Kuldip Singh Dhingra, the patriarch of the Dhingra family and the man credited with building Berger Paints, has remained a mystery. He is low-profile, eschews media and continues to operate from a small office in Delhi. In Unstoppable by Sonu Bhasin, a candid and captivating biography, Kuldip reveals his story for the first time.

Read to know a few facts about this dynamic man:

1. Through Enid Blyton’s books, Kuldip would take his brother and sister to faraway lands of wishing trees, enchanted forests and the adventures of Noddy and his friends. The siblings would look forward to the stories.

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2.     Sixteen-year-old Kuldip had decided that he wanted to study further before coming to sit at the shop. ‘I thought chemical engineering karoonga, paints da business hai – kaam aa jaayegi [I thought I would study chemical engineering, we have a paints business – it will be useful],’ he said.

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3.     Kuldip went to Chandigarh in the summer of 1964 armed with his mark sheets and sports certificates. He had trophies and certificates for athletics, high jump, shot put and table tennis. Government College Chandigarh immediately gave him admission to his preferred course, Bsc honours in chemistry.

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4.     Kuldip has a temper but he also has compassion. ‘People tell me that I am like a volcano. After the lava gushes out, there is calm,’ he said.

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5.     Kuldip was a man who looked at the facts and took a decision fast. He processed all his thoughts and came to the conclusion that three months in the life of the business would not mean much and that seeing the world would only widen his perspective.

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6.     Kuldip was spending time between the shop, travelling along with Ajit Singh for his hands-on sales training and going to the factory sporadically. The job he liked the most, however, was sitting at his Hall Bazaar shop because he enjoyed dealing with customers.

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7.     Kuldip’s enthusiasm was infectious. The market loved him. ‘People used to say “maal kahan bikta hai? Yeh to personality bikti hai ji [Kuldip sells his personality, not his material], laughed Kuldip. His forceful and friendly personality created almost instant bonds with the trade.

Want to know more about this man? Unstoppable is available now!

Did you know? In the year 1997 when the United Nations named Winnie the Pooh as World’s Ambassador of Friendship. And did you know, that the Beatles released their popular song “With a Little Help from My Friends” in 1967 to mark the 10th-anniversary celebrations of International Friendship Day?

We celebrate this day with books! Would you like to gift your BFF a book from this curated list of must-reads?

In Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid, Rowley Jefferson writes about his experiences and agrees to play the role of biographer for Greg along the way. (After all, one day Greg will be rich and famous, and everyone will want to know his life’s story.) But Rowley is a poor choice for the job, and his “biography” of Greg is a hilarious mess. Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid: Rowley Jefferson’s Journal offers readers a new way to look at the Wimpy world—one fans won’t want to miss!

The Rabbit and the Squirrel 

A heartbreaking modern fable from a writer acutely alert to the dark surprises of the human heart. The Squirrel’s greatest joy is dancing in the forest with the Rabbit–her beloved friend and equal of heart. While the duo is inseparable, fate has other ideas: the feisty Squirrel is forcibly married to a wealthy boar and the solitary Rabbit enlists in a monastery. Years later, a brief, tragic reunion finds them both transformed by personal defeats. And yet, to each other, they are unchanged, and their private world—where sorrow registered as rapture and wit concealed loss—is just how they had left it. A story of thwarted love, and an ode to the enduring pleasures of friendship, The Rabbit and the Squirrel is a charmed fable for grown-ups, in which one life, against all odds, is fated for the other.

The Body Myth 

Mira is a teacher living in the heart of Suryam, the only place in the world the fickle Rasagura fruit grows. Mira lives alone, and with only the French existentialists as companions, until the day she witnesses a beautiful woman having a seizure in the park. Mira runs to help her but is cautious, for she could have sworn the woman looked around to see if anyone was watching right before the seizure began.

Mira is quickly drawn into the lives of this mysterious woman Sara, who suffers a myriad of unexplained illnesses, and her kind, intensely supportive husband Rahil, striking up intimate, volatile and fragile friendships with each of them that quickly become something more.

The Beauty of the Moment 

Susan is the new girl-she’s sharp and driven, and strives to meet her parents’ expectations of excellence. Malcolm is the bad boy-he started raising hell at age fifteen, after his mom died of cancer, and has had a reputation ever since.

Susan’s parents are on the verge of divorce. Malcolm’s dad is a known adulterer.

