Tryst With Booming Brands

By Srijit Saha

Lately, I have been making mends with my bookshelf, creating compartments with my self made genres - The books which entertain me; the books which motivate; and the books which guide me to my goal. To my surprise, there was just one book resting in the third compartment- Booming Brands by Harsh Pamnani. Each time I sift through the pages of this book, it invigorates me with a thirst to find that key to success, which I couldn't find through 23 years of reading self-help books. All because simply it isn't a self-help one. It works best when you agree to disagree with it and write your own thoughts along, it makes you grow, it makes you step in entrepreneur shoes and before you realize the power of storytelling that can create a spark of ideas, you are down with a whole bunch of keys. You would be wondering, really does it work like that? The Secret(By Rhonda Bryne) has always been there and it doesn't work for real. But then how do few of these brands get through and others don't. Yes, there is a key; a key to a path walked by the most successful personalities of this era.

We crib about how delightful would it be to be working with unicorns such as Zomato and Byjus, but lesser have we known the hurdles faced by them.

You have to constantly be in the learning mode and you can never get to a point where you believe you actually know it

-Deepinder Goyal( Founder of Zomato)

The key is to explore the lessons learned by these brands, as Harsh narrates a tale of eleven episodes - a book that every marketer needs to learn about the startup scenario; a boom that every established brand is in awe of today. Each of these chapters presents a new approach to the traditional problem and their own version of adapting with the predicaments. Harsh keeps affront the whole anatomy of these companies' journeys; brands such as - Byjus, BookMyShow, FirstCry, and PaperBoat to name a few and dissects on what went right or wrong with them. The lessons, which only we get after a taste of failure, along with the mantras to explore a new path has been enlightened in this book and untangled so that even a layman can dream upon this.

Personally, it was my first experience to host an author of such stature; one with immense experience of working around brands and with such a powerful ability to captivate the audience, it was always going to be challenging for me to spark a conversation at that hour. But then after an hour of discussion, I realized not all successful managers are like your boss- pressing you with theories, some educate you with the things about life that work around you. This is also what Booming Brand is all about; it highlights the dos and don'ts with the stories backing their success.

So, what should your plan look like to launch a new fast food service that would try to cannibalize burger consumption? How would you shift your target's audience attention from burgers to Vada Pav per se? Buy a case by IMD, Switzerland covered on Goli Vada Pav or read through Booming Brands which brings a new perspective of branding a local product such as Vada Pav from streets to small franchise-based stores. The book with such cases will answer all your questions from building a new product to a penetrating new market.

One notion that I had in my mind was to make a thorough research about a dignitary before you meet them. I had done my homework well but, nevertheless couldn't get a hold of the book to read. But, even before I was presented with this book by Mr. Pamnani himself, I got an opportunity to host him for our college event. It was our final day of annual fest, and we had Mr. Harsh Pamnani as our honored panelist, keeping him waiting because of the delay in our event had already put me down on guilt, for which I tried to cover with treating him at our food court. We were walking through a narrow lane with a number of food stalls set up all around us. What we unanimously agreed upon was that these new food brands with a new label every day had struck the right chords while other established brands were still struggling to retain their market share. We ordered upon a 6-inch Overstory Pizza while discussing- why Dominos and Pizza Hut are fighting for market share while Faasos is creating its own share from the pie.

A book about 11 brands and 11 journeys that made it happen, it doesn't happen in a day, does it? This is what Booming Brands walks you through- the journey of the path-breakers. So, explore your inhibition in this me time as discover yourself; get yourself this amazing piece of inspiration; Because every new idea is worth it.

Once an entrepreneur always an entrepreneur.