Meet Ingenious Mom Richa Sethi!

Richa, an adventure loving mommy who wanted to relive her childhood with her kids, and nurtured her entrepreneurial skills into something which brought her closer to her kids and gave new dreams to many other young creative minds – The Writer’s Bug ! Read her interesting and inspiring story here…

Richa Sethi – Co-Founder, The Writer’s Bug

1. My Mom Quotient

I had a great time in my childhood and to be able to relive it with full gusto was the force behind becoming a mother. Hence the same excitement and adventure continues with my kids. I love to share stories with them in every form – in fact stories define my MQ. Stories, anecdotes, incidents are my perfect way of sharing life lessons & knowledge with them.

I believe in exposing them to varied experiences and they are perceptive enough to create their own intelligences.

2. My Mom Inc. Story

Children and education have been closest to my heart and that’s what pulled me out of corporate life to create meaningful platforms for them. I got trained in NLP in Singapore and decided to start my own venture after returning to India. The Writer’s Bug took concrete shape when we hosted Mumbai’s first exclusive children’s literary festival in 2012. The huge response reinforced our belief that Indian parents are looking for meaningful engagements for their children. I co-founded The Writer’s Bug with the purpose of bridging this gap and equipping children with creative, literary & life skills. We have developed learning modules in these segments with professionals from the creative field. These are offered as part of school curriculum or as independent yearlong modules.

We also began this year Young Sparks which is world’s first student mentoring initiative that provides professional mentoring to talented kids in the field of creative writing and illustration. Well known children’s writers like Sowmya Rajendran, Santhini Govindan, Bhairavi Parekh, Katie Bagli and illustrators like Abhijeet Kini, Priya Kuriyan, Kavita Singh Kale and Tanvi Bhat are part of the mentoring team. Along with running my own venture I am also a mentor with Cherie Blair Foundation for women.

3. Who inspired/ supported me:

Entrepreneurship has fascinated me for long and there are so many inspirational ventures around to learn from. What keeps me going is reading about these entrepreneurial stories and talking to varied people about their ideas and their approach to business. My batchmates and friends with their own start-ups are also a great sounding board for me.

4. Advice/tips:

Create an ecosystem around that will support you in your entrepreneurial journey. It could comprise of your friends, ex-colleagues, seniors from college, ex- bosses who could act as your mentors, discussion board for ideas or simply active network. Even on personal front an ecosystem of family members, friends and reliable house help is what will be your pillar of support in your hours of need. Invest in relationships and build a reliable team. Write down the whys of starting up and keep referring to this note when the going gets tough and you need to reconnect to your dream. Be open to learning and picking up ideas. The world around you is changing at maddening speed and by keeping ears and eyes open will help you keep a tab on the evolving consumer.

Keep ‘us’ time for yourself and kids and be completely present – mentally and physically. This is going to be your energy source for the rest of the day and will also allow you to keep the delicate balance between work and pleasure.

Finally don’t be too harsh on yourself. There are no perfect journeys as a momprenuer. Improvise on your way up.

5. I love BabyChakra because it’s a refreshing new platform that connects experts with the parents, it’s perceptive to the needs of the new age parents and futuristic in its outlook…

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