About Me
There are many chapters to my story. Each one has shaped the person I’ve become.
I am Dr. Aparna Desai – an entrepreneur, business leader, gender-equality advocate, wife, mother and, above all, someone who believes deeply in the possibility of creating meaningful change.
My professional journey spans more than two decades across sales, business development, learning and entrepreneurship. Along the way, I have built teams, worked with clients, started businesses, made mistakes, changed direction and learnt a lot about people – and myself.
Today, four things hold very special places in my life: Ventura Learning, EmpowHer, Aayaansh Foundation and most importantly – my family.
Each carries a different part of me.
Building Ventura Learning
Ventura Learning is where the entrepreneur in me found her canvas.
I started Ventura with a belief that workplace learning could be more meaningful – more human, more engaging and more connected to what organizations and their people actually need.
Building it has been one of the richest experiences of my life. I have won clients and lost opportunities. Built teams and entered new markets. Made decisions I was sure about and many I wasn’t. Celebrated big milestones and very small wins.
And through all of it, I have learnt that building a business changes you as much as you change the business.
Ventura continues to be one of my greatest adventures.
Creating EmpowHer
EmpowHer is much more personal.
It is a culmination of my own experiences, fears and questions – from starting my career to moving through marriage, motherhood and different stages of life, while constantly finding my way between career and everything outside it.
My doctoral research into gender equality, bias and the mental health of women leaders helped me understand these experiences more deeply. But EmpowHer didn’t come from research alone. It came from living some of those questions myself.
I want EmpowHer to be a place a woman can turn to when she doubts herself, feels unsure about what comes next, or simply needs to find the courage to take that next step in her career.
Sometimes I wonder – am I building it for other women, or for different versions of myself?
Perhaps it is both.
The story closest to my heart
Some things we build from opportunity. Some from curiosity.
Aayaansh Foundation came from love and loss.
I lost my son, Aayaansh – as I may have named him if he survived – just a day after a premature delivery. There are some experiences that divide life into a before and an after. For me, this was one of them.
Over time, the grief found its way into something I could give.
I started Aayaansh Foundation to support expecting mothers and newborn children through health, nutrition and care during some of the most vulnerable stages of their lives.
Aayaansh will always be part of my story.
The Foundation is simply my way of carrying his name forward – hoping that somewhere, it can make a difference to another mother, another child, another family.
The people I come home to
Behind all these roles is my family.
They see the side of me that doesn’t make it into professional bios – the mood swings, the dreams and doubts, the long days, the fight to balance it all, the excitement when something finally works, the doubts, the chaos and everything in between.
Like many working women, I have realised that there isn’t always a perfect balance between work and life. Sometimes work needs more of me. Sometimes home does.
I have simply learnt to be present where I am, ask for help when I need it, and value the people who make it possible for me to keep dreaming.
My family gives me the space to fly – and a place I can always come home to – even if I fall.
And then, there is simply me.
Beyond the titles, ventures, qualifications and roles, there is simply me.
I am Ambitious. Emotional. Curious. Sometimes impatient (ah, ok – many times). Always dreaming.
I love seeing an idea come alive. I love meaningful conversations. I care deeply about the people in my life. And I want to spend my time building things that mean something – to me and, hopefully, to someone else too.
I am proud of what I have built. But I am equally shaped by what didn’t go to plan, what I lost, what I learnt and the people who have walked alongside me.
There is still so much I want to do.
And I think that is the part of my story I am most excited about.
Business taught me. Education challenged me.
I have always enjoyed learning – perhaps because the more I learn, the more I realise how much there still is to understand.
After years in business, I pursued the Advanced Programme in Strategy for Leaders at IIM Lucknow, followed by the Independent Directors Certificate Programme at IIM Bangalore.
But some of my most important lessons haven’t come from a classroom.
They have come from people. From difficult decisions. From building teams. From motherhood. From conversations. From getting things wrong, starting again and occasionally discovering that things work out very differently from how you planned them.
I think I am still learning. I hope I always will be.