Introduction BBLF 2022 : Bengaluru Business Literature Festival

Introduction by Amar Vyas

Very good afternoon on this weekday in September and September 2022. For those of you listening to this audio piece, somewhere down the line, my name is Amar Vias and I’m the Cofounder and your host on this episode of Mykitaab podcast. And today I am super duper excited to have a guest, a friend, who’s been on Mykitaab podcast. Believe it or not, nearly six years ago, it was early February 2016, when Ganesh Vancheeshwaran had actually visited the then recording studio, which happened to be our dining table. And today he is connecting remotely and we are going to talk about a very interesting book festival, rather a literature festival, an event I had an opportunity to be a part of in the BC that is the before COVID era. Ganesh will be talking about Bengaluru Business Literature Festival in a minute. But before that, Ganesh is an author. He’s a writer blogger. Today we are going to talk about BBLF and what’s new and exciting this time around. What brings Ganesh into the BBL fault session that he would actually be conducting. So, lots to talk about. Without further ado, over to you, Ganesh, and how are you this afternoon?

Ganesh V

Thank you so much. And like I said, it’s a pleasure, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you, meet you, and being on your podcast is a special pleasure and honor. So I’m happy to be back here so high to your listener base. Also to all of you guys out there hearing us, it’s a lovely afternoon here in Bangalore, where you and I live. Although we happen to live in two different parts of town, which might as good as saying that we are in.

Amar Vyas

Two different cities, separated by a huge.

Ganesh V

Waterbody, absolutely connected by huge water bodies and parking lots, which are water roads are yeah, it’s been raining these days and the weather is fantastic for Bangalore.

Amar Vyas

Can you take a minute or two to reintroduce yourself to the listeners?

Ganesh V

I think there is this litfest fever. Apart from that, there’s a bit of interesting work, my own business that I need to handle. So you wanted me to introduce myself, right? The different hats I wear. It’s simple, Lamar. For the last many years, I’ve been calling myself a catalyst for people self expression. I realized that all of us have this very strong urge, it’s a fundamental, universal urge to express some part or the other about ourselves to the world at large. And this takes on different forms and the motivations are different. For instance, we want to talk about our knowledge, share it with the world. We want to talk about our achievements, our life journeys, our career paths, our entrepreneurial journeys. We want to talk about things that have happened to us. Just life stories, share that with the world and many other things. So all of this I find very beautiful. They all come under the umbrella of self expression. Looking at it in a very human sense, I find it very beautiful because it helps us blossom, it helps us develop, it helps us bloom as people and whatever we share with the world, that is often of benefit to that person, to the person who is consuming the content.

Ganesh V

So for the last few years, I’ve been an enabler in the process. Which is why a catalyst for self expression, I do that in four or five specific ways. I work in the area of branding. I’m a book coach and editor, so I work with authors. I’m a writer myself, so I give voice to organizations, their projects, their plans, and whatever it is they want to share with their target audiences. I write scripts for brand films. I have a column in the magazine called scroll. And finally, I’m a voiceover artist, so I give voice to voice narration. So all of this, the common thread running is self expression, and I completely love what I do.

Amar Vyas

That’s a great way to introduce yourself. Ganesh while you are talking about being a catalyst for self expression by people, I was jotting down three professions that you probably could also be involved in, and those are a hairstylist, a fashion designer and a tattoo artist.

Ganesh V

Possibly. I think I just suck at all of them.

Amar Vyas

Seriously, that’s all about branding, self expression and telling the world who you are. Right? So they fall in that category quite well.

Ganesh V

Yeah, I know they do, but I think I’m stronger and happier. My skill lies in engaging with the inner parts of self expression, things that stem from within, not their outward manifestation.

Amar Vyas

Boss all right, before this turns into a philosophy podcast, let’s get down to and let’s talk about the Bangalore Business Literature Festival, or BBLF, for ease of everyone’s listening. Ganesh, what exactly is the BBLF and how did you get associated with this event?

