Piya Bose, a corporate lawyer who left her job to follow her passion i.e. Travelling.
Piya Bose started Girls On The Go Travel Club in 2008. Her TEDx talk on starting her business on a zero cash business model was listed by Forbes magazine amongst the Top 9 TEDx talks on travel globally.
While sharing her extraordinary entrepreneurial journey she said, “Though I have chosen to take up tourism as a profession, it still does give me pride that I have a degree in BSc.LLB from the prestigious National University of Juridical Sciences(NUJS) and have worked with great legal minds. The training I received at law school has helped me greatly in the work I do, starting from research methodology, to drafting a contract with people I do business with or being aware of my rights and liabilities as a service provider. So, to sum it up, I would not say I have totally left the profession as law is very integral to the work I do. Being from a legal background, gives greater credibility and respect to the work I do now.”
“In India almost every third person on the street is an entrepreneur. From selling street food to cleaning ear wax or selling magazines at traffic lights, the spirit of entrepreneurship I see in everyone around me is absolutely extraordinary. This is what inspires me”, she said further.
“Looking up in awe at the majestic Mount Everest during an impromptu overland trip from India to Nepal and then to Tibet, inspired me to focus more on living than earning a living. I quit my high paying career as a corporate lawyer at the age of 25 to start a travel club for women ‘Girls On The Go’ (GOTG) in 2008 on a zero cash business model. Since inception, GOTG has taken women camping in Mongolia, expedition cruising in Antarctica, Northern Lights chasing in the Arctic, staying with the head hunters of Nagaland and many more wild adventures”, she added.
Piya Bose has also helped women with disabilities travel and is now working on helping women from lesser privileged backgrounds to travel.
Piya has been listed by Conde Naste traveller as one of the top 15 travel entrepreneurs shaking up the travel industry and has been featured in a book by Penguin Publications called ‘You Can Make Your Dreams Work’. She has also been awarded as the Best Travel Entrepreneur of the Year by PCTE University and amongst Top 50 Rising Stars by UK based ‘We Are The City’.
She has also been a researcher on how environmental factors could have led to the fall of the Indus Valley Civilization and lessons we can learn to prevent a similar situation from happening again.
For the youth willing to start their own enterprise, she said, “Everyone in business should read this book:
Chanakya Neeti – Ancient pearls of wisdom on how to be a good leader and do business by Chanakya, a professor of political science and economics at the Taxila University. Known as the ‘maker of kings’, his astute wisdom holds well even today for anyone who wants to start a business and battle all odds.