21-year old SP Jain business student who comes from a business family in Mumbai embraces co-curriculars and real life projects to better capitalize her strengths and address her shortcomings

Pooja Agrawal is a 21 year old who grew up in a business family in Mumbai where her mother Naina Agarwal and her maasi (aunt) Rajita Gupta, co-run Raina Engineers– a company that has been designing, manufacturing, erecting and commissioning cranes for over four decades.

She is currently a student at S.P. Jain school of Global Management, which has a unique Business Management Program that provides students the opportunity to study in 3 different countries and thereby getting a multicultural exposure and experience early on in their professional lives.

As the pandemic hit the world in March 2020 and colleges moved online, Pooja like many others, found a lot of time at her hands. She realized she was only using limited hours of the day productively, and had nothing meaningful to do with the remaining time.

Pooja started dedicating time and working towards women empowerment by getting involved with co-curricular activities beyond academics, and founded the Sydney chapter for Girl-Up- a UN Foundations Initiative to promote women empowerment. Over the two years of leading the club with 100+ members, they organized 4 events and 7 webinars to spread awareness, hosted successful fundraisers and presented about their work at platforms such as the Annual Global Leadership Summit –a gathering with a global community of change-driven, growth-minded, hope-filled people who want to discover how to voice their vision for a better future.

Through this experience, she started to realize the value of being involved in co-curricular activities beyond college.

Parallely she was also witnessing her younger brother Hemang and her cousins Yukti Gupta and Dhruv Gupta improve their soft skills, communicate better and become more disciplined as they engaged in real-life projects with entrepreneurs and industry leaders as a part of the Entreprise India Fellowship, that they had joined. The Enterprise India Fellowship is a program where young people work on real-life projects parallel to 1:1 coaching to better understand their strengths and growth areas and build skills and abilities that make them ready for life.

Looking at the impact it was having on them, Pooja also joined the Fellowship and had shared, 

“I want to grow more, learn more about the world of business and hone my communication and networking skills.”

Throughout her fellowship experience, Pooja worked on  4+ projects including  in-house projects like #karo-a movement to celebrate “doing”, and client-based consulting projects like Pilates with Aarti- where they supported a Pilates Instructor to do user research to inform their marketing strategy for their business.

Pooja Agrawal

Hometown: Mumbai, Maharashtra

College: SP Jain School of Global Management 

Subject: BBA – Entrepreneurship

Interests/Cares About: Women Empowerment, Environmental Sustainability, Accessible Education

Fellowship Span: June 2021- Apr 2022

Fellowship Activities Sneak Peek:

– Worked on 4 projects – including 1 client project with Pilates with Aarti to help them do user research to inform their marketing strategy

– Created 5 blogs by leveraging the monthly reflection-based content creation process (Conflexion) at the Fellowship where Partners actively learn to reflect on their learnings and feelings and harvest them into blogs, videos and/or podcasts

Next Steps post Fellowship:

• Complete her graduation in Sydney
• Wants to work with an early stage startup or in consulting and prep for an MBA down the line
  
  Self Testimonial:

“The fellowship has helped me feel more comfortable in my skin by pushing me to address my shortcomings in a constructive way. I’ve come a long way since I started my journey, and I’m thankful for the opportunities, connections, relationships, and moments that have played such an instrumental part in my personal growth”

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After putting in 443+ hours of work through these projects, Pooja learned about asking precise questions, delivering effective communication in crisp and concise manner (as opposed to her stronghold of long form communication), and valuing everyone’s time to the minutes!

As she juggled multiple priorities and came across various opportunities she learned that,
“Saying YES is important, but saying NO is also important. The fellowship has helped me feel more comfortable in my skin by pushing me to address my shortcomings in a constructive way. I’ve come a long way since I started my journey, and I’m thankful for the opportunities, connections, relationships, and moments that have played such an instrumental part in my personal growth.”  

Pooja’s reflections on her self-discovery journey and the major change she witnessed as she worked on multiple real life projects and created her body of work.

Pooja is a naturally curious person, who was keen on asking questions and getting them answered. However, she shared that sometimes in life, one doesn’t necessarily get answers or logical reasoning to the questions and doubts in our minds. Through coaching conversations with Aditya Jhunjhunwala, the Co-Founder of the Enterprise India Fellowship, she now doesn’t hold on to getting answers to everything, “I will continue to ask questions to myself to learn more about the part I played in creating that situation. But this time, I will be at peace knowing that some questions will never be answered, and possibly jump to asking myself “Why does your why matter so much?””

