Best Award Winning Business Books From South Asian Authors

2018 · Longlist

Belong

by Radha Agrawal

Daybreaker founder Radha Agrawal turns community-building into a practical craft: how to find your people, or gather them yourself.

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2024 · Longlist

Nuts and Bolts

by Roma Agrawal

Structural engineer Roma Agrawal breaks the built world down to seven tiny inventions, from the nail to the spring, and finds wonder in each one.

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2022 · Longlist

Go Back to Where You Came From

by Wajahat Ali

Wajahat Ali answers a lifetime of that question with humor and heart: a memoir of growing up Muslim American that disarms hate by out-charming it.

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2024 · Longlist

How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi

by Chris Balakrishnan

Nerd Nite co-founder Chris Balakrishnan collects the wildest, funniest science talks from the beloved lecture series. Learning disguised as a night out.

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2022 · Longlist

The Titanium Economy

by Asutosh Padhi and Gaurav Batra

McKinsey’s Asutosh Padhi and Gaurav Batra spotlight the industrial-tech companies quietly powering American prosperity, hiding in plain sight.

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Published By Ideapress (Not Eligible For Awards)

Non-Obvious Thinking

by Rohit Bhargava

From our founder, with Ben DuPont: a field guide to seeing what others miss, in four practiced habits. The thinking behind everything we do here.

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2025 · Longlist

The 5 Types of Wealth

by Sahil Bloom

Sahil Bloom reframes rich across five kinds of wealth: time, social, mental, physical and financial. A generational bestseller about what actually counts.

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2022 · Longlist

The Newlyweds

by Mansi Choksi

Mansi Choksi follows three young Indian couples who married for love against every expectation, and pays close attention to what it cost them.

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2020 · Longlist

The Person You Mean to Be

by Dolly Chugh

NYU psychologist Dolly Chugh replaces the pressure of being a good person with the freedom of being a good-ish one: growth over perfection in the fight for fairness.

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2021 · Longlist

Digital Body Language

by Erica Dhawan

Erica Dhawan decodes the signals we send on screens, where tone is invisible and a period can read as anger. Essential for the hybrid work era.

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2018 · Most Original Winner

Winners Take All

by Anand Giridharadas

Anand Giridharadas’s unsparing look at how the global elite’s world-changing efforts often protect the very systems that created the problems. A book that reframed an entire debate.

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2025 · Longlist

How to Be Bold

by Ranjay Gulati

Harvard Business School’s Ranjay Gulati studies people who act with courage when it counts, and shows that boldness is a skill you can train.

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2021 · Shortlist

Backable

by Suneel Gupta

Suneel Gupta went from serial rejection to raising millions, then reverse-engineered why: people don’t back ideas, they back people who make them believe.

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2024 · Longlist

Breaking Bias

by Anu Gupta

Scientist and lawyer Anu Gupta offers research-backed practices for interrupting bias, in our minds and in our institutions, without shame or blame.

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2023 · Longlist

Win Every Argument

by Mehdi Hasan

Broadcaster Mehdi Hasan shares the rhetorical craft behind his famous interviews: how to persuade, debate and hold your own in any room.

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2025 · Longlist

Make Art

by Nishant Jain

SneakyArt creator Nishant Jain gives readers permission to draw: art as a daily practice of noticing the world, no talent prerequisite required.

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2017 · Most Important Winner

Give Work

by Leila Janah

Samasource founder Leila Janah argues the surest way to end global poverty is not charity but work, and shows how giving work transforms lives and communities.

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2021 · Longlist

Peak Mind

by Amishi P. Jha

Neuroscientist Amishi Jha shows that attention is trainable: twelve minutes a day of practice measurably strengthens focus, even under extreme stress.

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2024 · Most Important Winner

Brave New Words

by Salman Khan

Khan Academy founder Salman Khan offers the most credible early map of how AI will transform how our kids learn, and why that future is more hopeful than we fear.

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2021 · Most Shareable Winner

Move

by Parag Khanna

Parag Khanna maps the forces of climate, economics and demographics that will make the next decades the most mobile in human history, and predicts where we will all go.

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2022 · Longlist

The 6 Phase Meditation Method

by Vishen Lakhiani

Mindvalley founder Vishen Lakhiani engineers meditation for people who hate sitting still: six phases, a few minutes, built for performance.

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2024 · Longlist

Wicked Problems

by Guru Madhavan

National Academy of Engineering’s Guru Madhavan celebrates the unglamorous engineering mindset that untangles society’s messiest, most wicked problems.

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2025 · Longlist

Uncompete

by Ruchika T. Malhotra

Ruchika T. Malhotra makes the case for dropping zero-sum thinking at work: collaboration, not competition, is the real advantage.

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2025 · Longlist

The Devil Emails at Midnight

by Mita Mallick

Mita Mallick turns years of surviving difficult bosses into a survival guide for the rest of us, without becoming the villain yourself.

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2021 · Longlist

Fast Company Innovation by Design

by Stephanie Mehta

Fast Company’s Stephanie Mehta showcases two decades of design that changed business, proof that how things look and work is strategy.

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2017 · Longlist

The Power of Onlyness

by Nilofer Merchant

Nilofer Merchant names the source of every big idea: your onlyness, the singular spot where only you stand. Then she shows how to scale it.

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2020 · Shortlist

Together

by Vivek H. Murthy

Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy diagnoses loneliness as a public health crisis and prescribes the connection our bodies literally require.

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2017 · Most Shareable Winner

Hit Refresh

by Satya Nadella

Satya Nadella’s inside account of transforming Microsoft by putting empathy at the center of one of the world’s most powerful companies.

