Bengaluru: The tenth edition of the Bangalore Business Literature Festival saw business heads, investors, industry experts, entrepreneurs, readers and authors take stock of India’s start-up growth story. “[The goal] is to curate meaningful conversations between authors, business leaders and readers so that they make better-informed and more nuanced decisions about business, environment and life,” said author and academic V Raghunathan, chair of the Bangalore Business Literature Festival (BBLF). Success stories like Amrut, India’s single malt whisky, and startups like financial services firm Zerodha, and fantasy gaming platform Dream11 were shared and celebrated at the day-long festival held on 14 September at Bengaluru’s Catholic Club.
Apart from book launches, authors like Tanuj Bhojwani, Shalini Kapoor, Sriram Devatha, and Ravi Wazir took part in panel discussions that covered a range of topics from the art of writing to the role of artificial intelligence and the rise of food startups. But there was a cautionary note as well—in the form of edtech startup Byju’s. The unravelling of the edtech firm has put a question mark on the future of internet-related startups with investors now losing confidence in funding this space, said Pradip K Saha, whose debut book, The Learning Trap: How Byju’s Took Indian Edtech for a Ride won the C.
K. Prahalad Best Business Book Award. “People like to believe that founders of such companies are gods.
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