We all have our stories and the lockdown, and how it impacted our perception of life. SURFACES REPORTER (SR) in association with WADE ASIA invited women in Design to share their inspiring stories from 2020. This story is an inspirational tale of a woman who in her own words has expressed her journey through lockdown as "a combination of innovation and struggle".

Also Read: Meet Purnima Sharma: The Woman Who Found A New Relationship with Technology in The Lockdown

Meet Aarushi

As the saying goes “In adversity lies opportunity”, fun fact, many multi-million-dollar businesses we established during the great depression. This has been a constant source for inspiration in harsh times.

A hardship became a reason to try out something new, something bigger than before. The lockdown impacted Aarushi's life in a multitude of ways, the business coming to an all-time low and most importantly losing her elder brother to a car accident which was a huge emotional shock fir her and her family.

Giving up is always a choice and living to fight another day a difficult struggle, needless to mention Aarushi decided to go with the latter.

Even after being met with several adversities, she never lost hope throughout and ultimately managing to revive her business deploying her newly developed digital marketing skills learned by obtaining a certification.

Also Read: Lessons Learnt, Memories Cherished, and Mindfulness: A Lockdown Story

Coming Breakthroughs

Coming times brought success and prosperity, leading to collaborations with great designers to name a few, Design nidukaan, Ar. Dhruv Gupta, model Ayesh Kanga, invitation to teach design to over 500 students, speak at webinars alongside the very renowned Parul Zaveri, magazines and online blogs such as India Today Homes,

The Architect’s Dairy, The quarry gallery and many more.

For the first time in her life, she got the golden opportunity to judge a design competition. Followed with signing bigger and better projects with Westin Resort and Spa and also starting out a YouTube channel.

Hard to believe all this was accomplished in a matter of months, but according her the most satisfying of her accomplishments was generating a revenue figure of lacs and generating opportunities for employment across various sectors by designing a simple but extremely pragmatic table safety solution in collaboration with Armor Industries and is now installed in over 300 offices across the nation some notable one's being in that of a Police Commissioner and the CM of Rajasthan, Ashok Gehlot.

Also Read: Sustainable Architecture and Designing- A Novel Approach All the Way To Success

Looking Back

The journey certainly wasn't easy but was definitely worth it.

Soon after the lockdown was announced she made up her mind that this was the best time to grow mentally, economically, emotionally as a person.

Home indeed was her haven from the pandemic and the focus was made on making optimum utilisation of all the available space and time.

After evaluating her strengths, she envisioned ideas and turned them into a board and started approaching her fellow designers for collaborations and inspirations.

She was aware of her ambitions and knew all it takes is a small idea and massive amount of persistence to achieve a dream and followed this action plan.

All this while designing a product that was manufactured in India, providing employment to the local craftsmen and labour force was cherry on the cake.

More than just success

The lockdown or as some might refer to it as "Stay at home order" brought the market chain to a halt and left millions unemployed. One of her last visits to the working site having observed carpenters, electricians, and other workers whose livelihood was dependent on the income generated from the site who were all soon to be unemployed trembled her heart even though there was aid coming in by good-Samaritans the bigger question was "For how long?", if a sustainable solution wasn't to be found soon the scarcity of resources could soon put everyone at stake.

To combat this, she decided to re-establish the chain of work to refuel the system. She started out by targeting one labour group and designing something that could be locally manufactured serving the need of the hour.

Her new product going by the name "Sit-Safe” acted like a catalyst and soon after its launch in collaboration with Armor Industries it gave a sudden rise in demand for labour and additional office staff.

One after the other, she was contacted by people working in various fields finally making its way into the CM house and the rest in now history.

Keep reading SURFACES REPORTER for more such articles and stories.

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