Name: The Mouse Charmers-Digital Pioneers of India
Author: Anuradha Goyal
No. of Pages: 344
Genre: Business
Publisher: Random House India
Price: Rs. 229/-
Published in: 2014

The blurb of the book says: 

The advent of Internet has been a significant game changer for our generation. Mouse Charmers are a new breed of entrepreneurs in emerging India powered by the Internet and the opportunities that it offers to create new markets and to cater to old markets in new ways. Some of them have already achieved success where they can be called iconic and inspiring while others have powerful ideas that put them on the same path.

Anuradha Goyal tells the stories of digital entrepreneurs like Flipkart, Zomato, ImagesBazaar, IndiBlogger ; how they started out, the innovations and technologies involved, their business models and unique marketing strategies. Inspiring and useful, The Mouse Charmers is an essential guide for aspiring entrepreneurs.

About the author:
Anuradha Goyal wears many hats to pursue her three prime passions—innovation, travel, and books. She studies business innovation, especially business models, and blogs about them. She has earlier co-authored the India Innovates Series published by CII showcasing innovations from across the country. She was a jury member for Economic Times Power of Ideas Contest in 2010. Her papers on business innovation have appeared in various journals and forums. She is one of India’s leading travel bloggers, writing a popular travel blog for a decade now. Her travel story has been published as part of an anthology ‘Celebrating India’ and her paper on ‘in-city travel’ appeared in travel journal Earth. Her stories regularly appear in various print and online publications. She has close to 400 book reviews to her credit on her book reviews blog. She is a keen student of Indian art history. She regularly speaks on these topics at various conferences and institutes. In her earlier avatar she worked in the IT industry for over a decade. She studied computer applications for her master’s degree and physics for her graduate degree at Panjab University. She currently lives in Goa.

MY THOUGHTS:
The book is about digital businesses started by Indian entrepreneurs. She has picked up several online businesses and tells us how they started off, how they operate, the challenges they face, the innovations they have made, their USPs and their future opportunities.

The author has broadly categorized the digital business into three: Commerce, Content and Connectors.

• In Commerce section, she talks about Flipkart, MakeMyTrip, BigBasket and CaratLane.
• In Content section, she talks about Zomato, Games2win, ImagesBazaar and Chat with Lakshmi.
• In Connectors section, she talks about Shaadi.com, Rang De, CommonFloor and IndiBlogger.

The author further discusses the ecosystem in which the Indian digital businesses operate and survive. 

As an avid online shopper, I was able to connect to the information revealed in the book. I remember, I started to shop online in the year 2010. Initially I bought only books online and started with Flipkart. In a few months I was so addicted to online shopping that I ended up buying things which I didn’t even need. I had and still have both good and bad online shopping experiences. But thankfully I had good experiences and so I have not shied away from virtual shopping.

The author have beautifully covered all aspects of online business operations and also enlightened customers like me. I believe it is a good book for both management and IT students and professionals alike.

I give “The Mouse Charmers” 4 stars on a scale of 5.