This story is about a strong-headed woman who successfully fought against all odds to transform herself into a successful entrepreneur. She is Anooja Bashir, whose story is great enough to be an inspirational epitome.

It takes a little more than courage to break stereotypes and useless gender bias that society often adorns an individual with. The saga of Anooja Bashir bears living testimony to the fact that undying willpower, perseverance, and optimism laced with skills and talent will always grant success in the end.

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The Beginning 

“Entrepreneurship wasn’t my choice but it became as a calling for me-“ The words of this powerful entrepreneur set an example to the world that undying willpower, perseverance, and optimism laced with skills and talent will always grant success in the end.

In the case of Anooja Bashir, entrepreneurship was not exactly her ideal career or dream spot but today no matter what, she is always at the beck and call of the same. The story of Anooja Bashir, a civil engineer turned entrepreneur has quite a lot of twists and pseudo-climaxes.

Graduating as a civil engineer, she has played many important roles both in India and abroad from interior designer to project manager and as a former assistant professor. Her exposure and conversance with both academia and the corporate for a tenure of more than ten years helped her in identifying the numerous rifts and fractures that existed between the adroitness of the academia and the dexterity demanded by the corporate.

Anooja has with her a plethora of experience, thus delineated her brainchild – a finishing school concept for professional graduates with venture Ourea in 2013.

The Glitch

She too, like other entrepreneurs faced a herculean task to start with. Having spent a substantial aggregate of time in both academia and corporate space didn’t completely aid her.

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 venture harboured uncertainty and fostered widespread criticism. The startup failed pathetically twice with devastating outcomes. Like every other startup, she too experienced a roller-coaster ride – full of struggles, ups and downs leaving a sweet taste of success and bitter taste of failures.

The Rise of a Pheonix

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 was all disheartening.

Still, the will “to be her own boss” kept her vigour smouldering. “A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong she is until she is in hot water”. These quotes of Eleonor Roosevelt find their crowning, out-and-out in the case of Anooja. She believes that the society in which women cannot apprehend their full flair loses out on the notable potential for modernisation, economic expansion, and modelling of jobs.

In 2018, she rose to the occasion like a Pegasus, establishing a concrete foot and intensified tactile signals for her venture. Anooja reanimated Ourea, the one-stop consultancy service that catered to all corporate requirements. She established and organised a strong footing in the entrepreneurial space with Ourea as a 360° Business Management Consultancy.

Partnering with Vinod Chacko and Naman Modi.Anooja created an adept team with a clear sense of purpose, measurable objectives and tenacious infrastructure.

Reconciling the Gaps of The System

She again incarnated her brainchild – the LIKES (Learning Innovative Key Employment Skills) and sketched the modules of the program by 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. She moduled the course in a way that the students get acquired the essential qualities required to be in the corporate world. In the past few months of recession, Ourea continued its strategy of transforming the talents into skilled employees to bridge the gap between tremendous opportunity and employee candidates.

The idea was to get talents under the verticals of Marketing and IT, train them in accordance with the industrial standards and corporate necessities for two months with a stipend. The program resulted in developing a strong human resource system that was capable of bringing more productivity and it eventually worked out well increasing turnover. Thus, this startup created a solution for a long-lost problem of unemployability along with an increase in manifold revenue generation.

The Entrepreneurial Stature from Kerala that withstood the Global Pandemic

Ourea with its notable vision and unflinching support to its mentees, designed and moulded educators, strategists, program managers and technocrats. Today, the venture does all the chief stages of branding for individuals and organisations. 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 the pandemic. Ourea today supports and strategises branding, communication and web identity of umpteen organisations both business-to-business and business-to-customer oriented with more than 1000+ clientele.

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 focusing on women empowerment and child welfare. She has also been selected as a speaker for TedX and Josh talks.

Her story is not just yet another tale of a successful businesswoman but of an individual who stayed self-motivated and never gave up on her dreams, no matter what the cost is. Anooja in her words, “(I) have created many more me“ as she has played many a role from brand strategist to ministering angel, watering many organisations both big and small to stand and perform better, thus to gain a strong foothold in the Indian and global start-up ecosystem.