The COVID-19 pandemic has been a bolt from the blue. This is a kind of crisis that most of us are unlikely to experience more than once in our lifetimes. Individuals and companies are trying hard to cope and adapt.

The truth though is that we constantly deal with crises in our lives. The consequences of some of these crises are far worse than those posed by the pandemic. Imagine being born in Afghanistan in the 1980s or 1990s or being born to a sex worker in any country. Life itself would be a crisis. Yet, some deal with a crisis with equanimity and courage while some others give up.

A crisis can be a great opportunity for innovation. Almost every great innovation has been in response to a crisis of some sort. We have seen this in recent times, and we have seen this throughout history.

"Sailing through a Storm" (Bloomsbury), co-authored by T.N. Hari and Sanjay Swamy, brings us this hope. An inspiring read, the book comprises beautiful stories of women and men who dealt with adversity, how they emerged strong and successful, and how drawing from their lives we too can turn the storm around to make it work for us.

T.N. Hari is an advisor and sounding board to numerous entrepreneurs and start-ups. He is a strategic advisor at The Fundamentum Partnership and Arkam Ventures as well. He also heads human resources at Bigbasket. A graduate from IIT and IIM, Hari has worked at an executive level with several start-ups/scale-ups. He has anchored four successful exits in different industries (Daksh, Virtusa, Amba Research and TaxiForSure). The co-author of four books, his last two published titles are "From Pony to Unicorn: Scaling a Start-up Sustainably" and "Saying No to Jugaad: The Making of Bigbasket".

Sanjay Swamy is an Indian technologist, entrepreneur and venture capitalist and a huge champion of the start-up ecosystem. He is making his debut as an author with this book. He has previously worked with the UIDAI project.

(IANS)