Microsoft India conducts periodically a day of intensive technology onsite seminars for India’s Software biggies. MSDN calls these engagements with SI (System Integrators, as they are known in the Industry) as “MSDN Day”. I have known for years “Jonah Stephen” who is currently the MSDN Enterprise SI Manager in India. In the last few months for Jonah, I have presented in many MSDN Days in Chennai on “ASP.NET 2.0 & Visual Studio 2005”. This included MSDN Day for CTS, Satyam & TCS in Chennai.
After the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) program, I was given a very thoughtful gift that I have received for a presentation. It was a book titled “The Creation of Wealth” – The Tatas from the 19th to the 21st Century, by R.M.Lala. As with many books that many of us have, this too lied along with many of the other books in my bookshelf. This was until I took it along with me in my recent trip to USA. I was very apprehensive whether I will read even few chapters of this book in my flights. But the book was so interesting, I finished the entire book before I landed in Los Angeles. Thanks to TCS Chennai for presenting me with this book.
The book is an enjoyable light-reading material of how the Tatas build their empire. Though the book is a chronology of Tata's history, Lala has brilliantly camouflaged it in an interesting novel format. Only after reading it, I realized how ignorant I am about Industries and Business Houses in India. We seem to be more informed about American companies like – Walmart, Microsoft, GM, GE, etc. May be this is because of excellent reading materials available about them. I am sure management books on how Indian Industry has performed Post Liberalization – Their Right & Wrong moves, will make interesting reading. I hope some writer is reading this blog!.
But for many of us, we should take a leaf from this incident and start giving Books as gifts to our friends and business acquaintance. Coming from a Publishing House myself, what else you expect from me to end this with? 