Million dollar baby

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It’s not every day that you come across a young boy in his twenties who is out there to change the world. Don’t mistake him to be a crusader or a fighter. Neither is he a revolutionary. City-boy, Varun Aggarwal is your quintessential boy-next-door. But the twist in Varun’s story is that, within days of the launch, his book, How I braved Anu aunty and co-founded a million dollar company, has sold over a 1,000 copies.

“This book happened because I was down with fever,” is the first thing Varun says when talking about his debut novel. “I started writing blogs after I established my T-shirt producing company. I never thought that readers online would connect instantly with my blog,” says Varun. That’s when someone asked him to send samples of his writing to a publishing house. But Varun started writing when he was unwell and was on a dose of antibiotics. A week of rigorous writing and he was ready with the manuscript.

“The book isn’t meant to be read intently and appreciated. It’s a story that has all the ingredients of what a youngster’s life is today — girlfriends, Facebook stalking, drinking sessions and all the other happenings in a young urbanite’s life. But, between the lines, it’s a story about achieving your dream and living it,” explains Varun, who runs a social media marketing company and is an aspiring filmmaker. “In India people think if you want to be a film maker, you need to make a feature film. But I want to change this notion. A filmmaker can be making corporate films or ad-films and can still be earning his livelihood,” says the youngster. Quiz him about his hobby and Varun says that his work is his hobby. “I love the fact that I am enjoying what I do, it never feels like I am working. We design and produce T-shirts for institutions and work on social media marketing strategies,” he says.

But his favourite time pass is to read biographies and autobiographies. “The Life and Time of Howard Hughes is a book that has inspired me the most. When people who have nothing to loose, achieve, it is the usual. But in Howard’s case, he risked everything that he had inherited and eventually achieved a lot,” says Varun. Ask him about his greatest achievement and Varun says it isn’t the money he has earned. “If I have been able to make a difference to someone’s life, that is an achievement,” says the youngster. At present, Varun is working on his next book on filmmaking.