Susan hasn’t told anyone, but she wants to be an artist. Malcolm doesn’t know what he wants-until he meets her.

Love is messy and families are messier, but in spite of their burdens, Susan and Malcolm fall for each other. The ways they drift apart and come back together are the picture of being true to oneself.

Dawood’s Mentor by Hussain S. Zaidi

Tired of being bullied, a scrawny, impoverished Dawood Ibrahim is looking for a saviour, Khalid Khan Bachcha, who would teach him the ropes of handling a bunch of hooligans. Instead, what he gets is a mentor who eventually transforms him into a cunning mafia boss.

In Dawood’s Mentor, Dawood meets Khalid and they eventually forge an unlikely friendship. Together they defeat, crush and neutralize every mafia gang in Mumbai. Khalid lays the foundation for the D-Gang as Dawood goes on to establish a crime syndicate like no other and becomes India’s most wanted criminal.

Great leaders of innovation know that creativity is not enough. They succeed not only on the basis of their ideas, but because they have the vision, reputation, and networks to win the backing needed to commercialize them. It turns out that this quality–called “innovation capital”–is measurably more important for innovation than just being creative.

The authors have spent decades studying how people get great ideas (the subject of The Innovator’s DNA) and how people test and develop those ideas (explored in The Innovator’s Method).

Featuring interviews with the superstars of innovation–individuals like Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Elon Musk (Tesla), Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Indra Nooyi (PepsiCo), and Shantanu Narayen (Adobe)–this book will help you position yourself and your ideas to compete for attention and resources so that you can launch innovations with impact.

Here is an excerpt from the book!

The Virtuous Cycle of Innovation Leadership

Whatever your view of Elon Musk, one thing he did when he helped launch Tesla was articulate a lofty vision for the company.

“Our goal [is] . . . to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass-market electric cars to market as soon as possible,” he wrote. “In order to get to that end goal, big leaps in technology are required. ”1 Musk then laid out his “master plan”—a strategy for launching desirable electric vehicles at the high end of the market followed by affordable electric vehicles for the mainstream market.

Sterling Anderson, former head of Tesla Model X and Tesla Autopilot and co-founder of Aurora Innovation (a startup that is successfully providing a full-stack self-driving solution for major automakers like Volkswagen and Hyundai), says that Musk’s success as an innovative leader stems largely from a reinforcing cycle of success triggered by an exciting and inspirational vision:

Elon understands people. He understands that a lofty vision, an inspirational vision, attracts world-class people,
particularly world-class engineers. With those world-class engineers, he’s able to build a better product. That better product attracts customers and attracts investors, and it’s self-reinforcing. As this feeds on itself, engineers are
increasingly inspired to join, not only because of the lofty vision but also because of the increasingly strong brand behind it. These conditions attract increasingly strong talent; it feels good to work there and to be viewed as someone who is helping drive innovation toward that lofty goal.

Without prompting, Anderson independently has described the same virtuous cycle that we have seen many leaders utilize with positive results. This cycle includes the following steps:

1. Identify an exciting, lofty, even inspirational vision. The vision needs to solve an important problem, pursue a big opportunity, or just be exciting.

2. The lofty vision attracts talented human capital (e.g., better engineers and scientists) who want to work on something exciting. It also attracts investors and/or resources from organization leaders who provide the resources and senior sponsorship needed to launch a successful innovation project.

3. The talented human capital increases the odds of developing a better product and customer experience. Put simply, talented people going after a lofty vision produces better results for the customer.

4. The better product or customer experience attracts customers. The increase in happy customers leads to the creation of a valuable, hopefully innovative, reputation. Customers of companies or brands with an innovative reputation experience “identification”—which means their personal identity gets tied up with the products and brand which makes them much more loyal and valuable customers.

The ability to attract customers and build a valuable brand leads to a reinforcing cycle. Going back to step number two: talented human capital and investors are attracted to companies and projects with a valuable brand and loyal customers. Thus, the cycle repeats.

Get your copy of the Innovation Capital today!

The Young and the Restless by Gurmehar Kaur, maps the journey of eight youth leaders, their aspirations for the country’s youth, their goals for themselves and their ideas for the nation. While giving a comprehensive understanding of the ideas and motivations of these leaders. The book explores whether these leaders are influenced by the shadow of their older party leaders.

