All the start-up stories you have heard are of the big daddies – Amazon,Facebook, Tesla, Uber, Flipkart, Paytm, Zomato. Reading about them to learn about the world of start-ups is like watching porn to get sex education.Here is my real start-up story. And real stories are brutal. I got rejected by 119 investors. We got tailed by the ISI in Pakistan, witnessed bloody riots in Bangladesh, were kicked out of hotels in Ethiopia and mugged in the Philippines.

If you think that’s scary then you are wrong. It’s nothing compared to the terror of going bankrupt – not once, not twice but three times . . .

Manasij was living a chilled-out life with a good job when he and his co-founders decided to build a start-up called ThreadSol. They had barely any savings, no godfathers to lean on and had done very little research about the business. They had simply fallen in love with the idea of solving a problem and building a start-up. This is his story – brutally honest, often hilarious, sometimes terrifying, and it tells what it takes to build a start-up in India like no other book will.

If you want to start-up, you should read this book. If someone in your family works in a start-up, read this to know what they are going through. If you want to join a start-up, read this to know what might be awaiting you on the other end. And if you are a VC, read this book – you might end up treating the next founder kindly!