Know your customer

A playbook that acts as a masterclass on India’s messy consumer market

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THERE ARE TWO kinds of business books in circulation today. The first kind is written by consultants and academics who lean on case studies to present neat frameworks. The second kind is written by entrepreneurs who have actually built something from scratch and are willing to share what worked and what failed. Zero to Scale firmly belongs to the second camp.

Arindam Paul, part of the founding team at Atomberg, has not only witnessed but shaped the company's rise from a fledgling startup into a consumer brand with a turnover in excess of 1,000 crore. That scale is lived experience, and this is what gives the book its weight and credibility.

The publisher, Wyzr, has played a smart hand here too. Its founder, an alumnus of IIM Indore, has drawn on that network to commission a phenomenal book by another alumnus, Arindam himself. There is an interesting business model emergingworking with Unicorn CXOs as authors, giving them a platform to showcase their case studies in a way that conventional (and often snooty) academic journals have yet to recognise. It is also a quiet reminder to commissioning editors in the business who keep chasing only marquee executives or manuscripts backed by large marketing budgets.

Sometimes the most relevant stories are being lived and told by people building companies in real time, not only by retired CEOs or academic celebrities.

Paul makes no attempt to write a glossy memoir. This is presented as a playbook, and it feels like one. The book moves through the lifecycle of a consumer brand-spotting the right category, designing the first product, setting up distribution, scaling customer acquisition, building brand salience, and managing the grind of operations. Each stage is explained through Atomberg's journey, with anecdotes of mistakes and corrections. What makes the writing stand out is its clarity and practical tone. There are no abstractions here.