“I shot for <Insert large Indian brand> yesterday,” Annapoorna pings me for the third time this month.
“You are on a roll, role after role”, I say, chuckling at my own silly word play but also in happiness looking at her very unique career portfolio.
Today, I bring to you Annapoorna Virdi, strategy consultant, start-up employee, and of late, an actor whose face has started popping up in ads of very many leading consumer brands in India.
Here are some excerpts from my interview with Annapoorna on her unique career portfolio.
How would you introduce yourself in three words?
Non-conformist. Free-spirited. Observant.
Tell us in a few more words who you are.
I’m just a girl staring into the screen (or a book) waiting to see (read) a great story. Always.
I grew up in Ludhiana in a two-professionals two-daughters household, my mother a doctor and father a chartered accountant. As parents of daughters, they raised us with fairly liberal values and a great degree of freedom. When people asked me whose profession I was gonna take after, I was always tempted to say “Neither. I am a builder”. Little did I know then that my answer would traverse a long journey that begun at engineering but went into all forms of creation afterwards, a form of building after all.
After my MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, I was determined not to get into consulting, and as all well-laid plans go, I ended up with Booz & Company, a consulting firm. Armed with a job that gave me not just industry experience (media & entertainment particularly) but also functional experience (market entry, growth, learning & development strategies), I made my first career switch, into a new-age start-up that had invested in a bunch of creator studios and would help them streamline their content operations, and scale their business. It introduced me to a new world altogether. One of the most valuable lessons I learnt from this experience was to experiment and fail fast, be wary of the environment and be ready to pivot if you want to survive. Those instincts really helped in the last few months as I decided to embark on a new adventure and explore the world of camera acting.
What made you try acting? What skills from your previous careers helped you make the shift?
I wouldn’t call it a full “shift”. I have put a few things on hold to pursue a new track that fascinates me and see how it goes. My consulting toolkit is like an invisible briefcase that I carry with me everywhere. It helps me ramp up quickly, like any new project, and also helps me break problems into smaller solvable chunks. I also end up cultivating new skillsets in my acting career, ranging from lead generation and business development to branding, marketing, and content creation.
What did you do to re-skill yourself?
I spent about 5-6 months training – I undertook a variety of workshops and courses in Mumbai to set my foundation.
One of the workshops I signed up for was facilitated by a Movie Director, another by a Casting Director, yet another by an ace acting coach. It helped me learn about what different stakeholders look for.
I also worked with a casting company for about 4 months and that gave me access to a database of old auditions, a network of actors who were approached for parts, and a sneak peek into how they auditioned.
What are key things you have had to build to prepare yourself for this journey?
Boundary conditions: I wanted to be realistic with the timeline I was setting for myself, and the financial setback I was ready to take. Calibrating those really helped me be in the right mental state to pursue this career.
Actor network: You cannot be a lone wolf in this field. In my other life, I always had ready access to folks from the business world. Here, I had to build everything from scratch.
Profile: For starters, I had nothing to show as “work”. I started an Instagram page and experimented with different kinds of static and dynamic content that could proxy for work showcase. I took classes in posing to put together my portfolio.
Casting network: These are the nodes in the value chain who’ll get you the jobs - head hunters, if you may. The first phase included just identifying the relevant ones and pushing my profile through. The second phase was about getting them to notice me enough to send in an audition, and the final phase was to convert them into inbound auditions so that it keeps running on auto-pilot mode, and I have the bandwidth to focus on ongoing business development / hunting for leads, etc.
What are the biggest self doubts you had as you embarked on this journey?
Umm, will I ever be able to make a penny out of this in the timeline I have set for myself? Do I even fit here? Would I even get auditions? Would I ever be able to crack the auditions and land the job? These were some of the self-doubts, but I don’t think I would qualify them as ones that were too big. Because I was fully aware of my safety net. And I always knew I could get back to my other careers, in consulting or media.
Did you worry about any other risks?
One thing I feared often enough was what is my network or community going to think of me. Am I going to lose face? I would often see a smirk or a bemused expression when I would tell people that I am training for camera acting. I understand people don’t know enough and cannot imagine what it takes to break into acting. Many people imagine that we wake up one day and voila! here’s your ad shoot on a platter. This eventually got to me a bit, I started feeling isolated. I decided to channel my thoughts more constructively, penning my journey and experiences, breaking these down for folks interested in knowing about my space. One of my posts, the Anatomy of an Audition, made a lot of people reach out to me and tell what a revelation the process was for them.
What has kept you motivated to continue?
I do a quarterly check in on my progress, and see if the state of affairs is aligning with my overall yearly objectives. Having access to the actor network and an insight into the casting world gives me a reality check, so I don’t have unrealistic expectations for sustained periods of time. Knowing your walkaway point helps. And so does having a few well-wishers in friends & family to share your little wins and lows with. 😊
If you were to do something new yet again in your career, what would you do?
I’m actually trying to do that now as we speak. I got introduced to this concept, Portfolio Life, a while ago, and I have started embracing that. It means pursuing multiple things at once and / or in life - could be careers / areas of interest or just focus areas of life. I’ve realized I love business, and I love consulting. I get excited by the idea of solving for a variety of problems. I have recently started out as a freelance strategy & operations consultant for early stage start-ups and SMBs. However, despite many incoming leads, it is getting hard to streamline my time because of the unplanned nature of my acting gigs. I also play Pickleball, a game that dovetails so well into my strategy interest areas. It fascinates me that all these things are so well intertwined. If you are intrigued by the idea of Portfolio Life, Portfolio Life by Christina Wallace is a good book to start with.
What are three pieces of advice you would give our readers who are thinking about career changes, big or small?
I’m very wary of advisory as a service (lol) because there’s really never a cookie-cutter answer. But perhaps, I can make an attempt to answer for readers who’re more or less in my peer group – folks with about 8-12 years of valuable experience with them. If you have your financial safety net sorted for a given period of time, just go give it a try – whatever you’re toying with, and for that my top 3 tips would be:
Try to experiment and fail fast, and avoid falling into the trap of escalating commitment
Be strict with your boundary conditions, and be agile to make appropriate adjustments to your plan based on circumstances.
Start your additional career on the side, if possible, so that when you’ve taken the full plunge, you already have a headway. [Note: I did not actively do this]
Lastly, when is your next ad releasing? What is it about?
Very soon! And that’s for you to watch and find out!
To learn more about Annapoorna’s work, check out her Instagram profile here.
And some of her ads are here, a small sample of the impressive brands she works with.
Reliance Smart Bazaar / Jio Mart
Urban Company
Groww IPL
Vadilal
What an inspiring interview !! Many congrats Annapoorna for taking the off-beat path and acing it. Thank you Kavitha for holding space.
What an awe-inspiring story! I wish I had half the guts (and skills) of the women in this post.