Doglapan by Ashneer Grover (Book Review: 4.25*/5) !!!

2042nd BLOG POST

36^th Book of 2022

Well, at one point of time, when December begun, I had posted that I would not be meeting my Yearly goal of reading 36 books but here I am, right on 31^st December, sharing the review of the 36^th book. I have just completed reading Ashneer Grover’s very first book named “Doglapan” which got released just few days back. It is always a delight to be one of the first readers of a book that is about to get extremely popular.

 

This 256-pages autobiography by Ashneer is special because of his personality of calling spade a spade without worrying about what you’ll perceive of him. The founder of my 1^st company would always say “We are not here to win an election. Whenever there’s anything wrong, go ahead and tell it on the person’s face”. Ashneer has been just the same through his Shark Tank experience which made him popular and the book is also written in the similar fashion which makes you understand from where does this confidence reflect in his personality.

 

You must have watched Bollywood movies where they show the protagonist being handcuffed or defamed in public in the very 1^st scene and then immediately navigate to the flashback which leads to this prologue section how the character ended up being in such state. In the similar fashion, the prologue speaks about a segment of the whole Bharatpe saga which happened early this year and immediately, Ashneer takes us to his childhood where he describes his background and with utmost respect, speaks about his parents, grandparents and every member of his family.

 

He gives insights on how he ended up being so studious that he is part of two topmost institute of our country. He is proud and delighted about everything he has achieved in life and that reflects every time he talks about his achievement – either it’s about academics, personal life, corporate life or start-up success. He doesn’t try to sound modest because he knows how much effort he has put in to achieve success in each of these sectors. He is a typical family person and the part on how he started missing his grandparents when they started staying separately to give him space for studying and how after reuniting with them in a new home, he started feeling happy again made me emotional.

 

The whole section of him joining MBA just because that was last chance for him to find a good partner and how he even got successful in it tells a lot about his conviction behind achieving anything. Haha! How he had to actually win trust of his in-laws makes you remember the whole “2 States” segment of the protagonist with his in-laws. The way he speaks about each of his corporate experience and what he learnt from them is quite beneficial for every corporate or start-up employee. He emphasizes on the fact that anything you do or learn while working never goes waste and comes out in rescuing you later in your career or life for sure. He also speaks about creating and maintaining relationship in the same space which is a great take-away from this autobiography.

 

The 2^nd half of the book is more about how he moved into the start-up world. Everything right from the 1^st page till the last is written as if you are reading a fiction novel. Ashneer always insists on speaking Hindi as it clears things better than English, even in this book, he has not shied away from writing few sentences in Hindi. The whole start-up section is about learning from his experiences and knowing how to keep your product customer-centric and move ahead with pitching for multiple rounds to raise funds. Though, here, I felt that too many figures and technical terms made it hard to understand few events but overall, it was great to know how a single person can create a product which can earn such kind of money for an organization. Unbelievable!

 

The last segment of the book, as I said initially, takes us to the same prologue scenario where the whole Bharatpe saga happened due to which he ended up resigning from his own company. This is interesting to read as I knew that the whole book has just been written by Ashneer to share this story and reveal for once whatever he wanted to say about people who ditched him. Unfortunately, the whole thing sounds like a rant while reading than an honest account as Ashneer only speaks from his point of view and never talks about what must have gone wrong from his end for all his team members to go against him – that too when he got famous as public figure and they knew that eventually, it is only going to make him more famous than them. Anyway, Ashneer doesn’t try sugarcoating anything and directly calls out name without thinking of repercussions of saying such harsh things about people sitting at powerful positions.

 

He makes us understand things like GST complications, how investors start bossing startup founders, how wrong hiring can screw you badly etc. The last chapter speaks about 5 things success and failure- both taught him which is a nice ending to the book. There’s obviously a chapter before this on his Shark Tank experience and it is all goody goody stuff about how it went for him.

 

Overall, the book is interesting and shouldn’t take more than one sitting or 5-6 hours to finish the same. I give this book 4.25 stars out of 5. I received whatever I expected from it.

PURCHASE THE BOOK HERE

 

Thanks!

