As a former professional basketball player and a current coach, Steve Kerr has seen it all. His quote: “As a leader, one of the things that’s most important is to know your team needs to see you as confident,’ perhaps reflects the theme of Nina Lekhi’s biography Bag It All (as told to Suman Chhabria-Addepalli). Kerr’s quote simply means that a person who has confidence, is an undeterred team leader and mentor, who can attain success irrespective of the hurdles or criticism which comes his/her way. Lekhi is the founder, MD and design curator of Baggit India, a brand that sells handbags. 

Addepalli, a writer and founder and CEO of Urban Firefly, an urban gardening solutions company, tells the story as it is: the making of Baggit and how Lekhi built it from scratch with a lot of belief, hardwork and confidence. 

India has had a fair share of women entrepreneurs and one of the forerunners to top the list is the ‘Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2015’ awardee Lekhi. But she didn’t have it easy. The book narrates how Lekhi faced her first major failure when she was 17. Due to this failure, Lekhi had ample time on her hands. Instead of wallowing in self-pity, Lekhi took advantage of the time and started work on her venture — from hand-delivering bags to clients, to setting up the first store in Mumbai, to making Baggit a successful Rs 100-crore brand. 

The book has been divided into four phases, each portraying a phase of Lekhi’s life and each phase is detailed under several chapters. Lessons learnt from her experiences are mentioned at the end of each chapter. 

Although there aren’t many path breaking strategies in the book, it simply tells the story of an entrepreneur, who made positive use of her failure, thus proving to be a go-to book for young minds who face failure during formative years of their career.