Holding a bachelor’s degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from RV College of Engineering, Anupama has been associated with GoFrugal for over 16 years now, prior to which she held the role of Project Manager at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Women Entrepreneur recently got a chance to interact with Anupama, wherein she shared insights on various niche business-related traits. Below are the excerpts from the exclusive interview.
Why do most successful people and geniuses prefer & encourage self-learning? How can one develop a habit of self-learning?
“The more you know, the more you can create. There’s no end to imagination in the kitchen” – this quote by famous French cook Julia Child perfectly portrays the importance of self-learning in one’s life. Thus, you can future-proof your career only by up skilling yourself, which is possible only when you have that hunger to learn more each day and continue this learning process throughout your life.
While there are numerous ways to imbibe self-learning, the best way to inculcate self-learning within oneself is to practice it like a ritual and not keep as a mere habit. This can be done in four steps – learning by online research, learning by doing, learning through joint work/knowledge sharing, and learning by teamwork/networking.
In your opinion, is technology a boon or a bane for the upcoming generation’s learning process?
Rewinding back a few decades, our daily experiences were the only source of learning and information back then. But today, kids can get access to any and every kind of information online within the click of a few buttons. Technologies is enabling students today to have an enhanced learning, thus increasing the effectiveness of the way knowledge is being consumed. For instance, ChatGPT has been readily integrated within courses of many universities, wherein the students are only restricted not to blindly copy-paste whatever content it offers. Technology must only be used as an enabler and not as the actual system for education and learning. Thus, the way we integrate technology into the learning process plays a key role determining its effect on the learning process of upcoming generation.
What are some of the factors to consider before deciding a career goal and objective?
Before choosing a career path, one must think whether that particular career is in tandem with his/her passion in life. One must have strong perseverance to pursue their passion and work hard towards achieving the same. Along with perseverance, passion and grit, one must also stay focused on achieving their career goals and aspirations by sticking to a single job, vertical and mentor in which your passion & goal lies.
As a women leader, how do you manage your work-life balance? Also, what are your strategies to overcome any gender-specific hurdles in the business world?
The most important aspect we must take care of in anything & everything we do is to have a clear set of goals. As a woman leader, there are a lot of areas where I can contribute to, but there are certain areas where I can make a difference. I have a clear vision set for myself to ease the life of my customers by addressing their pain-points in the best way possible. Thus, I aspire to engage myself more in such areas where I actually can cause an impact and prioritize them ahead of my other work areas & functions. Secondly, despite being difficult initially, I have learnt to say ‘NO’ whenever necessary. I strictly adhere to these practices and have hence been able to maintain a very good work-life balance.
As for tackling gender bias related challenges, I engage myself in hiring more women, training them and grooming them according to their career goals & aspirations.
What attributes do you think make a ‘good mother’ in a world where coaches are taught to be good, rather than nice?
We at GoFrugal had brainstormed this concept of ‘Good Mother’, wherein we ask every team lead/manager if they are being a good mother to their respective teams. This is because a good mother knows the exact strengths and weaknesses of her ever child. The same concept we have tried to incorporate in our organization’s people strategies. Only when the TL/manager knows the strong and weak areas of every member of their team will they be able to bring-out the best in them by training them accordingly.
How do you ensure continuous improvement of yourself as a business leader?
I am very passionate about cooking and would thus give an example as to how I ensure to improve myself. When I first time prepared Idli, I had asked my husband to rate it on a scale of 1-100 and got 50-55 rating. Even today, after five years of that, I still ask him to rate it whenever I cook Idli, ask proper feedback and accordingly tweak the ingredients ratio and cooking process the next time I prepare it. Thus, the strong desire of wanting to be better each day comes only through continuous learning, which I strictly practice in all aspects of both my professional and personal lives.
