Actor Neha Dhupia gets candid about parenting, acting, and entrepreneurial ambitions
Actively driving online conversation around parenting challenges, Neha Dhupia is now willing to give entrepreneurship another shot, while she gives her production company and acting a reboot.
Actor Neha Dhupia has balanced parenting with a successful podcast series and multiple projects for six years. Keeping up with multitasking, Dhupia shares insights about an active parenting community that she is working on, while she eats a quick meal during this interview with YS Life.
“You will hear me chewing food. As long as you are ok with that…Long day, sorry, I haven’t had time to eat…,” she trails off. Mom to mom, a working lunch is a time-saving trick, and quite fine to function with.
The former Miss India (2002) made her Bollywood debut in 2003, and since then has also paced herself as an actor, model, producer, and podcast host for NoFilterNeha. After embracing motherhood, Dhupia co-founded Freedom To Feed, an Instagram page dedicated to building a parenting community. Things are only getting started for Dhupia as she actively looks to return to acting and give entrepreneurship another shot.
Actor Neha Dhupia is just getting started
Voice with a cause
Recently, Dhupia got online attention when actor and fellow celebrity mother Bipasha Basu revealed her struggle with her daughter’s heart condition on Dhupia’s Instagram live.
“We began as a breastfeeding community, but today we are a fast-growing parenting community. We have larger conversations around children's health, mothers’ mental well-being, and co-parenting. We’ve got experts to help us through such issues. We are largely conversation-driven where mothers exchange stories,” Dhupia says.
Freedom To Feed has over 56,000 followers, and aims to expand across social media platforms. Counting on the aspirational value, the page gets people interested by bringing in celebrities to talk around parenting.
While celebrity mothers have earlier invested in parenting and childcare ventures, Dhupia is more focused on building a longstanding and enduring online social community that works towards genuine engagement and awareness.
She tackles topics like mom guilt, co-sleeping with a child, and other behavioural actions that often conflict working mothers with her celebrity friends.
The former Miss India (2002) has also paced herself as an actor, model, producer, and podcast host for No Filter Neha.
Talking about her husband Angad Bedi and their parenting practices, Dhupia says, “The fact that we don’t talk about it (who does what) says a lot about how we co-parent. Today, while I am at work, he will look after the kids and in the evening, he will take our son for football and I will take our daughter to an art exhibit. The fact that our parenting responsibilities are taken for granted by each other, there is a lot of comfort in that. Most couples don’t quite get to this level, I understand that. But to applaud a man just because he changes diapers is unnecessary.”
Behind the camera
Dhupia is one of the first multi-taskers among Hindi film actors, having veered into show hosting and the successful reality show Roadies (2016).
She was last seen in A Thursday (2022), a sleeper hit on Disney+ Hotstar, as a pregnant police officer.
Under her production banner, Big Girl Productions, she has produced a short film, Good Morning (2022), and is currently preparing for a movie. “I am 100% looking to get back to work full-time. As my daughter and son both go to school, I have a lot more time on my hands.”
Dhupia is currently working on a comedy film with actor Vicky Kaushal, co-produced and directed by Anand Tiwari. She further reveals that a web-series will be announced soon. “I play a small but effective role (in the web series and film).”.
Furthermore, having made her mark as a conversationalist that can get movie stars to talk about their feelings without veering into gossip, Dhupia is now planning to make a web-series out of her NoFilterNeha podcast.
Image source: Facebook
Big Girl Productions also covers Dhupia’s philanthropic ventures. “We are working on all fronts as nothing is self-funded entirely,” she adds.
Entrepreneurial instinct
Dhupia turned entrepreneur for an online apparel venture, HerStyle, in 2011, but it didn’t take off. “We didn’t get adequate traction on it. I also got busy with multiple commitments,” she tells YS Life.
Currently, she has stepped into the sphere of mother and child care brands to ramp up her entrepreneurial engagements that she will soon announce. “After I had my kids, I realised that I have a huge entrepreneurial side and I am driven by it. The market is completely different now, but the idea of getting a startup off the ground really excites me. I am looking to work with someone who can take the lead on such a venture,” she says.
For those with a long memory, Dhupia’s ability to adapt, survive, and conquer was evident in the 2002 British documentary, Bitches and Beauty Queens: The Making of Miss India. In the insightful documentary, a young Dhupia comes across as intelligent, articulate, and laser-focused on making things happen–the perfect recipe for an aspiring entrepreneur.
For now, she concludes the conversation with an upcoming mommy task and a clear thought–“Happy moms make happy children! I didn’t want to miss out on the joys of seeing my kids grow up. At the same time, I get so much love from people for what I do, so I really want that too!”
Edited by Megha Reddy