2021
Woman
I see myself as a changemaker in the industry
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INSPIRING
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2021 VOL. 02 ISSUE 01
A Dynamic Multi-Tasker Making a Difference in Multiple Verticals
From the I
EDITOR
An Inspiring Tale
nspiration comes from various sources. It originates from the free flow of ideas that transpire between people, inanimate objects, dreams, and extraordinary vision. Free flow of ideas amongst people are very much understood. But how can it transpire between objects and intangible things you ask? Well, it is quite simple when you put your perspective in a broader sense. Everything around us has a story to tell. Even though we are too blind to see the beauty behind things, it is still there hidden in plain sight. We just need to tap into our visionary insights to draw out inspiration in whatever we do. Now you might ask, why the inspiration? Where exactly this is going? This is leading towards leveraging the power of creativity in all the important things that we do. Seldom we do not realise that when we are stuck at someplace, or doing something, it is inspiration that moves us from one point to another. In life, inspiration is one of the strongest influencing factors that drive us to do a lot of things that impacts our lives in a dynamic way. Small or big, inspiration is what makes things happen and we revolve around it, in more ways than we can imagine. It is a source of power that many people use to derive their capabilities in personal and professional lives. It has been established that inspiration can be drawn from anything. Sometimes we have to go find it, other times it comes to us. It is curiously amazing in its own way. The more we try to unravel its mysteries, the more we get fascinated by its nature or element of surprise. Inspiration is a muse to creativity. It lingers in the space where creativity lies, and
ideas come to grow. An environment that nurtures productivity is what inspiration provides. Not only art, but inspiration covers every aspect of your life, wherever you want to take it. When we are saying that you could get inspired from anything or anyone, it would be wrong to rule out oneself. Sometimes, the inspiration comes from within and it turns out to be the one thing that you wanted the most. You can be your own inspiration on the journey called life. The key is to believe in yourself and never giving up. Well, as far as inspiration and inspiring figures go, there are a lot of people in the society who make a difference and inspire others to do the same or even go beyond that. There is one such personality who inspires a lot of young entrepreneurs and people who are looking to start their own businesses. She is Anooja Bashir, the CEO and Founder of OureaCorp and Oureansoul. This special edition of Insights Success features Anooja as an inspiring business leader who with her zeal and creativity is impacting the Indian business paradigm dynamically. She is a serial entrepreneur with various skills at her disposal and expertise across different industry verticals. She is best of all worlds and utilizes her talents to grow in this ever dynamic and evolving business environment of India. Dive into her journey of entrepreneurship exclusively with our edition, ‘Inspiring Woman 2021.’ Read away!
DarsHP
Darshan Parmar Managing Editor
darshan@insightssuccess.com
2021
Anooja Bashir is recognized as an
Inspiring
Woman 2021 for her diverse experience in multiple verticals while catering to the clientele from different segments in an exemplary way.
Sumita Sarkar Editor-in-Chief
Editor-in-Chief Sumita Sarkar Managing Editor Darshan Parmar
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FEBRUARY, 2021
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A Dynamic Multi-Tasker Making a Difference in Multiple Verticals
Even after failing twice, I stood up strong, building my company with strategies and experiences gained in the journey of evolving myself into my best
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othing is built in a day. We need a lot of perseverance, endurance, and commitment to reach our goals. Never give up on your dreams. Like Paulo Cohelo’s saying, “And when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” Also, failure is always going to be a part of your life, you will keep failing and that becomes the major source of learning. Though it might seem to be a hard way, it is indeed the best way.
Failure is the next step towards success.
The biggest challenge I face is to prove to people that I could build my dreams
“So, keep trying, stay focused, increase your knowledge, strengthen your network, build a great team, and besides all, believe in yourself and your dreams. Embrace your failures and learn from them.” This is the thought process of a business leader who strives to not only bring a contributing change in the industry she is working in, but also create a
handles the role of multi-specialist in her organization, getting involved as a Brand Strategist, Marketing Consultant, Business Mentor, and Corporate Trainer. “I have tried pretty much a lot in the corporate to have bagged expertise and experience all around,” says Anooja.
business environment that is suited and progressive for everyone. She is none other than Anooja Bashir, CEO and Founder of OureaCorp and Oureansoul. Besides being the spearheader of Ourea, Anooja is also the Cofounder and CMO of FlexiCloud (Managed Cloud Hosting), and COO of Digitaliz (IT Consultancy), and Founder of Anooja initiatives (social entrepreneurship initiative). She
After 10 years of corporate background and another couple of years in academia in 2014, she decided to bridge the gap of talents of academia and corporate, hence conferred the idea of an innovative program called LIKES - Learning Innovative Key Employment Skills. Though the concept was of a finishing school which later evolved into a marketing agency and then with the expansion of the IT wing, she developed it into a 360-degree business management consultancy. Ourea emerged as one of the strong marketing agencies within a year with its innovative and conceptualized approach. Eventually, Anooja collaborated with Vinod Chacko (Founder of FlexiCloud) and Naman Modi (Founder of Digitaliz) and got the best IT support for Ourea. “The professional team took a new shape getting us super stronger than ever as an organization,” states Anooja.