 

WRITING BUDDHA 

Inni & Bobo find each other by Soha Ali Khan/Kunal Kemmu (Book Review: 4.5*/5) !!!

2041st BLOG POST

35^th Book of 2022

 

Well, as a Blogger and Book-Reviewer, I have received many opportunities to meet authors in several literature festivals and other events. Unfortunately, I have not been able to be part of many book launches due to their schedule on week-days as I had to earlier attend college and now - office. But it is always a distinct experience to be reading and then writing about the books of which you have been part of their launch. The 1^st launch that I attended this year was for the book “Inni & Bobo find each other” written by none other than Bollywood couple- Soha Ali Khan and Kunal Kemmu. I also got an opportunity to meet them and have a short conversation regarding this. Unfortunately, the review couldn’t come soon after the event but yes, let’s do it now before the year ends.

 

This is 1^st book in the “Inni & Bobo adventures” series of which the 2^nd book has also got published around October this year. The author-duo are being quite consistent and serious about this writing spree. This is a children’s book with a story that is spoken in around 32 pages with less texts and more illustrations and drawings – definitely to appeal it to children. The book is published in hardcover format with beautiful cover page and well-written synopsis. The team has definitely worked upon the packaging of the book brilliantly as every kid will love to have it. I just wished that the costing of the book could have been affordable as every parent might not purchase it for Rs. 399/-.

 

The story is about Inni – a little girl and Bobo – a puppy that she adopts eventually from an adoption center. There are several instances where authors have tried to teach values to the children belonging in the target audience age group. One of the main lessons is obvious that it teaches human beings to have compassion and love towards animals as much as we have among our own species. It also speaks about how parents teach their child that she can’t have all the dogs but only one. This reflects about how one can’t have everything they want in life but can only get one or fewer options and they need to find peace with it.

 

Authors also try to inculcate the value of protecting the beings who need and deserve it as the protagonist picks up the dog which is the most vulnerable of all and scared. It tells that we should always think from humanitarian ground than wanting to have best option for ourselves. The situation where other dogs who protected Bobo until then feels happy about him finding a family where he’ll be always taken care of – teaches that we need to let go of our favorite person/thing if we know they are finding a better place than us.

 

The story is really sweet which speaks about children’s innocence and unbiased nature also. The book would have seriously been incomplete without illustrations by Rituparna Sarkar as the visualization and colours it has provided to the story is unbeatable. I was forced to first go through all the pictures and then again start reading the story from the Page 1 onwards. How the text and illustrations are related with each other seems that the authors and illustrators thought of the story with the same mind.

 

Overall, this is a nice attempt. I just hope that the pricing is worked upon and authors can come up with anthologies for children rather than having just one short story in a book that costs so much. I give it 4.5 stars out of 5.

PURCHASE THE BOOK HERE

 

Thanks!

 

WRITING BUDDHA 

Get Epic Shit Done by Ankur Warikoo (Book Review: 4.75*/5) !!!

2040th BLOG POST

34^th Book of 2022

 

It’s quite obvious that publishers are now interested in publishing Youtubers, Influencers or Start-up founders as the new generation is following them religiously. I recently completed reading Raj Shamani’s 1^st book who is a Youtuber and just now, I have completed 2^nd book published by Ankur Warikoo, who was a Start-up Founder and is a Youtuber and Content-creator now. His first book “Do Epic Shit” got tremendous response last year and its quotes were visible almost everywhere- Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and where-not. The 2^nd book is named “Get Epic Shit Done” which Warikoo says is a next-level thing and not a sequel to his 1^st book. I have been an ardent follower of his life-related videos on Youtube and never missed them. I watch it with my parents. Watching him makes me feel as if a big brother is talking to me, someone I didn’t have in my life to guide me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t read his 1^st book continuously but read it in parts hence couldn’t talk about it on my Blog. But I was very sure that I am going to read his next book as soon as it comes out and here I am.