Ganesh V

Pplf was founded in 2015 in Bangalore. So now we are in the 8th edition. Fest is in the 8th edition here. It’s interesting how I got associated with the fest. This was in the first edition, that was in 2015. Towards the end of that year, my book, The Underage CEOs had just been published by Harper Business and imprint of Harper Collins. As part of promoting the book we were reaching out to through various channels. And one of those was organizers of Literature Festival. So that’s how we got in touch with Benedict Paramount and the co founder of this festival, the person who conceived the idea of this fest. So my publishers got in touch with him. He said, okay, that’s an interesting book, and then invited me to come over as a speaker. And that’s how I found my way into the BBL fold. Ever since, Ben and I have become friends and we’ve kept in touch. And then subsequently he requested that I also support him in conducting the festival.

Amar Vyas

Wonderful. And I do recall, I think it was held in Cubbon Park, right near the first ever event.

Ganesh V

That’s right.

Amar Vyas

The Century Club is exactly I remember attending that event. I was very much there. I think I’ve attended four or five editions so far. And of course the 2019 one, I moderated one of the sessions right. Coming to the 22 edition. How do you think this event has evolved over the past iterations?

Ganesh V

Good question. So we had very humble beginning there. Amar, I’ll connect back, I’ll link back to one part of your earlier question. We realized that this realization has only grown stronger over the years, that there is space to celebrate and to talk about business literature separate from the rest of the literature. So there are many literature festival India, and there have been for quite a few years now. But business literature does not find place or at best finds passing mention in those fests. So Ben and the other co founders figured out, look, why don’t we do this? Why don’t we celebrate business literature in India, business books in India, and have discussions related to business themes? Because business literature itself is a large and dynamic area within the larger canvas of literature. That’s how BBL was born. And from then on, the intent has always been year after year, to foster business writing, especially business books and publishing and reading by bringing the best of minds together. That, in a nutshell, is what BBL is. How has it evolved? I said we started from humble beginnings. You were there from finding better formats, better venues, better ways of delivering the fest, from keeping the BBL brand alive throughout the year and not just making it an annual addition.

Ganesh V

So there are activities through the year, month after month, most relevant, most topical things to talk about, the quality of conversations, very transformative, engaging and vibrant conversation. I think in all these five or six ways, I can say BBLF has evolved, has become much better than the.

Amar Vyas

Time we start for Mike at our podcast BBLF. In a way, the relationship goes beyond these two. Quite a few of our past speakers from BBLF have also been guests before our conversation. I was just going through the list and probably eight or nine overlaps so far, which is like quite an interesting coincidence when you are talking about lack of business specific event or a literature festival that talks about business issues related to India and things like that. I’m going to make a slight segue and talk about a recent ten part podcast series I did with Storytel and that’s called Why Businesses Fail. Then the idea itself came up. The talk was, hey, can we actually do a series on finding out reasons why a business fails? Of course, there are multiple ways, but the key point there was we wanted to keep it focused to India because when we were talking about business literature, even on a topic such as business failure.

Ganesh V

Right.

Amar Vyas

There’s very little literature, very little body of work available on why a business can fail. Everyone wants to celebrate a success, but very few people want to really dig down and find out what caused the failure and what could be the learnings from it.

Ganesh V

Right.

Amar Vyas

So I’m glad that this theme that BBL committee kind of decided has actually found its comfort zone and it’s been growing in that particular zone. There is an absolute need for the kind of topic or what’s the value proposition of BBLF out there.

Ganesh V

Yes, you’re right.

Amar Vyas

So with that, let’s move on to the 2022 edition of BBLF. We used to have Bbls as an in person event. Last two years was online. This year it’s a mix, right? Online and offline. And of course, we will add the link to the agenda itself in the show notes. Or to you, Ganesh.

Ganesh V

Yeah, sure. One of the heartening things for us, Amar, has been that we managed to keep the fest going through the last two years, through the worst of the pandemic. We were able to do that, I think, because of our involvement with this theme. And some of it is also the sense that this kind of a festival is important, all the more important in these gloomy dressing times. So that also fueled our motivation, fueled our intent to keep the fest going this year. And I think from now on, this online voila part, the online dimension of the fest is going to be permanent because that has allowed us to reach wider audiences and that has thrown the festival really international. There are people sitting in all corners of the world listening to us from around the world, participating in the fest in the last two, three years as speakers. So both ways it’s worked very well for the fest. So I think we’ll keep this as a permanent facet of the fest. This year it’s going to be hybrid. The fest is happening on September 1314, 1516 and 17, just about a week away from the opening of the fest on the first four days, that is from 13 to 16.