Anooja feels that every founder has a scar that reminds them of their struggle even after achieving their goal. She struggled in finding a balance in managing the team and bringing sales to the system. She also had a lot of deceit from people with who she got associated in business as Anooja truly trusted them and always had a belief that they had righteous business ethics. Besides, when she initiated her startup’s operations, she did not have a mentor to guide her for which she had to do trial and errors to figure out what is the best strategy to make the company grow, all by herself. Yet another challenge she faced in running the business was to make tough calls that disappointed her crew sometimes. “For the sake of the organization, I needed to be strict at times, though I am personally so connected to my employees as I have kept a lot of other things in mind while making a decision,” describes Anooja. Leadership Simplified As a leader herself along with her co-founders Vinod Chacko (CEO, FlexiCloud) and Naman Modi, who again are great leaders with
When I started my venture, I was criticized for my business model. Now, the same one has brought me success today accomplishments of their own like being CXO’s of their respective verticals, has taught Anooja that a business leader can enhance a company’s growth and generate revenue by strengthening their HR. In India, as a developing country, the trend and innovative techniques changes every now and then. The only constant resource of the company which does not lose its relevance and importance is its powerful and inspiring leaders. An inspiring leader can motivate his/her subordinates and needs to enhance the quality and efficiency of employees. HR itself is a vast area that needs an appropriate and
dedicated business leader. “In my opinion, the leaders in any HR need to be compatible with the employees and the system. The key qualities possessed by a business professional need to be effectiveness, appropriate delegation, and result orientation,” opines Anooja. In Ourea, Anooja and her team have a deep understanding of the necessities of CXO’s expertise in the field which allows us to get an indepth knowledge of the needs and trends allowing us to train and manage HR accordingly. “We train leaders to be the best HR heads to give out the best efficient results,” says the team of Ourea.
Anooja encourages a positive ambiance in the workspace for her crew so that they can concentrate and focus. “We celebrate every festive occasion with our employees along with their birthdays and special days,” says Anooja. She conducts team outings and yearly vocational trips to give them relaxation. Her crew is like her family. She listens to their grievances and appreciates and motivates them in timely increments. Talking about her inspiration, Anooja discusses a lot of things. According to Anooja, Indra Nooyi is a woman of strong mind and always showed boldness in speaking up about matters. She is an inspiration to every race who always gave the example of how to balance personal and professional life. “My mother is my role model on a personal front as she is a woman who inspired me to never give up on my dreams,” claims Anooja. She admits that her multiorganizing skills came from her mother who is a disciplined organizer. Her mother has always motivated Anooja with her strong will and always taught her to believe in herself. Industry Dynamics and the Pandemic Everyone in this world is moving to the cloud in one way or the other. “You can look at how spreadsheets are
Inspiring
Woman 2021 replaced with google sheets for better collaboration and conventional email servers are getting replaced with Gsuite and outlook365,” shares Anooja. So, it would not be wrong to say that cloud is an ever-demanding arena and ever-growing vertical. FlexiCloud Internet is helping those who want to move to the cloud and need a predictable pricing table so that they do not see a bill shocker every month. Anooja has partnered with a variety of public cloud providers who provide Ourea with servers and its team sells it to their clients adding management. “If you look at giants like AWS or Google cloud, they won’t provide support unless you reach a billing threshold or you pay a monthly fee for support,” adds Anooja. In her opinion, the cloud market in India is still evolving, which has a huge potential of its own. She had thoroughly dedicated her time to building the brand powerfully by training the team with industries best. “We utilized our time in finding out the solution to fight out the challenges of pandemic related business obstacles,” claims Anooja. WShe promoted Ourea’s employability program called LIKES – Learning Innovative Key Employability Skills. Her team modeled the course in a way that the students will acquire the essential qualities for being in the corporate world. The idea was to give the five vital elements of professionalism to enhance their skills like the Panchatatva theory of life. In the past few months of recession, Anooja continued her strategy of transforming the talents into skilled employees to bridge the gap between tremendous opportunity and employee candidates.
