The Naina Experience

Practicing authenticity. Life experiences. Photography. Solo entrepreneurship. India. Australia. And everything in between.

The Naina Experience is a society podcast hosted by Naina Redhu, with 182 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Naina Redhu hosts The Naina Experience, a society show with 182 episodes published.

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  The Naina Experience

  #176 Joseph Freeman, @joespeakshindi, Learning Hindi and Going Viral in Australia #TheNainaExperience Podcast

  Aug 14, 202658 min

  How does an Australian guy end up speaking better Hindi than the host of this podcast? That's where this conversation with Joseph Freeman starts.Joe grew up in Sydney's northern beaches, a part of Australia he describes as culturally insular - not much diversity growing up, and nobody really talking about the different backgrounds kids around him came from. His path to Hindi started somewhere unexpected: a gap year job in Hong Kong, working for an NGO that took secondhand goods from the city and shipped them to grassroots charities elsewhere. There, he found himself surrounded by Indian, Pakistani, Nepali and Bangladeshi friends who all defaulted to speaking Hindi with each other, regardless of which country they were actually from.He came back to Sydney and turned it into a full university major in 1999, at a time when the program was small enough that some classes were taught by video link to a lecturer at ANU in Canberra - genuinely novel technology at the time. Partway through the degree, he did a two-month intensive Hindi course in Rishikesh, which counted toward a year of credit. Before it started, he deliberately routed himself through small UP towns - Jaunpur, Rampur, Sitapur, Muradabad, Bareilly - specifically so he'd have no choice but to actually use the language, rather than falling back on English.A year later, living in Rajasthan, his cook - a man from Bihar who'd also spent time in Punjab - taught him vocabulary and cooking side by side, and neither of them could always say for certain which region a particular word or dish technically belonged to. That's the backstory behind the poha video Joe eventually posted online, beans and all, which earned him hundreds of comments insisting "beans nahi dalna."We also get into the reel that changed the scale of everything for him - Joe lip-syncing PM Modi's speech during his Australia visit, which crossed a million views while he was out at his dad's birthday dinner. From there: copycat reels from other creators, AI-generated versions circulating, news outlets reposting the clip without credit, and a CNN call that came with zero preparation - no briefing on what would be asked, cameras and lighting being adjusted live while the interview was already underway. Joe talks about which parts of that whole experience actually meant something to him - it wasn't the big outlets, but the small local papers that took time to ask real questions.We also get into how he handles the hate comments that inevitably show up, why he's stopped taking them personally, and why - despite everything that's happened with the account - he has no plans to make any of this his full-time job. He still works a regular job, and says he'd rather keep the account something people can genuinely connect with than chase where it could go commercially.Guest: Joseph Freeman Naina: Instagram | Website | YouTube | Come on the podcast: naina.co/product/the-100-podcast

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  Episode #175

  #175 Aishwarya Mishra - From Software Engineer to Interior Designer in Adelaide | The Naina Experience Podcast

  May 22, 202658 min

  Aishwarya Mishra spent 12 years as a software test engineer before she enrolled at TAFE Adelaide and switched to interior design. She now runs Aishmi Design in Adelaide.She was born in Odisha, grew up in Hyderabad, and comes from a creative family - trained Odissi dancer, fashion designer uncle, mother in media. The software career happened because in Hyderabad, you're handed a short list of options. She picked software, worked it for 12 years, reached management, and decided she wanted something creative.She enrolled at TAFE Adelaide, got her diploma, and credits the practical training there with making her want to fight harder for her place in the industry. She now works alongside her mentor Tanya Nikolic on residential projects end to end - floor plans, 3D renders, site visits, client and trades communication.Her design philosophy is built around color. She's Indian, not scared of pattern or bold palettes, and says most of her client work involves showing people - through renders and patience - that color in a home is a feature, not a risk. She calls the current state of Australian interiors a "beige pandemic." Her counter: you spend 60 to 70 percent of your time at home. It should make you feel something.Her TAFE final project was designing a home for a client with a degenerative disease - eyesight deteriorating over time, wheelchair use ahead. She added color and high-contrast surfaces and made it feel like his home. National award finalist.Skills she carried from software: fast tool adoption, time management, client and trades navigation. She says software engineering has a role in everything she does in interior design now.Seven years in Adelaide - two in Sydney before that. She says the small market is an advantage for someone building a name. Available for residential, open to commercial.Find Aishwarya:Instagram: @aishmi_design LinkedIn: Aishwarya Mishra on LinkedIn Find Naina:Instagram: @naina Website: naina.co YouTube: The Naina Experience on YouTube Be a guest: Join the podcast

