Voice of Advaita

As a young child, I loved to read. I would read anything I could get my hands on. And I loved to share what I learnt. My mother shares how on our trip to Canada, the 6 year old me was enthralling co-passengers by reciting the 7 continents.  However, I didn’t know then that this would actually propel me to business. But right from the beginning I knew that I wanted to be financially independent.

After a Bachelors in Economics from Kirori Mal College and a Post-Graduation in Marketing Communication from MICA, in 1996, I started my career in sales and marketing at NDTV. I handled media sales selling airtime and new concepts. That was a time of immense learning for me. An enduring lesson I learnt from Dr Pranoy Roy was how to smile and ask for your money. This helped me tremendously in the future when I turned entrepreneur.

I soon realized that I loved to learn and share what I learnt with people. So very quickly, I was invited for guest lectures and taking courses in marketing communication in various business schools in the NCR.

On the suggestion of a colleague, in 2003, I moved from sales and marketing to academics. I was a visiting or adjunct faculty with a number of business schools such as BimTech, IBS-G, AIMA-CME. That was a fascinating time as I applied the skills of marketing & advertising to teaching. The concepts of student centricity, engaging discussions, roleplays etc were not as common then as they are now.  It was very gratifying to have engaged students. Additionally, I could spend time with my daughter who at that time was a toddler.

But soon, I wanted more challenge. Mafoi Management consultants gave me the first break in corporate training. I got an opportunity to train 30 principals of Akal Academy (They have schools in rural Punjab and other states in North India) for MacMillan. That experience is etched in my mind as not only were they all principals but they had gone through a time management session just the day before. Luckily, they were open to hearing me as “Dilliwalo ki baat kuch aur hain.” With that first success, I launched into corporate training.

In 2011, I finally started Larks Learning along with my co-founder Anila Rattan. At Larks we enhance profits of organizations by equipping their people using training, coaching and psychometric assessments.

The journey has not been easy. Starting a business is never easy but it was compounded by personal challenges. My mother fell seriously ill, I had 2 young children and I had a new business. However, my business was also able to provide me with flexibility and allowed me to follow my passion.

Some things that worked for us were: keeping fixed costs low, building an amazing network of trainers and facilitators and working hard at increasing competence in learning and development with diploma’s and certifications in training, assessments and coaching. We focused on providing excellent customer service and understanding the business reason for any learning intervention that we were to provide. We also managed to obtained the India franchise for Extended DISC International (a premier psychometric tool).

In 2016, upon realising how under-represented women were in leadership, I co-founded Women Lead India. At Women Lead, we equip women in corporate India to reach leadership roles. We have found that some of the challenges that women face are unique and the training & coaching we provide can catapult them to the next level. One of our workshop participants said that her key takeaway was, “If I don’t ask then I am the loser.” And just by asking she went from managing 1 building to 3 buildings in the span of 1 year.

Our work has started getting noticed and today we have very prominent clients such as DuPont, BHEL, CPA Global, Bharti Realty, L&T, Creative Travel, CNHi, Host Books etc.

The journey at Larks Learning till now : 8+ years, 100+ clients, 2000+ training days pan India and we are still raring to go.