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2025 · Longlist

You're the Boss

by Sabina Nawaz

Executive coach Sabina Nawaz reveals how power quietly changes managers, and the habits that keep new bosses effective and human.

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2018 · Shortlist

The Art of Gathering

by Priya Parker

Priya Parker transforms how we think about meetings, parties and conferences: every gathering needs a purpose, and most of ours have none.

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2023 · Longlist

The Power of Saying No

by Vanessa Patrick

Professor Vanessa Patrick shares the science of empowered refusal: how to say no without guilt, and why it is a superpower at work.

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2021 · Longlist

You Can't Be Serious

by Kal Penn

Kal Penn’s funny, improbable memoir of chasing two careers at once: Hollywood actor and White House staffer. Proof that permission is overrated.

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2023 · Longlist

The Future Is Disabled

by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha imagines futures built on disability justice, where care is collective and no one is disposable.

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2016 · Most Important Winner

Persuadable

by Al Pittampalli

Al Pittampalli makes the counterintuitive case that the willingness to change your mind, being persuadable, is a defining strength of modern leadership.

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Published By Ideapress (Not Eligible For Awards)

Good Awkward

by Henna Pryor

Executive coach Henna Pryor rebrands awkwardness as a professional asset: the discomfort you avoid is exactly where your edge lives.

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2022 · Longlist

The First, the Few, the Only

by Deepa Purushothaman

Deepa Purushothaman draws on hundreds of interviews with women of color in corporate America: the tolls, the tactics and the power in numbers.

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2023 · Longlist

Upshift

by Ben Ramalingam

Ben Ramalingam studies people who perform best under pressure and distills the science of turning stress and adversity into fuel.

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2025 · Longlist

Defy

by Sunita Sah

Psychologist Sunita Sah studies why good people comply when they long to resist, and teaches defiance as a principled, learnable skill.

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2023 · Longlist

Big Bets

by Rajiv Shah

Rockefeller Foundation president Rajiv Shah argues incrementalism is overrated: the biggest global problems yield only to big bets.

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2023 · Longlist

The Defiant Optimist

by Durreen Shahnaz

Durreen Shahnaz, the first Bangladeshi woman on Wall Street’s trading floor, tells how she built a financial platform for the world’s excluded.

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$Math Mind by Shalinee Sharma — book cover$

2024 · Longlist

Math Mind

by Shalinee Sharma

Zearn CEO Shalinee Sharma dismantles the myth of the math person: everyone can love math when it is taught the way brains actually learn.

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2017 · Shortlist

How To Be A Bawse

by Lilly Singh

YouTube superstar Lilly Singh’s no-excuses guide to conquering life, told with the hustle and humor that built her from bedroom vlogger to global entertainer.

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2022 · Longlist

The Light We Give

by Simran Jeet Singh

Simran Jeet Singh shares Sikh wisdom for living with connection and courage in divided times. A book of practical grace.

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Published By Ideapress (Not Eligible For Awards)

Savvy

by Shiv Singh and Rohini Luthra

Shiv Singh and Rohini Luthra deliver a field guide to navigating fake companies, fake leaders and fake news, and staying clear-eyed in a post-trust era.

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Published By Ideapress (Not Eligible For Awards)

Why It Hurts

by Aneesh Singla

Physician Aneesh Singla reframes pain as the body’s essential messenger: what it is for, why we need it, and how understanding it changes treatment.

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2022 · Longlist

The Founders

by Jimmy Soni

Jimmy Soni’s deeply reported story of the PayPal mafia, and the improbable beginnings of the network that shaped two decades of tech.

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2025 · Longlist

Rethinking Work

by Rishad Tobaccowala

Advertising sage Rishad Tobaccowala maps the four seismic shifts remaking work, and how to build a career that thrives through all of them.

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2021 · Shortlist

Useful Delusions

by Shankar Vedantam

Hidden Brain host Shankar Vedantam makes the counterintuitive case that self-deception is not always a bug: some illusions hold lives and societies together.

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2019 · Longlist

The Optimist's Telescope

by Bina Venkataraman

Bina Venkataraman, former White House climate adviser, on why we are so bad at thinking ahead, and the tools that give foresight a fighting chance.

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2020 · Longlist

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World

by Fareed Zakaria

Fareed Zakaria distills what the pandemic revealed about globalization, government and risk into ten clear-eyed lessons for what comes next.

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2024 · Longlist

Hope for Cynics

by Jamil Zaki

Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki brings the evidence against cynicism: hopeful skepticism is more accurate, more useful and better for us.

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Belong

Nuts and Bolts

Go Back to Where You Came From

How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi

The Titanium Economy

Non-Obvious Thinking

The 5 Types of Wealth

The Newlyweds

The Person You Mean to Be

Digital Body Language

Winners Take All

How to Be Bold

Backable

Breaking Bias

Win Every Argument

Make Art

Give Work

Peak Mind

Brave New Words

Move

The 6 Phase Meditation Method

Wicked Problems

Uncompete

The Devil Emails at Midnight

Fast Company Innovation by Design

The Power of Onlyness

Together

Hit Refresh

You're the Boss

The Art of Gathering

The Power of Saying No

You Can't Be Serious

The Future Is Disabled

Persuadable

Good Awkward

The First, the Few, the Only

Upshift

Defy

Big Bets

The Defiant Optimist

Math Mind

How To Be A Bawse

The Light We Give

Savvy

Why It Hurts

The Founders

Rethinking Work

Useful Delusions

The Optimist's Telescope

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World

Hope for Cynics

See every winner, every year.

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