In a exciting new partnership Penguin Random House India in collaboration with Romedy Now is thrilled to announce the publication of the much awaited and unique crowdsourced anthology, ‘You Are All I Need’ Edited by Ravinder Singh.
Penguin Random House and Romedy Now came together for this exciting partnership with a unique initiative in mind, one that offered upcoming writers a rare opportunity to #GetPublished. The call for entries was announced by Romedy Now on its TV channel and was further leveraged across its network’s Social Media channels in conjunction with the social media outreach by Penguin India and Ravinder Singh. This resulted in an overwhelming response with more than 1500 story entries from writers across the world coming in, as submissions. Shortlisted participants were mentored by a team led by Penguin and Ravinder Singh, India’s best-selling romance author, ensuring the selected writers truly become the most talented and deserving.
Commenting on his journey as a mentor and Editor for the duration of this project, Ravinder Singh said, “From ideating to execution, what a terrific journey it had been. I have always enjoyed the process of finding new writers and cherished seeing their stories finding so much love among readers. I bet this anthology will leave you with a variety of emotions. In some of the stories you read, you are going to find yourself, in some you will question yourself and in some you will simply enjoy the beauty of love—but you will not remain untouched. I can’t wait for my readers to tell me what they experience while reading them.”
You Are All I Need is a collection of touching stories selected by Ravinder Singh to bring to the readers the myriad facets of love. This book will make you laugh, cry, think and feel, all at the same time. It is an eclectic collection of love stories that will warm the cockles of your heart.
Speaking about the unique idea, Vaishali Mathur, Publisher, Indian Language Publishing said “I am truly excited to be presenting this anthology. I’ve enjoyed curating and editing each one of these stories with Ravinder and can vouch that each one of them is interesting and engaging in their own way and will keep the reader hooked.”
Speaking about the collaboration, Vivek Srivastava, President – Strategy and Business Head, News and English Entertainment Cluster said, “Celebrating the creativity and talent of aspiring writers by offering them a golden opportunity to see their work in print, #GetPublished has been a tremendously successful initiative.Receiving over9.9 Million impressions and reaching more than 6.8Million fanson social media, we are already witnessing a massive excitement and engagement leading to the book launch. We are extremely delighted that our partnership with Penguin Random House India (PRHI) and Ravinder Singh, has led to the curation of a diverse anthology of stories that reflects different shades of love.”
The Book
Whether it is a distant lover or someone you see every day but can’t confess to; whether it is a love that grows silently or a love that’s not acceptable by society; whether it is a love that will never be yours or a love that is pure and untainted by jealousy-love will always find a way to survive, to make life more beautiful, more liveable. That’s why we say, ‘Love makes the world go round!’
You Are All I Need is a collection of touching stories selected by Ravinder Singh to bring to the readers the myriad facets of love. This book will make you laugh, cry, think and feel, all at the same time. It is an eclectic collection of love stories that will warm the cockles of your heart.
About the Author
Ravinder Singh is the bestselling author of titles like I Too Had a Love Story, Can Love Happen Twice, Like It Happened Yesterday, Your Dreams are Mine Now, This Love That Feels Right and Will You Still Love Me?. After spending most of his life in Burla, a very small town in Odisha, he is currently based in New Delhi. He did his MBA from Indian School of Business. His eight yearlong IT career started with Infosys and came to a happy ending at Microsoft where he worked as a senior programme manager. He has also started a publishing venture called Black Ink to publish debutante authors. He loves playing snooker and is crazy about Punjabi Music.
Extract From The Book :
How Harsh Mariwala Cuts through Clutter
Harsh Mariwala is the founder and chairman of Marico Limited. He is also a rarity among Indian businessmen. In keeping with his simple, uncluttered approach, Harsh built Marico around two major brands—Parachute and Saffola—both of which are market leaders in their respective segments. In contrast to the typical Indian promoter who after succeeding in his main business falls for the ego trip of empire building, Harsh has steadfastly refused to diversify in unrelated areas. Unlike the typical Indian promoter who holds on to his company until his last breath, Harsh relinquished day-to-day operations to Saugata Gupta in 2014 (Saugata is now managing director and
CEO of Marico). Harsh is a billionaire at ease with himself and yet full of energy to help entrepreneurs fulfil their own dreams as part of his Ascent Foundation. Marico is in the original list of ‘coffee can’ companies profiled in depth in The Unusual Billionaires.
