The art of getting rich

The Ambanis, the Tatas, the Jindals, or the Mittals — if you thought being born to one of these families and bearing influential last names was the only way to having bloody good wealth, best-selling author Ashwin Sanghi says you couldn’t be more wrong. Along with Sunil Dalal, a serial entrepreneur who has built many businesses, Ashwin, who has some of the top sellers like Chanakya’s Chant, The Krishna Key to his fame, demystifies wealth acquisition for all of us through anecdotes and practical ways to becoming wealthy, in his latest book 13 Steps to Bloody Good Wealth.

As we ask how this second book in the 13 Steps series took birth, Ashwin explains, “After the first title 13 Steps to Bloody Good Luck had come out, where I explain how luck is something one makes for oneself, rather than it being something external, I had many readers writing to me saying that I had simplified the concept of luck for them. One of my childhood friends gave me the idea that I should write about wealth. So, I paired up with Sunil, who for the last 20 years has been building businesses ground up and is intimately aware of the process of wealth creation. I realised that it was important to have a broader approach to wealth than what a banker or money manager would have, which Sunil could bring in. And we wanted to do it in a simple way, in layman terms.”  

The author, who was born into a family of businessmen, has always mentioned  about him becoming a writer quite ‘accidentally’. He says when he wrote his first book The Rozabal Line, he never knew he was going to write another one.

13 Steps to Bloody Good Wealth by Ashwin Sanghi, Sunil Dalal Westland pp.218, Rs 150

The author, who has written about seven books that have stood on top of bookshelves across the country’s stores, believes that the objective of his work is to entertain, educate and enlighten, but entertainment comes first. “If I cannot entertain my readers, there is very little chance that the reader will actually hang on to the book and read it till the end. There was a survey done to find out the reading habits of people, which mentioned how the average reader does not get past page 18, which is a very scary sign — that people in our country are buying books but aren’t reading them,” Ashwin says.

Even as he says his royalties now allow him to write full-time and quit business, Ashwin has kept his one foot in business throughout his literary journey. “Earlier, I was a  businessman trying to be an author, now I’m an author trying to be a businessman.  And my suggestion to youngsters is ‘Don’t quit your day jobs. Try to find some time  for your passion along the way’,” he elaborates.

About an expanding number of authors in the country taking to writing mythology,  Ashwin says the reason could be that books today are dealing with a younger demographic, who aren’t growing up in an environment where their grandparents narrate them stories. “For me, my grandparents were always around, and I grew up listening to stories from Ramayana and Mahabharata. As we’ve become more urbanised and nuclear, these relationships are missing and for most of the young generation today, these writings on mythology are their first exposure to it.  We’re at a stage where Indian readers haven’t matured yet. Today mythology and romance are the top sellers, which could change with a change in the reading habits.”