Bhawna Agarwal

We were told time and again to write against people stereotyping women as un-savvy technocrats. And we came across this wonderful person, who has been covered by tech story, and is known to be a precursor to the myriad online travel industry.

Bhawna Agarwal, CEO NDTV Gadgets, is undoubtedly one of the prettiest and most inspiring Feministaas that we have come across. Adept and savvy, she is an apt example of ‘beauty with brains’ and the perfect one to debug this myth. We entered her office to let a sea of positive energy hit us.

History

Bhawna Agarwal has been one of the very few serial entrepreneurs in the country and started her flourishing career with Times Internet. Within four years, she created India’s first travel platform, Indiatimes Travel. She never looked back ever since. She has been an advisor to OYO Rooms and also in the founding team of Yatra.com.

Knowing her parents were not too fond of the fact of her joining the start up sector, yet she was able to deliver and outperform to reach where she is today, CEO at NDTV Gadgets!

The Interview

Advice to startups

Coming from her rigorous experience with start ups, Bhawna gave her first tip to the start up community. Highlighting the fact that the first thought which comes to people’s minds on hearing “startups” is “Fund Raising”. The biggest problem that comes with start ups, is that before even materializing any idea, people want to rush in to raise funds. She advices to try out the idea, keeping the end consumer in mind, by bootstrapping (self funding), see how it goes, get the experience, and then apply for funding.

Testing the proof of concept for a new business is very important to run it.

She highlights the fact that it is also very important to  “be dispassionate about a passionate idea“. Blindly believing in your idea, without keeping consumers in mind is not viable at all. If a venture is customer centric, that is, if you are continuously taking feedback from the end consumers regarding your business idea, things will go in the correct direction.

If you start being too strong only about what’s there in your mind, without taking feedback, you might not achieve the expected results.

Gender Gap in Work Spaces

Bhawna Agarwal, spoke very positively on the issue of a poor gender ratio in senior management roles. Women have a tendency to feel happy and satisfied with what they have professionally. Resultantly, they don’t explore what they could be at a professional level. But, gradually trends are changing. There are super creative and energetic women entrepreneurs rising today. They have ambitions no less than Michelle Obama.She also stresses on the fact that women must take support from their own eco system.

When there is peace and satisfaction of achievement within, there would be peace at home.

Especially for ambitious women, it is important to encourage them to not let go of the inner fire, or get disheartened. She tells them, that they needn’t feel that they can do it all. Sometimes, work will get neglected due to other priorities, and sometimes vice versa. But, one needs to keep going ahead and moving forward.

Basically, she encourages the women to aim high, and keep reaching out to achieve their best!

NDTV Gadgets!

Continuously praising the work environment in the best media house of the country, Bhawna, stressed on the fact that the perks and benefits for female employees at NDTV were exemplary.

“They prefer not to talk about it”, she states proudly! NDTV has a great work culture and they look after their employees well.

There’s more to her advice. Subscribe to our newsletter and stay tuned for the release of part 2.

Till then keep the inspirational level high and up!