Jason Kothari reveals mantra of turnaround success in book

Jason Kothari, who has the distinction of transforming several distressed Indian Internet firms, shares the turnaround story of his journey from a rebel, train-wreck kid to one of the top ten paid young executives in the country.

As a college student at Wharton, Kothari scraped together money from family and friends to save his childhood favourite comic book company, Valiant Entertainment, from bankruptcy and bring it back to life. A few years later, he transformed Valiant into the third-largest superhero entertainment company in the world after Marvel and DC Comics and sold it for USD 100 million.

Jason then became a professional turnaround leader and went on to transform distressed Indian Internet firms Housing.com, FreeCharge and Snapdeal, and advise giants like technology investor Softbank and real estate developer Emaar.

In his book "Irrationally Passionate: My Turnaround from Rebel to Entrepreneur", Kothari share's his turnaround story and the many learnings from it with students and young entrepreneurs to help them in their journey.

Published by Harper Business, the book tells how Kothari started as an assistant to Jackie Chan in Hong Kong, learned strategy from champion Muay Thai fighters in Thailand, tackled huge personal setbacks and became a CEO in 60 seconds, among many other stories.

As the CEO of Housing.com, Kothari is credited with leading the transformation of the distressed company and a merger with News Corp's PropTiger to create the USD 350 million industry leader.

Following this, he was the Chief Strategy & Investment Officer of Snapdeal, where he played a lead role in transforming the distressed company from a monthly loss of over USD 20 million to a profit, the first for an Indian e-commerce company.

He was also the CEO of FreeCharge, where he led the sale of the company to Axis Bank for USD 60 million.

He says his book, releasing on March 11, is something all entrepreneurs are - "the risk and return profile of entrepreneurship never justifies becoming an entrepreneur".

According to HarperCollins India publisher Krishan Chopra, "From a rebel teenager, to creating the third largest superhero entertainment company in the world, to his 'mission impossible' work in India's Internet space, the book tells you that you can create your own turnaround story at any stage in life."