Category: BookReview

The Book ‘Unstoppable-Kuldip Singh Dhingra and the rise of Berger Paints’ is written by Sonu Bhasin who is a family business historian.

As the title suggests, the Book is about Kuldip Singh Dhingra who rose from being a shop keeper in Amritsar to one of the richest men of India.

The author has done a marvellous job of chronicling the story of Mr.Dhingra in a very honest and readable fashion….it avoids the hagiography that usually bedevil Indian biographies.

The Dhingras started off as shop keepers in Amritsar as dealers of paint cos like Jenson& Nerolac etc. Gradually, they moved into manufacturing and set up a small factory in Amritsar selling mass products

One thing led to the other and they started exporting paints to the Soviet Union. Eventually, they would export all sorts of chemicals to the Soviet Union to become the largest exporter from India to the Soviet Union. I was astonished to know that at that time, they were making more profits than Asian Paints !

With the profits from the Soviet Business, they bought Berger Paints from Vijay Mallya in 1990. They infused funds in the business , turned it around and the rest is history.

The Book contains lots of anecdotes which make it a superb read. One anecdote I liked was this one:

“Adi Godrej wanted to export to Russia and wanted the orders for household chemicals like scouring powder, soaps, shaving cream and tooth paste.

Kuldip told Godrej that he would come the next day to meet him at the Godrej office in Asaf Ali Road.

Adi Godrej said that Kuldip was the client and Godrej was the supplier and therefore, following protocol, it was Godrej who would come to Kuldips’ office’

One of the bane of family businesses is they are often unable to scale due to divisions of assets/splits etc amongst family members. The Dhingra family too had multiple divisions amongs uncles, working partners and brothers. There is a lot to learn from the Book on how the divisions were done in an amicable and business like fashion.

I would strongly recommend this Book to all those interested in Indian Family run businesses.

The Book ‘Bottle of Lies’ is written by Katherine Eban, who is an investigative journalist and author.

The Book covers the rise and fall of Ranbaxy and the dark side of Indian pharma

I found the Book to be a very disturbing and distressing read.

I was shocked to know that nearly all Indian generic pharma cos (Ranbaxy, Sun, DrReddy, Cipla, Glenmark etc) were under the USFDA lens for falsifying data, tests, hiding evidence, faulty manufacturing practices etc

Our companies never rejected any batches for not measuring upto standards. In fact, defective batches were sold in the local Indian market or sold in Africa.

In some parts of Africa, doctors recommend 10x the dosage of Indian medicines to their patients as the efficacy of the medicine is so low.

The Book covers the Ranbaxy saga in great deal. How the Singh brothers fooled Daichi is something to marvel at. What I found incredible was that the malpractices at Ranbaxy continued even after Daichi took over.

The Book is very harsh on Indian companies and the employees working there. Initially, the natural instinct for the Indian reader is to defend our homegrown champions but the evidence and the data is so damning that it would be like defending the indefensible.

Another takeaway of the Book was the effective whistle blower mechanism in the US. Dinesh Thakur , the whistle blower, whose untiring efforts led to Ranbaxy paying a $500 Million fine, got around $48 Million for his efforts.

Contrast that with the arrest and hounding of the whistle blower in India who had exposed GVK Biosciences.

I would strongly recommend this Book to all investors and those interested in Indian Pharma.

The flipside of reading this book is you may lose all faith in medicines manufactured by Indian pharma majors !

The Book HDFC Bank 2.0 is written by Tamal Bandyopadhyay, a journalist of over 35 years of experience covering the banking industry.

The Book is divided into 3 parts-it’s digital journey, its origins and the legacy of Aditya Puri.

I found the part of the digital journey to be quite interesting. Its incredible how a large bank like HDFC Bank was able to disrupt itself, instead of letting fintechs do it.

Going digital enable HDFC Bank to offer its customers a wide variety of products with significant lower costs. Digitial transactions now account for a whopping 85% + of overall transactions

One product that HDFC Bank was able to offer its customers was the 10 second loan product…it could do so because of its vastly superior data analytics and risk management processes.

One surprise for me was Aditya Puri asserting that HDFC Bank is the Indian Alibaba. I had always thought that telcos like Jio or Amazon/Flipkart/PayTm would be India’s answer to Alibaba.

But No, Aditya Puri’s motto is that if a customer wants to shop, pay, invest, trade,borrow, the only option in their mind should be HDFC Bank ! The Bank intends to do that via its Smart Buy Platform which clocked 4,000 Cr in 2018.

The second part of the Book is about the origins of the HDFC Bank. This is mostly material from Tamal’s earlier book ‘HDFC Bank: A Bank for the Buck‘

The third part of the Book is Aditya Puri’s legacy.Aditya Puri is the longest serving MD of a Bank globally (25 years) and will step down in 2020. His legacy is that he created a world class bank with great folks and superb governance standards.

I would recommend this Book to those interested in HDFC Bank and India’s banking industry.

The Book Trillion Dollar Coach is written by Eric Schmidt, the former Chairman of Google and his co-authors Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle

The Coach in the Book is Bill Campbell who is supposed to have coached half of Silicon Valley including legends like Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Sergei Brin, Sheryl Sandberg etc. Trillion Dollars in the title refers to the wealth created by these companies thanks to the advice and guidance provided by Bill

Bill Campbell is no more ( he died in 2016) and his coachees felt a Book would be the best way to honour his memory and bring his learnings to ordinary folks,

In the Indian context, we are used to coaches (or Gurus) who help/guide us in our personal lives- it can be in spirituality or sports or Yoga or dance or music etc. But very rarely, we have coaches who help us in our professional life. And yet, it is our professional lives where we need the most help and which in turn can have the most impact on the outside world

The genius of Bill Campbell was that he understood that successful companies need successful teams. So, along with individual 1-1s, he used to coach entire teams.

I was astonished to know that he used to sit on staff meetings at Google to check how the teams work.Any senior recruitment would need his approval before selection. This was the kind of trust he enjoyed

The Book contains many lessons regarding trust, loyalty, integrity, decisiveness, communication, putting the team first, knowing the first principles etc

The Book tends to be hagiographic at times which is irritating and takes away the spotlight from some of the lessons.

The Book has quite a few interesting anecdotes from Business and the Board Room which bring to colour the business aspects of Silicon Valley.

One amazing aspect of Bill was that he did not charge a dime for his services.

Some of the hottest companies in Silicon Valley (including Google) offered him compensation to which his reply was:

“I don’t take cash, I don’t take stock, and I don’t take shit”

Then why did he spend so much time and energy coaching and guiding others?

His reply was “If you’ve been blessed, be a blessing”

That to me was the greatest lesson from the greatest coach of all time

Do buy this book if interested in becoming a better manager

Animal Farm is a Book written in 1943/1944 by George Orwell and is widely regarded as a Classic.

I had come across the Book in my student days but never got around to reading it.

I am glad I did so now.

The Book is about how animals on a Farm get tired of their human supervisors and overthrow them

They start with very lofty slogans of Equality, Fraternity etc but gradually one set of animals (pigs in this case) take charge and slowly but gradually things revert back to how they were

This Book is considered one of the most satirical pieces on Communism and hints at the Stalin-Trotsky fight in a very amusing way. The Book also has a reference to religion which I found funny.

The Book is relevant even today. In the Indian context, one can immediately relate it to the AAP party in Delhi who came to power on a clean platform only to become like the other political parties.

I would certainly recommend this Book to those interested in Classics and power politics.