Anitha Senthil’s village is small but her dreams are big
“As a woman, I have never felt that I can’t do something. Dream for it, love it, work hard towards it and it will be yours.”
Anitha Senthil’s words echo her story. Anitha comes from a village in Palakkad in Kerala from a lower middle class family with parents who have given her all the support and freedom to choose her career.
If there is one thing that Anitha as a child has wished for, it has been the desire to leave a mark on the world, “To inspire someone,” she says. She hardly knows any women in her village who have done what she has. But when we mention that she must be an inspiration to many in her village, she laughs it off shyly.
Inspired by Abdul Kalam’s book Wings of Fire and motivated by her friends, she found herself leaning towards entrepreneurship. In 2012 she started Coursegig.com. Coursegig offers professional tutoring and a large source of study materials. It contains a huge collection of study material and provides online tutors too.
Anitha completed her schooling in Palakkad and moved to Coimbatore for her graduation and post graduation. After graduation, she started working in the BPO sector in Chennai in 2008. This exposure was pivotal in her life. Anitha says, “Thanks to this exposure I am doing something in my life.”
These years living away from home were also very challenging for her. She missed her family terribly and finally when she could not stay away any longer, she quit her job in 2009 and started looking for something in her hometown. The job she found was not to her satisfaction so she started her online career as a freelance content producer and moved in to the academic sector. Those were tough days but it made her bold and like Anitha says,
It gave me courage to lead my life and compete in any circumstance.
Anitha’s journey has seen its share of ups and downs and she has learnt from her struggles and mistakes.
Working as a freelancer gave her the opportunity to learn the ins and outs of the business, understand business tactics, study the market etc. “The market analysis helped me in finding answers to so many questions such as why am I starting this, and I know the competitors in this field,” she says.
In 2014 she also completed her MBA.
Anitha is proud that marriage and motherhood has not come in the way of her venture, passion and dreams and vice versa.
My friends tell me they are busy with family and don’t have time to do anything but I think one can manage both and maintain a balance. In fact I am always dreaming about what is next and how do I achieve my latest goal. This makes me happy and gives me the energy to live my life today with ambition and optimism,
she says. Anitha is very happy to talk about her team, “I have a great team and they support me in everything. I have three employees to assist me at the moment and the others are all freelancers. This makes it easy to manage things. I do miss out the office environment some times.”
Early this year she took the bigger step and started the Keyways Edu Service which is based out of Cochin. With Keyways Edu Services, she says, “We provide an out of the box academic assistance to students cost effectively. We pool in resources such as internet and other technology so as to ensure that students are benefitted and achieve goals concerning their education. Our ultimate aim is the online support for educating students for academic performance and thereby enhancing their future.” Now both coursegig.com and academicpaperhub.com have been brought under the umbrella of Keyways Edu Service. The latter provides solutions for penning papers.
As an entrepreneur she has never shied away from networking and is a part of different communities. This has allowed her to meet a lot of people, and many of these people have inspired her to reach her goals.
‘To help others achieve their dreams in order to achieve mine’ is a philosophy she lives by. To keep herself motivated she practices yoga and meditates daily. “I focus only on good things and take pride in everything I do.”