The below is a transcript of the Wonder Women podcast, which can be found on YouTube here. Content has been edited for clarity. See part three here.
Aparna Pujar
I think it goes back to being a working mother. Parenting is one of the toughest jobs in the world. For working parents, there’s this constant demand and challenge for time and resources of balancing work and family needs. The way I sort of handled it was I formed an ad-hoc network of fellow parents who agreed to help each other out, but mostly it was in the time of crisis and it was sort of ad-hoc and unstructured.
An example was I had to go pick up my kids from school, but my manager would call me for a meeting at 4 o’clock. My first gut instinct was call my husband, but he would be busy, so then call some of my other friends, but they would be busy and so I would drop everything and go to pick up my kids. At the time I just wished what if I had this trusted set of resources that I could depend on and make it known to them that when you’re in need, I’m willing to step in and help.
Parents are really good at actually helping each other out. I’ve never had someone turn me down when there was a state of crisis, all I was saying was I don’t want to wait for a crisis to happen, let’s try to bring it to “Hey, I’m busy this day, can you do it? Can you watch my kids on Thursday, I’ll watch your kids on Friday?” I wanted to create that environment where it sort of simplified the whole process for everyone.
Monica Antoki:
And it also creates a sense of trust that comes with longtime family. Like basically, we grew up with “The family’s gonna take care of you, grandma’s gonna take care of you and your neighbors are gonna take care of you.” It used to be like that, but we’re not like that anymore so I think what you’re doing is recreating family in our day and age with technology.
Aparna Pujar:
Absolutely, I tend to think of Enfavr as this platform which helps you build an extended family around you.
Monica Antoki:
And it’s so neat because we’ve become to detached emotionally from everything and it’s so quick, the transition is happening so quick and our attention span is getting smaller. We’re detaching emotionally from people around us because we don’t want to be judged, we don’t want all kinds of other things that used to be a normal way of life. Now we don’t want them anymore, we just want our likes but we’re losing that connection. I love what you’re doing with this it’s fantastic.
Since you started, what’s been the biggest thing that you’re proud of with Enfavr?
Aparna Pujar:
The biggest thing that I personally feel very good about is that I finally acted upon my dream and I formed a company. I designed this product, I built it from scratch, I created a team. I have a team that is sort of global; I have a few people in India, I have a few people in the U.S., a few people in the Philippines and we’re all working in this virtual company that we have.
Through this process, I’ve met hundreds of interesting people from all walks of life. I talk to parents, I talk to investors, and I talk to marketing people. It is a very different experience and to me, the best thing that has come out of this if that I’m learning so much. It’s keeping me excited and keeping me challenged and setting new goals for me. I am naturally the kind of person who likes to take on a challenge and see how far I can go, and so this had just worked out perfectly.
Monica Antoki:
That’s awesome. You’re a female founder which is fantastic, how is it being a female founder? What struggles do you have to deal with as a woman and what joys have you had while starting a company?
Part 5 Coming Soon!
