Nicholas Kardaras Ph.D

It requires peculiar skill to write an empty book about one of the biggest burning issues of our time. Nicholas Kardaras’s tedious, grating and sermonistic Digital Madness riffs and rants on the ills of our hyper-connected digital-first world without offering new information or insight. It took me back to the early days of the pandemic when India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged citizens to take a stand against the Coronavirus


Reviewed by: Shubhodeep Pal
Gaurav Mandlecha and Durjai SethiPan

The Indian start-up ecosystem is known for its cutthroat competition. With an increasing number of start-ups entering the market, the level of competition has become extremely fierce. It is not just about having a great idea, but also about executing it well, and that too in a crowded market. Entrepreneurs are constantly facing the challenge of standing out from the competition, and it can be difficult to attract the necessary investment and talent to grow their business. Additionally, the Indian market is known for its price sensitivity, which can make it hard for start-ups to build a sustainable business model.


Reviewed by: Rhea Yadav
Dhruv Nath

At a time when India’s start-up scene is thriving and its founders are making headlines for their tenacity and inventiveness, this book, an engaging result of the ‘bearded professor’ generously spilling the beans on his decades of expertise, is a good addition to the literature for those of us who are interested in the nitty-gritty details of running a company.The author starts with the concept of a ‘Dream Founder’, taking us through real life stories of Instamojo and ‘iDream’, the latter a start-up providing educational solutions to rural India.


Reviewed by: Debarpita Pande
Nikhil Inamdar

This winter when I came across an appeal for donation of woollens and other material from an NGO on an online platform, instead of scrolling down listlessly, I was quick to devise a plan to source these from my locality and deliver them to their centre. The trigger behind the action came from Nikhil Inamdar’s powerful narration of the organization’s backstory that created an understanding of how small steps can lead to a big impact for communities at large, in ways which we clearly are unaware of and perhaps too immersed in our urbane, rushed lives to care for.


Reviewed by: Vanshree Agarwal
Nistha Tripathi

Right off the bat, what makes Nistha Tripathi’s book stand out among others on entrepreneurial journeys is its sincerity. Through its 300-odd pages, and the conversations with 15 exceptional entrepreneurs, Tripathi manages to cull some remarkably perceptive observations about thinking like an entrepreneur and acting upon impulse and rational thought alike to create products and services that carry the stamp of extraordinary minds, be they ultimately successful or not.


Reviewed by: Rina Goel
Ankur Bhardwaj

If India had one film song as its soundtrack, what would it be? Jinhe naaz hai Hind par woh kahaan hai from Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa? It gets my vote, but it is a tribute to the richness of Hindi film music and to the depth of Note by Note: The India Story 1947-2017 by Ankur Bhardwaj, Seema Chishti and Sushant Singh, one of the most innovative books I’ve read recently, that it doesn’t figure as the song of the year in 1957. Another song from Pyaasa does, however, the brilliant Yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaaye toh kya hai, also written by the great Sahir Ludhianvi.


Reviewed by: Kaveree Bamzai