Shwetha’s story: finding harmony in the hustle

Shwetha Sivaraman is the Founder of Being Meraklis, a wellness brand in Bangalore, India that helps ambitious professionals find peace and fulfilment, without compromising their career success. Through one-on-one coaching services, yoga and meditation workshops, a podcast and a self-help book, Shwetha enables her clients to transform their lives. Still, even coaches need support, which is why she joined our Mentoring Women in Business programme. Together with her mentor, Abhish Nair, who works in Strategy, Operations and Partnerships at PayPal in Singapore, Shwetha formalized her business processes, hired a team, and developed a sales pitch that took her business to the next level.  

“I did my MBA at one of India’s top business schools, specialising in finance and marketing. Afterwards I went to work for India’s largest conglomerates. My life looked great on paper and I’d often have people tell me they’d love to be where I am, but for some reason, the success felt empty. I wanted to do something more fulfilling with my life, but I wasn’t sure what.  

I noticed that many people in my network, fellow MBAs, were quitting their jobs and running away to the Himalayas to find some sort of enlightenment or inner peace. That didn’t sit well with me, because they had so many talents to contribute to society, but they felt they had to leave in order to find meaning. I realised that there must be a way for people like us, ambitious professionals, to feel fulfilled and at peace while having successful careers. I asked myself “Can there be both success and peace?” That, to me, would be a life lived well. 

I decided to leave my job, but not to run away to the Himalayas. Instead, I started practicing meditation, studying Indic scriptures, and engaging in deeper self-inquiry. I found that inner peace that I was looking for and that I knew other people were looking for too. I wanted to share perspectives from the ancient wisdom I was gaining, but in a way that was applicable to people’s modern lives. So, I started a podcast!  

The podcast resonated with a lot of people. Listeners would contact me on social media to ask for advice. They asked some really big questions, like if they should leave their jobs or divorce their spouses. I wanted to help, but it didn’t feel right to give them guidance when I didn’t personally know them or their situation. What they needed was a life coach who could work with them one-on-one, offer them non-judgmental space to reconnect with themselves and find their own answers.  

I certified as a life coach, but I didn’t stop there. I got my yoga teaching certification and became an ardent student of the Indic Philosophy. What started as a podcast became a full-blown wellness brand, Being Meraklis. We offer clients a journey of self-discovery and transformation through journaling, breathwork, meditation, and one-on-one coaching, with additional resources like my podcast and self-help book, for those seeking further support. It’s been successful, but entrepreneurship comes with challenges, especially for women.  

Women have to fight harder to prove their credibility, regardless of our industry, age, or qualifications. As a woman entrepreneur, you have to believe in yourself, believe in the value of your business, and get other people to see that value also.  

Demonstrating value is particularly hard for businesses like mine, whose services provide intangible benefits. My business transforms people’s confidence, fulfilment and wellbeing. We have countless client stories to prove that, but those stories aren’t very effective when appealing to investors or pitching to corporate clients. They want everything to be quantifiable, but many valuable things can’t be measured. 

Knowing the value of one-on-one coaching relationships is what led me to join the Mentoring programme. I knew that working with a mentor would give me the outside perspective I needed to overcome my business challenges.  

My mentor, Abhish, was brilliant. He encouraged me to think bigger and push myself out of my comfort zone. He helped me challenge my own limiting beliefs about what’s possible.  

Abhish also supported me to set boundaries between my personal life and my business. Being Meraklis started as a platform for me to share my ideas and experiences. My life and my voice are closely linked to my brand, but at the end of the day, there needed to be some distance for the brand to scale and become the voice of the collective.  

Abhish used his expertise in strategy and operations to guide me in making my business feel more like its own entity and less like an extension of myself. He supported me to formalise my strategies, create quarterly plans, and fall in love with spreadsheets. Before, all my business plans were in my head, but now it is structured and documented, existing outside of me. That headspace has been freed up for other areas of my life!

This also made it easier to scale. I couldn’t have grown my business when it was just me doing everything. Abish helped me realised I needed to hire a team if I wanted to grow. I now have two employees and our operations are much more streamlined. Together, we’ve implemented new systems for measuring success and impact, which has helped us reach a wider audience. That all happened because of the Mentoring programme!

As women, we feel so much pressure to do it all on our own and get everything right all the time. This is especially true for solopreneurs, like myself. I think we need to learn that there’s no harm in asking for help. A mentor can guide you to that next level, then you can guide someone else in that same way!”