Eyeway Conversations with Siddharth Sharma
SShilpi KapoorJun 11, 2021 at 5:35 am21min
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00:07Eyeway Helpdesk
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00:32George Abraham
Hi, my name is George Abraham and welcome to this edition of Eyeway Conversations. My guest today is Siddharth Sharma, a Public Relations professional, a fitness buff, and a man of style. Welcome Siddharth. Hi, George, great to be on your show. So Siddharth, I was reading somewhere that you are the first blind Public Relations professional in Asia.
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00:57Siddharth Sharma
Well, that's true. George you know, I started my public relations career when I was with you, at the first World Cup Cricket for the Blind way back in '98. And soon after that, I started working with Public Relations agency called Connections, which was a great agency of its time. And after a few years of working with them, I realized that you know, growth in a PR agency might be slightly restricted. So therefore, I said, Okay, let's take the plunge, and go the entrepreneurial route. And that's when I decided to form Foundations PR, which was in 2002. So keeping that in mind, I mean, when I started off, there was nobody, absolutely nobody in the country who I could, you know, even talk to, from my field. I mean, when I say talk to I mean, visually impaired people, because there were none. Yes, today, I mean, I have successfully been running this Public Relations agency called Foundations PR, for, well, 19 years now. And I do happen to be Asia's first self employed Public Relations professional.
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02:22George Abraham
You started your career with the agency, Connections. And this was probably your first foray into employment as a visually impaired or blind person. So talk us through some of the initial experiences, some of the thoughts that might have been crossing your mind some of the apprehensions that you might have been having?
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02:43Siddharth Sharma
Well, as you know, I mean, I lost my eyesight at the age of 24 and a half, thanks to a motorbike accident. And for many years, I mean, I didn't really do anything structured in the form of a job, and so on. But when the World Cup came up, and you gave me the opportunity at that time to work on the public relations aspect of things, I suddenly realized that PR is something that suits my style suits, my, you know, intellectual capabilities, and so on. And so I settled into this job with a sense of apprehension, a, because it was a large corporate house, it was the Dalmiya Group. And I didn't know how I was going to fit into a corporate environment, I guess, that didn't turn out to be too much of an issue. I got into my role with the ease, slowly started realizing that all my experience from the past, because I was into counting sports and stuff like that, before my accident, and the things that I had done. I mean, I was a Commerce graduate, I soon realized that business development and, you know, the marketing aspect of things, the operational aspect of the agency was something that I was, you know, very comfortable with. And soon, I started bringing in business, to the organization, which, at that point of time was a huge sense of achievement, not only for me, but also for the organization, because suddenly, I mean, we were bringing in marquee accounts, they were good accounts that were coming in. And that gave me a sense of confidence that okay, even though I mean, I have this visual impairment, when I go out into the big wide world, people take you seriously.
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04:36George Abraham
Public relations, the way we all know it is a lot of connections and interactions with people in the media. And the media is a huge group. There are different kinds of people in the media, whether it is print, whether it's electronic, or whether it's even the these days even in the digital space. So why don't you share with us, some of the initial challenges that you might have had.
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