Must-Follow Changemakers For Motherhood Inspiration
1. Simrun Chopra (@simrun.chopra) – Deep Health Coach & Nutritionist.
Getting healthy takes effort & willpower, but once you get there, going forward becomes a matter of routine. Simrun Chopra proves the same with her story. 6 years ago, she was 81 kilos, had a bulged spinal disc, PCOS, gestational diabetes and in turn, low self-esteem and severe mood swings. Thankfully, she had her baby boy without any danger to his health. Post-pregnancy, she was diagnosed with postpartum depression, and that led her to take charge of her health.
She started working out and losing weight. Her dress sizes reduced and people began noticing. From then on, even while she was very busy taking care of her baby, making time for her workouts stopped being a challenge. Gradually, her health problems receded and her body felt stronger. People were stunned at her transformation, The impact of good nutrition fascinated her enough to want to study it. After gaining her certification in nutrition science and behaviour change, she then went on to complete her Level 2 Masters certification. All through her journey, she received messages and posts from 100s of women who had gone through incredible difficulties themselves. Realising that her story wasn’t unique, she decided to help in any way she could. That marked the beginning of ‘Nourish with Sim’, where she started giving little bits of advice and pretty soon, it became a full-time activity. Today, with 25,000+ people in her programs, she works to deliver high-quality programs that combine diet and nutrition advice with 30-minute workout sessions daily. The results speak for themselves.
Prerna Sinha (@maaofallblogs) - Award-winning blogger and founder of MAAOFALLBLOGS, co-founder at I.N.S.P.I.R.E Awards, mom fitness influencer, certified ashtanga yoga coach, face yoga and yin yoga teacher.
A master of many talents, Prerna is a full-time professional blogger, who has worked with the brands like of Pampers, Nestle, Cleartrip, Unilever, Philips, Whisper, Asus, Hamleys and more. She has been blogging since 2012 and her page, her blog: MaaOfAllBlogs over the years has been rated as one of the top blogs on various sites like Social Samosa, Blog Chakra, Womensweb, India Top Blog Influencer, and Miss Malini and she has also been awarded as one of the Top Digital Power Users in India. She speaks on various blogging and parenting forums as an expert. Before motherhood nudged her into this transition, she spent a decade in the garment industry. Her Inspiration to start a blog and to share her experiences on the blog came when she had to quit her career midway to undertake the role of motherhood. That’s what led her to be so passionate about the cause of women in the workforce and senior leadership. Through the blog, she works on various social causes for women and kids like sex education, women empowerment and similar topics. She also believes in training newbie bloggers on the nuances of blogging through various workshops. Her venture, I.N.S.P.I.R.E Awards was also born out of a desire to give a platform for inspiring, celebrating and recognizing the moms who had to give up their choice of careers after having kids and gathered the courage to embark on a new chosen path to achieve their dreams.
3. Tanya Mehra (@tannzymommy) - Mom blogger, Certified in Child Nutrition, and Yoga Instructor
After giving birth to her daughter, Tanya decided to quit her corporate job at Ernst & Young (EY) where she was working as a Senior Business Research Analyst and started helping new parents overcome the struggles of parenting and childhood nutrition, something that she had faced while bringing her up too. So, she opened an Instagram blog for the same, where she would educate new parents through simple videos and workshops. She has studied Child Nutrition and continuing her studies in this area to impart more knowledge to parents about the importance of early childhood nutrition. She has been trying to cover every single topic on child care and nutrition that a parent would want credible, tried & tested information on. Her followers call her the “Google of Child Care.”
She started this blog in Oct 2020, when her daughter was just 3 months old without the intention of becoming an influencer, but simply recording her memories. She didn’t even know how to operate Instagram. All she knew was that she wanted to help new moms with answers that are all over the place. Because being a new mom (esp. in a nuclear setting) is the toughest spot to be in, and she just wanted to lend a helping hand to mothers, and so she is!
4. Sneha (@candid.growingup.diaries) - Parenting Coach
Parenting comes with no manual or training, and it is tricky to traverse it all on your own. When her son was born, she set out to find her own manual by reading a lot about parenting and child brain development. During this time, she realised that there is a lot of staggered information which is presented in a very clinical way. What mothers needed was something that was easy to consume, understand and execute.
Sneha took it upon herself and set out to educate herself and then share her learning in more relatable and practical ways. This is how candid.growingup.diaries started, and her journey as a parenting coach has been gratifying more than anything else. She feels immense gratitude and happiness when her blog is able to help a mom. She considers this to be her way of giving back to society.
