This week we invited yet another promising womenpreneur Atifa Beig for an exclusive interview with us to share her interesting entrepreneurial journey with us. Atifa is the co-founder along with Arpit Sablok at Aquaphile Academy. Their startup aims at providing learning about all the aspects of life and how to understand your mind, emotions, energy and body. Let’s read more about her and her startup in detail!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Atifa:
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey, please;
Hello! I am Atifa Beig, a 23-year-old Punekar trying her best to figure out life. My seeking has been such that it has taken me to places, given me experience in so many fields and at the end of the day, I am grateful. Well, as an individual I carry a nature to love, to live, to learn, to grow, to help others, to heal, to teach, to explore, to be fascinated with the unknown, to seek compassion for justice, to love good food, to find beauty in everything! Tough, reliable and always ready to make you laugh, I seek happiness in the smallest of things. My journey so far has been topsy-turvy, life has surprised and shocked me. In short, Life made sure I fell in love with it!
Being a child who comes from a family of scientists, engineers, and doctors, my parents had no different ambition for me but to become a doctor. I chose to pursue my career in Fashion studies (it wasn’t a cakewalk to convince parents, but once you take a stand for something no one can say NO I guess). After graduating I became a style consultant and kept getting promoted until I became a Trainee Life Coach, there is so much to learn about human dynamics, that is what kept me intrigued. Finally, I have decided to continue my entrepreneurial journey in a full-fledged way.
Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a job?
Unemployment and falling economy! Hahaha! Well, Aquaphile was established when we were college-going students. But once we graduated, we decided to enter the job life as well as manage the business. It took me more than a year to realize that it’s not very healthy to travel on two boats at a time. So yes, I made my choice recently to stick to growing my business and growing as an entrepreneur. Coming back to the first line that i wrote as soon as I read this question, well isn’t it the truth? I know so many talented individuals roughly my age (have just begun with their careers) but are sitting unemployed because of horrible work culture, low wages or not enough opportunities. Let me give you a heads up before I continue, these reasons are not enough or rather should not be the reasons you choose Entrepreneurship. Getting back, what helped me decide to now focus on entrepreneurship was to provide a part time opportunity to people who can add value to my academy. I have been in a place where I gave up everything just to focus on my job, but if the environment is not cohesive, growth is only promised in words. I chose entrepreneurship to bring out a change, in work culture, in the employee-employer relationship and to make people believe that working for someone can be a happy thing too.
How do you find the industry/niche that you’re in?
The idea of Aquaphile Academy came to us (Arpit Sablok and Me) when we were college students. Aquaphile Academy provides coaches to your desired location in Pune, all we need is your society pool and minimum of 5 students! We deal with a plethora of water activities starting right from Swimming, Aqua Aerobics, to Aqua Meditation and Aqua Yoga. We also do Personal Consulting to help people with everyday concerns like Parenting, Career and Time Management. The idea was simply born out of the market need, we analyzed. Parents are busy, they want to do so much for their children and want to make their child learn so many things but classes are either far or they have to pick and drop their child, here the idea struck to us that why not we provide coaches to the society itself? Wherein the child can come down to the pool by themself and go back home without bothering the parent’s schedule. Well, a simple USP but worked wonders for us. Trust me when I say this, if you are waiting for an idea to come to you for a business, don’t wait! Start tapping into the needs of people and your idea will be born. At the end, businesses are businesses because we cater to the needs of people. Any business is not going to thrive just because of a fancy office space, creme employees or high ticket services/products, are you creating the difference that you intended to create?
What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e. what’s your source of motivation?
Well, this felt like a friendly reminder from the Universe to get my schedule together. Presently, I am managing the academy single-handedly so i prefer working from home. Well, it has its own perks but also brings you to a lazy zone. I generally work faster during the night as everyone is asleep and you are left alone with your work and complete focus, also (frankly) sleeping without accomplishing something is a sleepless night, might as well work Atifa! So mornings generally start late for me considering I don’t have any meetings or interviews lined up. My source of motivation to do work I would say is my partner, Arpit Sablok, he makes me realize the value of each day and what it would cost me as an individual if the day isn’t used well by me. Because of him, I have realized that it is so very important to have a business partner who aligns with your values, purpose, and vision because only then can compassion and understanding come in. When I was young it always felt like, two people who are intelligent or have lots of money become business partners, BUT IT IS SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT. Mainly if you have chosen to be an entrepreneur, you are set out to create a difference that cannot be achieved if you have unhealthy differences amongst yourselves.
