New Delhi, Sept. 12 -- Ashok Soota has written the book on entrepreneurship. Not just metaphorically, but literally too. Entrepreneurship Simplified: From Idea to IPO, which he co-authored with his former colleague SR Gopalan in 2016, ought to be compulsory reading for anyone contemplating a startup. One of its central premises, that a venture is only as good as its idea, runs through a book packed with practical advice that might have saved many a venture built on hype and destroyed by it.

And why not? Soota has earned the right to explain entrepreneurship better than almost anyone in India.

On 31 August, Happiest Minds, the company he founded in 2011, announced a proposed merger with ITC Infotech. As part of the transaction, Soota and...