Ganesh V

The sessions will take place from 05:00 p.m. To 07:00 p.m. IST in standard time. And all of them are online so people can register. It’s a very simple process. All you have to do is go to Bizlitfest.com, I repeat that Bizlitfest.com. There are tabs, one for program and the other for register. So go look at the program sheet. Click on the register button. Register. Everything is very smooth and seamless. Having done that, you’ll be sent a link for the sessions for September 13 to September 16. On September 17, you’re going to have an in person offline event here in Bangalore, at Bangalore International Center Domlur, which will also be webcast, so that can also be seen online from wherever the viewer is sitting. And for this, there is a different registration tab on the same registration page of the website. The sessions for the first four days are free, absolutely free. Only for the last day, that is 17 September. We’re charging a very nominal, I should say paltry amount of 100 Indian rupees. Now, coming to the sessions, there are two things I want to call out, Amar. One is that we see this as a coming back or some sort of a celebratory mood in the team.

Ganesh V

And we want that to spread everywhere, spread to readers, which is also why we’ve kept the fest free. We want more and more people to attend this because we’ve seen the world come out of this gloomy face, very debilitating, pandemic face. So people are getting their act together, nations are getting their act together, businesses are back on stream and therefore we want to celebrate that. And optimism and gratitude also in the fest. You want to celebrate that? We want to celebrate resilience. All right, so resilience you will notice from some of these themes, especially on startup day, which is 17th September, we’ve dedicated that day to startup literature. So themes related to enterprises, new enterprises, entrepreneurs, startups, et cetera, what are going to be thrown up in the air on that day. And you will find the resilience features very promptly there prominence. We are going to talk about how enterprises have made it, some of them have made it through the pandemic. How did they hang on, what are the strategies, methods and mindsets they used? And there are lessons in this for other startups, also other companies and who knows when the next crisis is going to come.

Ganesh V

So it’s always better to be prepared. So we will talk about that then. The other big themes we are going to look at business and data. Data is morphing at a frighteningly fast pace, what with the involvement of artificial intelligence, machine learning, et cetera. So what is the role of data in business today? How is it morphing? What are the threats it throws up? How can that be used to hide truths or to portray the truth? What are the ethical angles of business that data calls into question? There is an interesting session relatedly on fraud, stock markets, banking, etc. For that have happened in India and that has a very strong link with data. Resilience is one data and how it’s morphing. Data in the context of business is two technology. The future of money in technology. I find that very interesting and that’s another big theme here. So one of the questions we must ask ourselves is we take cash for granted, boss today, but who knows, a few years later, cash could just disappear, everything could be paperless money. Similarly, there are these cryptocurrencies, but are they going to be yo-yoing forever on the fringes of our economy?

Ganesh V

Or will they become a stabilizing, mature, mainstream kind of force within the framework of money? So there are questions like that and then there is artificial intelligence, the frightening possibilities of that, it’s very confusing. No one really knows how to marshal artificial intelligence in a very healthy kind of way. So that you have a balance, strike a balance between man and machine.

Amar Vyas

So that’s another thing that is wonderful indeed. Ganesh thanks once again for taking the time and telling what BBL F 2022 Edition is all about, what people can expect and most importantly, where they can register. With that, we conclude this discussion on Mykitaab podcast with Ganesh one more time. Ganesh, can you mention the two most important links that you had mentioned? One is about the Literature Festival itself and where you can be contacted.

Ganesh V

You want me to say them?

Amar Vyas

Yes, just say the website, right. And then your email as well.

Ganesh V

So for more details on the fest, please visit Bizlitfest.com, that is Bizlitfest.com. And if you have further questions, if you need clarifications, if you have doubts, you could reach out either to Benedictparaman at benedict 99 [email protected] Benetict 99 [email protected] or to Meganeshfansiwaran at [email protected]. That’s [email protected] so we look forward to having a number of you there at the fest. First, we are extremely excited about what this year holds out in terms of themes and possibility for conversations.

Amar Vyas

So in online, offline or both of us, I will certainly be there and looking forward to these sessions. Ganesh and you have a great day ahead.