CONNECT THE DOTS

Rashmi Bansal’s previous book ‘Stay Hungry Stay Foolish’ was very inspiring, but whenever I spoke about this book to my friends. They said great but ‘they all have an IIM tag’. But in ‘Connect the Dots’ none have one.
This book is all about 20 entrepreneurs who have made it big following their passion and ideas.

My top 3 from these 20 are,
1) Prem Ganapathy, Dosa Plaza
2) Raghu Khanna, Cashudrive
3) Kalyan Varma, Wildlife Photographer

These 3 are incredible…

Dosa Plaza:
Prem Ganapathy, born in Tuticorin studied only till class 10 and at the age of 17 he moved to Mumbai without any acquaintances and became successful. He joined a bakery for cleaning vessels and today he has 26 outlets with Rs.5 Crores turnover.

Cashudrive:
Raghu Khanna , 24 years old from Shimla who joined IIT G. Later on he hatched a simple idea, but a brilliant one – ‘Brand on Wheels’. Used Orkut to sell his idea and today 21 brands use this campaign and drives revenue of Rs.86 lakhs.

Wildlife Photographer:
Kalyan Varma, a techie from Bangalore who quit Yahoo and worked for eco-tourism resort to follow his passion – wild life. He followed his passion and coupled with his photography skills. Now, he works for BBC as consultant and gets paid 300 pounds per day.

All the 20 stories in this book are must read for all of us as there is key learning in each story. If I were to paraphrase their advice to young entrepreneurs, they are as follows,

1) Be Optimistic.
2) Design ‘an idea’ which can add value to customer. Subsequently stick to the idea as it may take couple of years to gain acceptance.
3) Do you homework, in other words – ‘attention to details’.
4) Stand Out and Think different !!!