IPS officer Amitabh Thakur currently on study leave at IIM Lucknow and Amit Haralalka, a 2nd year MBA student at IIM Lucknow have come up with a book named “The Fresh Brew: Chronicles of Business and Freedom”. The book is being published by Alchemy Publishers, New Delhi. The book carries the inspiring life stories of these 25 IIM Lucknow Alumni, who charted an independent, entrepreneurial and self-envisaged careers instead of being part of a traditional career path. Some of these even worked with leading banks, consulting firms, marketing and technology firms before they decided that pursuing alternate and independent career was what they were made for.
This book is a collection of their experiences and intends to bring out the subtle dilemmas that they negotiated – both personal and professional. Some of the prominent Alumni featuring in this book include Bimal Patwari, a Gold Medalist from IIML who quit AF Fergusson to get engaged in CAD Design Outsourcing, Satyajit Sadanandan who works with FIFA and lots of other football clubs across the world , Tarun Tripathi, who worked with Yash Raj films, was associated with Hum Tum and is now writing a script for a TV Show, Gayatri Iyer, a multi-faceted individual who is into international theatre and has sung for over 20 Bollywood movies including Black, Salaam Namaste, etc. , Mayank Shivam, an Ex-McKinsey Consultant who quit his job to create a company focused on rural broadcast media and community radio, Nitin Das, socially relevant film-maker, who quit his job at Times Group to go to the NY Film Academy and study Digital Film Making, Jaya Jha who created India’s first online self-publishing platform, Sudhanshu Sarronwala who created a company called SoundBuzz in Singapore and sold it eventually to Motorala and is now working with the World Wide Fund for Nature in Geneva, Ratnesh Mathur who opened a pre-school for kids with his wife, Sumant Bhargava who quit his marketing job at Coca Cola India to develop a chain of multiplexes for Tier-II/III cities in India, Anjali Mullatti an Entrepreneur who also spearheads the Manjunath Shanmugham Trust initiatives – passionately fighting corruption, Gaurav Ahuja who founded a chain of restaurants specifically for malls, Ashish Kale who is in Sports Media, buys Sports rights and dabbles into other areas of Sports Entertainment and Kireet Modi who is in Greeting Cards business for almost 2 decades.
The Foreword has been written by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Former President of India. It has been dedicated to Manjunath Shanmugam, the IIM Lucknow graduate who was murdered while working in Indian Oil and Satyendra Nath Dube, the IIT Kanpur alumnus who was similarly killed in National Highway Authority. The authors have decided to donate all the proceeds of the book to constitute an award named “Fresh Brew Award for Social entrepreneurship” which shall be given every year for Social entrepreneurship by the Entrepreneurship Cell of IIM Lucknow.
The book shall hit the bookstores on 31st January, 2011.