Something’s are destined to take place; as so is the story of Anooja Bashir, the CEO and founder of Ourea (OureaCorp and Oureansoul), Cofounder & CMO of FlexiCloud (Managed Cloud Hosting), and Founder of Anooja initiatives (socialentrepreneurship initiative).
While, entrepreneurship wasn’t exactly her dream job but it was a calling from nature. A decade of a successful corporate background and another few years in academia in 2014, Anooja decided to bridge the gap of talents of academia and corporate, and 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 on evolved into a marketing agency, and then with the expansion of the IT wing, she developed into a 360-degree business management consultancy. It wasn’t easy for Anooja but it was her persuasive nature that brought her to these heights.
“Though my journey was full of thorns and rejections, I never gave up on my dreams. Even after failing pathetically twice, I stood up strong, building my company with strategies and experiences gained in the journey of evolving myself into my best. Ourea emerged as one of the strong marketing agencies within a year with its innovative and conceptualized approach.”
Anooja Bashir, CEO & Founder of Ourea
Currently, she is handling the role of multi-specialist in the organization, getting involved as a Brand Strategist, Marketing Consultant, Business mentor and Corporate trainer. She has an hands on experience the corporate to have bagged expertise and experience all around.
What motivates Anooja is people, innovation, any idea that leads to growth, and various other factors as it’s an evolutionary process. But her biggest motivation is to challenge me constantly as she keeps refining her skills and upgrading personally and professionally. When she face a tough situation, Anooja starts by making all the possible positive outcomes from that situation. At the moment, her motivation has been leading my entire team to higher successes as they are in process of scaling up and expanding.
The Thought behind Ourea:
As the tagline speaks, we design visions of our clients into reality. We always strive to build more brands from the product so that our customers who are into business have more visibility and lead generations. Providing solutions to the IT hassles of clients gives me a pride feeling that could serve the clients with utmost sincerity and satisfaction. So that clients are digitally supported.
Ourea consulting provides the best professional aspirants to an organization making their HR strong. With our program LIKES, we train graduates with proper etiquette to fit in the corporate world. Hence it’s indeed a privilege for us that in Ourea academy, we prepare leaders for the future to be the best CXO’s in the industry.
Adding to this, Anooja mentions, “The passion and vigor to evolve Ourea as a one-stop for all business needs always keeps motivated, excited, and moves ahead even when facing hassles. Since we have multi verticals, it is our major advantage, our once approached client takes other services from us only which intern generates revenue in our system.”
In addition to this, she adds, “Handling the role of a multi-specialist from the skills, and experience I have urged in all my career. Since I am an engineer by education, that skill of mine had always helped me to be a go-getter along with logical thinking of how to crack problems. Being a woman has truly made me a multitasking professional so that I handle the many verticals of the organization, My creative and analytical skills made me a strategist and lay my hands over branding evolving so many products into elegant brands. Be I think our venture became a successful one as our team had the combination of creative and technical skills supplemented by knowledge in the ecosystem.
The aim is to supplement our clientele with digital products other than the services to support more entrepreneurs to make a mark in the industry.
Dealing with Challenging Times:
Ourea had thoroughly dedicated our time in building our brand powerful by training the team with industries best and utilized our time in finding out the solution to fight out the challenges of pandemic related business obstacles. We promoted our employability program called LIKES – Learning Innovative Key Employability Skills. We 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, the organization continued the 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 our verticals (Marketing and IT), train them in accordance with the industrial standards and corporate necessities for two months with a stipend. After the completion of the said period, on the basis of their performance, either hire them or get them hired. The organizations industrial expertise allows connecting a wide range of networks and as an HRmanagement helped the 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 was capable of bringing more productivity and it eventually worked out well increasing our turnover.
“We also expanded our team with more employees, proudly enough we hired people when others were downsizing. We created a solution for a long-lost problem of employability for building us stronger than ever. Our revenue generation in turn was manifold because of the right decision taken.”
-Anooja Bashir
Testing times for Anooja:
The biggest challenge I face is to prove people that I was capable of building my dreams.Initially when I started my venture ,I was been criticized for my business model ,the same which has bought me today success .I feel every founder has a scar which reminds them of theirstruggle even after achieving their goal. I literally struggled in finding a balance in managing theteam and bring in sales to the system.I also had lot of deceit from people who I got associated inbusiness as I truly trusted them and always had a belief that they had business ethics. Besides, when I began my startup, I didn’t had a mentor to guide me for which I myself had to do trail anderrors to figure out what’s the best strategy to make the company grow.Yet, another challenge Iface in running in business is to make tough call that disappoints my own crew.For the sake of organization I need to be strict at times, though I am personally so connected to my employees asI have keep a lot of other perceptive in mind while taking a decision.
Inspire and Inspiration:
Nothing is built in a day. We need a lot of perseverance, endurance, and commitment to reach our goals. Never ever 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.” So keep trying, stay focused, increase your knowledge, strengthen your network, build a great team, and besides all believe in yourself and your dreams.. Get updated of anything & everything connected to technology. Bring in sustainable innovation with a smart thinking approach.
Also, failure is always going to be a part of your life, you 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 step towards success. So embrace your failures and learn from them
Indrani Nooyi is my role model in business as I always felt she had very sharp and logical approach to every issue that she encounters. She is a woman of strong mind and always showed boldness in speaking up matters. She is an inspiration to the eve race who always gave example of how to balance personal and professional life. My mother is my role model on a personal front as she is woman who inspired me to never give up on my dreams. I got my multi organizing skills from my mother who is a disciplined organizer. My mother has always motivated me with her strong will and always taught me to believe in myself .
