In this section I want to share the mosaic of my life’s experiences and the incidents that have shaped me as a person.
Read on…
My Heart Condition
Born with a heart condition, as a child I heard whispers of fear, cries of sadness or looks that had little or less faith that I would survive the hole in my heart. Doctors had suggested surgery but in 1970, science was not such as what it is today, so my parents had chosen to take up a slow and non surgical way of healing.
Ayurvedic medicines and treatments take years and these years are the ones that make me what I am today. As a person, as a mentor, as an influencer, as a mother and a self-made woman. I stand tall in difficult situations for myself, my family, my friends, my clients & my connections. Giving up is not an option for me & I thank my heart for making me the resilient person that I am.
Young, Married & Driven
Early marriages were not something rare in the 1980s in India and so I was one of the many girls from a convent who never saw the insides of a college and was in a wedlock before she turned 20. By the mid twenties I was a mother of 3 and well set to be a successful homemaker but there was always this fire within me, that there was more to my story than being a good wife, daughter, mother, sister and all the extended relationships that we build as we move forward in this journey called life. What my story was to be, I knew not but the one thing that never ceased to exist was the clarity within me that I was more to what was. Then, the universe brought my real story to me. I was working with my father in his R&D firm before I turned 30.
Managing Director at 20
I graduated 10th, had no experience of career focused or running a company and here I was as the managing director of a company in R&D for automobile products. These are the times of BSNL fixed internet dialling times, Alibaba for business connections & outreach for any international brand would take a minimum of 15 days through hard copy brochures and V-cards. But these were the days as well, when businesses were run with a parallel objective of gaining knowledge as we built the company.
Today, all my knowledge in IP Law, Company Incorporation process and so many other aspects are from these days. My close relationships with Engineering institutions such as IITs & VIT got built from these early stages. Another very critical skill set that I built for myself from then was to look at challenges as an opportunity to grow, which today is my signature style when it comes to working with my client’s businesses or even supporting my community initiatives.
Feeling Rich with 500 bucks
With the death of my father, I knew that running a R&D firm was a waste of resources and effort with zero knowledge in engineering. That was when I decided to pull the shutters down and walked out of a company that was buried in debts due to my father’s sudden demise. No education, no work experience in any MNCs & no success story of my gig with my father, I was a single mother of 3 and no sign of income. These days, I have lived on my children’s pocket money from their father at times. Having enough cash to be utilised for any one of the requirements, travel to look for work or feed the kids, I would feel rich.
This was the phase which makes me resilient to a level which not many can resonate with. Having to have nothing going good for you and still believing in making it through is something that only times like these can teach. Today, I insist young entrepreneurs with whom I work with to ensure that they go empty pockets if needed be, because it is then when you actually know your true limits.
Owning a Community of 50000
It had been 4 years since I had set up a consultancy firm that helps business leaders to grow faster and face minimum challenges as possible as they do it. Prudence Consultants was a partnership firm with my friend, Vivek Srinivasan and we had a lean firm and had worked with almost 100 plus companies across industries by then. Around this time is when the Startup gigs started in Bangalore and we attended one such gathering to explore possibilities and that was when my first community driven initiative was started.
Until then I believed networking was a waste of time but things changed. You can know more about this phase in my co-authored book “A Thought to a Million Dollars” on Amazon but fast forward 8 years, this community was almost a lakh plus young entrepreneurs from across the world, incubators, accelerators, institutions, investor networks, you name it. In simple terms, it was an ecosystem within an ecosystem that we had created and I was leading it all.
Strides towards Success
Success is a bitch, it teaches you the hardest of lessons in the worst kind of manner. With us leading the community we were at a place where you would not find one event, one gathering or few conversations that would go by without the mention of my community or we the founders. I was interviewed on BBC as well. We were one of the most known platforms for entrepreneurs to build ideas into businesses. We would provide mentoring, investor connections, community access and till date we hold the place of hosting one of the largest startup events in India with 5000+ attendees. The biggest gift from all these activities was the trust and faith that we received from the startup founders and entrepreneurs. They saw what we were and how committed to their journey we as mentors stood by. Even till date, we have young founders coming up to us for quick advice or detailed discussions. If success is about building this trust with the masses, I have seen and been successful like not many around.
This was the phase which makes me resilient to a level which not many can resonate with. Having to have nothing going good for you and still believing in making it through is something that only times like these can teach. Today, I insist young entrepreneurs with whom I work with to ensure that they go empty pockets if needed be, because it is then when you actually know your true limits.
Collapse of the House of Cards
Covid19 did bring us all to our knees. According to Nasscom, between 2019-2021, we had 60000+ startups shut shop. We were one of them too. It was one of the worst days as a mentor. Mental Health became one of the most important aspects of concern for startup founders and so it was for me as well. I did not take my previous venture’s failure that well. If you say this is rock bottom, I say, it was rock bottom, 100 ft of crap and then me there.
Each step brough tons of lessons & I knew every lesson that I was learning as I was building myself from scratch will be passed on to the 100s of people who knew me. I started building myself before I could stand to call myself a mentor or an influencer again. It was an overall repair. From an emotionally driven person to a realistic person. From an obese middle aged lady to a marathoner. The journey happened and along with it came all that I passed through to my clients, my community and my friends.
Back from the dead
The firm that I represent now is a baby born out of crises. Startup Squares is into growth execution services to in-market stage Startups and SMEs largely. What we do is not rocket science but how we do it is. You will know more about it in my work section here but then, this is part when things turned around. Today, I speak about resilience in my talks, but I believe that I am able to give those impactful sessions and huge take-aways only because I have actually come back from the dead. Giving up is not an option when you are associated with me. Pivoting is, improvising is but giving up, not really.
Building a new me
The sessions that I deliver are loaded with lessons from my journey and there has been no participant that has left the session without life changing lessons. Why wait to make your own mistakes when you can hack your growth through mine. Know more about my sessions under Talks. My life has been created such to be a lesson for many others and it is my responsibility to ensure it reaches as many