The 29-year-old entrepreneur and independent journalist, Harshita Dagha, is a mother to a 1.5-year-old. She restarted and accelerated her content journey post delivering the baby, which is now at gear five and unstoppable. Sure, juggling between the two worlds is quite a task but efficient.
Harshita Dagha – My Story
From a career that spans over a decade, I have collected experiences from my engineering days to my stint at Femina. I am now focused on providing customized content solutions from e-commerce platforms as much as to independent publications. If it has to do with words, I will find a solution for you.
I will do it for you if you need content that pulls people in like a moth to light. I am accredited as one of the top freelance writers in India today with an unapologetic passion for content. I am also deeply interested in lifestyle content – my passion varies from offering relationship advice to covering celebrities.
So basically, I am into content writing, and I am a content solution provider. I have a preliminary plan of starting to provide content solutions because I am an engineer by qualification. I had no idea that I would get into writing, but I just knew that I liked writing, which was my passion, and soon after, I ventured into a lot of small and big companies.
Due to writing, I got hired, and then I started providing conference strategies to zee and many other big businesses in entertainment and lifestyle. After a certain period, TOI times of India reached out to me. Famine was a pure lifestyle brand, and it’s a huge magazine. That’s when I started working, and I liked my job.
But then I realized that I wanted to do something on my own. I want to make a difference, and I want to be able to employ women and people. That’s what struck me, and I decided to quit and start freelancing. It was a rough start because you are very used to a job life, and it doesn’t come that easy to you. Eventually, I started with references, meeting people, and being in tribute to people. They learned that I am very pitch-perfect on my guidelines and deadlines in this task, so they started giving me more work.
So I was getting work not based on a company or a job but because of my experience, face, and brand name. I started to do something very independently and so on my own to be able to employ people and, most importantly, not get bored when I am 50 – 60. Because when you are writing, you are reading every day and everything. You are reading something new because the knowledge is vast and endless. You can read about different things as it keeps you updated.
As I am more into digital and now when I started with this industry, journalism is an aspect of content writing. It provides news, content, and something trending that is majorly on television or print media. It was not digital, so what I started doing was writing for a lot of digital portals.
Until then, most digital platforms started flourishing, and digital journalism started being consumed considerably. It made me happy that now I can contribute to digital journalism as much as I am contributing to content solutions. I believe that people in this world are getting more digital.
There is more reach, and you are not constructed to reach only a city, state, or country. It’s more than that. So my primary aim as a content solution provider would also be widening digital journalism and not just print media or television. It should be much more than that.
So that’s how I am trying to make a difference out of it and try to employ the writers, you know, people can work from home, work at their ease, and that’s the best thing about writing. I also have a lot of housewives writing content for me. People who are driven, motivated, and do multiple things are superheroes, so I believe that they are superwomen in their way, but they don’t have a chance to venture out of the house because they are already doing multiple courses.
They are managing their babies, their parents, their in-laws, their husbands, so writing is a perfect thing for them, and that’s what I am currently doing.
My company is very bootstrapped as I had invested on my own, my employ, my clients, and my workspace everything that I need. Writing only needs a laptop to be very precise and a website to hold your credentials. I am not doing a lot of marketing and PR activities lately because writing digitally gives you your third name. Whoever is having a bootstrapped business, the challenges are very different because they don’t get significant funding, and they don’t get to interact with many investors.
I would say they end up saving a lot of time, running about here and there, pitching to invest. I think they can start small and eventually grow more prominent and invest in their own company in that sense. It is like a mango tree, it will take time to bear fruit, but you know it will eventually happen. It’ll be slow, but it will be worth it. The conditions of entrepreneurs in India are yet to get up to the mark. As we see in Silicon Valley, the entrepreneurs are very supportive in this industry, whereas they are yet to get there in India.
When I am doing engineering and want to do content writing, I do not want to reject it because engineering has taught me a lot. If you see a pen, engineering teaches you that there is a lot more to this pen. So I was able to do my research better as a content solutions provider, and it heads you deal with stuff better, but at the same time, engineering also puts you under a lot of pressure.
The only regret is I lost a lot of opportunities for independent work and freelance. I was doing the job at that time, so I had to say no to ample opportunities. I slightly feel that I would have started my venture before, as we say sooner, the better, but I am happy.
My plans for the future would be to give more employment to rural areas. There are very talented writers, and even if they don’t know the language like English very well, they can be trained, and they are very hard working. English is a primary language that is essential to communicate across the world. So yes, I would love the rural fox to come up and get into literature and even educate their families and learn the importance of content.
Content consumption is so large if we talk about good movies and scripting. That is good content. If we talk about youtube or TikTok right now, it’s banned, but that’s again excellent content. So everything in the world runs on content currently. I want to diversify into the content also as much as employ more into the content. That’s my plan A and second because I want to widen my horizon when it comes to reaching global and targeting more brands from foreign countries.
Hope is a rope that swings you through life. So to everybody who is reading this, I must say that you must never lose hope. The more you feel you will lose hope, the harder you are going to swing onto the rope and hold it tight out. Because yes, hope will lead you somewhere you keep on trying, and eventually, one day, you will get there.
I have bagged over ten awards as the writer of the year, journalist of the year, article of the year, and more for the leading publishing house. I am also the owner of ‘being blah blah’ and scored over 2 million views globally, including features in HT, Mumbai mirror, etc. My content also gained recognition in the UK, US, and Africa.
A message to other women entrepreneurs:
Business for women is not just balancing between two worlds, but it’s more about juggling between two worlds. One needs to be on the toes. It is only the grit and determination to love your work as much as your child as I also have a one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and it’s quite a difficult task to juggle between two different worlds.
But if you have a great passion for something you can live and die for, you should go for it. No matter how hard it gets, you have to stick to your hobby and passion and pursue it because you know that’s the only thing that will live by you when the people are not around. So everything is temporary, everything is going to change, and it’s only your passion that will be here to stay.
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