What challenges/obstacles did you face in your journey so far?
Finding the right recruits has been a major obstacle in our expansion and future plans. Since our services are unique and known to a very few people who can carry out these coaching to the best of standards we have maintained in the past two years is very difficult. If we find a person with the skill set, they may be lacking their customer relationship qualities which is the key element at Aquaphile. Each employee gets to interact with the customers on first-hand basis, and we have to make sure that a person can be the POC for every parent/student if anything concerns them. Also, since we have not picked up any funding and we are a start-up, we don’t have an office space where I myself can train people in how to conduct themselves or how to handle situations. Initially, it was just Arpit and me who worked at Aquaphile Academy since we did not have enough revenue to employ people, but as time passed we started realizing that we don’t want to make the academy on a single face, in fact, Arpit always says that our customers should feel that Who the hell are the founders? That is the depth of alignment he envisions to have in our employees. Time and again we have realized that we are not in this journey to be famous, but to create the difference we have always dreamt about. The difference in work culture, in team alignment, in Vision, value penetration and customer relationships. So to sum up – the challenges are many, but we are well poised to counter them all.
What comes first for you – money or emotions?
The simple logic is to NOT base your emotions on your bank balance. Your emotional well being and mental health come first in any scenario of life. This machine (your mind and body) can only work to its full potential when your energies are high and you are in a good emotional state. Waiting for the damn bank balance to go up, or having a big house, a car and then I will be happy is a never-ending cycle. Thanks to my time at Life Coaching, I realized at a very young age that everything one is searching for lies within, you are the only source of your happiness, satisfaction, and success.
How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
Pressure and stress are your own mind’s chaos. I always remind myself that this is not a life and death issue. Keeping calm and basing everything on logic is what is going to sail me through the hard times. Situations demand response, but often we react because we are not able to handle the stress which creates another issue to worry about, might as well take-charge in the first go itself. Don’t let any lower emotions rule you!
What is one strategy that you believe has helped you grow as a person?
I wouldn’t call it a strategy but a life learning that I have gathered on the way up till now, is that you have to take a stand for yourself. Mamma-Daddy, Friends or anyone will only be able to support you but in the end, it is your journey and your decision, if you don’t stand up with confidence and self-belief how can you expect someone else to do so?
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
Well, in my opinion, true success is when you don’t feel successful only when people call you successful. Let me explain, in today’s world we are waiting and desperate to be recognized by society, family and acquaintances ONLY THEN we feel we have achieved success. But measuring success on the scale of fame or money is not a meaningful way to go about life. For me, success is how many obstacles I have overcome? What once seemed impossible for me and now I have gathered enough courage to crack it? How many people have I created a difference for, have impacted their life in some way or the other? How many new relationships and bonding have I made? These make me feel successful and give me a reason for being. So my personal opinion on this topic of Keys to Success would be, increase your horizon, life is much bigger than we perceive it to be, so don’t measure your success on some scales but on YOUR sense of achievement.
What advice would you give to someone starting out particularly women?
I am going to let Arpit answer this question, he is a man I have seen who truly lives the word ‘Equality’ and is always up to pump up people.
I am not a great person to give advice to anyone, because I am yet learning in my own journey, but if I have to suggest someone starting out a business particularly women then it would be to first have a clarity in your mind about why you want what you want? which will help you to align your thought process and emotions singularly. The major hack is to push your will power with a reason when challenges come across your way. For me women symbolise stability, strength, emotional well-being and dedication. Today women have proven themselves by breaking a stereotype that existed in Indian society that they are meant to do the household work only. The increasing no. of successful women in all sectors of society justifies the very fact that if they can run the family then there is no doubt they can run huge business as well. At last I would like to conclude by saying –
“Believe in your infinite potential because what limits us is not an unfavourable situation but our own emotions and thought process”
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