Penguin Random House India is proud to announce the forthcoming publication of Never Say Die: My Life in Business and Entrepreneurship, a memoir that refuses the conventions of business storytelling. The book chronicles the tumultuous journey of Shripal Morakhia, the founder of SSKI, Sharekhan, and Smaaash, offering a raw and candid look at a life defined by extraordinary success, financial ruin, and profound spiritual resurrection.
Most business memoirs are polished chronicles of triumph, gliding over turbulence with the elegance of a ship sailing calm waters, where storms are edited out and failures appear only as footnotes. This one is different. Never Say Die reads like a shipwreck journal set ablaze, where ambition crashes against circumstance, and the human spirit is tested against its own darkest tides. What emerges is not a tale of linear success but a journey through wreckage and restoration, proving that courage is not the absence of failure but the willingness to walk through it barehanded.
Morakhia’s career defied conventional wisdom and spanned India’s highest-risk sectors. He is known as a visionary who “turns impossibilities into blueprints” and who “dares to do what others only dream of.” His philosophy was rooted not in multiplying capital but in “business creation, toil and perspiration,” a fearless approach that powered ventures across finance, film, and gaming. He co-founded India’s pioneering online trading platform Sharekhan, built SSKI into one of the country’s largest institutional brokers with a 90 per cent market share, and launched Smaaash, an experiential playground blending cutting-edge technology with the simple joy of play. He sealed a $100 million ADR deal for a telecom company after a major foreign bank failed—an example of the audacity that defined his career. If he had X resources, his commitments, he says, were “X raised to the power of four.”
But what truly sets the memoir apart is its unflinching honesty about collapse. Morakhia writes of “skyrocketing success” followed by “crashing failures,” losing “every penny that I made” and even his family home. The book carries a clear advisory that it discusses sensitive topics, including mental health struggles and suicide. Morakhia recounts days when he was “physically and financially down,” when despair led him to a suicide attempt, and moments when rage and emotional outbursts were signs of what a therapist later diagnosed as “acute depression.” He writes of the humiliation of ARC officials and police arriving at his Altamount Road apartment at 7 p.m. to force his wife to vacate their mortgaged home while he was out of town.
The ashes of this collapse give rise to a philosophical rebirth. Through surrender, deep breathing, meditation, and reflections inspired by the Mahabharata, Morakhia rebuilt not his wealth first but his inner world. He calls himself “Shripal 2.0,” believing that “TIME is the greatest measure of success or failure,” and that wealth, power, and prestige are ultimately momentary shadows. He embraces acceptance, forgiveness, and compassion—viewing those who abandoned or angered him as teachers. And despite everything, he remains resolute: “Physically and financially, I may be down, but emotionally, mentally and spiritually, I am strengthened and I know for a fact that my best is yet to come.”
Endorsements:
‘Shripal always dreams big and backs it with passion. A man who has played with money all his life took to playing with storytelling, as he ventured into Smaaash, a sports experiential centre. It was great to partner with him at Star, to see this become real with the power of technology. The “never-say-die” attitude shines on’— Sanjay Gupta, president, Google Asia-Pacific
About The Author:
Shripal Morakhia is a serial entrepreneur. He went to the US in 1979 on sponsorship by the New York Stock Exchange and after his MBA worked as the Executive Assistant to the President of NYSE for a year. His journey was cut short by the death of his father and he returned to India in 1981. In the early ‘90s, he promoted SSKI and Sharekhan. SSKI was the first ‘Made in India’ brokerage and investment banking firm that served Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) and was a leading investment banker for media, telecom, and infra placements to private equity and strategic investors. Sharekhan was a pioneer in combining the brick-and-click model of retail broking. Shripal also produced/distributed 16 feature films including Jajantaram Mamantaram, Bend it Like Beckham and Monsoon Wedding.
Publication: December 2025
