It’s well known that leadership involves a fundamental identity shift. However, it is also true that since the days of yore, women, confronting all sorts of risks, have carved out positions of leadership for themselves, at work and in society at large. Breaking the shackles of gender bias, navigating along a labyrinth of obstacles, with a razor edged balance between work and personal life, women of today have been aggressively driving their focus towards building a career. Anjali Pais, Founder & CEO of Aquilar Strategic Services- a strategic human resources consulting firm, is one of those trailblazing women, shining bright from India’s young C-suite pack of leaders.

Anjali, a commerce graduate having completed her masters in management studies, has over 18years of experience across diverse verticals such as operations, sales, marketing & branding, and human resources, in start-ups& corporates, that too across multiple industries. Transitioning from a C level corporate executive, into a successful entrepreneur, Anjali today is an acclaimed strategic HR leader, carving a niche for herself and her company Aquilar Strategic Services. The Women Entrepreneur India magazine team interviewed Anjali to know more about her inspiring leadership journey, leadership mantra and more.

Introduce us to Aquilar strategic services. Take us through the foundation journey of the firm and the underlying idea that compelled you to take up the entrepreneurial route.

I have more than 18 years of industry experience where I worked in fields such as operations, branding and marketing & sales. But, it was in the last few years that I transitioned into a human resources role. Having forayed from a business role into human resources, the one thing I enjoy impacting as a strategic HR Partner is the productivity and ROI of my clients. To me, human resources as a function, is the amalgamation of everything in business as it encompasses the gamut of all people, without whom, any business would cease to exist. Hence, each and every employee is an active business partner, stoking productivity and impacting the top line and bottom line of the organization in his/her own way.

Being a people centric person, with a firm business acumen, I realized early on, the importance of managing the people function efficiently. And, this is what led me to start my boutique consulting firm Aquilar Strategic Services, where we strive to be a productivity partner for our multiple clients. My personality too is quite dynamic, and hence, after having spent a significant time in the domestic and international corporate arena, I became an entrepreneur, and established Aquilar Strategic Services, a boutique strategic human resources consulting firm.

Understanding the client’s businesses, and integrating cognitive psychology into our work processes we provide clever, cost-effective, impactful and easy to implement services as per their business needs. We address organization wide productivity across multiple areas: attitudinal improvement and increased engagement, leadership enhancement, organization realignment and resource optimization, as well as culture building. And through this, we impact our client’s business metrics.

Tell us about some of the most significant leadership mantras and philosophies that define your approach to work and leadership.

My first and most important belief in life (even beyond a leadership mantra) is purity of intention. When you give, you become a channel of abundance and you too receive. We practice that actively at Aquilar, where the culture of helping is celebrated. In fact, one of our verticals – the content creation one is altruistic in nature and the closest to my heart. We have hired specifically, mothers who have a need to work from home. I believe one way in which we as women contribute largely is by grounding the next generation. Hence, I wanted to do something different from a business model perspective for my country. Today, I've got this gamut of extremely intelligent mothers who work with different timeframes be it eight hours or six hours, and actually produce cutting edge content, where operations and HR psychology are merged in. Our good work has also got us some of the biggest brands as clients and one of our clients has won two national awards as well for the work that we have done for them.

My second is trust and authenticity. And we as a company practice first what we preach to our clients. These are the founding pillars of everything we do as a team.

And finally, the third and probably one that is very strongly associated with my personality, is passion. Our hiring at Aquilar is quite intuitive and while we look for basic skills we believe that hiring for pure talent is inefficient. We look for the right mind-set, and believe that skills will be built thereafter. Learning can happen anywhere and at any time. However, it is the attitude of gratitude, commitment, humility and accountability, that drives performance. In short, when you bring passion to the table, and your intention is pure, everything works out.

“We practice that actively at aquilar, where the culture of helping is celebrated. In fact, one of our verticals – the content creation one is altruistic in nature and the closest to my heart”

What have been some of the most critical business challenges that you have had to face as an entrepreneur? Alternately also tell us about a few significant milestones achieved by Aquilar strategic services.

Every dawn brings with it new challenges and opportunities – and honestly we choose to see our challenges as opportunities. Many a time, our clients have been quite demanding as they too are high performing organizations. Hence one of the most interesting challenges I have faced is creating a team that can continue the journey of excellence with the client without me being a part of it. Typically, lack of delegation and micromanagement is very common in small firms. However, I firmly believe that unless I can replace myself, I can not do anything bigger. As a leader, I try to prep people with skills better than mine. I will continue to seed in people the degrees of excellence, which will either match or outshine mine.

My journey with Aquilar has been rather interesting. We are fairly young, but already have some very big names as our clients and our entire growth has been referral based and though repeat business. My most memorable achievement is when a client of mine won two national awards for the content that we had created for them. It was a very proud moment for us. Another very proud moment was when we actually turned around a start-up by restructuring and reorganizing their people practice.

As A Successful Entrepreneur, Where Do You Draw Inspiration From? What Would Your Advice Be To Other Young Women Who Aspire To Make It Big In Life As Entrepreneurs?

My inspiration, and confidence in being an entrepreneur comes from the two most important men in my life: my dad and my husband, both of who saw in me potential, when I never saw it myself. I hail from an entrepreneurial family and entrepreneurship runs through my bloodstream. My father always wanted me to be a career woman. It used to be a given, that if any woman was featured in a newspaper, that page would be brought to my notice by my dad with the suffix “… and you should one day be like her”. My husband not only placed his faith in my becoming an entrepreneur, but also takes pride in all of my company’s achievements. I owe a lot to my teachers, bosses, juniors, clients, friends and even coworkers. I’ve learnt so much from each and every one of them.

Advice to young entrepreneurs: Everyone has good days and bad days. However, what differentiates the great from the average is the ability to get up after falling down, and keep going strong. Also, whatever you do, always have a pure heart to give, and make a big difference to every life you touch.

Anjali Pais, Founder & CEO, Aquilar Strategic Services

Anjali, a commerce graduate having completed her masters in management studies, has over 18years of experience across diverse verticals such as operations, sales, marketing & branding, and human resources, in start-ups& corporates, that too across multiple industries.