Giving a clear narrative of the new-age politics of the country and where it is headed, the book provides a fresh view on the political sphere of the country.

Here we list the aspirations of these inspirational youth leaders for you:

1. Omar Abdullah

The ex-Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Mr. Omar Abdullah, is a driven politician with a zest to advocate for the peace of his native state. He talks about the Kashmir of his boyhood with its pristine beauty and the changes that have come about in the past few decades. Talking about the Kashmir of yesteryears, he shares what he believes is the best course-of-action for the state.

“That’s why I always say, for me, if we could restore Jammu and Kashmir in some way back to the state we grew up in, that would be the biggest service we could do to the younger generation.”

2. Sachin Pilot

The young Indian politician, puts forward his views about the importance of education in the the country. He believes that an educated society would do well to ward off the many evils of today’s world. With an insight into the many advantages of an educated society, Sachin Pilot explains how this nurtures people in the right direction.

“It’s not just educating children on an academic level, it’s about imparting ethics, values, history, our culture, not in a political way but to understand where we come from.”

3. Sowmya Reddy

Being an environment and animal activist, Sowmya Reddy ,an MLA from Karnataka, has always raised her voice against injustice. When speaking about the the many issues regarding animal cruelty, climate change and social inequalities, she stressed that one can only be more perceptible to social issues when they don’t limit themselves to formal education and have the freedom to learn from outside the world. She believes it is through this freedom that one can bring about a change in the society.

“With that, Sowmya confirmed to me that freedom was important to her and it showed through in all her actions, whether it was her choice to be vegan in a household that enjoyed non-vegetarian food or whether it was studying environmentalism away from home or whether it was to take the road less travelled and start an activist centre and cafe on her own.”

4. Jignesh Mevani

This young political activist and an MLA of Gujarat is known to have had a long history of political struggles during his initial years. Being vocal about caste discrimination from a very young age, he believes in working towards an egalitarian society.

“And what does working for the Dalit community mean? It means to stand up for them when they are oppressed and subjected to violence. that is what I learnt about leadership growing up.”

5. Shehla Rashid

An activist since her student days, Shehla Rashid has been actively supporting the cause of Kashmir and its people, gender and other social issues. She talks about the struggle of getting into the political sphere and hopes to one day be instrumental in bringing about a change for the country.

“I don’t know, there is bad in everything and we need reform everywhere, especially in politics. We need reform in marriage and we need more progressive institutions than marriage; similarly, we need better politics. Otherwise everything is bad.”

6. Aaditya Thackeray

The twenty-eight-year-old political leader from Maharashtra has ushered in a trend of new-age politics. Going against the grain in the political sphere, he has taken actions that represent a progressive understanding of the current world.

“I don’t think it plays much into my politics because the way I see politics or the things I’m doing in politics right now, be it the plastic ban or electric buses or trying to reform education, all of these issues are not only very important for me, it affects everyone.“

7. Madhukeshwar Desai

The promising young politician,  has proved to be a dynamic leader over the years. As a leader, he is aware of the responsibility he has towards the people and hopes to show people the right path.

“I think regardless of what I do, it’s about doing justice to what I do and making sure I don’t bring disgrace to something he did.”

8. Raghav Chadha

The twenty-nine years old leader, is a confident politician who strongly believes in his ideologies. Originally a chartered accountant, he realized the important for a corruption-free India, and hence decided to join politics.

“Therefore this thing has always been inside me. how can we actually get rid of corruption?… The common life is of an ordinary person who doesn’t know how to pay for his child’s next meal and that is because there is an unfair distribution of wealth due to corruption. Corruption is at the root of all causes.“

The Young and The Restless follows the journeys of eight youth leaders, their aspirations for the country’s youth, their aspirations for themselves and, most importantly, their aspirations for the nation.AVAILABLE NOW!

India, 1922. A curse seems to have fallen upon the royal family of Satapur, a princely kingdom tucked away in the lush Sahyadari mountains, where both the maharaja and his teenage son have met with untimely deaths. The state is now ruled by an agent of the British Raj on behalf of Satapur’s two maharanis, the dowager queen and her daughter-in-law.

Here’s an exciting excerpt from The Satapur Moonstone!