5. Anu Menon (@exlolakutty) - Anchor, performer, stand-up comedian.
When Anu Menon chose to pursue the Arts over Biology, her science teacher was heartbroken. “But you dissected a frog so well! Don’t you want to work hard anymore?” Despite her superior frog dissection skills, Anu did a master's in drama in London and moved to Bombay to pursue her first love- the stage. For 8 years she was better known as her alter-ego VJ Lola Kutty on Channel V, a character she created who interviewed Bollywood stars. Lola was the antithesis of the cool VJ - sari-clad, bespectacled, gajra sporting a thick Malayali accent. To this day her greatest achievement is that she somehow managed to win the ‘Best Talk Show Host’ award when the other nominees in her category included Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt!
The stage being her first love, Anu has had the privilege of travelling the world with plays. Her theatre credits include Lillete Dubey's Sammy, Divya Palat's, A Personal War (that won at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival) and Rage's One on One and more. Anu has extended her stage life to actively performing stand-up and hosting corporate shows. Her stand-up special "Wonder Menon" is the first Indian female special to feature on Amazon Prime. Whenever her set revolves around her family, they get a 30% cut of all jokes about them. Since she has to provide for her son’s material needs it’s only fair that she uses him as material! Anu was a part of "Destination Unknown", a comedy travelogue with Vir Das and a mentor on Comicstaan, both on Amazon Prime. She is currently the face of Pizza Hut in India and HDFC Bank's Vigil Aunty, an anti-fraud superhero. With a husband who works as a marine engineer, Anu is a single parent for half the year; so, life is all about meticulous planning and to-do lists. Her ultimate dream is to do a shampoo commercial or item number!
6. Antra Bhargava (@sparshhospitals) - Chief Growth Officer at SPARSH Group of Hospitals
A mother of two wonderful daughters Meira and Sofia, Antra Bhargava has had an exciting and highly successful career spanning over 20 years. She is known for choosing roles that drive social impact and make the world a better place. Antra is currently the Chief Growth Officer at the SPARSH Hospital Group – one of the most exciting and purpose led organisations in India, under the aegis of the visionary Chairman Dr Sharan Patil. She was formerly CEO of SuVitas - an award-winning and pioneering healthcare startup in Transition Care that has been acquired by HCAH, a Delhi-based group promoted by the founders of the Dabur brand. Prior to that, she has worked across consulting firms from KPMG to GT and in industries as varied as a billion-dollar glass manufacturing group to telecommunications to sports startups.
An honours law graduate from Trinity College, Dublin and a qualified CA, Antra was one of India's first and youngest female black belts in Taekwondo - a Korean martial Art. She was also the first and youngest female referee for the sport in the Indian National Games in 1998. She is the Creator of P.A.C.E. - a model to help people of all genders and ages to build personal safety habits which she has taught to over 20,000 people. Today, Ms Bhargava is also the Founder and Managing Trustee of The WoW Kitty Trust - a charity focused on women's empowerment through financial independence. Author of an award-winning thesis on gender diversity on Corporate Boards, Antra is also a published poet.
7. Monisha Krishna (@oursacredgroves)- Co-Founder at Sacred Groves
Driven by the urge to bridge the gap between people and nature, Monisha Krishna co-founded The Sacred Groves - a UK registered Community Interest Company (social enterprise) in February 2020. The venture was born with the purpose of protecting natural habitats all over the world from further degradation and destruction. Monisha has been working full time with Sacred Groves since its conception, managing the day to day running of the company with a focus on finance, technology, legal and compliance. The enterprise has leveraged the latest technologies (geospatial imaging, image analytics, block chain, cloud computing, etc.), to create a digital twin and tokenize the forests/ natural habitats to make the participation in conservation easy and meaningful. It allows environmentally sensitive individuals and companies to embark on their conservation journey in just a few minutes.
8. Sonia Kotak (@mommyadventures_with_raahat) - Entrepreneur and Influencer
This successful Entrepreneur and Influencer is proof that women are adept at juggling multiple roles with aplomb. A woman who dons many hats all at once, Sonia manages a team of academic writers, is an Instagram-recognized content creator and is a well-known parenting & travel blogger. Sonia began her journey as an individual writer in 2018 and now leads a team of academic writers from across India and handles overseas projects under her entrepreneurial wing “WellWords.” Her tryst with success started soon after becoming a mother. She started her Instagram page ‘@Mommyadventures_with_raahat’ in 2018 as a parenting blogger wherein she started journaling her experiences, reviews and parenting adventures. With consistent and creative content creation, her social media popularity rose, and she garnered a huge fan following of 190,000 followers in 5.5 years of time. Now she writes not only about parenting but also about her lifestyle and travel experiences in a funny relatable format. This young female blogger and social media influencer was recently featured in Midday among the “Top 10 Bloggers to follow in 2022” and was also awarded “Mirchi Women of the Year 2023” by Radio Mirchi in March’23.
