India – November 2026 | The Gaja Capital Business Book Prize today announced the five books shortlisted for its eighth edition. Gaja Capital instituted the prize in 2019 to encourage Indian entrepreneurs, writers and journalists to tell the story of Indian business. It rewards books that teach the reader something about India’s economy, its markets and its companies, and that give the next generation of founders something to learn from.
The five books span a wide range of topics – a multinational’s conduct in India, three decades of telecom rivalry, two centuries of the stock market, and the founding of two companies, Freshworks and Zomato.
The shortlisted titles are:
All In: Memoirs of the Freshworks Founder, by Girish Mathrubootham with Pankaj Mishra. The founder’s own account of building, from Chennai, the first Indian SaaS company to list on Nasdaq.
The Johnson & Johnson Files: The Indian Secrets of a Global Giant, by Kaunain Sheriff M. An investigation into the hip implants the company sold in India, the patients they harmed, and the regulators who were slow to act.
Running Behind Lakshmi: The Search for Wealth in India’s Stock Market, by Adil Rustomjee. Two hundred years of India’s stock market and the people who made and lost fortunes in it.
Telecom Wars: The Race to Capture a Billion Voices, by Deepali Gupta. How the business houses that fought for India’s mobile market, from the first licences to Jio, built the industry we have.
Unseen: The Untold Story of Deepinder Goyal and the Making of Zomato, by Megha Vishwanath. The founder of Zomato, from a Chandigarh coaching class to the Nifty 50.
Manish Sabharwal, Chairman of the Jury, commented, “Three of these five books are about building something: a SaaS company in Chennai, a food delivery company in Gurugram, and the national telecom industry. The other two take the long view, across two centuries of India’s stock market and an investigative account of a multinational’s record in India. Good business writing celebrates what was built and asks how. This shortlist does both.”
Gopal Jain, Managing Director and CEO, Gaja Capital, commented, “Gaja Capital backs founders, so we have a bias for books that show how a company is actually built. This year’s list has a founder telling his own story, a journalist telling a founder’s story, another tracing an entire industry, an investigation into a global company’s conduct in India, and a history of India’s stock market itself. There is something here for everyone. Happy reading!”
The winner of the 2026 Gaja Capital Business Book Prize will be announced next month and receives a prize purse of INR 20 lakh.
The jury chose the five from a longlist of ten, drawn from a large number of nominations. The jury comprises Manish Sabharwal (Vice-Chairman, TeamLease; Chairman, Jury), Imran Jafar (Co-founder & Managing Partner, Gaja Capital), Arindam Bhattacharya (Senior Advisor & Emeritus Partner, BCG), Dr. Lakshmi Venu (Managing Director, Sundaram-Clayton Ltd.), Dr. Sangita Reddy (Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals), Neelkanth Mishra (Executive Director, World Bank), Prithvi Haldea (Founder Chairman, Praxis Consulting), Shailesh Haribhakti (Chairman, Shailesh Haribhakti & Associates), and U.K. Sinha (Chairman, Gaja Alternative Asset Management Limited and Former Chairman, SEBI).
About Gaja Capital
Gaja Capital, India’s first listed alternatives AMC, manages funds that provide growth capital to ambitious entrepreneurs to build the future champions of the Indian economy. Founded in 2004, Gaja Capital has established itself as India’s leading institutional and independent private equity firm with a strong track record of performance and value creation. Gaja Capital is recognised as a partner of choice by emerging Indian companies and top-tier global and domestic institutional investors.
Gaja Capital was founded by Gopal Jain, Ranjit Shah, and Imran Jafar – a group of seasoned Indian professionals with an established track record of investing and operational management in India. Its investments include Ei, Leadsquared, Signzy, Eggoz, The Indus Valley, Sarvam.ai, and QNu Labs.
About the Gaja Capital Business Book Prize:
Established in 2019, the Gaja Capital Business Book Prize celebrates the spirit of entrepreneurship and business leadership in India by recognising outstanding authors and their contributions to business literature. It honours works that inspire, inform and shape the discourse on India’s entrepreneurial and business landscape.
