Book Review: The Mouse Charmers

     Title:          The Mouse Charmers

     Author:      Anuradha Goyal

     Publisher:  Random House India

     ISBN:         978-8-184-00492-2

     MRP:          Rs 299/-

It would be hard to pinpoint one because I enjoyed reading this book for several reasons. This is not the kind of book you can skim through or read while munching or waiting for someone in a noisy café; rather, it is more of a repository and knowledge bank on the online industry in India with several charts and case studies. Needless to mention, the author has done a commendable job! Also, being an entrepreneur myself (I run an online company) I enjoyed every bit of this book!

This book talks about ‘Mouse Charmers’ and the title is very apt for the theme as it is about the various entrepreneurs who made it big with dot com companies or in electronic business world. The author has taken into consideration only the B2C e-companies dividing them into three categories, viz,

• Commerce   
• Content
• Connectors

The Commerce section includes studies on the online giants like Flipkart (aka Big Daddy), MakeMyTrip (travel), BigBasket (Groceries) and CaratLane (jewelery). The Content section includes cases on sites that do not sell physical goods but provide and sell abstract content. The studies included are on Zomato (food review), Games2win (online gaming), Images Bazaar (digital images) and Chai with Lakshmi (interviews and chat content). The third and the last section- Connectors consist of studies on portals that connect customers in some way like Shaadi.com (matrimonial portal), Rang De (microcredit), Common Floor (real-estate) and our very own, IndiBlogger that has given me this awesome book for review!

Each story or case study has been well explained in terms of business models and various factors like capital, technology etc. The author also sheds light on lesser known facts, like not many of us know that Flipkart’s founders initially wanted to start a price comparison site but ended up changing the face of Indian e-commerce! The tables and data along with statistics provided make this book a delight to read. The language is simple and flowing and the categorization provides a well defined overview of the Indian e-commerce industry.

Another thing the author observes is the presence of few women entrepreneurs (Glass Ceiling of Digital World/page-319). She says she came across only three women founders (not women employees) out of all the ones she spoke to for this book and two were in the content based businesses.

Did you know?

• CaratLane has one lakh solitaire diamonds and more than 2,000 designs!
• Shaadi.com has 350 million views per month!
• Flipkart’s A/B architecture allows 20-25 experiments to go on simult.!
• Zomato operates across 11 countries and 35 cities!
• IndiBlogger has more than 35,000 blogs listed!
• South India leads in e-commerce biz.
• Lakshmi Rebecca won the international ‘Manthan Award’ for digital initiatives for Chai with Lakshmi!

And there are many more awesome facts about the ever expanding market of Indian online retail that will astonish you no end! Get a copy, you won’t regret.