Book Review: India Inc.

India Inc. How India’s Top Ten Entrepreneurs are Winning Globally by Vikas Pota

A subject that has gripped boardrooms over the last decade has been that of the burgeoning economies of countries including china and India, which are set to outgrow all others.
However, what has not been widely understood are the stories, values and business principles of the great entrepreneurs who are leading this change. Vikas Pota, a business man himself and frequent media commentator, has successfully begun to capture some of these perspectives.
His book is an anthology of ten of India’s most successful global entrepreneurs; representing a myriad of sectors including IT, consultancy, media, healthcare, industrials and finance. What Pota successfully brings to the fore is not only ‘who’ these people are and what drives them but also the strategies which have made them successful and the problems they encountered in their journey.
The diversity is well balanced. Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys, one of the world’s most successful IT consultancies, began in poverty and worked to achieve success through perseverance, excellence and teamwork. On the other hand, Subhash Chandra, founder of one of the world’s largest media empires, is the son of a successful businessman who says: “I’m not a manager. I don’t have the patience for it. I am an entrepreneur.”
It is the diversity in the stories which have both the capacity to inspire and teach. And I don’t believe this understanding is exclusively useful for entrepreneurs. It is important for all as we move into a world economy where these people will have more commercial impact on British business than perhaps Europe and the US.

Reviewed by Anoop Maini FCMI

Published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing
£20
ISBN 978-1857885248