We met Harsh on 3 September 2019 on a rainy morning at Marico’s headquarters located at the edge of Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex. Harsh loves reading and we spotted business classics (Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People15; Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras’s Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies16) as well as relatively newer books (Daniel Goleman’s Focus17, Navi Radjou and Jaideep Prabhu’s Do Better With Less: Frugal Innovation for Sustainable Growth18) on Harsh’s well-stocked bookshelf. We spoke about grit, passion, simplicity, focus, turning points in Marico’s history and much more.
Harsh keeps a diary with printouts stuck on the pages. He showed us two such pages19 (see Exhibit 4), both of which reflect Harsh’s clarity of thought. The first is titled ‘Role of Chairman, Marico Limited’, and it is a list of nine specific areas with a list of duties in each area. The second is titled ‘The Marico I would like to leave behind’ and it defines Marico’s legacy.
Harsh is a big believer in simplicity and focus. The first phase of building Marico involved moving out from a family run commodity business (Bombay Oil) to a professionally run FMCG firm (Marico) in the 1990s. This was followed by building both brands with an intense focus backed by insights. Harsh says, ‘I strongly believe that focus will lead to depth and depth will lead to excellence.’ He gives us the example of hair oil in the 1990s. While hair oil’s use was going down internationally, there was a huge market in rural India, which was using unbranded hair oil. ‘I saw the opportunity to convert them to branded hair oils. I took a big bet, acquired a few brands, started new brands, entered the amla oil segment. The clarion call was given internally that we have to get market leadership,’ he told us. Marico backed this with its memorable ‘Champi kiya kya?’20 campaign to drive the message of the benefits of hair oil. Harsh was always clear that he would not take on the giants head-on.
‘We didn’t want to get into the hair wash category which is heavily competitive with Hindustan Unilever Limited
(HUL), Procter and Gamble (P&G), and L’Oréal. But we were focused on hair oil, and over time our vision changed
from being leaders in hair oil to being leaders in pre- and post-wash haircare. After that change in vision, we acquired Set Wet and Livon and those bets paid off,’ he told us.
The deepening and widening of brands continued in edible oils as well. Marico positioned Saffola as the ‘good for heart’ cooking oil and then launched food products around that, such as Saffola Oats. But Marico’s consumer insights revealed that Indians preferred savoury breakfast over sweet ones (such as cornflakes). ‘We didn’t have a differentiator compared to Kellogg’s and Quaker in terms of the plain oats. And Indians like savoury breakfast—in the south, they like idlis, in the north, parathas etc. So then we launched the range of savoury oats based on the taste preferences in different parts of the country. In that segment, we have 70 to 75 per cent market share. We
built the market,’ he told us.
Harsh built Marico’s brand strategy around a simple question—how can they be the market leader? Because if
you’re not the market leader, then you don’t have the pricing power and will always be vulnerable to the market leader’s price actions. Selling small packs at low prices was another way to maintain leadership so that even if a competitor launches a cheaper brand, people will not easily shift away for a few rupees in price difference.
Having built a successful FMCG franchise, Harsh could easily have bid for licences for coal mines or telecom or banks—all fashionable things for Indian promoters to do in the opening decade of this century. But Harsh studiously avoided the clutter of unrelated diversifications. ‘Discipline is very important. Be focused. I like to leverage my strengths not my balance sheet,’ he told us.
Marico is also well-known for high standards of corporate governance—for example, a top-notch board of directors. Harsh believes that a great board of directors also attracts brilliant professionals from all fields, and that allows the company to have top-quality people at the top, guiding the company forward. Harsh is a big believer in building a great working culture, personally setting high standards of conduct from the early days of building Marico by, among other things, paying very high rates of tax. ‘If I evade taxes, the culture goes down in the organization,’ he told us. This is exactly the advice he gives the entrepreneurs at Ascent Foundation. ‘Be fully compliant from day one. It is not about size but about building a culture of good governance. If the top starts taking shortcuts then people down the line will start taking shortcuts,’ he told us. A good, honest work culture also attracts talented employees who want to work in such companies.
(‘Excerpted’ with permission from Penguin Random House India)
The Book has hit the stands on September 28, 2020
