India, Land of The Mouse Charmers

August 25, 2014
Author: Anuradha Goyal
Publisher: Random House India
Year: 2014
ISBN: 9788184004922
Rating: ★★★★☆
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The phrase is clichéd, but its vigor is fresher than ever! – ‘From the land of snake charmers to the land of mouse charmers’, the transition took place as if this whole deal is a motion picture. A quick comparison between our country’s past and what we readily embrace as present would not fail to astound us. Now it all seems normal, a computer at home, twitter on mobiles, apps, games, what not. The world witnessed the duplication of itself within the universe of World Wide Web.

Into the arena of Indian digital entrepreneurial space, this book enters as a fine work of research. In this genre, some writers deliver intelligence and some display elegance. Anurdha Goyal’s The Mouse Charmers glimmers with elegant intelligence. Anuradha, in this book, unravels the business specifics of twelve companies that began as digital entrepreneurships and now sail with their magnificent masts, ruling the waters of Indian markets.

Fitted into three alliterated categories, Commerce, Content and Connecters, these are the twelve companies – Flipkart, Makemytrip, BigBasket, Caretlane (Commerce), Zomato, Games2Win, ImagesBazaar, Chai with Lakshmi (Content) and Shaadi, Rang De, CommonFloor, Indiblogger(Connecters).

Though the broad pillars of business analysis (Technology, Marketing, Logistics, etc.) stand tall in all cases, each company in the list above is dealt with deftly, taking into account the nuisances characteristic to its category.  Under subtle and apt subheadings, these businesses are delightfully dissected with an admirable administration of balance between content and captivation. Unlike most of the present Indian non-fictions, which tend to test the patience of a reader to some degree or the other, The Mouse Charmers is a charmer by itself.

One of the important purposes of any analysis is to churn an ocean of information and deliver to the recipient a sufficient amount of meaningfully organized intelligence to be consumed by him in the shortest time possible. Anurdha’s book serves this purpose exceedingly well.

This book dives right into the center of companies’ business aspects and does not scrape unwanted surfaces. With a straight-forward problem-solution approach and sufficient detailing of companies’ business models, their USPs, innovations, experiments and failures, the discussions in here compose a perfect blend of inspiration, experience and education.  Charts and flow diagrams depicting operational flows and business models provide valuable assistance to the reader and occur at the required rate rather than being insertions for the sake of insertion.

The author’s honest criticisms and suggestions for improvements, though less in number and significance, also made their way into this book. Apart from its analysis, this book brought to my mind a scary imagination of technological and networking advancement to the extent of complete breach of privacy and destruction of personal space.

Overall, The Mouse Charmers is a well-organized analysis of Indian digital ventures with resemblances of a page-turner.

Read about Anuradha Goyal’s musings on her travel blog, or check out her website and Twitter handle

Lakshmikanth Koundinya

Lakshmikanth Koundinya

Writer at IndiaBookStore
Of Poe's heart, Russell's brain, Wilde's thought and Rand's strength - a hedonic wanderer and enchantress' apprentice in the world of Literature
Lakshmikanth Koundinya

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