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  Episode #174

  #174 Manka Mishra, Reinventing Career and Culture from India to Sweden to Paris

  Apr 22, 202659 min

  Episode 174. Manka Mishra joined me from Paris.She is from Dhanbad, Jharkhand. Delhi University, post-grad in Pune, a short stint in Mumbai, six and a half years in Delhi. Ericsson then moved her to Sweden. Thirteen years in Stockholm. Amazon then brought her to Paris, where she now works in business transformation.We talked about what professional survival actually looks like abroad. In Ericsson elevators in Stockholm, Indians were assumed to be developers. She was in marketing. The Swedish workplace is planned, consensus-driven, and deliberately flat. Friends schedule vacations two years ahead. You meet every six months because that is the calendar.Her reading on why most Indian men she saw move to Sweden went home while the women stayed: Indian women are trained to give and to ask, men are trained to be served. One of those survives.Paris flipped the script. Nine months to sort her admin. A recent hospital emergency where staff would not help her because she does not speak French. She pays 42 percent tax. A visiting friend who spoke French had to step in.Outside work: PhD in Odissi, PhD in vocal, certified yoga trainer, painter, golfer, swing dancer in training, calligraphy student. She runs a Women in Leadership forum she built in Sweden, now extending it across Europe. The focus is authentic leadership, including the hits leaders took on the way up.She is hard on herself. She knows it. Forty was the year it got better.Connect with Manka: LinkedIn Connect with Naina: Instagram Website Watch on YouTube . Book a podcast session .

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  Episode #173

  #173 Sabreen Haziq, Building Brand Equity on LinkedIn from Boston

  Apr 22, 202656 min

  Episode 173 of The Naina Experience. My guest is Sabreen Haziq, based in Boston, on the production team at Buffer, and someone who has posted on LinkedIn every single day since June 2024.We talked about her "land and expand" approach to content: pick one platform, invest deep, then port the brand equity somewhere else. LinkedIn has been her anchor. YouTube is her current expansion, a rebrand of a dormant 2013 account that already brought in 400 new subscribers off the first video.Her brand deal pipeline runs through LinkedIn DMs, not Instagram. SaaS companies reach out, she builds the campaigns, the work repeats. She's also planning a new Instagram in July with a fresh email, geotagged US, to crack the wallet-share problem she's hit with a heavily South Asian audience.On production, she's refreshingly un-precious. One key light next to the camera, two lights taped to the back wall, a night lamp for fill, Sony A7IV. "Date the camera, marry the lens."The AI section is where she went deep. She doesn't write code. She built a workflow at Buffer where Zapier pulls every message from the top ten Discord channels into Google Sheets, Claude analyses sentiment, Notion receives a monthly report that now shapes product decisions. Her framing: nobody is behind on AI right now, as long as you're willing to embrace it.Plus moving to London at 22 to study and waitress through it, moving to the US at 25 and rebuilding after divorce, launching her coffee brand Breadcrumb Behavior on ManyChat, and the line I keep thinking about: "I get bored very easily. So I sometimes give up before the compound effect hits."Links: Sabreen on Instagram Sabreen on LinkedIn Sabreen on YouTube Naina on Instagram Naina's website Book your own podcast episode The Naina Experience on Spotify The Naina Experience on YouTube

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  Episode #171

  Shefaly Yogendra, Reimagining the Boardroom for Uncharted Spaces Episode 171 #TheNainaExperience

  Apr 14, 202658 minS0

  Episode 171 of The Naina Experience is with Shefaly Yogendra, author of Uncharted Spaces, board director, and one of the sharpest pattern-spotters I know. We recorded on the morning of her book launch at The Shard in London. This is her first book.Shefaly introduced me to the word metacognition years ago. Her definition: what we do is what we get engrossed in, and the learning comes when you abstract one layer up to see the principle underneath. The best use of formal education is to apply its principles to your own life. Most people reserve them for work and miss...

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