will support this path, helped further by governance reforms, including strengthening our democratic institutions and greater decentralization.
The authors offer praise where the Indian establishment has been successful but are clear-eyed in pointing out its weaknesses. They urge India to break free from the shackles of the past and look to the possibilities of the future. Written with unusual candour, and packed with vivid examples and persuasive arguments, this is a book for anyone who has a stake in India’s future.
Don’t risk the dire consequences of your work processes becoming obsolete—discover a powerful model for constant, ongoing, enterprise-wide process evolution and optimization.
If you have a great product, but don’t have the operations in place to efficiently and effectively support it—production, manufacturing, sales, finance, human resources, etc.—you won’t succeed. Product innovation is seen as flashier and so gets far more attention, but you can create an enduring competitive advantage by revolutionizing business operations.
The problem is most attempts to improve business operations are reactive, sporadic, and siloed. Tony Saldanha and Filippo Passerini’s Dynamic Process Transformation model provides a living model for constant, ongoing process evolution and optimization.
The authors focus on maximizing three drivers of change. First, “open market rules”—each business process must be run as a separate business, instead of via monolithic mandates coming down from on high. Second, there must be “unified accountability”— outcomes must be clear and consistent across the company, instead of being siloed within departments. And third, there needs to be a “dynamic operating engine,” a methodology to convert the constantly changing business process goals into tactical day-to-day employee actions.
With numerous examples from leading companies, this book shows how to proactively keep business processes across the company from becoming obsolete and take advantage of a neglected key to success.
One of Thinkers50’s Ten Best Management Books of 2023
“A timely, actionable book on the virtues that every great leader needs to learn.”
—ADAM GRANT, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife
Leadership is simply a series of moments, and this book gives you the tools to turn each moment into an opportunity to leave a positive legacy for those you lead.
In this ground-breaking book, award-winning leadership expert and business leader Kirstin Ferguson has written a much-needed practical guide for every modern leader. Whether you are the head of one of the largest companies in the world, supervising a small team, or guiding your family, it will be your ability to integrate your head and heart that will influence your success in leading others and navigating our complex world.
Combining studies from leading thinkers in the field with her own research, and more than three decades of personal experience, Kirstin explains the 8 key attributes of a head and heart leader and provides the tools to measure your own approach. Along the way, she shares her conversations with modern leaders from a broad range of backgrounds whose stories will surprise you, challenge your thinking and inspire you to be the type of leader the world needs.
The unknown history of economic conservatism in India after independence.
Neoliberalism is routinely characterized as an antidemocratic, expert-driven project aimed at insulating markets from politics, devised in the North Atlantic and projected on the rest of the world. Revising this understanding, Toward a Free Economy shows how economic conservatism emerged and was disseminated in a postcolonial society consistent with the logic of democracy.
Twelve years after the British left India, a Swatantra (“Freedom”) Party came to life. It encouraged Indians to break with the Indian National Congress Party, which spearheaded the anticolonial nationalist movement and now dominated Indian democracy. Rejecting Congress’s heavy-industrial developmental state and the accompanying rhetoric of socialism, Swatantra promised “free economy” through its project of opposition politics.
As it circulated across various genres, “free economy” took on meanings that varied by region and language, caste and class, and won diverse advocates. These articulations, informed by but distinct from neoliberalism, came chiefly from communities in southern and western India as they embraced new forms of entrepreneurial activity. At their core, they connoted anticommunism, unfettered private economic activity, decentralized development, and the defense of private property.
Opposition politics encompassed ideas and practice. Swatantra’s leaders imagined a conservative alternative to a progressive dominant party in a two-party system. They communicated ideas and mobilized people around such issues as inflation, taxation, and property. And they made creative use of India’s institutions to bring checks and balances to the political system.
Democracy’s persistence in India is uncommon among postcolonial societies. By excavating a perspective of how Indians made and understood their own democracy and economy, Aditya Balasubramanian broadens our picture of neoliberalism, democracy, and the postcolonial world.
