47th Book of 2020
It has been sometime since I stayed long with one book because I have got this bad habit of completing a book within 3-4 days as soon as I pick it up for reading. But due to certain events in personal life, I read Sandeep Aggarwal’s entrepreneurial-based autobiography named “Fall Again, Rise Again” quite slowly and peacefully maintaining notes of the same. Sandeep has co-authored this book with Sunny Sen. I got introduced to Sandeep Aggarwal when he judged a show based on Start-ups along with my favorite – Raghu and Rajiv on MTV. I got very much impressed with the kind of questions and interrogations he used to do with the contestants. It gave the vibes that he is a very knowledgeable and informative person in the field of Start-ups and creating something out of nothing. This book has just come like a surprise all of a sudden and I am glad I am done reading it.
The book stays very true to its title- “Fall Again, Rise Again” as the life of Sandeep has been almost on the same verge where he kept falling and rising again in almost every stage and big events of his life. I just couldn’t comprehend how Sandeep could create something new every time his last venture failed so badly – and this is what Sandeep speaks very vastly in this book by regularly sharing his personal experiences. His determination, hard work and never-quit attitude has been reflected in every page. As the book majorly speaks about how Sandeep developed ideas and then took it further in the market to get funding to develop it into a bigger establishment and finally, implemented several changes as the challenges kept coming in front of him, this serves as a very beautiful guide for anyone who has ever imagined himself/herself as an Entrepreneur or Start-Up creator.
Sandeep has written the book in the form of small chapters with smaller sections within them where each of them have some kind of a message for the readers- sometimes straight or otherwise for the readers to read between the lines and decipher what is the author trying to say behind this story. Mr. Aggarwal has shared how he learnt various lessons which he implemented later in his life while working in Microsoft headquarters – how not being fluent in English yet reaching up to a stage where he worked in foreign lands and even ended up becoming a person who gave regular speeches in different seminars and television programmes – how the power of building and maintaining relationships and networks can make you reach heights as opportunity can come from any direction etc.
Author has widely spoken on the challenges faced in entrepreneurship such as the hiring challenges where getting a good candidate becomes really difficult as no one wants to work with a start-up. Also, start-up needs some experienced candidates who comes with the requirement of a kind of package demand which a Start-up can hardly manage. As his most ambitious venture- ShopClues was more about operations, author explains how he learnt from this mistake which he corrected later when he founded Droom where he tried cutting off as many operational work as possible and became more reliant on technology.
Similarly, ShopClues was more about delivering products to the end-consumers where Sandeep has given an insight upon how courier charges vary in terms of the amount of orders received daily by the business. Also, how North-east region of India became a challenge for him as the delivery and transport is still a challenge for the rest of India to reach. When author talks about his internship days, he tells how he ended up facing 37 rejections after which he got a great opportunity with Charles Schwab. Along with sharing his life, author also gives many informative insights upon the other big and contemporary companies of the times he was struggling to make his mark. I also liked how it has been promoted in the book for the people to move to small companies even if they start their career with MNCs. How author ended up making this step is another memorable reading experience in the book.
Overall, the narration is very simple and even a layman can understand all the business and finance terms used by the author. The small chapters help you to read book taking breaks and gaps. Summing up the book within 200 pages is another positive point as such exploratory life of any individual could have gone for more than 400 pages also. The editing team should be credited for this. The book is going to inspire many youngsters from India who remain confused on various topics as author has shared the kind of challenges even an achiever like him had to fight through to be at a place where he is a big face but still going through several turmoil’s.
Talking about the drawbacks now, I must say that because the book is not written in a linear way, it becomes really difficult to understand the shuffling of the timeline. This has also ended up having many sections or part of the stories to be told twice and sometimes, even thrice. Hence, it becomes repetitive in many chapters. There are also some typos and spelling mistakes in the book which is surprising to have got missed when the book is drafted by two authors and proofread by Rupa Publications. Then, I also wished to know many things about author’s life which I think has been skipped like how he ended up becoming judge in MTV Dropout which made him known to other world of audience has not been mentioned at all. I wanted to know many more details about his routine, personal life, his philosophical beliefs etc.
Other than the few points mentioned above, this book is definitely needed in your book shelf. I give this one 4.25 stars out of 5. Please do read if you have aspired to be an entrepreneur or even if you are working as an employee.
Thanks.
WRITING BUDDHA
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