In the nineteenth century, a tiny community from the deserts of Rajasthan spread out to every corner of India. The Marwaris controlled much of the country’s inland trade by the time of the First World War. They then turned their hand to industry and, by the 1970s, owned most of India’s private industrial assets. Today, Marwari businessmen account for a quarter of the Indian names on the Forbes billionaires list.// What makes the Marwaris so successful? Is it their indomitable enterprise, or their incredible appetite for risk? In this new book, Thomas Timberg shows how the Marwaris rely on a centuries-old system for conserving and growing capital which has stood them in good stead, alongside a strong sense of business ethics which has earned them respect.// Family businesses in general and the Marwaris in particular might have a vital role to play in shaping India’s economic future.
Catagory: Business & Economics
The Truth Always Prevails
The memoir of one of Pakistan’s most prominent businessmen in exile
‘I reached to see not the beautiful hotel that we had so lovingly built, but a war zone. . . . We found bodies of our dear guests, colleagues, friends: faces I recognized, faces I had worked with and smiled at. The sight that stunned me was the crater-60 feet wide and 20 feet deep. It had been created by over 1000 kg of RDX. The hotel had not been attacked, it had been brutalized. Dead bodies and dismembered limbs, little pools of blood-it was a massacre. I had thought of myself as a hardened man who had seen violence and gristly sights-but what I saw that day left me shaken.’
Truth Always Prevails is the memoir of one of Pakistan’s most prominent businessmen, Sadruddin Hashwani, chairman of the internationally renowned Hashoo Group.
From sleeping in the back of trucks in the cold deserts of Balochistan to now owning a brand of luxury hotels as well as numerous other businesses, Sadruddin Hashwani has led a remarkable life. He has struggled against corrupt politicians and uncooperative government officials to build and sustain an extensive business empire. He has faced near-death experiences, most remarkably the 2008 bombing of his own hotel, the Marriott Islamabad, and has overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.
Filled with fascinating anecdotes and telling sketches of prominent Pakistani personalities, his is an extraordinary story that will inspire and entertain readers.
Driven
An epic triple treat-stories from a civil servant, corporate captain and businessmanA trained lawyer who became an IAS officer, Jagdish Khattar has had an astonishinglydiverse career. He was an agent of change in Uttar Pradesh through his roles as districtmagistrate and head of the cement and transport corporations. He also helmed India’sTea Board in London and played a key role in the ministry of steel. Elevated to the postof managing director at Maruti Udyog, a firm that was on the verge of a steep decline,Khattar braved labour unions, foreign competition and politicians as he led Maruti toa very successful IPO. Finally, at the age of sixty-five, Khattar turned entrepreneur withCarnation, India’s first multi-brand car sales and servicing network.Driven spreads across a sweeping national canvas from drought-hit villages to theShakespearean intrigues of politicians and bureaucrats. Written with flair and liberallypeppered with frank anecdotes, it is filled with lessons about leadership, friendship, jugaadstyleinnovation, resilience and values.
An Unfinished Agenda
From his birth in a village in Andhra to founding and running Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, now one of India’s largest pharmaceutical enterprises, Dr K. Anji Reddy’s journey makes for an inspiring story. That story is told rivetingly in his own words in his memoir, An Unfinished Agenda.
Dr Anji Reddy became an entrepreneur at a time when India was woefully short of technology to manufacture many basic medicines. Then, in barely three decades, the Indian pharmaceutical industry had grown to the point that India not only became self-sufficient in medicine, but also a supplier of affordable generic medicines to the world. Dr Anji Reddy provides a ringside view of this remarkable transformation, with fascinating anecdotes about those who made it happen.
The history of modern medicine is a gripping story of triumphs and failures. An Unfinished Agenda takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the science of medicine over the last hundred years and reminds us of the stark challenges that remain.
The World of the Tamil Merchant
How did the Tamil merchant become India’s first link to the outside world?
