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01
Zero to One ✓
Completed · Jun 2026Learning from Zero to One
This book helped me find the things that nobody is doing in business. A rush is not sustainable — like the dot-com rush or the green energy rush. For a technology-focused business, your solution should be 10X better to survive in the market, and it should be customer-centric. A business needs to find the gap, be 10X better, equally focus on sales and marketing, build the best team, think 10 years ahead, get the timing right, aim for monopoly, and understand the power of compounding.The most important thing this book taught me is to find the secret — the thing that is true but that nobody is talking about or acting on yet. Every great business is built on a secret. Google's secret was that there were billions of web pages and nobody had built a proper way to rank them — they saw what others ignored. When I read this, I immediately related it to Ather Energy. When everyone was waiting for EVs to become mainstream in India, Ather was quietly building the technology, the infrastructure, and the product from scratch. They found their secret early. But they also proved Thiel's other point — a great product alone is not enough. Ather built something exceptional and underinvested in sales and marketing for a long time. They are catching up now, but it cost them. That is exactly the kind of thinking I want to apply — finding what is invisible to others but obvious once you see it, and then making sure the world knows it exists.
Thiel also made me think about how I see the future. He separates people who have a concrete plan from people who just hope things will work out. I want to be someone with a definite plan. And founders matter more than anything — the vision of one person can shape an entire company more than any system or process.
This book did not just teach me about business. It taught me how to think about what I am doing with my life.
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02
The Design of Everyday Things ...
Started · May 2025This book ruined zippers, light switches, and door handles for me. Not in a bad way. Norman showed me that bad design is everywhere, but more importantly that good design is intentional. It's the invisible architecture of how things work (or don't). A must-read for anyone who builds anything.
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03
The Way of the Peaceful Warrior ...
Started · May 2025A semi-autobiographical novel about a gymnast who meets a gas station attendant called Socrates. It sounds odd. It is extraordinary. The idea that the warrior's path is not about fighting but about presence stayed with me for a long time.
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04
Started · Apr 2025The Untethered Soul ...
Singer asks: who is the one watching your thoughts? That single question restructured how I relate to anxiety and self-doubt in the lab and outside it. One of the most quietly radical books I have encountered.
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05
Ikigai ✓
Completed · Jan 2025A slim, beautiful book about the Japanese concept of a reason for being. The Venn diagram of what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for is something I keep on my wall.
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06
Inner Engineering ✓
Completed · Aug 2024Sadhguru presents yogic science not as religion but as technology — a system for understanding the human mechanism from the inside. It challenged my materialist assumptions as a physics student in the best possible way.
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07
The Alchemist ✓
Completed · Mar 2024"When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." That line lives on my homepage. The Alchemist is a short book with a long echo — every re-read finds me at a different point on Santiago's journey.
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08
Atomic Habits ✓
Completed · Dec 2023The most practically useful book on this list. I restructured my entire morning routine around the 1% improvement idea. Not philosophy — engineering applied to behaviour. Every physicist should read this.
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09
Think Like a Monk ✓
Completed · Jun 2023Where Sharma gives you the parable, Shetty gives you the practice. The chapter on purpose — finding your dharma — is something I reread every few months. A grounding book for an overactive mind.
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10
The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari ✓
Completed · Jan 2023A parable that hit me before I even knew what I was searching for. Sharma's Julian Mantle walks away from a life of excess to find something quieter and more lasting. It made me question very early on: what am I actually optimising for?