01
Built for this market
Institutional complexity, market heterogeneity, family business dynamics and social licence constraints — a competitive environment no Harvard case adequately prepares you for.
Kindle Edition · 381 pages
Where Kautilya Meets Porter
A Strategy OS for Business Leaders across India and Emerging Markets
What if the most powerful strategy framework was written 2,300 years ago — and no business school taught it?
Kindle Edition · 381 pages · ₹499
69
Chapters
across 7 analytical layers
115
Case studies
Indian and emerging market
92
Frameworks
alphabetically indexed
61
Strategy thinkers
synthesised into one system
The book
2,300 years apart. One unified strategy system.
Kautilya’s Arthashastra, composed in ancient Pataliputra, contains a theory of competitive power, stakeholder strategy and organisational design that anticipates Porter, Williamson and Simon by two millennia. It has shaped Indian business behaviour for centuries — quietly, invisibly, and without acknowledgement in any Western strategy textbook.
This is the first strategy book to place Kautilya in genuine dialogue with the Western canon: not as a historical footnote, but as a central analytical layer that completes what Porter, Barney, Williamson and Simon began.
02
A reckoner, not a read
92 frameworks indexed alphabetically at the back. Find the right analytical tool in under sixty seconds, the day you actually need it.
03
One coherent process
Seven integrated layers and a nine-step build process. Strategy is not a plan. Strategy is a system.
The strategy OS
Seven analytical layers, 69 chapters
From understanding your competitive reality to designing your advantage, from reading the game-theoretic dynamics of your industry to deploying the four ancient instruments of strategic power Kautilya codified 2,300 years before Porter wrote a word.
Layer 01
Competitive reality
Industry structure, market heterogeneity and institutional complexity — read the board before you move a piece.
Layer 02
Designing advantage
Resource-based view, economic moats, trade-off architecture. What you own that compounds, and what you refuse to do.
Layer 03
Game-theoretic dynamics
Competitive interaction, standard races, signalling. Your move is only half the analysis.
Layer 04
Ecosystem and platform
Network effects, platform governance, alliance management in markets where intermediaries still hold the customer.
Layer 05
The four instruments of power
Saam, Daam, Dand, Bhed — Kautilya's codified influence framework, applied to stakeholders, regulators and rivals.
Layer 06
Execution architecture
Organisational design, agility, identity and culture — the layer where most strategies quietly die.
Layer 07
Cognition and decision quality
Kahneman, Taleb and Simon on the judgement that sits underneath every framework you apply.
115 case studies
Not from Detroit or Silicon Valley. From Jamnagar and Jamshedpur.
From Dalal Street and Dharavi. Cases you have lived through, watched unfold in real time, and competed within.
Jio
Disruption read through Christensen, game theory and Daam simultaneously
HDFC Bank
Three decades of compounding via RBV and long-term orientation
Asian Paints
An unassailable distribution moat, dissected
IndiGo
Trade-off architecture as strategy
Narayana Health
First-principles reinvention of cardiac surgery economics
Tata · Infosys · D-Mart
Plus HUL, Royal Enfield, Flipkart, Zomato, Nykaa
Who it is for
If you compete in India, this system is built for you
- Senior managers moving into general management or strategy roles
- Entrepreneurs building where Western MBA cases simply do not apply
- MBA and PGDM students who want theory anchored in Indian companies
- Strategy consultants who need a rigorous desk reference
- Business leaders across sectors — every one covered through real Indian cases
- Anyone who has read Porter, felt the gap, and wanted the Indian version
The author
Avneesh Bansal
A growth strategy practitioner with multi-industry expertise in fixing commercial engines — unlocking value, scaling revenue, and building competitive advantage that compounds over time.
Currently Head of Marketing and New Business Development at Parksons Packaging, a Warburg Pincus portfolio company and a leader in its industry segment, where he drives customer expansion, sales enablement and business transformation.
A graduate of IIM Calcutta’s Executive Programme in Growth Strategies, Avneesh spent two decades in the trenches of real competitive situations before writing the book he wished had existed at the start of his career. He lives and works in Mumbai.
Build the right system. Make the right moves. Win the right game.
₹499 on Kindle · free to read on Kindle Unlimited · 381 pages
Write to the author
Questions, bulk orders, speaking invitations
Bulk and institutional orders, workshop or speaking requests, or a genuine question about applying a framework to your situation — send it across.