The Anecdote of an Entrepreneurship Vocation
The narrative of Ms. Anooja Bashir, CEO & Founder of Ourea—a 360° Business Management Consultancy based out of Kerala, can be summed up easily in the words of Steve Maraboli and Roy Bennet – “Change your attitude and you change your life. You cannot control what happens to you in your life, but you can always control how you respond to it. The way you choose to respond is a reflection of your attitude. By changing your attitude, you also change your perspective and change your life.” and “Don’t let your history interfere with your destiny”. Most often it takes a little more than courage to break stereotypes and useless gender bias, the society often adorns an individual with. The saga of Ms. Anooja Bashir bears a living testimony to the fact that undying willpower, perseverance and optimism laced with skills and talent will always grant success in the end. Born and brought up in an extremely conservative environment, Anooja, a civil engineer turned entrepreneur, witnessed and experienced the bitter side of the patriarchal society at a very early stage of her life unlike many. Discharging various roles from interior designer to project manager to former assistant professor, Anooja has with her, a plethora of experience especially the ones that reek of gender generalisation and prude notions. This however, never pulled her back from realising her visions and aspirations.
The story of Ourea
It all began when the thought of setting up a finishing school for the umpteen fresh-faced technical and non-technical graduates, who come out of colleges and institutions every year, hit Anooja. Having spent a substantial aggregate of time in both academia and corporate space, Anooja was unsettled with the numerous rifts and fractures that existed between the adroitness of the academia and dexterity demanded by the corporate. She thus delineated her brain child – the LIKES (Learning Innovative Key Employment Skills) program. She sketched the modules of the program mincing and distributing the quintessence of the corporate ask for the students. The notion and impression of LIKES program pirouetted on the five essential elements of professionalism. This is similar to the Panchatatva theory of life, which spells out the five elements of existence. The whole idea at the time of its inception was a long shot. Since it confronted and stood against the conventional flow of the hackneyed educational style and corrupted skill development, the LIKES program harboured uncertainty and fostered widespread criticism. Unwilling to give up on the endeavour, Anooja stepped into the entrepreneurial phase of her life, as she concentrated on gathering corporate insights on strategy building and expanding the horizons of her knowledge. The opposition from her family on concerns of a career such as this with instability as opposed to her previous professions, the financial infirmity that came with the shift of métier were all disheartening. Still, the will “to be her own boss” kept her vigour smouldering.
In 2018, Anooja rose from the ashes of disdain and adversity to the modern-day phoenix that she is. She established and organised a strong footing in the entrepreneurial space with Ourea partnering with Mr. Vinod Chacko and Mr. Naman Modi, Anooja created an adept team with a clear sense of purpose, measurable objectives and tenacious infrastructure. Ms. Anooja believes that “Whenever a true entrepreneur confronts a problem, a pernicious and frivolous innovation rises out of it.“
Transforming the Global Pandemic into A Saga of Hope and Success
Ourea never slept or slacked off but we went back to the basics – learnt and unlearnt a lot.” With the motto of helping companies gain a foothold in the industry, Ourea marches with the entrepreneurial aspirants helping them in realising their dreams. The influence, experience and inspiration which Ourea holds thus helped over 100+ brands, both from scratch and revolutionising the already existing establishments by giving them a facelift. The beauty of this endeavour lies in its majority of implementation being in the time of pandemic. Anooja, today administers guidance, idea and clarity to those who seek strength and guidance to start their own entrepreneurial debut. She supports and advocates the pursuit of novel applications of social entrepreneurship focussing on woman empowerment and child welfare. She has been instrumental in organising nine plus hunger campaigns and various social and educational scholarships and fundraisers in and around the state. Ourea today, supports and strategises branding, communication and web identity of umpteen organisations both business-to-business and business-to-customer oriented with over thousand plus satisfied clients all over the globe. Anooja, being the Director of Marketing and Director of Operations for FlexiCloud and Digitaliz respectively, plans to upscale the LIKES concept into a diversified EDTech Platform, thus trying to explore the possibilities of automation and product delivery on a larger scale as opposed to the traditional manual process. . From a brand strategist to ministering angel, Anooja today helps and waters many organisations both big and small to stand and perform better.
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