India’s tech/startup industry today is estimated to be worth over $0.5 trillion, employing over 5 million people. And the stage for this incredible ‘tech-tonic’ rise and transformation of the country into the world’s software powerhouse, is Bengaluru.
Being the backdrop to this dramatic transition, Bengaluru has changed irrevocably. The city has been through many avatars—pensioner’s paradise, PSU capital, garden city, India’s Silicon city and pub capital. Once known for secure state and federal government jobs, it is now a buzzing startup hub attracting job-seekers from India and abroad. And the new monikers will continue. From ed-tech to health-tech, mobility to EVs, Bengaluru is at the heart of the multiple shifts underway in the digital era.
Truly, it is the city of new beginnings.
In Unboxing Bengaluru—the first ever deep-dive into the city—Malini Goyal and Prashanth Prakash ably unravel the city’s journey and the ensuing social, behavioural, technological and consumptive changes. They look at why people are drawn to the city; how the cosmopolitan culture and multi-linguistic society gives it a distinct flavour; the parallel economies that have cropped up; how the influx of young workers have changed the city; and the fault-lines of unplanned and poorly managed growth over the decades.
Richly researched and vividly written, Unboxing Bengaluru is filled with absorbing vignettes, extensive reportage and solid data. A fascinating book and a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the city, and indeed, India.
Leadership Chronicles decodes some of the deep secrets of leadership. It tells the story of a lifetime of teaching, learning and institution-building like never before. This book is a voyage of discovery of those unseen facets and mysteries of a maverick teacher’s life.
Debashis Chatterjee shares authentic insights from his personal and professional journey of nearly three
decades. The perspectives, stories and anecdotes reframe and shed light on the global application of classical Indian thought. This work presents transformative wisdom in a way that would stimulate your mind.
Told with candour, sensitivity and humour, the chronicles present a rich harvest of insights and ideas on the making of a leader.
Anirudh Rathore believes the stock market is for everyone—you shouldn’t need a degree in finance to be able to invest and grow your money. Led by this tenet, he distils his learnings in Investment Decoded, based on classic treatises on value investing and years of experience from growing his own portfolio. This is the definitive beginner’s guide to acquiring the tools and mindset required to start securing your financial future.
How to Thrive in the New World of Work
The old model of learn, earn and retire is no longer viable. We are living longer, working longer and facing constant changes in the skills and industries that demand them. We need a new approach to navigate the complex and uncertain landscape of work.
What does it mean to have a career in the 21st century?
We need to master the rules of Career 3.0.
In this book, Abhijit Bhaduri, a renowned expert on talent and leadership, shows you how to develop the six key skills that will make you future-ready and successful in Career 3.0. Whether you work for an organization, run your own business or do both, you will discover how to adapt to change, learn new skills, and lead with impact.
Career 3.0 is a guide that will help you stay relevant. The book is filled with inspiring stories that will challenge you to rethink your career vision, strategy and action. It will give you the tools and techniques to thrive in the new world of work.
You may be surprised to find out that you already have a Career 3.0 mindset. Now you know what it is called.
The news is a public good and needs to be handled with care and integrity. Even though lies and misinformation campaigns have been around for years—maybe since the dawn of journalism—the rate at which fake news is being spread these days is both alarming and preposterous. Almost every institution—public or private—uses fake news to further its own agenda. Governments and corporate houses spread fake news either through their own agencies or by influencing the popular media. In the business sector, fake news manifests itself in the form of exaggerated company returns and false data.
This book analyses the impact of fake news both on products and personalities. Foregrounded in rigorous research, it examines how fake news is used by companies, political parties, and leaders to create, amplify, and even tarnish a brand’s image and equity. It emphasizes how the customers’ perception of a brand impacts and influences its reputation, and acts as a decisive force in them gaining or losing competitive advantages. Elucidating how brands can interact both directly and indirectly with fake news, it brings to the readers’ notice how sometimes brands are the victims of fake news and other times, the purveyors.
