A book titled 'No Holy Cows in Business' not only offers good insights into the world of entrepreneurship through case-studies and interviews but also provides a bird's eye view through nine guiding principles.

How does one define an entrepreneur? According to Chandra Mohan, Chairman, Punjab Tractors Limited, "I believe that an entrepreneur is someone who perceives the opportunity to use his knowledge to innovate, create and build something new of recognised value." It's an apt definition found in the book titled 'No Holy Cows in Business' authored by Pune-based Kiran Bhat and Sekhar Seshan. Published by Vishwakarma Publications, the book opens the curtains on entrepreneurship, its guiding principles and the pitfalls, and does all this with several interviews and case-studies of businesses that began small and reached great heights.

Kiran is a first-generation entrepreneur who started Xebec Communications, an advertising agency offering integrated communications, in 1992. She has handled blue chip clients in various sectors ranging from automobiles, BFSI, retail, real estate, services, etc. Anticipating the advent of the digital age, she promoted a second company, Xebec Digital, with a pan-India presence, which offers digital consultancy, creative technology and marketing. She has also been an angel investor in several start-ups and likes nothing more than mentoring new enterprises to do better than what she has done. Sekhar has been a journalist since 1972 after doing his post-graduation degree in Journalism. He began with Poona Herald, moved on to a children's magazine called Sunshine and then the wire service United News of India. After a four-year stint in public relations, he joined Business India in July 1989 and retired in October 2012. He is now an editorial consultant for many publications.

Chipping at the solid block of entrepreneurship to discover what lies inside, the book works on two levels - while it outlines nine fundamental principles to guide green-horn entrepreneurs to tread the right path and not indulge in mistakes that can cost them dear, it also intersperses these with interviews of such leading industrialists and business personalities as G V Krishna Reddy, chairman of the GVK Group, Vikram Kirloskar, vice-chairman of Toyota Kirloskar Motor, C Parthasarathy, chairman of Karvy Group, Harshvardhan Neotia, chairman of Ambuja Neotia Group, and so on. This is what makes the book a good read and prevents it from adopting the tone of a preacher. As Pramod Chaudhari, executive chairman of Praj Industries puts it in his preface, "The case-study approach makes the book more practical, with real people coming to life in real-life Indian situations which all entrepreneurs here can understand and identify with."

Interesting, for example, is what Y Rajeev Reddy, the man behind Country Club India, has to say about how he overcame many challenges to finally turn his vacation and leisure concept into a multi-million business entity that now holds 55 properties, 175 franchised establishments and over 4,000 affiliations across the world. "I am really not a businessman. I am marketing a concept," he says. Equally gripping is the story of Nishit Kumar who set up an advertising agency called Notre in 1981 at the age of 23 with no business experience. He started with a equity of Rs 800, running his office from his mother's dining table without even a telephone and then reached a turnover of over Rs 11 crore in about 14 years. In 1999, things went horribly wrong for Kumar and along with bad debts, he found that one of his senior executives handling a branch out of Pune had started a duplicate agency in the same name to raise bills and pocket the income. Notre went kaput but Nishit Kumar bounced back as a consultant in the field of environmental engineering.

Such case-studies reinforce the principles laid down in the book. As for instance, how financial literacy and cost control is absolutely essential to keep a business enterprise afloat and progress. "It is necessary to sense the revenue stream and let it be the bedrock on which to build. That's the base of financial literacy," the authors suggest. "What is a must in any business is keeping your books meticulously up-to-date. Record revenue, let bills go out on time and start your collections as soon as your bills have gone," they add. Some of the other factors, according to Kiran and Sekhar, include being very focused about the enterprise and what you want it to achieve. A lot of importance is also attributed to getting the right people on board. The focus should be on customer satisfaction, innovation and systems and processes. "Innovation in a business is doing the same thing in a different manner to produce different - and better - results," the authors suggest.

And finally, the authors do a good thing by devoting a chapter to pulling the plug. How and when do you decide that your business isn't going to go anywhere and that it's time to pull down the shutters once and for all? "A good time to pull the plug is when you do not see any light at the end of the tunnel; when finances dry up; when there is no money to be made in the venture; when you missed paying the staff for a year on time. Better to take it on the chin and move on," is the advice the book gives. And that's something most entrepreneurs would do well to keep in mind.