“Every year, I watch Indian companies invest billions in digital transformation, mostly automation,” says Sameer Sankhe, the author of the book. “While this brings returns, it misses something crucial: creating bold, disruptive businesses from within.”
Sankhe combines over two decades of high-stake experiences as Chief Digital Officer, Genesys International Corporation; innovation consulting lead, Salesforce India; digital transformation leader, within a Tata group company; serial tech entrepreneur; and digital strategist, who worked across the globe, helping Fortune 100 companies and Indian conglomerates execute digital strategy. His central thesis is provocative yet practical: instead of merely digitising existing processes, legacy companies should be building the next unicorn from within their own organisations.
Customer love over technology hype: While artificial intelligence (AI) and shiny new digital technologies seduce many executives, Sankhe’s core message cuts through the hype: start with real customer pain points, design experiences that solve them, then work backwards to make customers not just like your offering – but love it. This customer-obsessed philosophy explains the book’s title and forms its central thesis.
The book’s most valuable contribution lies in challenging conventional wisdom about where break-through ideas originate. Should organisations copy successful start-ups? Hire expensive consultants? Rely on internal brainstorming? It’s Sankhe’s argument that these approaches miss the mark entirely. Through detailed case studies of Indian successes like Zerodha and global examples spanning Apple to Tesla, he reveals how hyper-growth companies actually discover game-changing concepts.
For legacy companies especially, Sankhe makes a persuasive case that this is the moment to think big. Established firms often have decades of customer relationships, well-honed workflows, and proven processes that can become rocket fuel when combined with AI and digital technologies. Most importantly, he argues, legacy companies possess a hidden superpower: their proprietary data.
Every year, I watch Indian companies invest billions in digital transformation, mostly automationSameer Sankhe
“Machine learning has a simple truth,” Sankhe explains. “Feed the same data points into ChatGPT, Perplexity, Llama, or any similar model, and you’ll get almost identical results. But the moment you introduce a unique or proprietary data set – something no one else has – you unlock a whole new level of differentiation.”
The execution challenge: The book’s strongest sections address the softer aspects of transformation – organisational culture, leadership involvement and execution dynamics. Sankhe tackles a reality many legacy companies face: what happens when the founder can’t lead digital transformation? His practical alternatives include upskilling leadership, hiring a chief digital officer, or acquiring start-ups, each with detailed implementation guidance.
In a market flooded with digital transformation guides, Sankhe’s book stands out for its combination of practical experience and Indian context. While ground-breaking in its individual insights, the framework provides a valuable roadmap for companies ready to stop talking about transformation and start executing it.
At its best, Make Them Love It! reads like an extended mentoring session with a seasoned practitioner, who has seen both spectacular successes and expensive failures. For Indian business leaders tired of incremental progress, it offers both the inspiration and instruction manual they need to build something genuinely disruptive.
The question is not whether Sankhe’s framework will work – it’s whether Indian companies have the courage to implement it.