Gaja Capital announced the shortlist for its Gaja Capital Business Book prize 2022 edition. The Jury selected the best five books from the longlist that cover a diverse range of stories of business leadership and entrepreneurship from a variety of different sectors – Cement, FMCG, Dairy, Home solutions and IT services.
The 2022 shortlist includes – Ambuja Story: How a Group of Ordinary Men Created an Extraordinary Company by Narotam Sekhsaria; Broke to Breakthrough: The Rise of India’s Largest Private Dairy Company by Harish Damodaran; Disrupt and Conquer: How TTK Prestige Became a Billion Dollar Company by T.T. Jagannathan and Sandhya Mendonca; Harsh Realities: The Making of Marico by Harsh Mariwala and Ram Charan; Maverick Effect: The Inside Story of India’s IT Revolution by Harish Mehta.
Currently in its fourth edition, the Gaja Capital Business Book Prize was instituted in 2019 with an aim to encourage Indian entrepreneurs, writers, and journalists to tell their stories for the world. It offers a prize money of INR 15 lakh, making it the biggest book prize in the country to honour and encourage writers and high-quality business research to help inspire and educate future entrepreneurs.
Gopal Jain, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Gaja Capital said: “Much has been written about India’s steady march to becoming the world’s 6th largest and fastest growing economy. This business book prize is an effort to encourage stories of Indian entrepreneurship and business leadership behind India’s growth. These are stories of some of the special women & men from diverse backgrounds who, through their hard work, enterprise and risk-taking, have created tremendous wealth and employment and will leave behind an enduring legacy of strong, globally competitive businesses. We hope that these books encourage budding entrepreneurs to read and learn from the experience of others and for writers, journalists, and entrepreneurs to share their stories and create a body of knowledge for others to leverage and build upon,” Jain added.
Former Mint journalist, Amrit Raj won the Gaja Capital Business Book Prize 2021 for its book, Indian Icon: A Cult Called Royal Enfield, a riveting story of the creation of a powerful Indian brand going global. Author Mihir Dalal won the Gaja Capital Business Book Prize 2020 for his debut book, Big Billion Startup: The Untold Flipkart Story. The 2019 prize was won by Girish Kuber and Vikrant Pande, the author of The Tatas: How a Family Built a Business and a Nation.
This year’s shortlist of Gaja Capital Business Book Prize honours the painstaking pursuit of notable homegrown businesses as well as offers a commentary on business ecosystems. These chronicles of Indian business stories are canonizing the struggle and joys of entrepreneurship, creating a repository of pioneers and their experiences. The jury, consisting of success Indian business personalities, have arrived at a shortlist of five books after careful deliberation. Gaja Capital announced the longlist of ten books earlier this year.
Commenting on the shortlist of 2022 and the overall reading experience, Manish Sabharwal, Chairman Teamlease and Chairman of the Gaja Capital Business Book Prize Jury said: “This year we had record nominations and an excellent selection of books. The jury had a tough time selecting the shortlist of 5 books. It was great to see a diverse set of stories straddling most of Independent India’s economic history and key sectors of the economy. In a world obsessed with “present-ism”, it’s good to go back to a bit of history and see how entrepreneurs created long lasting, sustainable businesses by overcoming their own unique challenges – valuable lessons that are as relevant today as they were decades ago.”
Gaja Capital is one of India’s leading independent private equity firms providing growth capital to mid-market companies. Founded in 2004, Gaja Capital’s team of sector and functional specialists combine investing, entrepreneurial and operating experience to deliver tangible value beyond capital.
