The Enlightened Entrepreneur

It is easy for an entrepreneur to look at data and charts to arrive at a business decision, but extremely difficult to look within his soul to find answers. Bhavarlal H. Jain happens to be someone who can do both with ease. He is the founder and chairman of Jain Irrigation, a $1-billion company which was presented with ‘The Good Company Award’ by Forbes in 2012. His is a company that nearly went bankrupt four times in the last thirty years of its existence, only to rise again. Despite these ups and down, however, Jain has not wavered from a business model that is based on Gandhi’s notion of trusteeship—wherein wealth belongs not to an individual but is used for the benefit of the community. Which is a compilation of lectures that he has given over thirty years. Replete with instances and expositions of what constitutes ‘enlightened entrepreneurship’—a notion that, Jain iterates, must be embraced by each and every entrepreneur—this book provides invaluable insights into what successes and failures mean to a businessperson, the tenets of effective leadership, and transformational businesses.