Author Interview-The Big Bull Of Dalal Street

H E L L O   F R I E N D S,

I am back with yet another interesting round of discussion in our author interview segment. This time with Neil Borate for his new book on the life of Indian stock market legend Rakesh Jhunjhunwala titled The Big Bull Of Dalal Street. His co authors are Aprajita Sharma and Aditya Kondawar. Below is a brief of their profiles and excerpts from the discussion with Neil on the book.

Neil Borate, a bachelor degree holder  in law & economics heads the personal finance segment at  Mint. Currently he is the Deputy Editor at Mint with prior experience  with portals and firms like paisabazaar, Value Research, Rupee IQ.

Aprajita Sharma a journalist in the finance segment has prior experience of working with eminent media brands like Zee Business, The Economic Times, Business Today, Business Standard, India Today. Currently she works as a freelancer for several media brands including Mint.

Aditya Kondawar also a financial enthusiast currently works with Complete circle Pvt. Ltd. as Vice President.

My View:

        Can you tell us a bit about your area of  work.

Neil:  I head the personal finance team at Mint. We cover topics like mutual funds, financial planning, insurance, tax etc.

My View:

       Why Rakesh Jhunjhunwala? What prompted you to write the story of a  business leader who hasn’t really grabbed the headlines all the time?

Neil:     Rakesh Jhunjhunwala epitomizes the Indian investor's dream. There are a lot of resources about him online including interviews he has given in the media. But our book is the first systematic compilation of Rakesh's life.

My View:

    It is not a complete biography of Rakesh rather is an accumulation of his thought process, work ethics and business ideology. How did you finalize the content structure? How was the work divided between you and your co authors?

Neil:   Yes, our desire was not to write just a biography. We also devoted a section of the book to his successes and failures (best and worst stocks) and also the personal finance lessons that can be learned from him.

 

My View:

      Who initiated the project among three of you? How easy or difficult it was to connect with Rakesh’s colleagues/friends to take their opinion on Rakesh’s professional life?

Neil:   I initiated it, but we all contributed to it equally. It was very difficult because the family was still dealing with the grief of Rakesh's passing when we started writing the book. We relied instead on people who had worked with him and knew him like Ramesh Damani and Shankar Sharma.

My View:

         Where do you think Jhunjhunwala had the biggest impact with respect to Indian stock market?

Neil:    He inspires stock pickers to this day. A single person with exceptional investing ability can build an immense fortune in India.

My View:

         How much time did it take to complete the book? What according to you is /are the biggest challenge(s) of writing a book specially when there are lot of fact searching to be done in terms of the content?

 

Neil:       It took about 6 months which is record time. We were able to do it because there were three of us, instead of a single author. Yes the sheer volume of information on Rakesh that we had to digest was immense.

My View:

         What are your favorite genres for reading?

 

Neil:    Since I write about personal finance every day, my reading tends to be a little away from my core subject. I'm very fond of books on geopolitics like Red Notice by Bill Browder which is on Russia.

You can connect with Neil Borate 👇

Image Credit:  Neil Borate, Malika Singh (Penguin Random House)

Twitter  :    https://twitter.com/ActusDei

 LinkedIn  :  https://www.linkedin.com/in/neil-borate-1a435a57/

My heartfelt congratulations to the author trio for bringing out such an amazing journey to public  through this book & gratitude to Neil for providing valuable insights during this conversation. Wishing them all the very best for their future projects.

 

 

 

 Click Here for my review of the book The Big Bull Of Dalal Street.

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