A civil engineering degree with three gold medals! A masters degree from one of the best buisness schools in the country! And four years of work experience in the construction and real estate sector. She had it all that one defines as success. But her definition of success was a little different!
Anuradha Kedia would have been just another name in the real estate sector, if she would have not stopped what she was doing and started chasing her passion. But today we all know her as the Co-founder of the one of a kind positive news portal, ‘The Better India’.
It was the year 2007, when Anuradha and her husband, Dhimant were enjoying their well paid jobs as well as their well settled life. Anuradha was also associated with an NGO then. They also had a few friends who were doing their bit to make India a better India. However these bit by bit improvement of our country was never shown by the mainstream media. This is where they felt the need to do something different and think beyond the conventional.
In 2009, Anuradha Kedia and Dhimant Parekh co-founded an online news portal called ‘The Better India’ (www.thebetterindia.com). The Better India is an effort to counter all the negative news in conventional news media today and bring to light unsung heroes and organizations that are making a difference. They are also the media partners of many social events and have become a platform for people to showcase the good things happening all around.
As per Anuradha, she always did what she wanted to. Engineering was always her thing and MBA too. She enjoyed being in the real estate sector. However once their website started getting tremendous response from the readers they decided to dedicate their life towards this positive change. The impact was real and so was their determination.
Initially they started just with a blog in which they wrote about the few positive intiatives taking place around them in Bangalore. They used to go around on weekends in search of positive stories. Soon people started appreciating their blog. After quite some time of featuring stories from Bangalore, a journalist from Delhi volantarily wrote for them. Now they had two cities to be covered as well as a person who could give their work a journalistic touch. They then started India’s first positive news website. Anuradha left her lucrative job and gave her full attention to the website. They had their own set of challenges, just like any start up has. Coming out of the comfort zone of a fixed salary at the end of every month and investing into a new venture which was absolutely unexperimented was not easy. But she believes that if you have the passion and determination for something, then it has to work. And it did! Eventually even Dhimant left his job and joined in.
There has always been a debate between the options available in India for conventional careers and offstream careers. We often feel that our education system has nothing to offer for entreprenuers and creative people. But the duo has totally bursted this myth. According to Anuradha, they do not feel that they have wasted their time in doing the conventional courses as the career they have chosen now could never had a formal training. She feels that Engineering or any other graduation would give a base to a student and then of course they can choose the kind of field they want to.
She also mentions that doing MBA has given them a solid foundation in many disciplines such as marketing, new product development and strategic thinking. This has helped them to constantly think of new additions, to keep abreast of new developments in the media and other sectors, to reach out to people and to promote their website. They reach out to more than 50,000 unique visitors a month by word-of-mouth marketing only and hence she strongly believes that any kind of education is not a waste at all.
Though she feels that proper counselling and right choice of subjects would really help one achieve their goal on time but she also suggests the youngsters to take advantage of the digital world they are living in.
Youngsters should not just stick to a patterned way of education. They have ample time, and so they should experiment various things. One can choose a conventional degree course and also do something which interests them as a side project. India has progressed a lot in terms of education too. Today we have a lot of courses available which can be done in order to change our stream at any point of time, Young people should take advantage of this. And at the end you will succeed if you are passionate about something
Says Anuradha Kedia
In the world where success is all about money, and media is all about TRP Dhimant and Anuradha have set an example for all the coming generations. Lets Rise for India and keep working for The Better India.
You can read all the positive stories about India and the impact of sharing them on www.thebetterindia.com
This post is a part of our awareness campaign #MyCareerMyChoice. To read more posts from this campaign, please click here.
