India, January 17, 2023 – Broke to Breakthrough: The Rise of India’s Largest Private Dairy Company, a detailed and perceptive account of the rise of Hatsun Agro and its founder RG Chandramogan, has been announced as the winner of the Gaja Capital Business Book Prize 2022. This is the story of Hatsun Agro starting from its humble origins of selling ice creams in pushcarts in Tamil Nadu in the 1970s and growing to a publicly listed company generating more than INR 6000Cr in revenue.
The winner was selected from a diverse and compelling shortlist of five books, showcasing the vibrant Indian business ecosystem. Instituted in 2019 by Gaja Capital, a leading private equity firm, the Gaja Capital Business Book Prize aims to encourage Indian entrepreneurs, writers, and journalists to tell their stories to the world. It offers the largest book prize in the country, INR 15 lakh in prize money, to reward and support authors and promote high-caliber business research that would encourage and equip upcoming business owners and young entrepreneurs.
While announcing the winner, Gopal Jain, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Gaja Capital said,“The 2022 shortlist covered a wide array of stories of some of the special women and men from diverse backgrounds who, through their hard work, enterprise and risk-taking, have created tremendous wealth and employment, and will leave behind an enduring legacy of strong, globally competitive businesses. These books are excellent stories of Indian entrepreneurship and enterprise. Each one is a winner, and it wasn’t easy to pick one. Harish Damodaran’s book is an exemplary Bharat story of entrepreneurship, and we hope stories like this help inspire the next wave of thousands of budding entrepreneurs from all across and within India to constantly emerge, grow, innovate and excel”.
The jury for the fourth edition comprised stalwarts from the worlds of industry, investments, academia, public policy, and governance: Manish Sabharwal, Vice-Chairman TeamLease (Chairman, Jury), Imran Jafar, Managing Partner & Co-founder of Gaja Capital, Dr. Lakshmi Venu, MD of Sundaram-Clayton Ltd (SCL), Michael Queen, Former Chief Executive of 3i (British Multinational PE fund), Prithvi Haldea, Founder Chairman of Praxis Consulting (Prime Database), Neelkanth Mishra, Managing Director and Head of Equity Strategy, Asia Pacific for Credit Suisse, Shailesh Haribhakti, Founder and Managing Partner of Shailesh Haribhakti & Associates Chartered Accountants and Upendra Kumar Sinha, Former Head, RBI Expert Committee on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).
The other books from the 2022 shortlist consisted of a range of stories of enterprises and their protagonists including:
● Ambuja Story: How a Group of Ordinary Men Created an Extraordinary Company (by Narotam Sekhsaria)
● Disrupt and Conquer: How TTK Prestige Became a Billion Dollar Company (by T.T. Jagannathan and Sandhya Mendonca)
● Harsh Realities: The Making of Marico(by Harsh Mariwala and Ram Charan)
● Maverick Effect: The Inside Story of India’s IT Revolution (by Harish Mehta)
