Corrugated Slices (The Social Jalebi)

Corrugated Slices: The Social Jalebi is the third book in The Jalebi Trilogy. Going through it, I certainly learnt more about heterogeneous India than I have learnt in my four years of managing an Indian company in Mumbai. Shombit constantly stimulates the reader to further dive in for more robust understanding.

The book offers market and marketing insights from an astute market researcher who travels the world and India to learn about priorities of life, lifestyles, and purchasing processes of multiethnic, multireligious, and multistate societies. You can share this extraordinary life of a great contemporary painter from his humble start in West Bengal to the heights of becoming a world-renowned business strategy consultant and brand creator in many business sectors.

Using the same incisive ability of managing his artist's brushes, Shombit Sengupta portrays India's societal evolution by highlighting how business houses should approach billion-peopled markets differently from a Westernized focus on million-peopled markets. Behind a simple narrative, Shombit shows you how we can be alert to societal evolution with an open and respectful mind. The book teaches the importance of being humble but detemtined to apply your brain and not blindly follow the incumbent fashion without a critical approach. And what is more important, I got provoked with an overwhelming infusion to learn much more.

In a clear and straightforward manner the book deals with very sensitive aspects. of contemporary society, from homosexuality to the previous Catholic Pope's involvement with Nazis. If is not easy to constrain it within a genre: management book, sociological book, autobiography book, Probably, all of these, it’s a rich experience that helped me understand both India and Europe from a different perspective.

Shombit Sengupta is a global consultant on unique customer-centricity strategy to execution excellence for top management. He originated the concept of Emotional Surplus Delivery through creative business strategy and implementation, which provides value beyond the customer's expectations. This motivates purchase and repurchase, and results in sustainable growth in the top and bottom lines of business organizations.

A French national now, Shombit started life in a refugee colony outside Kolkata in divided Bengal. He left for Paris in 1973 with US$8 in his pocket. His education at the Government College of Art & Craft, Kolkata, and in Paris at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts and Ecole Superieure d'Arts Graphiques Penninghen remained incomplete due to paucity of funds and insufficient time away from livelihood work.

From working as a sweeper to becoming a designer and a global strategy and execution consultant to top management, Shombit has versatile experience in diverse industries and different art and cultural domains that give him a deeper understanding of human sensitivity across all races. From this insight he mastered the unique art of understanding the subconscious mind. He translated this expertise on customer centricity into the fine art of business that has shown several global organizations the way to profitable and sustainable growth.

Shombit's 38 years of personal experience with transnational companies and countries across the world has been distilled to bring strong discipline and outstanding working processes to Shining Consulting, his consultancy firm in India and France.

Corrugated Slices: The Social Jalebi is the third book in The Jalebi Trilogy. Going through it, I certainly learnt more about heterogeneous India than I have experienced in my four years of managing an Indian company in Mumbai.

The book offers market and marketing insights from an astute market researcher who travels the world and India to learn about priorities of life, lifestyles, and purchasing processes of multiethnic, multireligious, multistrata societies. You can share the extraordinary life of a great contemporary painter from his humble start in West Bengal to the heights of becoming a world-renowned business strategy consultant and brand creator in many business sectors.

Using the same incisive ability of managing his artist's brushes, Shombit Sengupta portrays India's societal evolution by highlighting how business houses should approach billion-peopled markets differently from a westernized focus on million-peopled markets.

Behind a simple narrative, Shombit shows you how we can be alert to societal evolution with an open and respectful mind. The book teaches the importance of being humble but determined to apply your brain and not to blindly follow the incumbent fashion without a critical approach. And what is more important, I got provoked with an overwhelming infusion to learn much more.

The book clearly and straightforwardly deals with very sensitive aspects of contemporary society, from homosexuality to the previous Catholic Pope's involvement with Nazis. Going beyond an uncritical, common approach, Shombit constantly stimulates the reader to further dive in for more robust understanding.

It is not easy to constrain the book within a genre: management book, sociological book, autobiography book? Probably, all of these! It's a rich experience that helped me understand both India and Europe from a different perspective.

Perhaps I may be the perfect target for the book: Caucasian background in desperate need to understand India. In general when I buy a book, if I do not immediately understand from the title what the book is about, which may be the case here, I try and go through a few lines to understand in 30 seconds whether the content attracts me. Most of the time, a few lines make me decide to buy or not, rather in an emotional approach as books are my hobby, I have almost 12,000 of them! When you start reading this book, you will experience the right mix of personal understanding in different countries/cultures, management/marketing ideas, provocations on politics and religion. The "story" can evoke the need to agree or challenge the author, it triggers the mind with its uncommon approach. Overall, the book can be enjoyed by different age groups in any corner of the world.

Reading the book gave me much more than pure emotion: I got knowledge, new ideas to mull over, uncomfortable disconnects with my own belief, and, therefore, challenges to validate my belief, as well as deeper understanding of societal aspects relevant to my job in India.

As long ago as 1642, Frenchman Blaise Pascal invented the mechanical calculator, the precursor to computer technology. But until it suddenly descended upon us, no scientist, philosopher, or politician had accurately predicted how the digital impact would turn every moment of our lives upside down merely by activating our fingertips. Except, of course, physicist Albert Einstein (1895-1955) who said, "I fear the day technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots." Of course, the jalebi (sweet-meat in slurpy sweet syrup) was invented much earlier, in the 13th century. Due to its juicy, tasty, undulated character, the jalebi has comfortably remained in India and the Middle East, century after mouthwatering century.

The last millennium saw many inventions and discoveries such as radio, TV, antibiotics, rocketry, nuclear energy, automobiles, airplanes, Internet and personal computers from developed societies. These fructified to initially make the world's developed countries either symbols of advancement or superpowers. Developing countries were impacted much later.

Up to 1991 there was a time lag between inventions. But at the cusp of the 21st century, digital technology democratized the world. Suddenly every new digitech product or service is being launched simultaneously across the world. Moreover, there's barely any time interval between such inventions that are happening every fortnight, if not earlier. This has changed everything, in particular, human behavior of whole populations that have bypassed the mechanical era to enter the digital one straight from agrarian lifestyles. Today, all forms of art, culture, science, literature, and sports are pulsating to keep pace with the incredible new that's overpowering everything across the world. Most significantly, human behavior is continuously changing too.

Twenty years ago we could not imagine that the most advanced, all-time-requirement human companion device would be the mobile phone. From now onwards, this mobile device will become the critical industry of the world for human needs. Currently this industry is totally dominated by the 50-million populated South Korea, the global lord of the mobile phone. I have sometimes wondered if this digital trend is hype like the mechanical to electrical to the electronic eras that boomed at the start and then stabilized. Not everyone could enjoy the electrical or electronic eras at the same level due to cost discrepancies. But the digital era is growing in every aspect of life, industry, and culture.

**Contents and Sample Pages**