T

A Book Review On How I

Braved Anu Aunty & CoFounded A Million Dollar
Company
BY VARUN AGARWAL

DONE BY:
BIANCA MANIK A012

Author of the Book: Varun Agarwal

Title of the Book: How I Braved Anu Aunty & Co-Founded A Million Dollar Company
Name of the Publisher: Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd.
Place of Publication: India
Year of Publication: 2012
This book is about a 20-something protagonist, Varun Agarwal, who depicts himself as a
personality that broke free from the prison his parents, friends and society created for him.
Varuns parents, as most Indian parents do, forced him to pursue engineering. After four years
of madness called engineering he teamed up with his friend Rohn Malhotra and started a
venture which makes merchandise for schools and colleges called Alma Mater.
As he starts his venture with his friends, he is thwarted at all stages by Anu Aunty who is
his mothers best friend. She is described as one of those women who always poked her nose
into everyone elses problems and sniffed for one where there was none. She repeatedly
belittles Varun and mocks him for his apparent unambitious nature. The story encompasses
Varun and his friends pub hopping, stalking on Facebook and finally starting a
merchandising company of their own that makes customized hoodies and T-shirts for the
alumni of schools and colleges. This book chronicles how he decided on starting their
merchandising company and the difficulties they faced as first time entrepreneurs.
Varun constantly defers his job interviews because he was never passionate about engineering
and didnt want to spend his life as a techie like all other Indians do. Instead he focused on
doing what he loved and not letting your family impose their aspirations on you to a point
where not only do you despise them for making your life decisions for you but youre also
stuck at a job that youre never going to be passionate about.
There are lot of success and failure stories when it comes to entrepreneurship. For those who
are bold enough to look beyond the confines and boundaries the Indian society has created
for them it has worked meanwhile, those who have constrained themselves have managed to
fizzle out with time.
2

Since this book is basically about the journey that Varun had when he decided on becoming
an entrepreneur and all the ups and downs he had throughout this experience, it is a must read
for anyone who dreams of owning their own business and even those who are already
treading on their own journeys of entrepreneurship. This book motivates people to not think
too much and just follow their dreams. It inspires the younger generation to take action now
because, as they grow older, with the addition of more and more responsibilities, they tend to
take lesser risks in life. He believes that thinking important since it gives you insight but
overthinking your venture and businesses may just be the enemy of your creativity.
The book takes you through Varuns process of ideating his concept, making it happen and
growing his start-up into a respected brand. His challenges are well documented and gives
new start-ups and their entrepreneurs tips and educates them about the struggles they will
have to face in their future.
The influence of naysayers is also documented in detail. These people, like Anu aunty, who
constantly made fun of the author for not getting a decent job and always discouraged him
from trying anything unconventional or risky. Throughout the book, we see the journey Varun
goes through while starting up their business. Varun successfully learned how to negotiate
with his mother, who like other stereotypical mothers wanted him to have a steady job in a
company rather than starting a venture of his own. There was also an incident with his friend
Mal where he narrates how he saved his company.
The most important lesson for all entrepreneurs is to sort out their operations. Its is very
important to have a very good back-end system. The entrepreneurs E-Commerce site
developed as soon as possible. Since the business of E-commerce site will go ahead and
increase in the future, it is very important to have a well-developed website. Most of their
platforms are not only free, but they are also highly useful and functional.
He also continuously emphasises on how important it is to build connections throughout the
course of your journey since it helps you get to know more things than you could ever
imagine. It also helps in getting an idea about what others are doing, how they do it and how
one can do it more efficiently. He built up his own connections with respect to his
manufacturer and got the best one.

Varun Agrawal helps budding entrepreneurs understand how to promote themselves

shamelessly so as to create brand awareness whether it is on social media or even real life. He
continuously hopes to embolden budding entrepreneurs with his story. This book is as good
as any on understanding the nuisances of logistics, delivery, warehousing and brand
marketing involved in any such undertaking specific to India.
He constantly emphasizes on the importance of word of mouth marketing which had really
helped him in publicizing his company well. Varun learnt the importance of branding from
his arch nemesis Anu aunty. He thought that Anu aunty spoke of her son Arjun as a brand and
learnt his lesson of branding his company well from her. He wore his Cottonian hoodie
everywhere and talk about Alma Mater everywhere. This would then spread and finally get
on social media sites. It was important for him to sell himself well and get everyone to talk
about it. They tagged random people in Facebook photographs, showed up on peoples walls
and finally, everyone started to talk about it. He believed in shamelessly marketing his
products online as well as offline.
Varun also learnt how to interact with his customers. Since he has his own personal number
to respond to his customers queries, it made it very easy for him to personally know what
was wrong in the product or service of Alma Mater and fix them. He knew how they felt
about his product, what services should be added to his company, how he can improve his
brand, where they found out about the company and what changes need to be made in his
marketing strategy.
Most importantly, Varun Agrawal never lost hope. His entire book has inspired people to
never lose hope since this is what he learnt during the time where no one believed in him,
much lesser in his ideas. He never gave up on his three start-ups and now is at that point in
his life where his parents, who were initially unhappy with his entrepreneurial dreams also
accept and are pleased with his life decisions.
Varun also teaches us not to become bigger than the company itself. Staff shouldnt be hired
unless its extremely necessary. In his initial days, he says that he used to deliver, take
photographs, be an office boy, designer and play a lot of other roles for the company. This is
only because the company is a start-up and it is vital to keep its costs low so that valuable
capital is not wasted on things that could have been done by yourself.

Varun and Mal never had one concrete goal. Instead, they had goals that they wanted to reach
one after the other. They started with finding the right merchandiser, then with hoping that
they would get enough orders to not be in debt with their supplier finally to taking off like
hey expected then searching for an appropriate office and finally generating enough funding
to expand their operations.
Varun learnt a very important lesson on haggling from his mother. The incident where he was
forced into grocery shopping with her acted as an eye-opener for him since it helped him
realise how he hated the bargaining his mother did to save every last rupee but now that he
was starting his own venture, he realized he wasnt paying close attention. The greatest skill
any entrepreneur can master is the art of haggling, he states.
Since most of the experiences the author has had are easily relatable to all of us, it poses as an
inspiration to all of us who are preparing for our B-Plan presentations and hoping that they
take off as start-ups of their own. This book serves as a constant reminder that to establish
any start-up business successfully entrepreneurs should develop observation powers within
ourselves. This book has also taught us to pull all savings if youre passionate about what you
are doing. It helps us understand how to plan our business out and face the road bumps that
come with entrepreneurship effectively.
It also tells us to try our best in whatever we do. Holding authenticity and sincerity is the
leading part of selling anything. It also encourages us to aim high for things that are
perceived to be accomplishable and those that are deemed to be impossible. Its very
important to be patient and have a positive attitude towards your goals and consistency with
the tasks in your hands. Throughout this book, we see Varun getting frustrated with his
friends, family and love life but there is never a lack of passion for Alma Mater. In the book,
he tries his level best to start the company, handle his merchandising, have an appropriate
brand and finally generate enough funding to pursue his dreams further. If he wasnt
passionate enough, or patient enough, his start up would have shut down before it even took
off. It is always the destructive fear of failure that prevents people from realising their dreams
and goals but like the author, if you dont just go for your dreams as soon as you can , you
will never leap and go ahead with them.