[100 Emerging Women Leaders] From educating children of sex workers to building Veris: The journey of Aastha Sharma

As a student at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Aastha Sharma met several sex trafficking victims and sex workers in Kamathipur, a red-light area in Mumbai.

Along with some of her batchmates, she was helping the children of sex workers and the victims of child sex trafficking get proper school education.

However, many women did not have any paperwork to show, which would pose a problem for their children to enrol in public schools.

Fearing backlash due to the taboo around sex workers, private schools would bar them from attaining proper learning, while certain parents would not want their children to become friends with them.

“In my three months at Kamathipura, we would visit every day and see a completely different world. It opened my eyes in many different ways. Going to Kamatipura was a big thing. But, in the initial days, people wouldn’t want to talk to us, which meant establishing a trust base first,” says Aastha.

Hailing from Jaipur, with a homemaker as a mother and a government employee as a father, Aastha says it was a complete shift from her background.

Recalling when her father met with an accident, she says, “My mother was strong, and we never saw a tear in her eyes. These were tough times when we were taught to be independent women. We are two sisters and a brother, and my brother was 1.5 years old when the accident happened.”

Aastha learnt to hustle early. After passing college in Rajasthan, she pursued higher studies at TISS, where she understood the importance of gaining on-the-job experience. At TISS, students are trained more on the job than in classrooms.

“I had this course on leadership, and our professor Zubin Mullah said, ‘leadership cannot be taught in classrooms; you need to establish it in person.’ I was given a project to go to a relatively stigmatised or powerless community to establish this. I happened to choose commercial sex work,” she adds.

After graduating, she joined Body Shop, where the company was running a ‘Stop Sex Trafficking’ campaign—organised by Shriti Malhotra.

“It is said that the first boss has an impact on you, and I learnt a lot from her and how to bring about change,” says Aastha.

After her stint at Body Shop, she joined Avon. Aastha realised that going for meetings at other offices was a hassle, but not because of the commute. It was the experience at office buildings — finding parking spots, registering, figuring out the meeting, etc.

“In the age of on-demand technology, having to go through this hassle should not happen,” she says.

This led to the birth of Gurugram-based Veris in 2017, which started as a visitor management system. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the startup moved into employee experience as workplaces now focus more on catering to their employees’ choices and safety needs.

Today, Veris is a complete workplace experience platform where employees can book their meals, meeting rooms, desks, allow check-ins, book a shuttle, etc.

The platform has over 50 million check-ins and is deployed in 18 countries. Today, Aastha is all set to make Veris a larger company.

While, in her time, she has seen her fair share of glares, Aastha believes it is important for people to stick to what they do.

“As women, we have to work harder to simply put a point across. But over time, you are respected for what you bring to the table. Unfortunately, I have seen many women getting scared and backing out. It is a journey to make people believe; you need to know it is a matter of time. Trust yourself. Don't let the world decide for you. They should decide for themselves. The power is within. Unless you have faith in yourself, the world isn’t going to have any faith in you.”