Authorised Biography Writer for Founders & Business Families

The definitive account of a life and an enterprise. Written by a biographer who has built companies, and who has done exactly this before.

Begin a Conversation

I write authorised biographies for Indian founders and business families. The book that becomes the record, the one a grandchild reads to understand where they came from and a journalist reads to get it right. Confidential. One client at a time.

Begin the conversation See how it works

A life told well is not a timeline.

It is a dramatic question with a human answer. The wound beneath the achievement. The belief that held when everything else broke. Most authorised biographies fail for one reason: they are written to flatter, not to illuminate. They read like a long press release with a hardcover, and everyone can feel it, which is why no one finishes them.

The biographies that last do the opposite. Caro on Johnson, Guha on Gandhi, Isaacson on Jobs. They find the contradiction at the centre of the person. The visionary who was impossible to live with. The builder who was afraid. The public figure whose private doubt was the engine of everything they achieved. The authorised part is not a constraint on the truth. It is permission to tell it with care, from the inside, with the cooperation of the one person who knows what really happened.

For a founder or a business family, there is a second problem on top of the first. Your story is controlled. The narrative that exists about you was built for investors, regulators, and the press, and it is thin by design. The real account, the one with the near-failures and the choices no one saw, lives in your memory and in old documents and in the heads of a few contemporaries who will not always be here. Left alone, it gets told badly after you are gone, or not at all. An authorised biography is how you make sure it gets told once, in full, and right.

I have done this work

I wrote the authorised biography of one of the doyens of Indian IT: the story of how a man, a team, and an association took India’s software industry from a footnote to a $250 billion engine. The story had written itself over the years but had never been told. I scoured records going back almost forty years, interviewed extensively, spoke with contemporaries, and did the patient work of finding the dramatic architecture inside a life the subject could no longer see from the inside. The book became a bestseller.

I hold an MBA from MDI Gurgaon. I spent twenty years as a founder and ran C4E for Mahindra, Godrej, ICICI Bank, JCB, Honeywell, and Maruti Suzuki. I have made payroll under pressure and survived three startups. I know what it costs to build something, which is the foundation of every biography I take on. A journalist learns the founder’s world from the outside. I have lived it.

Why the right biographer matters

What I write

How it works

The proof

The most significant work I do is confidential. What is public, I share.

The authorised biography of an Indian IT doyen, a bestseller. Three more ghostwritten bestsellers, held under NDA. The Nidhi Kapoor Story, my debut novel, now in feature-film development. Five short film co-productions, with recognition at MAMI and Filmfare. A long investigative piece in The Ken. Twenty years running a communications collective for Mahindra, Godrej, and ICICI Bank, among others.

Most biographers are writers who do not understand business, or executives who cannot write. I am both, which is why the work I produce is different from both.

Who I am

I am Saurabh Garg, based in Mumbai. I graduated from MDI Gurgaon in 2006 and did not join a bank. I became a three-time founder and ran C4E from nothing over twenty years. I have written every week since 2004. I have seen how India’s largest houses communicate, the gap between the public narrative and the private reality, the careful architecture of what gets said and what does not. I do not observe Indian business from the outside. I have worked inside it, professionally, for two decades, and I have written about it for longer.

Common questions

Will an authorised biography just be flattering?

Not the way I write it. A book written to flatter dies on the shelf. I find the contradiction at the centre and treat it with respect. Authorised means cooperation, not censorship. The truth, told with care, is what makes the book worth reading and worth keeping.

Who controls what goes in?

You do. You review every section before it is final. What goes in is a craft decision we make together. What stays out is yours to decide, and I honour it absolutely.

Is everything confidential?

An NDA is signed before any story is shared. I have never disclosed a client’s private material, not a detail, not a name, without written consent. Discretion is the foundation of this work, not a feature of it.

Will you interview people other than me?

Where it serves the book and you permit it, yes. Contemporaries, colleagues, and family often hold the parts of the story you cannot see about yourself. Every such conversation happens with your agreement.

Who owns the manuscript?

You do, entirely. Full copyright transfers to you on completion. My name appears nowhere unless you choose to credit me.

Could the book become a film?

For the right life, yes. I am a published novelist and a short-film co-producer, and India is making founder biopics and dynasty documentaries now. The book is the foundation. The screen conversation follows from it.

How long does it take?

A full authorised biography runs six to twelve months, depending on complexity, the number of people to interview, and your availability. I do not rush work meant to outlast all of us.

How much does it cost?

Priced by the depth of the work, not by word count. A full authorised biography is scoped privately after a first conversation. See investment.

What you receive

A definitive manuscript, 70,000 to 120,000 words, delivered in stages with a revision cycle at each one. The research record behind it, organised. Full copyright, transferred to you on completion. A book built to be referenced for decades, and a foundation for whatever follows, including a screen story.

Who this is for

Founders and industrialists whose company changed something and whose real story has never been told in full. Public figures whose lives deserve more than a Wikipedia page. Families who want the founder’s account set down once, on their terms, while he can still give it. People who care about the difference between a book that flatters and a book that lasts.

Who this is not for

People who want a brochure with a hardcover. People who want every difficult fact removed until nothing real is left. The whole value of an authorised biography is that it tells the truth with care. If the goal is only flattery, a PR agency will serve you better, and cheaper.

What makes a biography last instead of gathering dust?

One thing: it finds the contradiction at the centre of the person and tells it honestly. The visionary who was hard to live with. The builder who was afraid. Readers feel the difference between a book that is hiding something and a book that shows them a real human being. The honest book is the one that gets read and re-read.

Have you really written one, or just memoirs?

A full authorised biography of an Indian IT industry figure, start to finish, research to manuscript, and it became a bestseller. This is the exact thing, done, not adjacent work I am stretching to claim.

Why not have a journalist write it?

A journalist writes the founder’s world from the outside, often well. What they cannot do is recognise the interior of building, because they have not built. I have founded three companies and made payroll under pressure. When you describe the decision no one else could make, I am not learning it. I am remembering it.

What if I start and decide not to publish?

That is your right, always. You own the work and the decision. Some clients write the book for the family and never release it publicly. Some change the scope halfway through. The control stays with you throughout.

We are a business family, not a single founder. Does that change things?

Yes, and it is some of the most interesting work there is. A family across generations is a different structural problem from one life, with its own dedicated path. See family and dynastic legacy books.

How many interviews does it take?

It depends on the life, but expect a series of recorded sessions over the months of the project, scheduled around you. The richest books come from many conversations rather than one marathon. The cadence is yours to set.

Can you work with an existing manuscript or notes?

Yes. Sometimes a founder has notes, a half-draft, or a journalist’s transcript already. I can take that as raw material and build the finished book around it, rather than start from a blank page. The voice and the structure still come from the work we do together.