Winning, losing and entrepreneurship

There have been numerous books on startups, big and small, but writer-entrepreneur and motivational speaker Alok Kejriwal's account of success stays with the readers

Getting Dressed and Parking Cars: The Magical Story of Building a Gaming Company

Author: Alok Kejriwal

Publisher: Penguin Random House 

Pages: 176

Price: Rs 299

In the funding winter season, a book by a successful startup founder is a welcome kit for the would-be entrepreneur. Pages of wisdom for those interested in the life and times of new-age companies would not go amiss either. The author’s LinkedIn account describes him as a hands-on, serial entrepreneur whose focused approach is to fire up a great idea and partner with the best people to make it happen. His previous startup, Mobile2win, was acquired by The Walt Disney Company and Norwest Venture Partners in China and India, respectively, the short profile description says.

Alok Kejriwal, the author of bestseller Why I Stopped Wearing My Socks (his first book) wears many hats. He’s a blogger, motivational speaker, meditation practitioner for 30 years and a mentor besides being an entrepreneur. Getting Dressed and Parking Cars reflects Mr Kejriwal’s personality as he takes the reader on a startup journey.      

The writer-entrepreneur starts by telling the reader that after two successful exits (read “plenty of cash”), he could have built just about anything for the next venture. That’s when he chose to build a gaming company to entertain consumers worldwide. The ensuing pages touch upon the many aspects of the journey around his fourth company — Games2win —incorporated in 2006.

Apart from the hard work, challenges and all the rest of the attributes connected with the spirit of entrepreneurship, the book attempts to recount anecdotes that lend warmth to this startup story. Somewhere in the middle of the book is a chapter called “Looking for a CTO and finding a spouse”. You may be tempted to go straight to it after reading this chapter heading in the contents section. Without killing the suspense, suffice it to say that the chapter brings out the writer’s search for personal values at the workplace in an engaging way.

If “Looking for a CTO….’’ offers a sense of experiment, that’s a running theme through the book. Take for instance Mr Kejriwal’s description of the MDP model, which he defines as the minimum dhandha  product. MDP seems to be a sure-shot model to check if a startup idea holds promise or not. In a back and forth style, the writer talks about his MDP experiment a decade ago on whether to start manufacturing jeans or not. He did not after the MDP test. He uses the same formula to check if the gaming venture would be worthwhile or not. All this may seem pretty much commonplace and logical but entrepreneurs need to remind themselves again and again that excitement of an idea should not result in financial catastrophe. That’s exactly what Mr Kejriwal does through the course of the book even at the cost of repetition. Indeed, being part of the startup world, he knows how thousands of them have collapsed over the years.

There have been numerous books on startups, big and small, written by founders and co-founders themselves, both globally and in India. That makes it tougher for any writer of this genre to sustain the reader’s interest. This one is no exception, but the author keeps it simple in style and form with a box on learnings at the end of every chapter. The learning is like a to-do synopsis for any potential entrepreneur.

Mr Kejriwal’s account of his “most successful failure’’ is an interesting case study for any startup. He talks about how the notion that “India will mimic China” was the flavour of the decade among venture capitalists. He writes: “For ambitious entrepreneurs, the hack was straightforward. If you could do something involving the internet and mobile phones that was successful in China and presented in a well-crafted PowerPoint as a plan, you could quickly raise a few million dollars from investors just to try out your ideas.’’

He goes on to say that the mimic-China experiment failed when he tried the MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game) genre. He recounts how he tried to Indianise the genre by opting for a car driving and parking game, based on the yesteryear hit Bombay Taxi. Games2Win struck a licensing deal with CT Racer, a game that was doing quite well in China and South Korea, but MMORPG failed to click in India. Mr Kejriwal’s lesson for the reader from the failed experiment: MMORPG was not meant for India, and what works in China does not mean it will work in India.

The author’s travels from Beijing to Seoul to San Francisco and other places join the dots of this real-life story of success, failure and the journey of an entrepreneur. But, the success story in this book stays with the reader. It’s about the Parking Frenzy game — that’s perhaps the genesis of the title. “At around 1 am (IST) on 12 June 2012, Parking Frenzy became the number one game and app in the US iTunes store…’’. That was a first for a mobile game from India, a record not broken yet. Soon after began the “Great Indian Internet Gold Rush”, Mr Kejriwal notes, as marquee investors set up local offices in India. The rest, as they say, is history. For this writer, however, the vision of becoming the Mattel of the digital world remains the guiding principle.