Enthused by the stupendous success of her first book Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish (2008), which recounted the secrets of several first generation business entrepreneurs and has reportedly sold over 150,000 copies in eight languages, Mumbai-based author Rashmi Bansal formally released her second title Connect the Dots (2010) at a crowded press conference in the city’s Landmark Bookstore on May 20.
The title of Bansal’s second oeuvre is inspired by legendary Apple Inc. chief executive Steve Jobs’ commencement address at Stanford University in 2005. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust… in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference to my life,” said Jobs.
“Connect the Dots is about 20 extraordinary people who without the benefit of formal degrees and B-school certificates followed their entrepre-neurial instincts to transform into successful business leaders. I wrote this book to give readers inspiring stories of people who believed in their ideas and made them work without expensive, formal training. Some of the extraordinary entreprenuers I have featured in my book include Kunwar Sachdev of Su-Kam, who started an auxiliary power back-up company to help people cope with acute power shortages; Ganesh Ram who started India’s largest English language training academy, VETA, and Chetan Maini, the pioneer of electric motor cars,” says Bansal, an alumna of IIM-Ahmedabad, former Times of India columnist and founder-publisher and editor of JAM — a fortnightly youth magazine launched in 1995 which claims a circulation of 30,000 per issue. In 2008 after putting JAM on the rails, Bansal vacated the editor’s office to transform into an editorial advisor and full-time author of motivational books and literature.
Bansal’s pioneering contributions to the causes of youth education and entrepreneurship are receiving incre-asing recognition. She is a guest lecturer and panelist at IIM-A and several other business schools; a consulting editor of an half-hour weekly show named Cracking Careers with UTVi, a business news channel, even as she writes columns for Businessworld, Business Today, rediff.com, and blogs on Youthcurry.
“While the media tends to focus on gloom and doom stories relating to economics and business, I believe there are thousands of inspiring success stories of strong-willed individuals who have succeeded despite a discou-raging system, waiting to be told. This is the focus area of my research which translates into books,” says Bansal who discloses that she has already started researching her next book on social entrepreneurs. “I want to highlight that it is possible to contribute to the social good while being successful in business. That’s why I focus on stories in which both objectives have been achieved,” adds Bansal.
Write on!
Swati Roy & Bharati Thakore (Mumbai)