Gaja Capital Business
Book Prize 2021

Contributor at Fortune India, Business Standard and The Telegraph, Pavan C. Lall has combined his upbringing in Bihar and West Bengal and his education in West Texas to better understand the flawed billionaires India has produced. After his first book on Nirav Modi, Yes Man is the story of Rana Kapoor, and his whirlwind rise that eventually led to the Yes Bank crisis. From starting out as a junior employee at Bank of America to leading Yes Bank, Kapoor’s rise and fall is a case study in ambition and greed. The author details not only Rana Kapoor’s journey, but also raises questions about the banking system, regulation and the business environment that also played a role in precipitating the Yes Bank crisis.

Former Governor of the RBI throws light on the bad debt challenge in Indian banks, which landed on his desk when he assumed the office in September 2016; a problem which would end up defining his term in office. In the line of fire of the crisis were some of India’s largest PSU banks and some of India’s best known business magnates running their empires on unpaid debts. Based on thirty years of macroeconomic experience, he worked out the ‘9R’ strategy which would save our savings, rescue our banks and protect them from unscrupulous racketeers – if only he had been allowed to.

R.C. Bhargava’s 25 years as an IAS officer before leading India’s biggest personal vehicle company, Maruti Suzuki, uniquely positions him to comment on and provide practical suggestions for stimulating manufacturing in India. Today, manufacturing is far from competitive and contributes only 15 per cent of India’s GDP. In this book, the author lists his suggestions to bring manufacturing to the fore in India and builds a strong case for making manufacturing competitiveness a national priority. For policymakers and general readers alike, this book brings promise and leads with an actionable guide to reverse what has been a secular decline in India’s manufacturing competitiveness.

Azim Hasham Premji is a man renowned for his business prowess, having built one of India’s most successful software companies. Journalists and authors Sandeep Khanna and Varun Sood, however, focus not only on his business acumen but also how Premji sought global scale even in his giving and philanthropy. Gleaned from numerous interviews with Wipro Executives, competitors, family friends and industry associates, the book is a business journalist’s account of Premji, the businessman who built a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, investor who created one of the first institutional family offices in India and twelfth on the list of the top philanthropists of the century.