New Delhi: In April 2017, Prashant Desai founded a promising venture that failed miserably after running successfully initially.
D:FY, India’s ‘first truly sports brand’ that Desai started found early success, opened 17 stores in seven cities riding on great aspirations and confidence. After six months of founding the brand, Desai roped in Rajiv Mehta, who had let Puma India for seven years, as a partner.
But the business lost Rs 30 crore within 30 months, wiping out virtually everything Desai had earned in 30 years of his career.
Desai’s book ‘The Biography of a Failed Venture’ provides a brutally honest account of why D:FY failed and how entrepreneurs can avoid these pitfalls to make their business ventures successful.
Published by HarperCollins, the book will be released on 31 August on ‘SoftCover’, ThePrint’s e-venue to launch select non-fiction books.
Desai’s venture failed not because of lack of vision. He was a successful accountant and ranked fourth on the all-India Cost and Works Accountants exam at the age of 21, joining the corporate world and working with leaders such as Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, Kishore Biyani and Jignesh Shah.
The brand failed because the number of things Desai did wrong exceeded the number of things he did right. He then decided to decode the black box of his crashed business and revealed new possibilities and a treasure trove of success secrets.
“The book underlines the need for solid expertise in all facets of the business, a true understanding of the customer mindset and requirements, a proper appreciation of the competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, but, most of all, the need to temper enthusiasm and passion with deep knowledge.” said Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairperson, and CEO, Salesforce India.
Actor-Director Farhan Akhtar said, “For every page that makes it into a final script, a hundred pages are lying crumpled on the floor. But they aren’t worthless, as they paved the way for something better. Failure is like that, never the end but always a new beginning.”
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