Book Review - Buildit: Building Blinkit in An Evolving India

Book Name: Buildit - Building Blinkit In An Evolving India
Author: Albinder Singh Dhindsa
Publication: HarperCollins (Harper Business)
Genre: Non-Fiction (Business)

Build It: Building Blinkit in an Evolving India by Albinder Singh Dhindsa, the one behind this e-commerce giant, the one who made our lives easy and brought groceries to our phones delivered within minutes, is not a guide or a step-by-step structure to build a brand or become an entrepreneur. Rather, it is the making of the brand itself, Blinkit. How it transitioned from Grofers to Blinkit is what readers will explore in this book through the lens of the founder, who has not only been on the business side but also experienced the consumer front when he noticed one day how his mother had been using his own brand for her daily needs at her fingertips.

Review

“They left not because we were failing, but because they didn’t believe we could succeed.”

This statement by Albinder shows how he tried to dig into the delivery partners ecosystem to understand their struggles and reasons for not showing up to work, and that forms a major part of what readers will find in this book. Though it is about the journey from Grofers to Blinkit, a journey of two decades, a huge chunk of the book focuses on delivery partners and how Albinder struggled to get them to work consistently.

The structure of the book has each chapter showcasing a year of building Blinkit, from the ideation of Grofers to changing the name to Blinkit when the time was right. The founder has put it all into this book. From what looks like a mere problem of not getting the right people to show up for work to the pigeon poop problem, which literally meant pigeon poop but also had a philosophical meaning, that is what made me think about how meticulously he has presented it in this book, depicting both the problem and the philosophy behind it.

“Very often we come across problems where we don’t identify the root cause of the issue and spend a lot of time and energy trying to solve the thing that is bothering us—those are the real enemies of progress and, therefore, we call them ‘pigeon poop problems’.”

Being a non-fiction read, the writing style is quite easy yet engaging for readers to feel the emotions of the founder and what he has gone through along with his business partner, the people who trusted his business, the delivery partners, and the team who joined him. While reading it, it feels like the story of a common man who returned from abroad and started a business, making his own space in an already established e-commerce market, and that makes the reading experience smooth. There are different pictures sharing milestones and analytics of the brand, which adds credibility.

Don’t pick this book if you are looking for a typical guide to building a brand, because it is the story of Blinkit. Pick it up to learn from the mistakes and to see what real struggles look like, because many times our ego comes in the way when we are starting something from scratch and the jobs we consider small are not what we expect ourselves to do. In this book, you will find the founder making deliveries himself.

If you are someone who loves to read success stories, especially the ones that show the rawness behind the scenes instead of just glorifying success, you should check out this book.

Buy From Here: Buildit: Building Blinkit in An Evolving India