The Naina Experience

Aishwarya Mishra spent 12 years as a software test engineer before she enrolled at TAFE Adelaide and switched to interior design. She now runs Aishmi Design in Adelaide. She was born in Odisha, grew up in Hyderabad, and comes from a creative family - trained Odissi dancer, fashion designer uncle, mother in media. The software career happened because in Hyderabad, you're handed a short list of opti...

Episode 174. Manka Mishra joined me from Paris. She is from Dhanbad, Jharkhand. Delhi University, post-grad in Pune, a short stint in Mumbai, six and a half years in Delhi. Ericsson then moved her to Sweden. Thirteen years in Stockholm. Amazon then brought her to Paris, where she now works in business transformation. We talked about what professional survival actually looks like abroad. In Ericsso...

Episode 173 of The Naina Experience. My guest is Sabreen Haziq, based in Boston, on the production team at Buffer, and someone who has posted on LinkedIn every single day since June 2024.We talked about her "land and expand" approach to content: pick one platform, invest deep, then port the brand equity somewhere else. LinkedIn has been her anchor. YouTube is her current expansion, a rebrand of a...

Episode 172 of The Naina Experience. Supriya Joshi is a family law lawyer in Mississauga, in the Greater Toronto Area. She graduated Windsor Law in 2016, was called to the Bar in 2017, and practises exclusively in family law and litigation at Subhash Joshi Law Professional Corporation on Drew Road. She is the first lawyer to come on the podcast. Supriya and I met years ago because of a shared love...

Episode 171 of The Naina Experience is with Shefaly Yogendra, author of Uncharted Spaces, board director, and one of the sharpest pattern-spotters I know. We recorded on the morning of her book launch at The Shard in London. This is her first book. Shefaly introduced me to the word metacognition years ago. Her definition: what we do is what we get engrossed in, and the learning comes when you abst...

Saurabh Bhatia is the founder of Comix.one, a marketplace, crowdfunding platform and community for indie comic creators, all in one place. In this episode we talk about his 20 years in tech, growing up on A.H. Wheeler stalls in nineties India buying Nagraj, Chacha Chaudhary, Archie and Richie Rich, and the fact that we both kept our Archie collections in newspaper-covered wooden boxes until we wer...

Episode 169 of The Naina Experience Podcast with Deepika Jindal - empowerment coach, meditation teacher, and founder of Circle of Calm in Sydney. Deepika moved to Australia from India 21 years ago. She spent years in corporate and public service before a moment of clarity during meditation gave her the courage to leave a toxic workplace and start coaching women full-time. We talked about people pl...

Swapna Namboodiri is a multi-disciplinary environmental and sustainability artist based in Adelaide. She works with upcycled single-use plastic - turning it into sculptural wall pieces, large-scale installations, and wearable art. No formal training. No gallery representation. International sales since 2017.In this episode: 6 years at Infosys (with a full creative practice running every evening af...

I first met Jane Richards at a wine tasting at the Australian Ambassador's residence in India. She was there on an Austrade mission representing South Australian wine producers. When I moved to Adelaide a few years later, she picked me up from the airport. This is Episode 167 of The Naina Experience. Jane and her sister Claire grew up near the Limestone Coast - one of five kids, always around coun...

Gitika Merani is the Director and Principal Mortgage Broker at Your Finance Network in Sydney. She trained as an architect in Pune, built a career there, and then moved to Australia after getting married - only to find her degree unrecognized and her experience uncountable. What followed was a decade of rebuilding: a design firm, interior projects including Indian restaurants in Harris Park, a com...

Episode 165 of The Naina Experience Podcast - and this one is very close to home, literally. I'm joined by Saurik Dheer , a young entrepreneur and creative director based right here in Adelaide. Saurik moved here in August 2024 to do his MBA, having never visited Australia before - not even when his cousin got married in Melbourne two years earlier, because he was too busy running his business in...

Episode 164 of The Naina Experience Podcast - and this one has been a long time coming. I'm joined by Ravi Sagar, founder of SPARXSYS , a software company based in London. Ravi and I have known each other online since the very early days of Twitter - we're talking 2007, when there were so few Indians on the platform that you just kind of knew everyone who was there. But we had never actually spoke...

Connect with Varun , Amrit Bhawan & Ekat Living Amrit Bhawan Website Book your spot on the podcast

Conversation with Vaishali @augustrum who is an illustrator, calligrapher and artist based out of Darwin.

#TheNainaExperience podcast with @gora.pakora.jamie talking about his journey, dis-ease to healing, spirituality, being connected with his body & modern medicine. Book your spot on the podcast.

Soundarya is one of the co-founders of Sattva & Sage , which is a curated lifestyle marketplace that brings India's finest homegrown brands to Australia. They are based out of Adelaide, South Australia.

Gayatri Singh is a Private Chef, Supper Club Host & Recipe Creator in Melbourne, Australia. @gayatriisingh on Instagram

People change!

In conversation with Vibhinna Ramdev, who is currently in Adelaide with her show "Why English", for Adelaide Fringe

It's a conscious practice. Pay attention to what you're paying attention to.

And other influencer marketing things.

Also consciousness, energy, vibration, activation & other things with Exploring Consciousness with Jamie Miller.

Cooking and talking

Gratitude, Internet comments, teeth

In conversation with Adi Parmarr, stand-up comic from Amsterdam