Ms. Anooja Bashir’s entrepreneurial journey to becoming extraordinary, though very struggling with many financial and emotional failures, began very subtly. She graduated as a Civil Engineer and began her career in the corporate field. After some time there she completed her M. Tech and soon after pursued her career as an Assistant professor so as to balance her professional and personal life. The realization of the fact that today’s students were not exactly prepared for the real world, became the turning point for her professional life and the idea of creating a finishing school was born, which eventually led to the startup Ourea. It failed pathetically as she didn’t realize that to become an entrepreneur you can’t rely only on professional skills.

Eventually, due to her passion for marketing and with her experience as a project manager, marketing, and sales manager she joined one of the leading real estate firms heading the sales and marketing department. With the expertise gained in the marketing domain, in a span of a year, she relaunched Ourea. Though struggles were a part of the journey her never giving up attitude gradually build up Ourea into a strong marketing consultancy.

Eventually, when IT services were also added, Ourea turned into a 360-degree business management consultancy. She and her team have developed many brands with a clientele all across the world. During the outbreak of covid her theory of implementing the idea of an innovative program called LIKES – Learning Innovative Key Employment Skills turned up to be a huge success as HR system got strengthened and eventually led to an exponential increase in revenue. Her experience in academia and corporate helped her to create a bunch of young professionals.

The efforts and struggle she made to build a strong organization got recognized with several features and awards. Her model and strategies of taking her business with parallel ventures were neglected and criticized to many levels by many of her close ones but she believed that an entrepreneur’s decision should be solely theirs. Her keenness towards the corporate world and marketing sector pushed her towards pursuing more qualifications in marketing giving her a better understanding of the techniques.

Marketing being her forte she excelled in the field miraculously. As she got deeper into the corporate world her understanding of the bits and pieces of the industry was integrated. She being a woman again put a lot of halts in her way up.

Ms. Anooja held on strong though it seemed like every cell in the world was against her, she chose to stay right in. She strongly believed in Paulo Coehlo’s The Alchemist quote “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” and this helped through her difficult times. She held onto her dreams, hopes, and ideologies, and believing herself worked very well indeed for her.

Ms. Anooja chooses to look beyond this, but she couldn’t deny the fact that being a woman in the male-oriented world of corporate and business stopped her more than she could express. Holding onto her hope and an eye for inspiration, she finally found the right team and rose like a modern-day Pheonix. Today her firm Ourea has been involved with 100+ companies, developing them into brands. She has been a mentor for over 50+ startups and SMEs. Ourea currently has over 100+ satisfied clients in various vertices. She has created 50+ brands all over and provided them the face they deserve.

Being a woman in a patriarchal society can be difficult, but Ms. Anooja Bashir, CEO, Ourea aproved that with determination and will to chase your dreams can do wonders. Her 20+experience in corporate gained her the idea of innovative business models and the will to be the change the society has shown her the path to success.She is also the CMO of FlexiCloud,the managed Cloud hosting company in India and COO of Digitaliz ,the global web development consultancy. After all the struggles and hardships were recognized and appreciated by Indian Forum by awarding her the Women’s Excellence Award.