BRAToSPHERE

Tag: book

  • Marissa Mayer.. – Book Review

    Marissa Mayer – the charismatic CEO of Yahoo. The once upon a time star of Google, and now a stylish CEO of a faltering company. This is how most people know her. (Other than the fact that she has a penchant for delivering babies without taking a break from work!)

    Yahoo – the once gateway to the web, and now a non-descript provider of weather data to iPhones. This is how most people know the company.

    Mix them both (Are they unseparable?) and you have an interesting concoction of a story. Full of Drama and Action.

    This book is not Marissa’s biography. It is more a chronicle of Yahoo, covering Yahoo’s history and the succession of management there from its beginning, which is both fascinating and intriguing. This leads us to the question – Why does Yahoo exist anymore? And what purpose does it serve?

    More importantly, this book throws a dim light on the situations that got Yahoo in the position that it is in presently.

    The author takes the reader through Marissa’s personal background (right from her child prodigy days to her dating Larry Page), her beginning days at Yahoo where employees pinned up posters of her face with the word “HOPE” to the end of that honeymoon period and the beginning of her real struggle to keep Yahoo alive after Alibaba’s IPO (the Asian investments). It is all covered.

    This book also throws interesting insights on Marissa’s working style and the various policies that she has brought in an effort to build a culture of innovation at Yahoo. She did try.

    I did not find this book flattering towards Marissa, nor was it biased against her. It did seem like a balanced view of her and the company. So much, that the book feels like a bunch of business articles joined together to tell a story.

    Nevertheless, anyone with a slight interest in the working of these internet companies and the background of the rise of the silicon tech behemoths should read this book. It has quite many interesting snippets and is an overall easy read.

    Psst. Did you know, yahoo let go of an opportunity to buy Google in its initial days?

  • My little epiphanies – Book Review

    I read rave reviews about this book in a newspaper book review section, immediately raising my curiosity to read it. A couple more good words on the book and I wasted no time in buying the book. So so totally worth the read.

    While reading this rather small book, one gets to know the large grit that the author had.

    Yes, “had”. As she is no more. Aisha Chaudhary was born with S.C.I.D (severe combined immune deficiency) and underwent a bone marrow transplant when she was 6 months old. Shesadly passed away on the morning of 24 January 2015, the very day her book, My Little Epiphanies, was launched at the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival. She was 17 years old.

    This book stands tall in front of all the many books written by similarly aged teenagers.

    This book is her way of letting her thoughts away from the pain and the misery she has always been in. Spending most of her time lying on the bed, this book is about a lifetime of her experiences. This book is full of honest, mischief, kindness, pain, hope and above all love.

    Reading this book makes one feel how little our life and problems are compared to what this young girl went through in her short but eventful life.

    One statement which is echoed throughout the book, and something that I have always attempted to live by, “We should be happy about the things we can do instead of being sad about things we are not capable of”.

    Her beautiful doodles and short poems so well capture the myriad of emotions she goes through while she battles this monster of a disease and how she does it all with a smile on her face.

    Aisha has surely left an indelible memory in my mind, and I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested to learn about life.

  • Alibaba’s World – Book Review

    Alibaba is probably the biggest success story of the recent times. Adding my interest in e-commerce sector in general, this book got on my must read list. I got my hands on the e-version of the book and finished it within a working week!

    The book chronicles the rise of Alibaba, from an apartment building to a company that challenges corporate goliaths E-Bay and Amazon. The author was one of the early employees at the company and had an inside view of the company from its beginnings.

    From his vantage point (he was handling PR for the company), the author writes about the successes and to a lesser degree the failures of the company.

    There are many interesting anecdotes about the early days of the company like the whole fight with ebay, and the guerrilla tactics used against it; the challenges posed by Yahoo’s early investment in the company.

    Reading the book makes one feel that history is repeating itself on in India, albeit 10 years later, and instantly one starts pegging who would be the Alibaba from India? Probably many, given the complexities in the geography and the economic disparities in this wonderful country.