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As she walked, keeping her eyes on the path ahead of her, she saw how many roots there were—how many holes and ridges and places to trip. So many depressions were filling up with water, it was hard to know how deep the water was until she stepped in. If she twisted her ankle, she’d become an impossible burden. The men who had jogged so sure-footedly with the heavy palanquin weren’t singing any more; she imagined it was because their songs were fast-paced and she was forcing them to walk slowly. Or maybe they hated the rain, too.

She wondered if Colin had ever endured a failed palanquin ride. The ordeal of slogging through mud might be impossible with a wooden leg, but if he chose not to use it, his cane would also get stuck. Thinking of this made her step a little more quickly.

Eventually, her journey would end.

The dark rain cloud was both in front of them and behind, and rain continued falling in tiny, cold knife-pricks. She imagined it was probably raining at the circuit house, and that Colin was worrying about her.

When they came out of the trees, her boots were filled with mud. But the journey appeared to be almost done. Ahead lay what looked like a sentry’s tower.

‘We’re almost there!’ Perveen said, pointing to it.

‘No,’ Lakshman said. ‘That’s an old hunting tower.’

‘Should we wait there for the rain to stop?’ she asked hopefully.

Lakshman wiped water from his face before answering. ‘TheSatapur royal family used to hunt here because it is a good place for tigers and leopards. We are not so far from the palace. We should go on.’

Lakshman wanted to protect them all from predators and naturally wished to finish the job. She tried to form a picture in her mind of a bright, comfortable palace filled with lights and warmth. She had everything to look forward to, if she could just keep her feet moving.

After some time, she saw, through a break in the trees, a faraway wall. The wall stretched on. It looked like a walled city, but she was afraid to hear it was another place they couldn’t stay.

Lakshman smiled for the first time. ‘That is Satapur Palace! This is the place where you wished to come.’

She was too fatigued to answer, but his words made her legs move faster. As the fog cleared, she saw the wall was the facade of a giant grey stone palace punctuated with a series of towers topped by onion-shaped domes. The palace was so huge that it was surprising to see its massive arched entry protected by only two durwans. She
guessed they were guards from their blood-red livery, although they were not standing at attention but squatting under the entry’s filigreed brass roof to shelter from the rain.

It took fifteen minutes from first sight to reach the palace wall.

With a wide smile, Perveen rushed the last hundred feet to get underneath the entryway roof. But she realized that her movement looked like an affront, because the durwans cried out and grabbed their bayonets.

‘Do not worry, brothers! She has come to visit the maharanis,’ Lakshman said quickly. He had run up behind her.

‘It cannot be.’ One of the guards spat sideways as he regarded their party. ‘Who are you?’

Perveen realized that she was too bedraggled to look like anyone’s idea of a lady lawyer.

Resolve the mystery along with Perveen Mistry in Satapur Moonstone

The Making of Star India by Vanita Kohli-Khandekar is the story of an audacious bet on an unknown market by one of the most colorful media owners in the world. When Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman, News Corporation, bought Star TV in the early 1990s nobody knew that it would become one of the three largest media firms in India with revenues of over $2 billion. Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation was the first major global media firm to showcase the potential of the Indian media market. Many other companies then followed his lead.

This book maps the ups and downs of Star India with interesting anecdotes. These feature a host familiar names – Richard Li, Rathikant Basu, Peter Mukerjea, Uday Shankar, Sameer Nair and both Rupert and his son James Murdoch.

Here are a few interesting firsts from Star in India:

1. Star’s first big success in India was the creation of Channel [V], which created a buzz all over the world. It was also India’s first music channel.

2. Star commissioned its first Indian show in the year 1993, called The India Show by Mr. Raghav Bahl.

3. Star appointed Mr. Rathikant Basu as its first CEO of News Television India in the year 1996. This was also Star’s first senior appointment within India.

4. Star’s first big success in the news industry in India was through an English news bulletin, Star News, in the year 1996. The show featured Mr. Prannoy Roy, whose rising popularity helped in the promotion of the news bulletin.

5. In the year 1998, Star came up with India’s first private news channel Star News.

6. The year 2001, Star launched India’s first private radio station – Radio City.

7. Star recorded its first successful year in India in 2003 on the back of popular shows such as Kaun Banega Crorepati, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, on Star Plus.

8. In 2014 Star revived and put on the world stage an ancient Indian game called kabaddi, through the Pro-Kabbadi League. It is now the second most viewed game on TV after cricket.

The Making of Star India tells the thrilling story of Indian television through its most notable protagonist: Star TV . The book is available now!