The tale of the Tamil merchant is a fascinating story of the adventure of commerce in the ancient and early medieval periods in India. The early medieval period saw an economic structure dominated by the rise of powerful Tamil empires under the Pallava and Chola dynasties. This book marks the many significant ways in which the Tamil merchants impacted the political and economic development of south India.
The East India Company
This groundbreaking study examines how the East India Company founded an empire in India at the same time it started losing ground in business. For over 200 years, the Company’s vast business network had spanned Persia, India, China, Indonesia and North America. But in the late 1700s, its career took a dramatic turn, and it ended up being an empire builder.
In this fascinating account, Tirthankar Roy reveals how the Company’s trade with India changed it-and how the Company changed Indian business. Fitting together many pieces of a vast jigsaw puzzle, the book explores how politics meshed so closely with the conduct of business then, and what that tells us about doing business now.
‘One of the first major attempts to tell the company’s story from an Indian business perspective’-Financial Express
Globalization before Its Time
How did the Kachchhi traders build on the Gujarat Advantage?
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, during the dying days of the Mughal empire, merchants from Kachchh established a flourishing overseas trade. Building on a rich legacy of free trade in pre-modern times between the many ports of Gujarat and the Middle East, the Kachchhis dealt in pearls, dates, spices and ivory with the faraway lands of Muscat and Zanzibar.
The Kachchhi merchants behaved much like today’s venture capitalists. They knew how to grow capital, seek new markets, and create them where they didn’t exist. They also had a phenomenal risk appetite. What they were able to practise was nothing less than the traits of globalization before its time.
This new book in The Story of Indian Business series tells their fascinating story.
Beyond 2020
India 2020 is about to become a reality. Are we ready?
In 1998, Dr Kalam and Y.S. Rajan published the now iconic India 2020, a vision document for the new millennium that charted how India could become one of the top five economic powers in the world by 2020. Sixteen years later, as the year 2020 approaches, it is time to take stock of how much India has achieved and what lies ahead.
In many ways, India’s growth story in the twenty-first century has been hamstrung by missed opportunities and slowdowns in project execution; but it has also been marked by new opportunities and emerging technologies that make faster and more inclusive growth viable. A renewed policy focus is now needed for agriculture, manufacturing, mining, the chemicals industry, health care and infrastructure to invigorate these sectors and boost economic growth, argue Kalam and Rajan. Alongside, education, job creation, emerging technologies, biodiversity, waste management, national security and the knowledge economy are some of the other vital areas that we need to build on as we look beyond 2020.
India can still make it to the list of developed nations in a decade. Beyond 2020 provides an action plan for that transformation.
Bhujia Barons
In the early twentieth century, young Ganga Bhishan Agarwal, aka Haldiram, gained a reputation for making the best bhujia in town. Fast-forward a century and the Haldiram’s empire has a revenue much greater than that of McDonald’s and Domino’s combined.
In Bhujia Barons, Pavitra Kumar manages to tell the riveting story of the Agarwal family in its entirety-a feat never managed before. It begins in dusty, benign Bikaner and traces the rise and rise of this homegrown brand which is one of the most-recognized Indian brands in the world.
The Haldiram’s story is not an average business story, it’s chock-full of family drama with court cases, jealousy-fueled regional expansion, a decades-old trademark battle, and a closely guarded family secret of the famous bhujia. Fast-paced and riveting, this book provides a delicious look into family business dynamics and the Indian way of doing business.
Economics without Tears
If you are a layman wondering what economics is all about or a freshman student of the subject, this is a book you cannot afford to miss. Starting from the first principles and stripped of mathematics and almost all jargon, it introduces you to all the basic concepts of economic theory as well as to some of its more surprising depths.
Economics pervades every aspect of our lives and our world. This book shows how anyone can acquire an understanding of its key principles while finding the exercise not only an exciting intellectual adventure but also great fun.