Mumbai:
A definitive account of one of India’s biggest start-ups Flipkart by journalist Mihir Dalal on Thursday won the Gaja Capital Business Book Prize 2020.
The winner, who receives a prize of Rs 15 lakh, was selected from a shortlist of six books, showcasing the vibrant Indian business ecosystem.
“Big Billion Startup: The Untold Flipkart Story” was published by Pan Macmillan India.
Established by the Gaja Capital equity firm in 2019, the Gaja Business Book Prize is one of the leading initiatives connecting the worlds of business and writing.
The jury said the Flipkart story “reminds us that Indian entrepreneurs will forge their own independent paths of innovation serving a diverse and very demanding Indian consumer”.
The other shortlisted books were: “Bottle of Lies” by Katherine Eban; “HDFC Bank 2.0” by Tamal Bandyopadhyay; “Saying No to Jugaad: The Making of Bigbasket” by T N Hari and M S Subramanian; “The Making of Hero” by Sunil Munjal; and “The Moonshot Game” by Rahul Chandra.
Announcing the winner virtually, Gopal Jain, co-founder and managing partner of Gaja Capital, said, “The Indian growth phenomenon is one of the great stories of the 21st century. It needs to be told. Narratives inspire and build conviction – India has many successful entrepreneurs and businesses.”
“The Gaja Capital Business Book Prize was instituted in 2019 to encourage Indian writers, journalists and entrepreneurs to tell our stories and tell them well, for the world,” he added.
The jury was headed by Manish Sabharwal, chairman of Teamlease, and included Imran Jafar, UK Sinha, Michael Queen, Neelkanth Mishra, Narayan Ramachandran, Prithvi Haldea and Shailesh Haribhakti.
The jury said the 2020 edition of the Gaja Capital Business Book Prize had an extraordinary list of submissions featuring an outstanding list of books, and the shortlist featured a brilliant range of stories of Indian enterprises and their protagonists.
“In addition to the narrative power and research behind these individual stories, the jury also considered how these outstanding chronicles can inspire and educate young entrepreneurs – and were unanimous in choosing ‘Big Billion Startup’ by Mihir Dalal as the winner of the 2020 prize,” it said.
In the book, Dalal recounts the story of how the Bansals built Flipkart into a multi-billion-dollar powerhouse in the span of a few years and made internet entrepreneurship a desirable occupation.
It is also a story of big money, power and hubris, as both business and interpersonal complexities weakened the founders’ control over their creation and forced them to sell out to a retailer they had once dreamt of emulating.
The inaugural Gaja Capital prize was won in 2019 by Girish Kuber for his book “The Tatas: How a Family Built a Business and a Nation”.