    At the end of the book, the author has included 40 lessons he took away from Jack Ma and Alibaba. Here’re a few of my favorites:

    • Today is tough but the day after tomorrow is beautiful. But most companies die tomorrow evening and can’t see the sunshine on the day after tomorrow.
    • Endure the struggle
    • It’s more important to be the best not the first
    • Find opportunity in crisis
    • Learn from competitors but never copy them

    This is like a semi-autobiographical narrative of the author’s life in alibaba. While it serves as a quick entertaining read, I wish there was a depth into the mind of Jack Ma.

    I felt the author was very lenient on the company and has highlighted all positive things alone. The book nowhere seems balanced perception of the company.

    Also, one thing that has kept me intrigued for long is – why did Jack Ma chose the name Alibaba. Alas! I am still intrigued and unaware.

    Overall, a good basic book for anyone interested in the story of the rise of alibaba.

  • The Dum Dum Bullet – Book Review

    After reading Konjo, by Sandeep Goyal, I was instantly curious to read up his previous book – The Dum Dum Bullet. I laid my hands on it recently and finished it within a week.

    The name of the book is from the bullet factory at DumDum Arsenal near Calcutta, where the author equates life in corporate to a bullet. The tagline of the book states – “Adventures of a corporate soldier” and who better than Sandeep to recount his adventures.

    Sandeep is the founding chairman of Dentsu India Group and was the CEO at Zee. Prior to this he served as the president of ad agency Rediffusion DY&R at a young ripe age of 35 itself.

    The book recounts an insider’s view of the dynamic advertising world in India through the 80’s to the 21st century. It is a real life account of life in advertising, and has an anecdotal style told in a humorous fashion. It has real life incidents involving many corporate doyens from Anil Ambani and Sunil Bharti Mittal and corporate ranging from Citibank to Bhutan Board.

    The book gives a biographical feel, where the author recounts incidents and learnings right from his days as a management trainee in a paint company in the hiterlands of Rajasthan to his rise in the corporate world.

    Throughout the book Sandeep’s perseverance, his quick thinking and his fresh ideas come across. Right from the instance in Nerolac Paints, where a Calendar for the dealers was part of the annual marketing expense. Sandeep suggests shooting hot models on the calendar with Nerolac branding and personalizes it for the dealers with their names on it. The dealers now were purchasing the calendars in hordes as a gift item to their customers. An Expense item was now a sales item, with a much higher reach in terms of branding.

    Such simple ideas and wonderful execution is what set apart Sandeep from others.

    The book is a wonderful easy read for anyone interested in the basic working of corporate India, and especially the advertising industry.

  • The Scion of Ikshvaku – Book Review

    After the hugely engaging and popular Shiva trilogy, I have been waiting for Amish’s next and was probably one of the first ones to pre-order the book on amazon. And Boy! He does not disappoint a bit. The simple language and familiar but still different story keeps you engaged right from the beginning.

    This book is the first in the Rama Chandra series, and narrates the most famous story of this part of the world – The Ramayana. Blending and telling the story like it was happening right in front of your eyes is a talent Amish has perfected. I still remember a colleague ecstatically mentioning Amish’s first Shiva book back in 2010 – “Have you heard of this new Shiva book? Shiva dances, smokes up and fights goons in it. You should read it.. “.

    This one is no different in that promise. Lord Rama, and the other characters of the pic are depicted as normal characters conversing in today’s language and talking normal basic world stuff. Amish does well to take the modern reader back to the original philosophical conundrums, especially when he explicitly puts these debates in a modern context.

    The integration of the infamous Delhi rape did look as a populist move but makes the reader think – How would a perfect society handle the situation?

    The first book details the epic through Ram’s childhood and education, along with the politics surrounding his ascension to the throne, and ultimately his 14 year exile, accompanied by wife Sita and brother Lakshman.

    The ending of the book is quite dramatized in a typical Bollywood movie style, where Ravan has kidnapped Sita and Ram looks up to see the Pushpak Viman flying away and is filled with rage.

    Looking at the pace of the series, my guess is that the second book would detail out the battle between Ram and Ravan, and the remaining three books, of the five part series, would dwell on the perfect society concept – Ram Rajya.

    Can’t wait for the next book!