Meet The SHEROES Aditi Bansal, Co-founder Ubunanny.com

“I learnt to bootstrap my personal life by applying startup principles”

I come from a small town in Haryana, and had an early inclination towards academics. It was my parents who encouraged me to participate in sports, and this taught me teamwork and persistence early on. I completed my engineering degree from NIT Kurukshetra and joined Tata Motors. This is where I grew up professionally, in the ‘Tata way of life’, and imbibed a deep sense of ethics and sensitivity towards people. 

My five-year stint at Tata Motors gave me exposure across diverse leadership roles, ranging from supply chain management at the Uttarakhand manufacturing plant, to selling commercial vehicles in the hinterlands of Karnataka. This helped me understand the many facets of business and management.

Driven by passion towards empowering parenthood and early child care in India, I recently took a plunge into entrepreneurship, and now lead the overall strategy and marketing at Ubunanny.com. In my free time, I like to play table tennis,  swim and follow social media trends. I am also pursuing a course in early childhood care & education.

The story behind Ubunanny.com: I met my co-founder, Deepali, at a friend’s baby shower where we started talking about babysitting options in the city, and shared our common passion for early childhood care. 

As we researched, we realised that one-fourth of first-time mothers in India quit their jobs due to the lack of trusted assisted child-care facilities. It really pained us to see this, and we decided to build a sustainable solution for this problem.

Lessons from working full-time and starting a venture of my own

• Being associated with a big corporate brought a lot of prestige and perks.  It took a while to adjust, but starting a venture taught me to be secure in my own identity and skills.

• I have learnt not to be afraid to put business assumptions to test through small experiments. It is better to have measured learning at an early stage, and act accordingly.

• From copywriting to telesales to customer support, the venture made me learn and develop new skills. I never thought about doing this before.

• I learnt to bootstrap my personal life by applying startup principles. Minimizing the personal ‘burn rate’, calculating a year’s worth of runway to provide a windfall.

A typical work-week for me: I dedicate one day each to – (i) Communicating with customers (ii) Product (iii) Marketing & Growth plans (iv) Business Operations and Recruiting (v) Meeting mentors, fellow startups, and potential business partners

Additionally, I make it a point to exercise each day and spend quality time with family.

The Future Is Bright: We aim to help parents across multiple geographies, and get them access to childcare services confidently, using technology and trusted services. I see Ubunanny as an organisation with strong customer centricity, technological capability and organizational culture.

We plan to induct passionate professionals in technology, sales and content writing. And it goes without saying that for all these roles, our top preference will be women willing to join back the workforce.

My Message:  “If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Collated By Paroma Sen