Meet these Chartered Accountant Twin Brothers who authored a book guiding CA articleship aspirants

• Hi, I am Tejan Dargar and I have a twin brother Viren (yes, we do look identical!)...and we are both Chartered Accountants! 
• We coincidentally did our articles first at Grant Thronton (Audit) and then at BMR in their tax team!
• In early 2019, while managing our full-time hectic jobs, we decided to write a book to help CA Students in their Articleship journey!
• And finally, by the end of 2019, we already published our book - 'How to Mine The Treasure Called Articleship'.
• Here is our story of writing and publishing a book from scratch! 

Back Story: Starting our CA journey

Science was a straight NO for me (I hated physics), Arts – No (who takes Arts with 94% in 10^th boards, “log kya kahenge”), and hence the answer boils down to Commerce.

The dilemma doesn’t end here, I wanted to do a course which gave me access to college life so Chartered Accountancy wasn’t even on my mind!

I studied hard to ensure that I get an admit to the prestigious Sri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi but God had his own plans...I missed getting admission by a meager 0.75% and hence took up Chartered Accountancy!

Our Chartered Accountancy journey began with dreading classes...luckily we cleared the first level of CA exams easily and by early 2012 we were done with our Intermediate exams!   

What Next? We had to start a 3-year internship at a Chartered Accounting Firm!

It was time to figure out what to do regarding Articleship...the The WHAT was clear but The HOW had no answer!

Struggling to find the answer about articles and lack of guidance

We knew nothing about the firms we should be applying to, the kind of questions that the interviewer would ask, or the skills and competencies expected from us to bring to the table.

So, began the process of frantically calling up school seniors, relatives, professors and professional contacts.

Some of them did not have the time...and most of them did not care to understand the situation and lend proper advice.

Some of them who cared to advise, did so in a piecemeal fashion, sharing just their own opinions - none had a comprehensive answer, an answer which would give a 360-degree solution to our problem.

We felt a dire need of a Chanakya who could help us sail through this difficult and the most important career decision in life!

What Next?

Eventually, asking around for guidance we managed to figure a few things!

Viren and I both applied at Grant Thornton and got selected in their Auditing team. It was super exciting as well as overwhelming!

Overwhelming because from being in school/classes to be suddenly put in a global corporate at a plush office, formal clothes, well-mannered behavior, rigorous boardroom discussions!

In the second year of our articles, Viren moved to BMR and guess what, I was also called for an interview and finally got selected.

We experienced life-changing moments working there. It was a journey of mixed feelings, ups and downs.

Sometimes we would be exalted for super performance and sometimes complained about forgetting the facts of the case in hand!

Others were preparing financials, we were writing a book. Why?

Fast forward, in 2018 I had shared my articles experience on The CA Story and we got a lot of questions on the same! You can find the article here.

CA students wanted to know - How did we apply to GT, BMR, what was our experience working there, how could they also grow and learn in their articles, etc.

It was fun helping and guiding students but again it was very time-consuming! So I thought "Why not write a book and share all of this in a book?"

And that’s how the idea of writing a complete guide to Articleship was born.

Synergies of two creative brains and a book was born!

My brother, Viren was doing his MBA from IIM Lucknow while I was working in the demanding world of finance. Therefore, we made sure that we write the content on weekends.

There were certain sections that I had more exposure to due to my experience in the corporate world while Viren adequately highlighted the learnings from his student life.

We would discuss on the phone about what should be written taking insights from each other. We both would write content and get it validated from each other. There were two minds working on the same idea.

We also spoke to many Articleship aspirants (including my sister) to understand the issues at the grass-root level.

We had discussion sessions with partners/managers in CA firms about their perspective on Articleship and what is the attitude/learning change that they seek in the articles they train. Hence, this book carries perspectives from all the relevant stakeholders in a student’s Articleship journey.

The idea was to incorporate everything in the book such that no questions are left unanswered and hence we call the book ‘A complete guide to CA Articleship’.

Finally, we wrote and published the book in 2019!

The book is made available at a very affordable price (Rs 99 i.e. lower than the price of a movie ticket) so that it reaches maximum readers.

Do you want to write a book? Here are some tips.

1. Define a structure for the book/articles that you wish to write

• It is called structuring your thoughts so that it can be put in the form of organized content. For instance, our book is organized in chapters, each chapter addressing one specific question/aspect of CA Articleship.
• The chapters have been structured to address the chronology of questions that come to an aspirant’s mind.
• For eg, the first question that any aspirant would ask is “What is the importance of Articleship and why 3 important years of my CA career be dedicated to it?”

2. Keep the language easy, jargons are passé!

• As simple yet effective the language, better it will be for the readers.
• The language of our book is very fluid, and we have tried to keep the book reading experience very interesting through the use of real-life illustrations, charts, relevant quotes from famous personalities, anecdotes etc.
• One of the friends with whom I had interned in BMR told me that when she was reading the book, she felt as if it is a time machine that has transported her back in time to the days when she was pondering over Articleship and her Articleship days.

3. The multimillion-dollar question - Marketing of the book

• The mere idea is not enough. It should be implemented and marketed. We had the idea of the book, wrote the book and it was required to be properly marketed so that it benefits the maximum audience.
• We are currently marketing this book through our connections on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram and our professional network.
• The idea is to put this book as an investment for a strong foundation for your career.

4. Find people with the same objective

• The way of working in this competitive world is through joint efforts!
• Find people who share the same vision and understand how you can mutually help each other to meet the desired objective.
• We collaborated with a lot of CA coaching classes, CA firms, etc to help our book reach the right audience!

Should you also write a book?

“If you don’t see the book you want on the shelf, write it”, this quote by Beverly Cleary was the guiding force behind this book.

However, writing a book demands a lot of time and effort hence, you should have a flair for writing!

Also, for writing, you need to read a lot so that you understand how to structure a book. Blogging may give you an edge in writing and helps in experimenting with different styles of writing.

You can reach out to Viren and Tejan on Linkedin! Tejan is simultaneously working on his blog called ‘Truth and Talisman by Tejan’ which helped him hone his writing skills.

Here is the link to the book: How to Mine The Treasure Called Articleship.