Anuja Paliwal & AVI Living

                 

Anuja was born and brought up in a business family in Delhi and did her Economics Hons. from Lady Shri Ram College, followed by an MBA from SP Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai. She did her CFA alongside the MBA, and got the opportunity to work with a very prestigious Wealth Management firm in Mumbai.

Anuja got married within a year of starting work and relocated to an industrial town near Delhi; Panipat. Anuja’s husband’s family is into exports and manufacturing home textiles since 1968. Over a period of time, Anuja started observing how their friends and family were always reaching out to them for their products as their designs and quality were not available in India.

Anuja saw this as an opportunity to start AVI Living (earlier called AVIRA HOME). The aim was to bring international designs, premium quality home linen, which were manufactured in-house and sustainably, to the doorsteps of Indian customers.

Becoming a mompreneur wasn’t a conscious decision, it was something that just happened. Anuja was always clear that she wanted to be actively working, while also being a hands-on mom. She also discovered that having her own business gave her a lot of flexibility in terms of timing. Her family wholeheartedly supported her in this venture.

Anuja has faced several hurdles along the way which she has taken to be great learning experiences. Being from a finance background, she had to learn about the technology involved in the business from scratch. She was a newbie where social media was concerned and she soon realised that she needed to learn fast if she wanted to widen the scope of her business. She took multiple online trainings and courses to figure it out and today she is a fairly confident social media user. Another challenge Anuja faced was building a good team, incentivising them and training them.

With the pandemic, the challenges only increased. Apart from juggling her two daughters’ online classes, Anuja also had to figure out innovative ways to keep the business from taking too big a hit because of the lockdowns. Even today, Anuja often feels the struggle of running a growing business alongside being there for her kids.

Initially the brand was called AVIRA HOME, derived from the names of Anuja’s in-laws (Avinash & Rani). This was in use for several years before an objection was raised by AVIRA Antivirus (a German company) for the use of the word AVIRA. By then an association with the name AVIRA had already been built (AVIRA towels was a top 10 ranked keyword on google), so the family decided to rename the brand to AVI Living.

Apart from her work. Anuja loves to read, listen to music and dance. She is a trained vocalist in classical Indian music and the dance form of Kathak.

Follow her on

https://www.instagram.com/aviliving/


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