 

The one issue that I always had with Warikoo is that he talks about happiness generally and advices people to not shy away from taking unconventional or undefined paths without worrying about what parents, family or near ones think about you. This is one reason why I feel scared because I have young cousins and I don’t want them to take extreme decisions just for the sake of it. I could never understand why doesn’t Ankur talks about hard work, hustle and efforts as he has been someone who has worked as an Entrepreneur which involves lot of work. Finally, with this book, all those complains have gone away.

 

As the title of the book says, author continuously empathizes on how to get big things done and executed in life ensuring that we don’t become mediocre or relaxed about growth and success. The previous book I read by Raj Shamani was a very aggressive speech on working hard whereas this is the same thing but spoken like a friendly senior/elder brother to make you realize where you are going wrong in life. The book is written in Teacher-student conversation format which is very similar to Bhagavad Gita where a confused Arjun is asking Lord Krishna questions and he is clearing all his confusions by letting him know the principles of life, success and righteousness without directly telling what actions to perform. He leaves it to him for deciding and executing. Similarly, here, the Student is someone who is at an age where education, career, relationships, personal growth are all important and something about which he is clueless because no one has taught him about it. Teacher, here, gives him friendly answers which makes him understand the root cause of every derivation and learn the art of helping himself in any situation.

 

The writing style is very simple. There’re no tough words used. You will not have to run for picking up dictionary at all. The book helps you uncover a lot of doubts about yourself so you’ll not even pick-up that God-damn phone in between while reading it as you’ll feel that this is one-time opportunity in life to learn about ourself. It seems that Warikoo is able to look inside you and find what’s making you confused and unhappy these days. All the questions that the student asks him – most of them are something you wish you had known at the time when you needed to know them or you are actually thinking of it right now. I’m at an age where relationship and career growth are a big issue in my life and the way it is covered helped me a lot to understand what actually needs to be done to get better in both the departments.

 

The book has some cool illustrations which you’ll want to redraw in your notebook so that you can retain it for a longer time. It helps you understand the textual contexts better. The book is divided in 4 different sections such as – Managing your life, career, people and yourself. There are total of 36 major questions that are asked in context to these four topics which then follows multiple questions inside to ensure that you understand the crux of the message that author wanted to deliver. There are many such quotes which can change your whole perspective or stay with you and guide throughout your life. For social media folks, they are worthy to be shared in the Stories/Status and get likes from it. Haha!

 

I would like to mention few things out of many that I liked from the book:

• The chapter on Writing our thoughts talks about how we pick only important ones as process of writing is slower than thinking and we want to capture only the best ones which later tells us about our priority.
• He also helps understand power of listening over anything else for being a good communicator.
• While taking decisions, thinking if we can bear the worst-case is something that can change life of many people fearful of taking decisions.
• I liked where it is explained how we have to deal with criticism from family members by separating the GIVER and what is GIVEN as criticism. Amazing advice that can help students and people in their 20s develop healthy relationship with their family.
• Nicely elaborated the difference between reading and watching videos. How reading enables complete focus whereas video ensures we are distracted by something regularly. I am glad Warikoo always promotes reading books.
• What a right career looks like is such a wonderful diagram to understand how to choose our career even if we want to convert our passion into it. You need to get the book to view the diagram, of course. 😊
• In the chapter about how to handle first 90 days in a job, Warikoo gives a very great advice to engage with people on personal level so that it becomes easier to then deal on professional level. This is a tried and tested thing even by yours truly. It works. 
• Living by ourselves and the factors that comes with it such as investing money, managing relationships, disciplined lifestyle, paying bill taxes etc.

 

Talking about the drawbacks – well, the book doesn’t have any but, in this case, Warikoo has. Haha! Because he has been so much active on Social media almost through all the platforms such as Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Newsletters etc. that there is very less that he has still not talked about. Hence, if you have been his follower like me, you’ll realize that 70% of what has been written has already been shared by him on Social media. Like, he has announced that his next book is going to be about “Make Epic Money”. Now, he has already created multiple financial videos that I doubt the book will have anything new. His content is facing his own contents as its enemy now. Haha!

 

Overall, I give this book 4.75* out of 5. Highly recommended to everyone!

PURCHASE THE BOOK HERE

 

Thanks!

 

WRITING BUDDHA