Indra Nooyi is my role model in business as I always felt she had a very sharp and logical approach to every issue that she encountered
Her idea was to get talents under their verticals (Marketing and IT), train them as per the industrial standards and corporate necessities for two months with a stipend. After the completion of the said period, based on their performance, Anooja’s team will either hire them or get them hired. The team’s industrial expertise allows them to connect a wide range of networks. Ourea as an HR management firm helped its motive of bridging the gap which turned to be beneficial for both individuals and organizations. The program resulted in developing a strong human resource system that could bring more productivity and it eventually worked out well increasing its turnover. “We also expanded our team with more employees, proudly enough we hired people when others were downsizing,” states the team of Ourea. Anooja and her team created a solution for a long-lost problem of unemployability for building themselves stronger than ever. Their revenue generation in turn was manifold because of the right decision taken. Talking about the IT consulting space, Anooja has always felt that the IT crew in India is the best as they are dedicated and hardworking. When it comes to consulting, most people perceive that it is a service industry. But the IT consulting is not only the service
Though my journey was full of thorns and rejections, I never gave up on my dreams
part, but it also includes the IT Strategy, IT Architecture, IT Implementation, ERP services, Systems Integration, Data Analytics, IT Security, and Software Management. The growth of IT and ITES has been phenomenal and has exceeded what anyone could have dreamt of in the 1980s. Despite competition from other countries, India has been able to hold its position as the most sought-after destination. It is also heartening that more and more services are being sourced out of India, and these services are truly based on knowledge and capabilities, rather than just manpower numbers and cost arbitrage. Anooja thinks India could offer a lot more in such KPO areas as engineering design, research, product development, etc. What the Indian IT sector lacks is innovation and coming up with conventionbreaking products - Somewhere in the flow, she feels that the enthusiasm that the new companies that come up with ground-breaking products get attenuated as the issues with cash flow and other things arises and shrinks themselves to a service-oriented company. “We are working towards building a few products of our own and help the innovators to bring their products to the market by collaborating with incubators and accelerators in the industry,” informs Anooja. Things to Look Forward to The first tip Anooja wants to give when it comes to building a brand is that be it any product or service, one should do thorough homework on who their target audience is to
Entrepreneurship wasn’t exactly my dream job, but it became a calling for me define their brand along with the purpose of creating it. “Another key aspect is stick to your vision and what exactly you want to achieve,” she educates. She extends her approach towards building the right message for your clientele rather than confusing them. Create your brand story and work on its visibility along with designing perfect visual elements for the brand. Make your brand stand out from the rest by innovative marketing strategies. Do proper social media promotion for grabbing clients’ attention. Always change your branding approaches according to the marketing needs. Nevertheless, without branding your product or service will just be faceless. Describing the future endeavors, Anooja conveys “I am seeing companies to be the frontrunners in app development, branding, marketing and managed cloud hosting in the next 5 years. We are working towards achieving that goal.” Ourea and its team are adding more clients than ever nowadays and all its customers are happily branded and hosted on the cloud. Anooja is looking forward to creating top-class brands and help them achieve their visibility via pitchperfect marketing strategies. She also has a plan of collaborating with training companies supported by Ourea’s tech to create an ed-tech platform. She and her partners Vinod Chacko and Naman Modi would like to provide jobs to professionals through various verticals.
About OureaCorp and Oureansoul OureaCorp is a 360-degree corporate management consultancy that is into Marketing, IT, HR, and training. It helps companies to gain a foothold in the industry. The company’s vision is to become the strategic partner for organizations aiming to achieve excellence in all functions. “We will give wings to their dreams by providing innovative solutions and helping the target audience believe in our clients,” claims the team of OureaCorp. It aims to exceed the clients’ expectations through innovative and customized solutions that provide their brand with a marketing and corporate boost. Its 7 domains work in tandem to achieve the business goals of the clients. “We want to understand, provide and work for the best of our clients. We believe in evolving with your respect and strive to maintain a global atmosphere where we value and encourage diversity. We always aim to be righteous with preciseness,” establishes Anooja and her team at OureaCorp. In her creative wing Oureansoul, she and her team always strive to blend conceptualization with creativity to bring out their creative side in interiors and events. Her crew possesses industrial excellence and a positive attitude which makes them take the extra mile to fulfill all clients' demands.
About Digitaliz Digitaliz’s vision is to provide professional and customized consulting solutions for its clients’ business to grow. The company provides its clients with the best business solutions for IT-based companies to grow and expand their operations. Its team provides deep research reports with details on which one needs to focus on. “We are experts in data extraction & analysis,” says the team of Digitaliz. “We are a company based on the moral values to grow with hands in hands with our customers and don’t burn a hole in your pocket & are extremely budget-friendly than anyone out in the market,” says Naman Modi, Founder of Digitaliz.
About FlexiCloud FlexiCloud Internet is helping those who want to move to the cloud and need a predictable pricing table so that they do not see a bill shocker every month. It has partnered with a variety of public cloud providers who provide them with servers, and then the company sells it to the clients adding management function. “If you look at giants like AWS or Google cloud, they will provide support unless you reach a billing threshold or you pay a monthly fee for support,” says Vinod Chacko, CEO of FlexiCloud. FlexiCloud presently supports any application that is built on WordPress, Magento, NodeJS, and Python - we are in the process of adding more application support. FlexiCloud’s vision is to enable everyone to get access to the latest cloud technology. “We enable small and midsized organizations to achieve their business objectives via information technology. We are trying to provide an easy entry to the cloud and understand in detail about its advantages with proper support and handholding to our clients,” states the team of FlexiCloud. Its core values include positive and solution-oriented ideology, accountability, trustworthy and customer-centric approach.
About Anooja Initiatives Anooja Initiatives is a social initiative of Anooja Bashir which is a thriving global community that lifts humanity and enhances the resources on which all life depends. Its vision is to create an Ideal Society, where everyone breaks the cliched social stigmas. Anooja and her team have organized hunger campaigns, medical camps, and educational facilities for the needy. She volunteers through raising funds and actively as well as physically participating in the events.