Dariya Budhani comes from the business family of Budhani Bros Waferwala, a 6 decades old business which is one of the largest manufacturers of wafers in India.
Since childhood, Dariya was interested as well as encouraged (by his family) to go beyond the plain walls of formal academic education and get himself exposed to a variety of co-curricular activities such as dance, sports and painting.
In 2018, Dariya started pursuing his Bachelors in Mathematics at Fergusson College, Pune and parallelly also started to volunteer for Nature Lovers, a youth led environmental awareness and community service based organization, based in Pune. Over the 2 years of his involvement he helped with organizing and planning events, volunteering for sessions, brainstorming and discussing ideas to spread environmental awareness in his own city.
As he was getting closer to graduating from college, Dariya found himself at cross-points where he had to pick his next steps. He was brainstorming all possible paths ahead of him- should he pursue an MBA? Should he look for a job? Or should he start working with his family business?
That’s when Pratik Kela, the founder of Nature Lovers, recommended Dariya to join Enterprise India Fellowship, a programme where he could learn business and entrepreneurial skills in an experiential way from entrepreneurs and business leaders.
Throughout the fellowship, he worked on 9+ projects including 3 Enterprise in-house projects like #karo, and 6 client projects with organizations like Total Coffee – an e-commerce platform for coffee & one of India’s leading coffee startups, and Thrills and Trails – an organization that facilitates experiences for special needs families.
“Dariya is very curious and genuinely wants to contribute in a meaningful way to the projects he’s working on. Beyond that too, he’s always up to do more and his curious mind allows him to come up with creative alternatives,” – Ankita Parashar, Co-Lead of the Enterprise India Fellowship.
Dariya ended up working on the Total Coffee project as he was always expressive to the Enterprise team about his interest in the coffee industry. Looking at his curiosity and work ethic while working together on this project, the founder of the company offered him a job at his other company Benki Brewing Tools, which Dariya accepted and moved to Bengaluru for and worked there for 6 months in sales and business development.
Dariya Budhani
Hometown: Pune, Maharashtra
College: Fergusson College, Pune
Subject: Pure Sciences, Mathematics
Interests/Cares About: Being relaxed mentally, Experiential Education, The value of doing, Having clarity in this chaos of abundance of data
Fellowship Span: Feb 2021-Apr 2022
Fellowship Activities Sneak Peek:
-Worked on 9+ projects including 3 Enterprise in-house projects like #karo, and 6 client projects with organizations like Total Coffee- one of India’s leading coffee startups and Thrills and Trails- an organization that facilitates experiences for special needs families
-Co-designed an ebook to spread awareness on Osteoporosis and worked with JOSH Connect & SMILE Wellness Foundation to support their fundraising efforts for covid relief and science education for children in rural and tribal areas.
Next Step post Fellowship:
– Working as a Marketing Coordinator with the Enterprise India Fellowship
Self Testimonial:
“Enterprise has shown me how to make my ideas and thoughts into reality. I do not live in an imagination anymore but now I create my own reality. Like the Mangaka makes his reality into his mangas”