This is Day 9 of #100workdays100articles challenge.

Delhi, 2015.
The digital revolution is swallowing everything.

E-books are booming.
Kindle is king.
Investors are betting big on pixels over paper.

And then there’s Shefali Malhotra.

An IT engineer with a fat paycheck, fast-track promotions, and the full corporate dream.

She walks away from all of it.

Not for a flashy startup.
Not for equity in the next unicorn.
Not for a bigger title or a better package.

She walks away for children’s books.

Physical ones.

The kind that don’t glow. Don’t ping. Don’t track your habits to sell ads.
The kind that quietly builds attention spans, sparks imagination, and connects generations.

Everyone thought she’d lost it.

“Books are dead,” they said.
“Kids only want screens,” they said.
“You’re committing business suicide,” they said.

She just smiled—and went all in.

The Pressure Was Brutal

Investors: “Go digital or we walk.”
Competitors: Scaling overnight with e-books and apps.
Advisors: “Physical books are over. Don't be sentimental.”
Friends: “When will you do something serious?”

Her answer cut through the noise like a scalpel:

“I didn’t leave a stable engineering career to chase someone else’s definition of success. I’ve seen what screens do to kids. I’ve seen the magic a real book brings. We’re not building a business. We’re protecting childhood.”

I was there to build the systems that could prove her right—or expose her as hopelessly naïve.

Then came the real test.

COVID Hit Like a Freight Train

March 2020. The world shuts down.
So does Bukmuk. Doors closed. Revenue collapsed. Deliveries halted.

The doomsayers cheered:

“See? Digital wins.”
“Now will you finally pivot?”
“It's not too late to save face.”

But the worst hit came from allies.

One of our biggest library partners—another ex-engineer turned literacy warrior—called in defeat:

“We’re giving up. Pivoting to toys. Anything that sells. Books are dead. Libraries are dead. We have to survive.”

Everyone was jumping ship.

Libraries became toy stores.
Publishers launched rushed digital platforms.
Bookstores sold notebooks and pens to stay alive.
Investors fled “legacy” book models.

This could’ve been Shefali’s out.
A graceful exit.
A perfect excuse.

Instead, she doubled down.

While Others Built Apps, She Built Magic

Contactless delivery systems that felt like Hogwarts post
Outdoor reading circles in parks, where safe
Personal phone calls to parents locked in with stir-crazy kids
Custom-curated book kits delivered with handwritten notes

While the world digitized emotions, Shefali humanized logistics.

And it worked—not despite the pandemic, but because of it.

The Moment That Changed Everything

When families were drowning in Zoom fatigue...
When screens became babysitters, teachers, and enemies all at once...
When kids’ attention spans shattered into TikTok-sized fragments...

Bukmuk was there.

Not with dopamine hits. But with deliberate calm.

Books.
Curation.
Care.
Connection.

10 Years Later, the Data Speaks

What looked like career suicide?
It became business genius.

Not just good PR or survival—but outperformance.

This Isn’t a Fluke — It’s a Pattern

Bukmuk didn’t invent this playbook.

TOMS Shoes gave one pair away for every pair sold. Wall Street laughed. Customers made it a billion-dollar brand.
Patagonia told people not to buy what they didn’t need. That honesty made them icons.

The strategy? Choose purpose over pressure.
The outcome? Customer loyalty that no amount of marketing can buy.

Most Businesses Still Get It Wrong

They optimize for:

Speed over substance
Features over feeling
Growth over gratitude
Conversion over connection

The result?
High churn. Low trust. Zero differentiation.

Conscious leaders play a longer game:

Design for customer wellbeing
Build stakeholder trust into the foundation
Treat relationships as assets, not line items
Trade "fast metrics" for lasting moats

The Bukmuk Principle in Action

Year 1–2: The Valley of Doubt

Revenue dipped 23%
Digital competitors scaled fast
Investor patience wore thin

Year 3–5: The Turning Point

Retention hit 85% (vs. 45% digital avg)
70% of growth came from referrals
Premium pricing became sustainable

Year 6–10: The Conscious Advantage

67% outperformance over optimization-first competitors
Zero ad spend—replaced by community evangelism
Real innovation, because real relationships fuel better ideas

The Magic Was in the Curation

They saw it again and again:

Arjun, age 8—couldn’t focus for 5 minutes on a tablet, sat absorbed in The Secret Garden for 2 hours
Priya, age 6—tired of Netflix, fell in love with the three carefully chosen books in her monthly box

“My daughter asks for her Bukmuk books the moment she walks in the door.”
“I trust your recommendations more than my own judgment.”
“You gave my son something I couldn’t find anywhere else—a love of reading.”

That’s not just a product.
That’s transformation.

Conscious Business Isn’t Slower. It’s Smarter.

It feels slower at first:

You're building trust, not transactions
You're listening, not just launching
You're curating, not mass-producing

But then the compound interest of trust kicks in:

Word-of-mouth > paid ads
Retention > acquisition
Purpose > promotion

The longer you stay conscious, the harder you are to compete with.

What This Means for Business

You’re at the same crossroads.

Path 1: Optimize

Deploy fast
Measure short-term metrics
Pray, trust catches up later

Path 2: Build Consciously

Start with stakeholder trust
Measure relationships and impact
Let trust lead technology—not chase it

Your “Bukmuk Moment” Is Already Here

Every major decision—product, platform, hiring, AI strategy—is a chance to choose:

Fast metrics or lasting meaning
Convenience or connection
Scale or soul

Bukmuk, TOMS, Patagonia—they didn’t “slow down.” They built to last.

The question isn’t whether conscious business works.
It does.

The real question is:

Will your customers thank you in five years for the decisions you're making today?

Is your business built on Conscious Prinicpals?

Courtesy: www.bumuk.com

Disclosure: Shefali Malhotra is the author's wife, and they have been happily married for 19 years.

She Burned the Playbook