India has its fair share of Book Fests and Lit Fests. Some generic, some specific to a genre or a language. A well-known one among these is the Bangalore BizLitFest—as the name suggests, an event devoted to the Business Literature genre.
The 6th edition of this Fest, held online (of course) this year, concluded this weekend. While I have attended this Fest over the years, this time I had a special role—as one of the panel of judges to pick the best Business Book of the Year. This award was instituted in 2017, by the family of the universally-known academic Prof CK Prahalad (of ‘Bottom of Pyramid’ fame). The CK Prahalad Best Business Book Award is given to ‘the most original, impactful and thought-provoking business book written by an Indian author’.
It never ceases to amaze me how many contenders there are every year! The competition process is a multistage one. Out of the business books published in the previous calendar year, a longlist of the top 25 is made based on ratings and reviews. Of these, the five which get the top ratings and number of reviews on Amazon, Goodreads and Flipkart in the first six months of the current year are shortlisted. And a jury selects from among these, using two major criteria: Originality of theme, and second, Potential of the book as a game-changer, inspiration and influencer.
I was in the distinguished company of Prof Rishikesha Krishna (IIM-B), Manish Sabarwal (Teamlease), Narayan Ramachandran (formerly Morgan Stanley, writer, social entrepreneur) in the Jury Panel.
The five shortlisted books were:
Saying No to Jugaad: TN Hari, MS Subramanian
Bridgital Nation: N Chandrasekaran with Roopa Purushottaman
How I Almost Blew It: Sidharth Rao
The CEO Factory: Sudhir Sitapathy
Big Billion Startup: Mihir Dalal.
The unanimous winner was Mihir Dalal’s Big Billion Startup, the story of Flipkart.
For me, there were two levels of learning through the process:
Each book was a fascinating journey and provided enormous learning! Four of them were the story or stories of specific enterprises or entrepreneurs told so as to offer lessons to any manager or entrepreneur. Bridgital Nation was different in that it provided a broader framework of using IT to solve the nation’s problems.
At the second level, I realized that reading as a judge was a different ballgame from just reading. One has to read much more consciously, comparing and contrasting, articulating what works and what does not work. One has to be aware of content and style. Whether the ‘lessons’ are coming out clearly. And whether it will work for the audience it is meant for. While I have graded student essays and evaluated children’s fiction, judging business books was a new experience of reading ‘judgmentally’!
One comment I have on the books is that most mention dozens of names. While completely necessary to acknowledge and bring out the contribution (or otherwise) of all concerned in the making of the company, it is quite confusing for the reader who does not know any of these people. At times, I found myself going back and forth to figure out who a person was, more than even in a Russian novel!
All in all, a very interesting experience, and I thank BBLF for it.
Look forward to the next edition in Sept/Oct 2021!
–Meena
Millennial Matriarchs 