Shridevi Mahadevan quit her well paying software professional job and started a performing and fine arts enterprise-‘Navarasa’ in Koramangala in 2009.

34-year-old Shridevi, dancing since her childhood; she learned Bharatnatyam, and later Kathak. She also had passion for theatre and worked with Bangalore based Script Peoples Theatre for several years.

Shridevi Mahadevan. Pic courtesy: Shridevi Mahadevan

It was in  the year 2009 when she was doing one-year Executive Management course at IIM, that she decided to channel her love for performing arts into an entrepreneurial venture

Predominantly focused on dance, Navarasa also imparts developmental theatre training, experimental workshops in pottery, children’s theatre, puppetry, origami and various other activities.  

Shridevi says, “The idea is to bring art and aesthetic sensitivity into people’s lives and enhancing one’s quality of life is the primary goal for Navarasa.”

She never intended to continue being a hands on entrepreneur, “the idea was to settle the management part of it for about six months and look for some another job, but eventually I never came out out of it.”  She started executing, organising and strategising at Navarsa. Though having a penchant for dance and theatre she never taught.

But in 2010, her Kathak dance teacher left and she started taking classes and now she teaches full time.

Back when she started, Bangalore was more conducive for technology oriented businesses. She remembers that lot of people in The Indus Entrepreneurs in Bangalore (TIE) advised her to start a mobile-apps-development-company. But she was working on a different track. She tells, “I wanted to do something creative.”

Once she got a business proposal to expand her company through franchise model, but she did not take it up. “ Navarasa is set up for developmental activity and forcing business would lose the quality.” She, however, plans to change the company into a trust.

She concludes, “Here you discover the newer essence of yourself.”⊕