“Pooja is driven by a sense of adventure and responsibility. When she takes on a job, she makes sure she finds the resources and knowledge required to get the job. She is unafraid to ask for the help and support needed to really make things happen, which is truly a winning quality that all of us should inculcate,” – Aditya Jhunjhunwala, Co-Founder, Enterprise India Fellowship.

She has explored these reflections in her recent blog- “Why does your why matter so much?”– that she wrote as a part of the Conflexion process at the Fellowship. Conflexion is a monthly reflection-based content creation process at the Fellowship where youth actively learn to reflect on their learnings and feelings and harvest them into blogs, videos and/or podcasts there by developing their reflection, articulation and written communication abilities. 

As the pandemic calms and she transitions to becoming an Enterprise Fellow, she is now in Sydney to complete the final stage of her college program. And is capitalizing on her written communication skills and working as a freelance writer for clients that approach her through her robust online presence. Once her college program ends, she is looking forward to making a career for herself as a business consultant.

Interviewer: Nikita Juneja
Author: Rhythm Joshi & Nikita Juneja
Video Editor: Rahul Devkar
Story Editors:  Aditya Jhunjhunwala, Ankita Parashar & Nikita Juneja
Webpage Designer: Dnyanesh Chandewar

Pooja Agrawal is a 21 year old who grew up in a business family in Mumbai where her mother Naina Agarwal and her maasi (aunt) Rajita Gupta, co-run Raina Engineers– a company that has been designing, manufacturing, erecting and commissioning cranes for over four decades.

She is currently a student at S.P. Jain school of Global Management, which has a unique Business Management Program that provides students the opportunity to study in 3 different countries and thereby getting a multicultural exposure and experience early on in their professional lives.

As the pandemic hit the world in March 2020 and colleges moved online, Pooja like many others, found a lot of time at her hands. She realized she was only using limited hours of the day productively, and had nothing meaningful to do with the remaining time.

Pooja started dedicating time and working towards women empowerment by getting involved with co-curricular activities beyond academics, and founded the Sydney chapter for Girl-Up- a UN Foundations Initiative to promote women empowerment. Over the two years of leading the club with 100+ members, they organized 4 events and 7 webinars to spread awareness, hosted successful fundraisers and presented about their work at platforms such as the Annual Global Leadership Summit –a gathering with a global community of change-driven, growth-minded, hope-filled people who want to discover how to voice their vision for a better future.

Through this experience, she started to realize the value of being involved in co-curricular activities beyond college.

Parallely she was also witnessing her younger brother Hemang and her cousins Yukti Gupta and Dhruv Gupta improve their soft skills, communicate better and become more disciplined as they engaged in real-life projects with entrepreneurs and industry leaders as a part of the Entreprise India Fellowship, that they had joined. The Enterprise India Fellowship is a program where young people work on real-life projects parallel to 1:1 coaching to better understand their strengths and growth areas and build skills and abilities that make them ready for life.

Looking at the impact it was having on them, Pooja also joined the Fellowship and had shared, 

“I want to grow more, learn more about the world of business and hone my communication and networking skills.”

Throughout her fellowship experience, Pooja worked on  4+ projects including  in-house projects like #karo-a movement to celebrate “doing”, and client-based consulting projects like Pilates with Aarti- where they supported a Pilates Instructor to do user research to inform their marketing strategy for their business.

Pooja Agrawal

Hometown: Mumbai, Maharashtra

College: SP Jain School of Global Management 

Subject: BBA – Entrepreneurship

Interests/Cares About: Women Empowerment, Environmental Sustainability, Accessible Education

Fellowship Span: June 2021- Apr 2022

Fellowship Activities Sneak Peek:

– Worked on 4 projects – including 1 client project with Pilates with Aarti to help them do user research to inform their marketing strategy

– Created 5 blogs by leveraging the monthly reflection-based content creation process (Conflexion) at the Fellowship where Partners actively learn to reflect on their learnings and feelings and harvest them into blogs, videos and/or podcasts

Next Steps post Fellowship:

• Complete her graduation in Sydney
• Wants to work with an early stage startup or in consulting and prep for an MBA down the line
  
  Self Testimonial:

“The fellowship has helped me feel more comfortable in my skin by pushing me to address my shortcomings in a constructive way. I’ve come a long way since I started my journey, and I’m thankful for the opportunities, connections, relationships, and moments that have played such an instrumental part in my personal growth”

View Profile